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SILAS
"WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" asks the police officer with the crisp uniform and the honey-blonde curls.
Silas doesn't miss a beat. "Esteban Bloodknight Inkcartridge."
What? Silas isn't normally a liar, but he knows she can't know who he really is. He's not from this dimension; what if there isn't even a Silas Darling in this dimension? What if he tells them what his real name is, they look him up in the databases, and nothing comes up? They'll kill him and his entire family and everyone he's ever acquainted himself with for sure.
He can't take any chances.
He doesn't know why he's here, handcuffed to a table. The room is empty. It's just him and the officer and the table and a lamp and a large mirror, a sheet of one-way glass. He only has a vague memory of what happened, of rushing towards a police car for help. He needed to find his friends, needed to get out of there, needed to do so many things. But the officer didn't even read him his rights before he was handcuffed and shoved brutally in the backseat of a cop car. He kept asking what was going on, but the cop said nothing. When they got to the station, he was led into this interrogation room. They left him on his room until the blonde officer, McConnell, came in and started questioning him.
He doesn't know what he's doing here. He doesn't know why they're treating him like he's some kind of terrorist. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was just looking for their help.
McConnell blinks at him. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-one."
"Are you from Warwick?"
"No."
"Where, then? Berlin?"
"Wisconsin."
McConnell is eating his words up, happily scribbling on a notepad. Silas has begun to consider a career in improv.
"And you're a student?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What are you studying?"
"Epidemiology."
That's not entirely a lie. Silas wants to go into disease control. It's just that he hasn't exactly gotten around to doing so because, you know, he's a high school junior.
"Where at?"
Silas falters. "Androscoggin." A community college in Warwick, named after the river the city's nestled up against.
McConnell looks over her notes, dissatisfied, her expression sour. "Your name is Esteban Bloodknight Inkcartridge, you're twenty-one years old, and you're a student studying epidemiology at Androscoggin Community College." A pause. She licks her thumb, uses it to flip to the next open page in her notepad. Squints down at it. "What do you have to hide?"
Silas balks. "What do you mean?"
"Your name sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi novel. You look hardly fifteen. ACC closed down when the wall went up, and they never had any epidemiology courses. I should know; I went there. You very well might be from Wisconsin, but I don't believe a word that you said." She peers at him over the rims of her glasses. "People only lie when they have something to hide or something to gain. So what is it?"
This is why he doesn't lie. He's horrible at it and people can see right through him. He'd auditioned for Romeo in their middle school rendition of Romeo and Juliet, but he didn't get the part. The director told him he was "too dramatic for Romeo."
He plays with the strings on his sweatshirt, wishing his plastic chair would swallow him whole. He's really gotten himself into a pickle, now. "I'm seventeen," he says weakly. He can't have her thinking he's a fifteen-year-old.
McConnell arches an eyebrow at him. "Is that the truth?"
He nods, looking down at his shoes.
"Go on, then. Tell me the rest of it."
And just like that, the truth spills out of him, word vomit: "My name's Silas Darling. I'm seventeen and I'm from Warwick. I lived there, in the same house, my entire life. I went to Warwick High School until it shut down." The last part's a lie. He still goes to Warwick. But if ACC closed down when the wall went up, his high school must have, too. He takes a deep breath, cradling his head in his hands, ashamed of himself. How could he betray his friends like this, in telling the truth? What would they think of him? They could have lied and gotten away with it.
McConnell swallows, seemingly satisfied, and pushes back from the table. "Come with me, Silas. I need to get you to your cell."
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SILAS IS, by nature, a rule-follower. That doesn't mean that he thinks all rules are good. It's just . . . he doesn't like to be the one to challenge them. Will he support his friends, if they want to break every rule known to man? Absolutely. But from a safe distance away. Sipping on a hot mug of tea. With bandaids and bail money ready. Cain likes to say that he's the human equivalent of a calculus teacher. Meredith thinks it's sweet.
Is it because some part of him knows he wouldn't get off as easy as his friends do? Meredith's white and blonde and pretty. She gets away with anything. Cain's Chinese: people see him and they think innocent nerd, however false the stereotype may be. They don't think he's capable of homicide. Atlas might be black, but he's mixed, lightskin. The kind of black that's acceptable. The kind of black you see in Hollywood and college brochures. The kind of black that's comfortable, because it's also a little bit white. Silas's skin is as black as night. Not the kind of black you see on the red carpet or smiling in front of college campuses. The kind of black you see in mugshots and photos of gangs and riots.
Maybe. But Silas also really hates getting in trouble. So, naturally, at first, he doesn't think about using mind control to break out of prison. Why would he even consider trying to break out? He hasn't done anything wrong. If he's quiet and compliant, if he answers her questions and says yes ma'am and keeps his head down and a civil tongue in his head, he'll be set free. Won't he?
The only thought he has is something akin to the perspective of a Bikini Bottom resident (Silas has an in-depth theory about how Bikini Bottom is a totalitarian capitalist state and Mr. Krabs runs the monopoly in control of the government): I must do everything they say.
So he listens to McConnell's every command without question. He follows her out the interrogation room, down several hallways, and into a lonely little cement-block cell, his tail between his legs. There's a bed hanging from the wall by chains, a pink sink, a white toilet, a silver drain and a shower-head hooked to the ceilng. On the bottom of the door, there's a little doggy-door-esque slit. Silas assumes it's to give prisoners their food.
She locks him in and tells him to get some rest, there will be more questions tomorrow.
"Wait," Silas calls.
McConnell pushes the door open, stumbling back inside. "What is it?"
Silas slides onto the bed, his back pushed against the wall. What does he say to her? Why didn't he think this through? What is he doing? In a moment of panic, he blurts the first thing he thinks of: "They used to make Coca Cola with cocaine to get people addicted to it. Isn't that messed up?"
What? Is he supposed to ask her how her day's been? Has she arrested any serial killers lately? Shot any unarmed black teenagers?
She stares at him coolly. "Interesting." Starts to push open the door with her foot. "I'm gonna go nowâ"
"No, wait." He needs to keep her talking; he's out of practice with his power. He needs a moment to figure out how to actually use it. "Why doesn't anyone ever say that capitalism only works in theory?" Her only response is a blank face. Of course she's a capitalist. He needs to change his tactics. Stop getting so worked up over his Spongebob fan theories. "Have you ever done cocaine?"
"I grew up in Detroit. My upstairs neighbor smoked crack. Once, she accidentally fed it to her poodle. She won a Nobel Peace Prize. Because of something completely unrelated."
Silas tries to focus on what he knows about her. He knows she's from Detroit. Knows she's white and probably had it easy. Doesn't know if she's ever done cocaine because she kind of avoided the question. (Do you do cocaine? He doesn't know his drug lingo. One time he asked Meredith if she did weed and all of his friends made it their Instagram bios for a week, they found it so funny.) He's not very efficient with mind control.
The two times he ever used his power . . . he hadn't entirely been in control of his body. Like how one might be after entering the spirit realm through a truck stop Denny's. But he does remember that, in his little pancake-induced trucker spirit realm, he'd been completely fixated on the little girl he'd made grab the gun, on drunk Maya as he made her stop the cop car. It was like he'd been trying to shove his mind into their's. He still remembers the little girl's face, all wide brown eyes and cute hook nose.
He tries to do that now with McConnell. Looks at every wrinkle and fold in her neatly-pressed suit. Looks at her sensible white Sketchers. Looks at the way her honey blonde curls fall in perfect little ringlets at her shoulders, the way her rimless glasses make her look somewhere between a ninety's nerd and a 2017 music.ally clout god. He tries to mold his mind into the shape of her.
"A girl in my freshman year English class presented an entire power-point about why she doesn't think Detroit exists," Silas says, trying to get her talk more about Detroit. Trying to get her to talk about her childhood, about her hopes and fears and dreams. Maybe this'll be easier if he knows her a little better. Should he ask her to dinner? No, that's preposterous. He can't be too obviously stalling. "She said all industrial cities are a ploy of the government's to distract us from the ultimate state of mind."
"And what would that be?"
"Wheat farming."
Concern knitting her brows together, McConnell kneels in front of Silas. "If you or someone you know is suffering from addiction, don't hesitate to call the Addiction Network today."
"You want me to call Food Network?" Silas asks. He'd genuinely misheard her. "You think Bobby Flay is gonna slay my demons? He couldn't even beat himself! How could he?"
"What?"
"Didn't you see that episode of Beat Bobby Flay where Bobby Flay fought himself and lost?"
Silas feels himself leave his body.
His brain seeps out of his skull in smoky tendrils, reaching towards McConnell like a snake slithering towards its pray. Half of his mind stays in his body, the half that can see and think and react but not all three at the same time (he sees but can't think of what he sees; he thinks but can't react to what he thinks). He hears a sizzling noise like the sound of meat hitting a grill, and the other half oozes into the cracks in her mind, deadly as hydrogen cyanide.
McConnell's mind is clay in the grasp of these smoky tendrils. Silas can easily mold her into what he wants her to be, but he can't mold her into something entirely new. He knows this much. He can't create new thoughts or ideas; he can only manipulate the ones she already has to his own advantage. It's a bit like controlling a video game character. Yes, you're technically in control, but there's only so much you can do within the confines of the game. You can play God, but you can't become God. Silas learned this lesson while playing Minecraft.
He takes a second to sift through her thoughts. (Like he's reading the options of what his character can do.) Just sitting there at the edges of her conscious, he can peer down into her depths. A husband, a son, fifteen, seven iguanas and a boa constrictor. The husband is black; so is the son. (Silas reminds her of him, if she squints a little.) He can see something clear-as-day, a memory outlined in bold ink: the son in front of his high school; he and his friend, a white girl with her own driver's license and car, had been caught skipping class. The drug dogs were there that day. They searched her car and found a couple ounces of weed hidden under her backseat. Operating on an anonymous tip, they searched her house and found another three pounds. She was charged with sale or possession with intent to sell. She was eighteen, so they tried her as an adult. She got three years incarcerated and fined $20,000. The son had been smoking, but he didn't have anything to do with her little high school drug cartel other than the obvious. He was fined $100 and suspended for a week.
She's worried about her son. She knows he's a good kid, but she just . . . she doesn't want him to end up like Silas.
A big part of her is muling him over, trying to figure out his end game before he even starts the race. She doesn't trust easly; he's no exception. She can't tell what his motive is. Is he actually on drugs? Is he just joking around with her, trying to find comfort, company, camaraderie? (She's a Hufflepuff. She can respect that.) (Hey! So is Silas! That's something he can latch onto!) Or is he stalling? He could be trying to escape. Maybe he's even planning a mass exodus. What if he's trying to bait her into giving him precious intel?
She can tell that his heart is pure. She wants to believe he's searching for comfort, that he's just a scared teenage boy in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Isn't that the story of black America?) That he's innocent and had nothing to do with what he was charged with. That he'll be more compliant and honest in round two of questioning tomorrow. That his alibi will check out. That he'll walk free. But every word that came out of his mouth was a lie. She can't forget that. What does he have to lie about? McConnell is a cynic, and this kid is sweet but deceptive, pure-hearted but deceitful. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
Curiously, Silas peers into what she knows about him. He wants to find out what they're charging him with. (This is why she thinks he's deceitful, isn't it? Because he does things like this? But . . . come on! He's already controlling her mind. What more does he have to lose?)
When he does, a single word flames up inside his mind: arson.
She thinks he burned down the wall. It wasn't just the city that burned, Silas realizes. Somebody burned down the wall.
Quickly, Silas pulls himself away from the realization. He dips his toe into the waters, giving her a little nudge towards her worry that he might be on drugs. All it takes is planting a little seed of thought, and she instantly jumps to life.
"YOU'RE UNDER ARREST FOR PUBLIC INTOXICATION! YOU GET THE DEATH PENALTY! YOU GET THE DEATH PENALTY! EVERYONE GETS THE DEATH PENALTY!"
So maybe there's no such thing as a little nudge with her. Silas slams his foot on the breaks. She silences herself, throwing a hand over her mouth, shocked she would say such a thing.
"Silas, I'm so sorry," she mumbles. "I don't know where that came from . . . "
If Silas was anyone other than himself, he would have found the idea of having a cop under his complete control amusing. But he's not anyone else. He's Silas. And he finds it absolutely terrifying, how easy it is to get drunk on power. He could make her do anything. He could make anyone do anything. He could have the entire world in his hands like this. He could become God. He could live out his wildest Minecraft fantasies. But even just dipping into the outskirts of her mind, he feels dirty, invasive, full of the gunky pollution of secrets. If he saw the entire world like this, how much would he be able to handle before his power destroyed him? And why would he want all of that power? This is the land of the free, after all. People weren't made to be controlled. Besides, taking advantage of people like that wouldn't be nice. He hardly likes to say no to his friends when they suggest tacos for dinner for the third night in a row.
He can't dwell on it too long or he'll start doubting himself. The possibility of power is too tempting, too maddening. It sings its beautifully disgusting siren song, and Silas is a sailor lost at sea. He's tied to his boat by his friends and his moral compass, his ears full of wax, but he can still hear it reverberating around him, thumping like a drum in his chest and his blood, oppressive, omnipresent, seductive.
What is he saying? What is he thinking? He needs to get this over with. Now. And never useâor even think about usingâhis power ever again.
He pushes her towards sympathy. He reminds her of her son; if he was tried for something he didn't do, what would she want the cop handling him to do? Follow orders, fill out her paperwork? No. Tears fill her eyes; the memory of her son's brief dance with the law pools into her mind.
Silas can't bring himself to do this to her, to hurt her so badly, to remind her of such an awful memory so he can use it to his own advantage. But he has to.
He feels his connection falter as an electric shock pulses through her brain, arching all the way through her bloodstream to her heart. She jolts, yelping, and Silas loses his touch. The metaphorical controller flies out of his hands. The metaphorical video game screen burns with static before fading to an explosive black. His character is frozen, a clay statue fired in the kiln. Her paint is cracking. Her tears are raindrops settling on her hollow eyes.
They sit there for a second, staring at each other. The creator meeting the created; God meeting the devout; a gamer meeting PewDiePie. Both stunned into silence. It feels like McConnell walked in on Silas reading her diary or looking through her internet history. (Silas has pegged her somewhere between Neopets and the Deep Web.) They both know what Silas was just doing. They both know that something is terribly, terribly wrong with him. Then, bursting out in violent tears, McConnell runs from the room. The door wide open behind her.
His body shaking with exhaustion, Silas slumps against the wall. His head feels like it's went through a meat grinder; his lips tickle with the taste of blood. He can't feel his left pinkie. His mind spins, a blur of fuzzy blackness, and he knows that if he tries to move, he'll hit the floor. Then, next thing you'll know, shawty'll get low, low, low, low.
Silas stares at his hands. Blood drips from his nose into the space between his fingers. He stares at the door. Should he take the chance? Even though it was wrought from poking at old scars, even though he knows it's wrong? Which does he value more: integrity or loyalty?
He knows the answer; it lies in the very reason he decided to break out. Not because he was afraid of dying in this prison, but because he was afraid of dying alone. All he wanted wasâall he wants isâto see his friends again.
Silas forces himself to feet, feeling like he's waking up on a Monday morning. It takes nearly all of his energy just to get to the sink. He spins the faucet, hot water spilling out of the tap, bubbling as it splashes against the enamel, making a tiny twister of water as it races down the drain. He cups his hands under the flow, dipping his face into the water to cleanse himself of blood. There's no paper towels, none of those BS hand dryers that work about as well as the American healthcare system. He dries his skin with his sweatshirt, already feeling better. Self care is absolutely crucial, especially when you're being falsely tried for arson
I just washed my face in a prison cell, he thinks.
Turning the water off, he heads to the door, peeking his head around the corner to make sure the coast is clear. The hallway is empty. He steps out, the door creaking shut behind him. Does he look suspicious? Of course he does.
Every couple of feet or so, there's a smooth metal door like the one behind his back, another cell. Isolation chambers? Maybe. Simple holding cells? Probably. How many are occupied? Are his friends in any of them, or are they full of dangerous prisoners? Are his friends the dangerous prisoners? What if Cain actually was the one that started the fire? The hall's lit by ghostly white fluorescent lighting. He feels like he's in a school. Several cells to his left, the hallway ends abruptly in a set of double doors. To his right, it curves into a tight corner, continuing on for God only knows how long. Which way should he go? Scylla or Charybdis? Death or more death?
Maybe he's being melodramatic. Surely it can't be that bad. But he doesn't know. He's never broken out of prison before.
These have to be isolation chambers, he realizes with a start. Holding cells wouldn't be here, in a prison. They'd be at a police station or maybe a local jail. They'd have bars, maybe even windows. More prisoners inside of them.
Suddenly, Silas feels horribly lonely. How would he feel if he was in total isolation without the possibility of escape? Without anyone to talk to? Without a friend?
He walks to the door across from his own, checks the knob. Locked. So's the little doggy door at the bottom. He knocks, but there isn't a response. He tries again, slamming his palm into the door. Still nothing. What was he expecting?
Silas leans against the door, putting his lips against it. "Hello?"
No acknowledgement that there's another human being behind the heavy metal door. (Silas thinks it's horribly inhumane that someone's locked in there, completely cut off from the outside world. So what if they killed someone? They're still human. They still deserve a friend.)
He's stalling, letting himself get distracted. Probably because he's absolutely terrified of the potential consequences of, you know, breaking out of prison. He needs to stay on task.
The double doors are promising. Doors always signify an exit or, at the very least, the entrance into another room. The curve must just lead deeper and deeper into this place.
He reaches them in three strides, pushing his hands into the horizontal metal handle. The doors don't budge. Adjusting his stance, putting all his swim-team-captain muscles into it, he shoves his shoulders into the doors. Still, they don't budge. How swoll would one have to be to get them to open?
Trying not to panic, he examines the doors. They're painted cherry-red and smell strongly of lemon antiseptic. Running his hands along the sides of them, he discovers a metallic locking mechanism ordering him to INSERT [HIS] ID HERE.
I'm not twenty-one.
Sighing, he turns his back to the doors. He'll take his chances with the curved hallway. Maybe it'll empty into the pits of hell.
He's only taken a couple of steps forwards when the doors are pushed open from the inside.
"HEY!"
Silas starts walking faster, trying to out run the disembodied voice.
"Hey, what's the big idea? Mister, where do you think you're going?"
He freezes and responds with the first thing that comes to mind. "Dave from Alvin and the Chipmunks was literally a canon furry, and you have the nerve to ask me where I'm going?"
"Turn around, dumbass."
Silas has been and always will be a rule-follower. He complies, expecting the worst. A cop with a loaded gun; an escapee looking for a hostage. What he finds is probably the best possible outcome, so good he hadn't even let himself consider it.
"Surprise, bitch." MeredithâMeredith!âtilts her head, putting a hand on her hip. "Bet you'd thought you'd seen the last of me."
Silas breaks out in a big dumb grin. He races forwards, knocking her out of the doorway and into the next room with a hug. The door slams shut behind them. "Meredith!"
Meredith lets out a squeal of excitement, throwing her arms around his shoulders. She buries her face in his neck. "You're the worst human being on the face of this earth, never leave me like that again. The cop that handled me had a bowl-cut, Silas. A freaking bowl-cut!"
"You poor thing."
They stand there like that for a while, rocking back and forth, neither wanting to pull away. Meredith is familiar, warm, homeâthe only earthly thing in this alien world. Silas never wants to let go of her. He's worried that if he does, he'll lose her again. That he'll lose everything again.
Meredith is usually beautiful, but right now, she looks like she hasn't showered since she was three years old. Her hair's so greasy it's soaking wet, dripping oil down her skin. It rolls down her face, settling in the wrinkles and crevices. She's broken out in angry red dots poking down her face and neckâcystic acne acting up without access to soap. (It's usually bad, but not this bad, and she can cover it in makeup. But right now, she looks like she's never washed her skin a day in her life and has only ever drank Mountain Dew.) She reeks of unobstructed BO. Silas doesn't mind it. He doesn't mind any of it, because she's Meredith, and there's been a tiny part of his mind convinced he'd never see her again.
Silas thinks he'd rather be locked in an isolation chamber for the rest of his life than lose her.
(Is he being melodramatic? Absolutely.)
Meredith is the first to break the hug. She holds Silas at arm-length, examining all over like she's checking a child for injuries. "You're hurt."
"What?" Silas crosses his arms over his chest, suddenly unsure of what to do with them. Should he hold her like she's holding him? Should he put them in his pockets? Should he start doing the Macarena? He doesn't flipping know. "Nah."
Meredith bops him on the nose. "There's blood all over your face, dumbass. Nosebleed?" Curiously, she leans forwards, her hazel eyes sparking with the excitement of potentially juicy gossip. "Did my little marshmallow get in a fight? Is that how you got out?"
Maybe Silas isn't as knowledgable about prison skin-care as he thought he was. Self-consciously, he covers his face with his hands. "Seriously, Meredith, it's nothing."
"Oh, all right." Disappointed, Meredith leans back against the wall, one foot bent to prop her up. "If you say so."
Silas pauses, taking the moment to take in his surroundings. They're in some kind of antechamber for the cells. It's a small room, empty except for the flickering overhead lights. There's two sets of double-doors, one leading to the rest of the prison and one leading back out to the cells. Silas wonders what their next move is and how Meredith managed to escape despite her significant lack of supernatural powers.
"How'd you get out?" Silas asks.
"Remember the cop that handled me? The one I told you about with the bowl-cut? His name was Phelps. No relation to the swimmer and enslaved merman we all know and love. I asked him 'bout that. Anywho"âthe seemingly endless gleeful light in her eyes suddenly flickers darkly, and she swallows roughly like she's suppressing unpleasant memoriesâ"he's gone now."
"Where'd he go?" Silas asks, confused.
"Silas, dearie . . . " Meredith shakes her head, her voice suddenly dripping into a southern accent as thick as if she was raised in the bayous of Louisiana rather than the suburbs of Toledo. "Mr. Phelps is swimming in the big pool in the sky."
It suddenly clicks in Silas's mind. The dark look in her eyes, the only way she could have escaped. Meredith has never needed powers to be powerful.
He doesn't need her to elaborate. He doesn't want her to elaborate on the details of Mr. Phelps's untimely death. He simply shakes his head to let her know he understands.
And then something goes horribly wrong, and Silas falls out of his body.
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MEREDITH
THERE WAS A TIME when Meredith was convinced she was the harbinger of death.
She was friends with this weird frog-faced little girl in elementary school, Tori. Tori collected eraser shavings and read books about the human body. Once, she asked Meredith for a sample of her hair. Fourth grade came and went, and she and Meredith spent the year holed up in the tree-house in Tori's front lawn playing Pixie Hollow. They both made Water Fairies and had gold memberships.
That summer, Tori drowned in Lake Eerie. Her body was found with a pair of plastic fairy wings.
And then Meredith's momâand that lady that went into cardiac arrest on one of her dad's flights on Meredith's thirteenth birthday. And now, recently, the poor man she shot. Vic. Her dogs, Maple and Syrup. Mr. Phelps.
She can't let Silas die.
She can't be the harbinger of death.
Not his death.
"Silas?" Meredith asks, laying a hand on his shoulder, hesitant. "What's wrong? You're scaring me."
His eyes have gone blank, staring dully at her like he's seeing right through her. His body's shaking. Thick blood dots the corners of his lips. A seizure, some kind of panic attackâMeredith vaguely remembers Thea getting them when she overexerted herself using her power. Didn't Cain get a few, too?
All of a sudden, it makes sense. He used mind control to break out of prison. Because of course.
Meredith is absolutely head-over-heels for this kid.
Silas is frantically shaking his head, his eyes wide and terrified, dark amber hardening around thin pinpricks of black. He's mumbling to himself in either French or gibberish; it sounds like he's speaking in tongues.
In a fit of sudden clarity, Silas grabs onto Meredith's arm so tightly she's afraid he might break her bone. "It hurts," he says painlessly, speaking to a point above her head. "It hurts so bad."
"What hurts?"
He dances over the question like a prancing horse and promptly vomits up blood.
Some rational part of Meredith's brain knows she needs to get him out of here, but the panic beating her heart to death is overpowering. She doesn't do well around hospitals, around sick people, around blood and vomit and death. Ever since Tori, ever since her mom, ever since the poor woman that died on her thirteenth birthday . . . she panics. Panics because death is inevitable. Panics because cancer is everywhere, pulsing in the very food they eat, and she doesn't know whenâor whoâit's going to strike next. Panics when she goes to the doctor for a checkup because she's worried her blood work will reveal the leukemia lurking in her veins. Panics when her grandpa gets a headache and sleeps through dinner because she just knows he has a brain tumor and is going to die. Panics, panics, panics because she's certain Silas Darlingâher best friend in the entire world, the only person she loves almost as much as she loves herselfâis going to die.
She can't let him.
It's hard to get him to his feet, but easy to wrap his arm around her shoulders to support his weight. Meredith wants nothing to do with him. She can feel every point of contact between his clammy skin and her own, and it isn't pleasant. He reeks of blood and vomit and prison cells. But she's not going to give up on him. She uses the ID she stole from the late Mr. Phelps to get past the set of double doors in between the antechamber and the cell block.
"Bazinga," Silas groans, his voice raw and guttural.
"What?"
"The bazinga man. He haunts me. BAZINGAAAAA." He winks at Meredith. "That's their mating call."
A minute passes, and Silas falls eerily silent. His head tilts forwards, his eyes widening and his brows furrowing; he knows that something's wrong, worse. He tries to breathe, only to make a panicked hiccuping sound when the air doesn't reach his lungs. This happens several times.
"Silas!" Meredith yelps.
He's passed out, she realizes. He passed out. Surprised at the sudden weight as he falls limp in her arms, Meredith struggles to hold him up. He slides to the floor, where he lays as if he's a child napping. His limbs are sprawled at an uncomfortable angle, his eyes half-closed, his chin doubled, tripled, quadrupled. His chest isn't moving. Meredith watches in horror as dark blood fills his mouth.
"Oh, fuck, shit, fuck!" Meredith cries. "What do I do? What do I fuckingâwhat do I do?"
Last semester, Meredith's health class got a mini-lesson on CPR. They gave chest compressions to dummies and watched some movie about a guy that ate a Big Mac once and then had a heart attack and died. Meredith had named her dummy Harold. She knows what she needs to do . . . or does she? She doesn't know what's wrong with him. Isn't CPR just for heart attacks and choking? Silas is too young to have a heart attack, and he's not choking. He's having some kind of Mara attack; it must be centered in his brain. But he's not breathing. She has to do something. She can't just leave him there to die.
She kneels down at his side, placing two fingers inside his mouth, sweeping out the blood so he doesn't choke on it. She gags at the feel of it, warm and wet and slimy between her fingers. Her eyes scan his chest to make sure he isn't breathing (he's not) and her fingers press against his throat to see if he still has a pulse (he doesn't). She intertwines her fingers together, digging her palms into his chest, counting with each compression.
She's only ever done this on plastic CPR dummies. Doing it on a real person is nothing like what that stupid class prepared her for. She practically has to throw her entire body-weight into it to get his chest to move an inch; with each compression, she can feel his ribs snapping under the pressure. By the time she's finished a single set of compressions, she's panting like a dog and covered in a sticky film of sweat. Her arms burn with the effort of the continuous movement. When she presses her mouth against his to breathe life into his lungs, his lips taste of death: blood, vomit, dry hot air. Suddenly, she feels the flicker of his heartbeat under his shattered lungs. He's still alive.
"Please," she whimpers, tears streaking down her face, hope blossoming in her heart. "Please wake up. IâSilas, I love you, I love you, I love you. Please wake up . . . I can'tâI can't lose you too."
Having finished her third set of compressions, she leans down to give him another breath. Just as her lips are about to reach his, she hears footsteps. Loud, angry footsteps. She doesn't let this deter her. She gives him two long breaths and goes right back to compressions, lacking the energy to look who's coming.
Suddenly, two arms roughly grab Meredith around her armpits. She's lifted away from Silas, dragged to her feet, her arms painfully bent behind her back. Red-hot panic blurs her vision; she can only half-see the person holding her. She can make out the blue button-down of an officer. There are others gathered around her, other officers staring blankly at her behind the barrels of their guns. She feels something press against her temple, something cold and metallic and smooth.
"HE'S NOT BREATHING!" Meredith screeches at these lifeless beings. "HE'S NOT BREATHING! HE'S NOT BREATHING! HE'S NOT BREATHING!" A softer plaintive cry follows: "He didn't do anything wrong."
Panic bursts through her lungs. A wild, primitive fear breaks loose inside of her. Desperate, she screams at the top of her lungs, her body violently convulsing in her haste to escape. Suddenly shot through with adrenaline, she fights her captor with the ferocity of a python, scratching and biting, ripping at exposed pieces of flesh. If she's going to be ripped away from Silas, she's going kicking and screaming.
A shot follows, bloodcurdlingly loud, and Meredith swears that time stops. The gun's still aimed at her head, but here's the catch: it fired a blank. Still, she feels the kick of the gun, feels something hot on her skin.
"Please don't shoot . . . ," Meredith cries, sinking to her knees.
She feels the floor move underneath her. Her captor, the officer, the monster, the faceless hell-demon, has grabbed her by her wrists, dragging her along the floor. Away from Silas; back towards her cell. Maybe to an execution chamber. (She did kill a prison guard, after all.) Do they still have execution chambers?
An officer has continued CPR on Silas. Behind him, the doors open, paramedics rushing in.
"He's going to die!" Meredith sobs, still fighting. (She's going to die fighting.) "Please! You can't make me leave him!"
Her cries carry down the prison hallway, an echo unheard by anyone still breathing.