The Host (The Host 1)

Chapter 41: Vanished

Ian sat with me for three days in the darkness.

He left for only a few short minutes at a time, to get us food and water. At first, Ian ate, though I did not. Then, as he realized that it wasn't a loss of appetite that left my tray full, he stopped eating, too.

I used his brief absences to deal with the physical needs that I could not ignore, thankful for the proximity of the odorous stream. As my fast lengthened, those needs vanished.

I couldn't keep from sleeping, but I did not make myself comfortable. The first day, I woke to find my head and shoulders cradled on his lap. I recoiled from him, shuddering so violently that he did not repeat the gesture. After that, I slumped against the stones where I was, and when I woke, I would curl back up into my silent ball at once.

"Please," Ian whispered on the third day-at least I thought it was the third day; there was no way to be sure of the passing time in this dark, silent place. It was the first time he'd spoken.

I knew a tray of food was in front of me. He pushed it closer, till it touched my leg. I cringed away.

"Please, Wanda. Please eat something. "

He put his hand on my arm but moved away quickly when I flinched out from under it.

"Please don't hate me. I'm so sorry. If I'd known. . . I would have stopped them. I won't let it happen again. "

He would never stop them. He was just one among many. And, as Jared had said, he'd had no objections before. I was the enemy. Even in the most compassionate, humankind's limited scope of mercy was reserved for their own.

I knew Doc could never intentionally inflict pain on another person. I doubted he would even be capable of watching such a thing, tender as his feelings were. But a worm, a centipede? Why would he care about the agony of a strange alien creature? Why would it bother him to murder a baby-slowly, slicing it apart piece by piece-if it had no human mouth to scream with?

"I should have told you," Ian whispered.

Would it have mattered if I'd simply been told rather than having seen the tortured remains for myself? Would the pain be less strong?

"Please eat. "

The silence returned. We sat in it for a while, maybe another hour.

Ian got up and walked quietly away.

I could make no sense of my emotions. In that moment, I hated the body I was bound to. How did it make sense that his going depressed me? Why should it pain me to have the solitude I craved? I wanted the monster back, and that was plainly wrong.

I wasn't alone for long. I didn't know if Ian had gone to get him or if he'd been waiting for Ian to leave, but I recognized Jeb's contemplative whistle as it approached in the darkness.

The whistling stopped a few feet from me, and there was a loud click. A beam of yellow light burned my eyes. I blinked against it.

Jeb set the flashlight down, bulb up. It threw a circle of light on the low ceiling and made a wider, more diffuse sphere of light around us.

Jeb settled himself against the wall beside me.

"Gonna starve yourself, then? Is that the plan?"

I glared at the stone floor.

If I was being honest with myself, I knew that my mourning was over. I had grieved. I hadn't known the child or the other soul in the cave of horrors. I could not grieve for strangers forever. No, now I was angry.

"You wanna die, there are easier and faster ways. "

As if I wasn't aware of that.

"So give me to Doc, then," I croaked.

Jeb wasn't surprised to hear me speak. He nodded to himself, as if this was exactly what he'd known would come out of my mouth.

"Did you expect us to just give up, Wanderer?" Jeb's voice was stern and more serious than I had ever heard it before. "We have a stronger survival instinct than that. Of course we want to find a way to get our minds back. It could be any one of us someday. So many people we love are already lost.

"It isn't easy. It nearly kills Doc each time he fails-you've seen that. But this is our reality, Wanda. This is our world. We've lost a war. We are about to be extinct. We're trying to find ways to save ourselves. "

For the first time, Jeb spoke to me as if I were a soul and not a human. I had a sense that the distinction had always been clear to him, though. He was just a courteous monster.

I couldn't deny the truth of what he was saying, or the sense of it. The shock had worn off, and I was myself again. It was in my nature to be fair.

Some few of these humans could see my side of things; Ian, at least. Then I, too, could consider their perspective. They were monsters, but maybe monsters who were justified in what they were doing.

Of course they would think violence was the answer. They wouldn't be able to imagine any other solution. Could I blame them that their genetic programming restricted their problem-solving abilities in this way?

I cleared my throat, but my voice was still hoarse with disuse. "Hacking up babies won't save anyone, Jeb. Now they're all dead. "

He was quiet for a moment. "We can't tell your young from your old. "

"No, I know that. "

"Your kind don't spare our babies. "

"We don't torture them, though. We never intentionally cause anyone pain. "

"You do worse than that. You erase them. "

"You do both. "

"We do, yes-because we have to try. We have to keep fighting. It's the only way we know. It's keep trying or turn our faces to the wall and die. " He raised one eyebrow at me.

That must have been what it looked like I was doing.

I sighed and took the water bottle Ian had left close to my foot. I drained it in one long pull, and then cleared my throat again.

"It will never work, Jeb. You can keep cutting us out in pieces, but you'll just murder more and more sentient creatures of both species. We do not willingly kill, but our bodies are not weak, either. Our attachments may look like soft silver hair, but they're stronger than your organs. That's what's happening, isn't it? Doc slices up my family, and their limbs shred through the brains of yours. "

"Like cottage cheese," he agreed.

I gagged and then shuddered at the image.

"It makes me sick, too," he admitted. "Doc gets real bent out of shape. Every time he thinks he's got it cracked, it goes south again. He's tried everything he can think of, but he can't save them from getting turned into oatmeal. Your souls don't respond to injected sedation. . . or poison. "

My voice came out rough with new horror. "Of course not. Our chemical makeup is completely different. "

"Once, one of yours seemed to guess what was going to happen. Before Doc could knock the human out, the silver thingy tore up his brain from the inside. Course, we didn't know that until Doc opened him up. The guy just collapsed. "

I was surprised, strangely impressed. That soul must have been very brave. I had not had the courage to take that step, even in the beginning when I was sure they were going to try to torture this very information from me. I didn't imagine they would try to slash the answer out for themselves; that course was so obviously doomed to failure, it had never occurred to me.

"Jeb, we are relatively tiny creatures, utterly dependent on unwilling hosts. We wouldn't have lasted very long if we didn't have some defenses. "

"I'm not denying that your kind have a right to those defenses. I'm just telling you that we're gonna keep fighting back, however we can. We don't mean to cause anyone pain. We're makin' this up as we go. But we will keep fighting. "

We looked at each other.

"Then maybe you should have Doc slice me up. What else am I good for?"

"Now, now. Don't be silly, Wanda. We humans aren't so logical as all that. We have a greater range of good and bad in us than you do. Well, maybe mostly the bad. "

I nodded at that, but he kept going, ignoring me.

"We value the individual. We probably put too much emphasis on the individual, if it come

s right down to it. How many people, in the abstract, would. . . let's say Paige. . . how many people would she sacrifice to keep Andy alive? The answer wouldn't make any sense if you were looking at the whole of humanity as equals.

"The way you are valued here. . . Well, that don't make much sense when you look at it from humanity's perspective, either. But there's some who would value you above a human stranger. Have to admit, I put myself in that group. I count you as a friend, Wanda. Course, that's not gonna work well if you hate me. "

"I don't hate you, Jeb. But. . . "

"Yeah?"

"I just don't see how I can live here anymore. Not if you're going to be slaughtering my family in the other room. And I can't leave, obviously. So you see what I mean? What else is there for me but Doc's pointless cutting?" I shuddered.

He nodded seriously. "Now, that's a real valid point. It's not fair to ask you to live with that. "

My stomach dropped. "If I get a choice, I'd rather you shot me, actually," I whispered.

Jeb laughed. "Slow down there, honey. Nobody's shooting my friends, or hackin' ' em up. I know you're not lying, Wanda. If you say doing it our way isn't going to work, then we're going to have to rethink things. I'll tell the boys they're not to bring any more souls back for now. Besides, I think Doc's nerves are toast. He can't take much more of this. "

"You could be lying to me," I reminded him. "I probably couldn't tell. "

"You'll have to trust me, then. Because I'm not going to shoot you. And I'm not going to let you starve yourself, either. Eat something, kid. That's an order. "

I took a deep breath, trying to think. I wasn't sure if we'd come to an accommodation or not. Nothing made sense in this body. I liked the people here too much. They were friends. Monstrous friends that I couldn't see in the proper light while sunk in emotion.

Jeb picked up a thick square of cornbread soaked through with stolen honey and shoved it into my hand.

It made a mess there, crumbling into gluey morsels that stuck to my fingers. I sighed again and started cleaning them off with my tongue.

"That's a girl! We'll get over this rough spot. Things are gonna work out here, you'll see. Try to think positive. "

"Think positive," I mumbled around a mouthful of food, shaking my head with disbelief. Only Jeb. . .

Ian came back then. When he walked into our circle of light and saw the food in my hand, the look that spread across his face filled me with guilt. It was a look of joyous relief.

No, I had never intentionally caused anyone physical pain, but I had hurt Ian deeply enough just by hurting myself. Human lives were so impossibly tangled. What a mess.

"Here you are, Jeb," he said in a subdued voice as he sat down across from us, just slightly closer to Jeb. "Jared guessed you might be here. "

I dragged myself half a foot toward him, my arms aching from being motionless so long, and put my hand on his.

"Sorry," I whispered.

He turned his hand up to hold mine. "Don't apologize to me. "

"I should have known. Jeb's right. Of course you fight back. How can I blame you for that?"

"It's different with you here. It should have stopped. "

But my being here had only made it that much more important to solve the problem. How to rip me out and keep Melanie here. How to erase me to bring her back.

"All's fair in war," I murmured, trying to smile.

He grinned weakly back. "And love. You forgot that part. "

"Okay, break it up," Jeb mumbled. "I'm not done here. "

I looked at him curiously. What more was there?

"Now. " He took a deep breath. "Try not to freak out again, okay?" he asked, looking at me.

I froze, gripping Ian's hand tighter.