Chương 44: Dead-Heart Confession (1) [October 4th, Age 14]

I wish I could say it was good forever. I'd settled into a ritual where I would wake up, race to put on my contacts before my brain had a chance to process what I'd lost, and sit perfectly still—blinking rapidly—until my vision restored itself to something resembling normal. Every month I was receiving new contacts in the mail. The deterioration was close to linear now. Sophia had figured out a system that had gotten me through a year and change, but in the back of my mind lurked the truth.

A dark splotch spreading its tendrils across each of my thoughts—every one of them stained with the smell and feeling of it. I couldn't interact with it. I wouldn't allow myself to—but the closest I got was the morning of October 4 th. It wasn't any different than any other morning. I performed my sacred ritual—now with the added step of squeezing the stuffed frog Ava gave me for support while I waited for everything to go back to normal again. Came down from the bunk bed.

Made my coffee with Cygnus, who pretended not to know what was going on with me. I think, in hindsight, that he also knew what I couldn't say. Maybe everyone in Unit 6 did. Maybe they were all just waiting for the whole thing to fall apart. Yoru, Ava, and Benji slowly stopped speaking to me. I'd been doing my best to try and keep everything the same, but the black splotch in the back of my mind took everything I said and tilted it a half-register off-kilter.

In tone or content or whatever it was—everything that came out of my mouth was wrong, and I couldn't fix it no matter what I did. They knew what was coming. Only Cygnus and Bell stayed. Cygnus would talk to me in the mornings over coffee and whatever random bread-like product we had lying around. Sometimes eggs, if he woke up earlier than me and was feeling charitable or if I was feeling particularly chipper.

Days like those almost made me thankful that Hal was usually gone by the time I woke up, back in the forgotten days—I could whip up a whole breakfast for myself with a vigor and skill that was enough to made Ava add yet another entry to the list of things she harbored an iron jealousy against me for. And Bell—Bell was around a lot more than she used to be.

Something about Ava's outburst against her a few months back must've stuck in her brain, because she was taking shorter missions—one- or two-day ones, occasionally three. But no more multi-week, multi-month sprawling mind-benders where she'd come home dazed and silent, morphing her body this way and that in the darkness of the three-AM common room, trying to remember what she used to look like by the comfort of her skin alone. And so, on the days when Bell was around, she'd find me during meals, or in the halls.

Sometimes even at the bar downstairs. She'd sit on a stool alone and tell me stories of all her escapades, sipping lightly on something fruity. And then we'd go upstairs, back home, and meet up with Cygnus for some TV. Yoru wasn't joining us anymore, but I could catch him stealing glances at the screen from behind a book, over on his bed. I knew he wanted to, but he never came clean. In a lot of ways, Bell, Cygnus, and I formed Unit 7.

We would often joke about that—when Bell would finish her one drink (and it was always just one, regardless of what was in it), I'd say, "Time for some Unit 7 TV time," and Bell would nod and smile and agree, and we'd go upstairs and take part in the other sacred ritual, and for an hour or two I'd forget who I was. And then in the morning I would remember again. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

On October 4 th, Cygnus and I sipped our coffees in relative silence. We both had the day off while no one else did, so the room was empty except for us. And despite not having to censor ourselves in front of Ava or Yoru, we found ourselves with nothing much to say for most of our first mugs. By the second cup, though, Cygnus found something.

"How's it been?" he asked me. A benign enough question for most, but for me, I knew what he was getting at immediately—and the black horror in the back of my head stirred awake.

"Fine," I said.

"It's fine." He nodded. Looked down at his coffee. Thought about saying more—that much was obvious, even for me—but instead, he just grimaced for a second and downed the rest of the cup. Then the door creaked open, and Sophia walked in. In the two years I'd been at the Radiant, I think that was the first time I'd seen Sophia outside of the first floor. We crossed paths outside of the ward extremely rarely.

But the fact that she found it correct to come all the way up to our hideout to find me—and of course it was to find me, what other reason could there be? —swelled the black tumor even more. It choked out my ability to think or speak.

"Erika," she said, slowly. Solemn. Her whole body tensed. For the first time, wearing her key-necklace.

"We need to talk." Cygnus went to take a sip of his coffee and realized there wasn't anything left. I was standing. I didn't remember getting up. Not focused on anything in particular. I knew what this was about. I'd known since that morning. I'd known since I became aware of that black force in the back of my mind. Cygnus stood.

"I'll come too," he said. Sophia shook her head.

"No," she replied, and she shot him a look so devoid of feeling that it made him sit down again. I blinked. We were in the ward. She was sitting on the little green-leather stool and I was on the green-leather bed. Behind her was the sterile desk with the sterile jars and their sterile instruments that I'd become convinced long ago were just for show—trinkets for Sophia to organize and re-organize when she was bored. What good was a tongue-depressor to a flesh key? The thought fled my head.

The shape in the back of my mind ate it. The thought had reached out to the forefront, stretching to my conscious just long enough to scream its name, and then it was yanked out back and eviscerated. I didn't know how we got there. I didn't know how long it had been. But I could feel it. Pulsing back there, just out of perception. It knew what this was about. It knew what Sophia was going to say. I was powerless to stop it. Time would march on. Sophia would say what we all knew. The word would be said.

And I would fall apart. There was nothing I could do. I was weak. Vulnerable. Prone. Words left Sophia's mouth.

"Erika, I—intercepted your mail, this morning, to check and see if the way I'd been going about this whole… uh… this whole thing was, ah, going according to plan, and… well…" She shifted in the chair. Took hold of a bit of the end of her hair, twisting it absently. Doing her best to look me in the eye. I wasn't doing that. I was staring right through her. I was numb. The shape had taken my feeling. The sharp smell of sterility was gone. It had taken that, too.

In my mouth was the dry taste of acrid air, and nothing else—and I knew I was about to lose that as well. And then I would go deaf, and Sophia's words would go right through me like light through glass. And then— Sophia said, "These are minus-ten diopter contacts. Do you—do you know what diopters are?" I didn't move. My nerves were dead. Sophia continued: "Well, um, it's a measure of lens strength. Measured in units of inverse-meters. Regular—um—the usual amount… no, that's not…" She grimaced and started over.

"Nearsighted people usually have a prescription for something with minus-two diopters. For you, it's…easier to measure with counting fingers at twenty feet than with anything else." I opened my mouth and closed it. I expected words to come out. But nothing happened. I couldn't make any sounds. She reached behind herself and took the box off her desk. I hadn't even noticed the box before—it was a box of contacts, a different brand than I usually got, but contacts nonetheless.

"These are minus-ten. They also make minus-twelve, but…they don't make anything stronger than that. At that point, it's…not really worth it. And we can't have you wear glasses. Too many people out there have accuracy too good, and then you'd end up with glass shards in your eye." A trickle of frustration seeped into her voice.

"It's just not getting better," she said.

"And I don't know what to do. I'm sorry. I've failed you. But—I don't even know if I can say that if I never really knew what to do in the first place." Sophia took a deep breath. She did not look at me. And then she said, "Erika, you are legally blind."