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THREE
I felt the pressure on me ease up over the next half hour. I said nothing. Did nothing. Just curled quietly in the small corner of my brain that was still mine and let the feeling of being reduced down into irrelevance recede.
It was horrible how quickly I was learning to pretend not to exist. To not bother my captor. It felt like disappearing. Like if this kept up I'd simply evaporate from the inside out.
When she touched down again I roused myself from the stupor I was in. We were hidden near the dumpsters at the mall, right on the end, behind a three-story department store.
«They're not closed?» I asked. I immediately regretted it as Aftran's attention turned to me. Tension surrounded her.
«Not yet.» She replied shortly. I watched the owl shrink away in fits and starts until only a teen girl in ugly workout spandex remained. «Not this entrance, anyway.»
She was right. The store was dark, but the single glass side door at the back of the building gave way under my hands as she pushed on it. There was no bell. She slipped inside the building and turned immediately left.
Aftran took me into the boys' section, selecting shoes and jeans and a hoodie. Then she walked me through departments at the edge of the store with my face turned to the wall. She walked until we were at the men's section fitting rooms.
«Cameras.» She said tersely. «Have to avoid the cameras.»
I tried not to feel too bitter about her bothering to verbalize her thoughts to me. I tried not to feel desperately grateful at being acknowledged at all.
She guided me into a fitting room halfway down the length of the room. Closed the door. Pulled the tags off the clothes. Dressed me. Peered critically in the mirror. With the hood up I looked like just some skinny tween boy.
I didn't like where this was heading. Why did she need to dress me? Why did she feel so tense, so focused, so afraid but determined? What was—
She turned me away from the mirror. Unlatched the door.
«You will do what I say if you want either of us to live.» She said abruptly, voice tight. «Do you understand? Exactly what I tell you, or both of us will die tonight and all your friends will become controllers under Visser Three.»
What?
«I— What?!»
«Your friends are still free, Cassie. They aren't infested. That can change. Whether it changes is up to you following my instructions.»
I felt stress rise off of her, tightly suppressed and managed terror. She started walking forward towards the end of the fitting rooms instead of leaving.
I didn't like this. I didn't like any of this. I especially didn't like how her terror spiked as she stepped inside the last fitting room. She reached up and twisted the second hanger from the right over and over again, then pressed both my hands to either side of the mirror. It popped open. There was a cinderblock-lined hall beyond.
She hesitated, stepped through. Her anxiety spiked. She winced, braced, then took a breath and continued walking when nothing happened, breathing out slowly.
She walked down the cinderblock hall as it curved down and turned into a staircase. As she descended, the cinderblocks gave way to rougher rock walls. Echoes reflected up to me from further down: voices, sloshing, movement. Cries and screams.
«You're insane,» I whispered. My own terror slammed into me, washing into Aftran's until I wasn't sure whose it was or how my body wasn't trembling.
«Because I am particularly good at host response suppression,» her response to my thought sounded absent, anxious. «Now, pay attention. I need to feed.» She was pouring off stress as she spoke.
«I will walk to the deinfestation pier. Once I am in the pool, you will calmly step to the right, exit the pier, and enter the voluntary area. You will start a timer. You will sit down with entertainment. You will not give any being any reason to suspect anything. When your timer goes off, you will signal the Hork-Bajir-controller on duty and line up for reinfestation.»
She must have felt my incredulity. She became even more tense as I curled there, blasting revulsion and disbelief.
She reached the bottom of the staircase. She stepped my foot into the main pool area.
«Do this or we both die.» She said grimly. «Or I die, starved over months, and you become host body to the next ranking Visser who wants to enslave an unsuspecting species for the Empire.»
My body came to a stop. The pier was maybe fifteen feet in front of me. As we all stood there, unconcerned, a man lined up behind me. The person in front of me stepped forward. Aftran followed.
Screams came from the end of the pier. A hork-bajir dragged a woman old enough to be my mother past by her shoulders as she sobbed and fought. I wanted to turn my head slightly, follow her with my eyes. Aftran did neither.
«You cannot make a scene.» She said urgently. «You must do as I say. Voluntary hosts are not actively tracked at feedings. If you are caged, they will record your identity and compare it to the host records. We will both be discovered the moment your entry is not found.»
The person in front of me stepped forward. She followed, stepping onto the pier.
I was trapped. If I believed her— and I did— my only choice was to pretend to be a voluntary host and hope I wasn't recognized by anyone who knew I wasn't.
The girl who walked past me next had a bored, deadened look on her face. Aftran moved my eyes to follow her path past us and over to the voluntary section. The girl grabbed a magazine from a table set up near the roped-off entrance. She pressed a button on one of the digital clocks set up on the table after that. 45:00 flashed and started counting down. The girl turned, sat on a couch, and started flicking through the magazine.
The person in front of me stepped forward. Aftran followed. There were two people between me and the end of the pier.
I wanted to throw up. «What's the signal?» I asked. I didn't want to do this. I wanted to go curl up in my bed and wish I'd never saved Karen from a bear.
An image appeared in my mind. A raised flat hand close to my body at hip height, swiftly closing my fist from the top.
The person in front of me stepped forward. She knelt, and Aftran did not look down to watch. I heard the sound of a splash before the woman in front of me halfway stood up and then slumped bonelessly, suddenly sobbing. One of hork-bajir standing there pulled her away.
Aftran said nothing. I felt a blast of emotion from her, worry and stress and fear and anticipation mixed with the wild glee of trying to get away with this. She tugged my hoodie back away from my face, half-off. And then she was kneeling and turning my head.