“Yeah?”
“The sun was warm.” Her lips curve up. “I remember the sun.”
My throat tightens. I keep my hands steady on the bandage I’m peeling away from her back. The broken ribs had been the least of her worries when they got her out of that damned facility. “That’s good, Dara.”
She sits silently as I examine the scalpel incisions down her spine. She’d been unconscious when they brought her back from that place. Then woke up screaming. God alone knows what those bastards had been trying to do in there. I’d kill them myself if I could.
“They were afraid of him,” she says unexpectedly.
I glance up. “Who?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know.
“That man. The one you keep locked up. They said he got loose last night.” She glances over her shoulder at me, then winces. “Nobody would work with him. Only the worst ones.”
The worst ones…
“Was he like this when he was in there?” I ask, not sure she’ll answer. She’s barely spoken about the place since she got here. “Under sedation?”
“Mostly. Unless they woke him up for…the treatments. Then things were bad.”
“Bad in what way?” I press cautiously, afraid she’ll clam up again.
“The sounds. The screams.” She pauses. Her spoon stops moving. “But it wasn’t just screaming. There was something else sometimes. Something that came through the walls. Lower. You could feel it in the floor, in the frame of your cot. Like a sound, but not. It would build and build, and then the lights would flicker, and the guards would start running.” Her hand goes flat on the mattress beside her, as if she can still feel it. “I don’t know what they were doing to make him do that.”
I file the detail away. The base of my skull prickles.
“I know he killed a few of them,” she adds, quieter.
Somehow, that doesn’t bother me.
“Did you ever learn what his name was?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “None of us had names in there. Just numbers.”
“You didn’t get a tattoo, though,” I say. “He has one.”
“Maybe it was because he was there longer.”
“Do you know how long that was?” I ask.
“No idea.” Her throat works. “Time just…blended together after a while. You know?”
I squeeze her shoulder. “I understand.” I don’t really. Not the way she does.
“He was there when I arrived. But I think he’d been in other places before that. I heard the guards talking about transferring him.” She looks down at her bowl. “Anyway, I hope he gets better soon.”
She picks up her spoon again. Takes another bite. Chews, swallows. The ordinary rhythm of a woman eating breakfast, and it shouldn’t undo me, but it does, because I remember what she looked like when they brought her in. And she isn’t that terrified creature anymore. This is Dara eating porridge in the morning light. She’s going to walk outside today, and the sun will be warm.
“The oats could use more honey,” she says.
I almost laugh. “I’ll tell Greta.”
“Don’t. She scares me a little.”
“She scares everyone a little.”
Dara smiles. A real one. Small, but it reaches her eyes, and I smile back and try not to make a big deal of it. But it is.
I pack up my supplies and touch her shoulder on the way out. She doesn’t tense. She just lifts her spoon again.
