Waiting.
"Who are you?"
I'd asked the question three times already. She hadn't answered. I didn't expect her to start now.
"Rue."
The word came out of nowhere, soft and almost sad.
"What?"
"My name. Rue. Like the herb. Bitter. Useful. Easy to overlook until you need it."
"Gabriel named you?"
"Gabriel named all of us."
She stopped in front of a door—metal, scarred, with a handle that looked like it had been melted and reshaped. She didn't turn around.
"He called me Bunny too. Before you. Before the Institute. Before he decided I wasn't worth keeping."
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
She pushed the door open, and the room beyond was small and cold and empty except for a single chair in the center of the floor.
"Welcome to where the other Bunnies go to die."
The chair was bolted to the floor.
I could see the bolts from where I stood—four of them, rusted, stained with something dark. The arms had scratches in the metal, deep grooves that looked like fingernails had made them. The seat was padded in something that might have been leather once, cracked and worn and stained beyond recognition.
"How many?"
My voice didn't sound like mine. Too calm. Too steady. Too much like the voice I used when I was performing.
"How many of us?"
Rue walked around the chair, her fingers trailing across the back, her nails leaving faint lines in the dust.
"I don't know. I stopped counting. He stopped naming us after a while. We were just... batches. Numbers. Entries in a ledger."
"You're lying."
"Am I?"
She stopped in front of the chair and faced me.
"Ask yourself why you can't remember. Why your memories keep changing. Why the girl who wasn't there keeps appearing in your dreams."
"That's you."
"Partly. I'm real. I'm here. But I'm not the only one."
"The blonde. The one from the diner. The one who—"
"She was real too. For a while. Until he decided she wasn't."
