Page 99 of Strange Lights

They say trees can hear sounds. That jumping spiders can dream. An octopus can feel pain. I don’t know where Adele fits on the rungs of this ladder of sentience, but I know she doesn’t fit at the top, and her story is all the more horrifying for it.

“You may know what it’s like to lose member after member of your family. But you don’t know what it’s like to die every death with them. Every. Single. One.”

Eldi’s face is buried in Orion’s chest as he curls protectively around her. But there’s nowhere for them to escape to, no place to hide, and I know they are both reliving the deaths they witnessed.

“I was young when the Beasts came. The deaths I’ve lived number greater than every second I’ve lived on this planet. Something broke inside me. I always struggled to tether properly. After the Beasts came, after they killed so many of us, I could no longer tether at all. But I clung on like stray thread to a sweater, not fully connected, grasping for any connection to my family, to myself and my life. When that last thread snapped, I was more alone than I’d ever been and had only death to look forward to.”

I know this feeling. It’s years ago, and Luca has been ripped away from me, and I’m standing at the edge of that magical void, accepting my end. Letting tether after tether slip through my fingers, letting go of my soul. I’m running from Agency 51, leaving my sisters behind, cutting myself off.

“But after I thought they were all long dead, after I believed myself alone, right when I was poised to give in and let the Beasts have me, the cruelest thing happened. It was then that I heard echoes, the remaining members of my family, the few remaining members of my species. I hadn’t realized anyone was left, and they were planning one last stand.”

Hear me; hear us. I finally do.

“With immense effort, I listened in despair, unable to communicate with them, though I tried and tried. Catching only fragments and crumbs of their last conversations. Their last moments of bravery as they planned and said their farewells. I watched as the last of your ships limped away, leaving us alone on the half-dead planet.”

Orion and Luca hand in hand, walking away from me as I cowered, hidden inside the Winnebago. Alone. I am alone. My sisters huddled together, waiting for me to come back for them like I promised. Eldi disappearing into a helicopter.

Alone, alone, alone.

“I threw everything I had into a tether, trying to hold on to them as together they ripped open the magical realm and tumbled in. Their last sacrifice. Made to save the race of creatures that left them behind for the Beasts. They gave everything, every last soul, every remaining piece of themselves, over to that dark void where magic originates and ends.”

I heard them. I heard them call to me from that void as I stood on the edge, begging the universe to let me feel something. Now I would trade to feel less, know less.

“In exchange for their sacrifice, the void, the magic took the Beasts too. Dragged them and the remnants of the planet into a great black hole. Nothing remains in that corner of space. Only the cowardly creatures who fled early enough escaped.”

“It was survival, not cowardice,” Orion says, clutching Eldi like a life raft, anguish in his voice. “I saw the planet burn and die. My only home. I could barely save myself. I barely saved Eldi. I made the choices, picked which of us had the small chance to live. Which of us were left to the Beasts. It wasn’t malice; it was triage. I tried to comfort every creature left to die, anyone I found along my way. The adults, my species, I don’t believe they would knowingly condemn anyone to the fate the Beasts brought to the planet. I don’t believe they would have abandoned anyone.”

Adele pauses, turns dead eyes on Orion, who is on his knees. He’s reliving and reorganizing a past he didn’t realize he shared with Adele. I feel sorry for him, and I feel a great clawing horror for Adele too. That feeling, dead, numb, too much, is back.

“I don’t care what you believe. It happened.”

“I’m sorry. If I could, I would have helped, if I’d known⁠—”

“You should have known! Your ignorance is no excuse. Their ignorance is no excuse.”

“It was the Beasts’ fault,” I cut in. “Your own fate wasn’t Orion’s fault; it wasn’t Eldi’s fault.”

“How?” Orion breathes. “How did you get here? How do you exist? How did you escape?”

“As I said, I clung with all my might to the last of my people. I slipped into the void with them, expecting the end. Longing for it, in fact.”

And oh, that hurts. I know that feeling. But I had Zara, I had Meredith to pull me back. Adele had no one.

“But I was broken. I lost hold of them somewhere along the way, and I fell. I fell a long way before instinct took over. Survival became the only thing that mattered for a very, very long time. Humans live such short lives. But I wasn’t human then. You humans simply can’t grasp how long I clung to my own soul. How long it took me to climb up after such a fall.” She glares at Orion. “You might, but you spent much of that time in stasis, sleeping and safe.”

He blanches, imagining it. I can’t grasp the time frame for myself. Centuries? Millennia? My human brain can’t comprehend it. I suck in a sharp breath at the thought. Because I am not human. But I feel so human. How can I be anything but human?

“Keep talking,” I rasp, looking at no one. Watching the way the light reflects off the blade that I hold instead. Wishing I were somewhere, someone, else.

“I thought I was alone before, but I had no idea. I experienced true loneliness then. True solitude. At least there’d been scraps of life among the ruins of my home planet. I thought about letting go. But then their sacrifice would be wasted. No one would remember my species. My fuel became vengeance, a desire to make their sacrifice known at the very least. For that purpose, I would crawl out of the void. I had all the time in the world, and I had a purpose.

“Then, a creature appeared. Falling from far above, just as I had. I reacted without conscious thought. I reached for the creature. An instinct to connect that I thought was long buried.”

Instinct. The first reflex even a newborn baby can’t escape. Fling out a limb, reach out, grab hold of whoever is willing to catch them. Do whatever must be done to survive.

“I saved her⁠—a human, I soon learned. It was simple to reach and pluck her out of the air, draw her close. But she was broken like me; she wanted more than she had to offer; she was unable to tether properly; it’s why she fell. Yet I still tried. Her will was weaker than mine. Eventually, I pushed her soul right out of her body. I didn’t mean to, exactly. But I wasn’t sorry.” Adele’s voice is clinical, detached. She speaks of this murder, this death of a soul, as if it were inconsequential. Not a person with a life, hopes, and dreams, but an object, a vessel, a tool. If she said it with disdain, it would be better, but this cold indifference feels inhuman.

Zara makes a horrified sort of noise, and Adele abruptly stops her pacing to glare at her.