Walking Amongst Them (Among Us, Book 2)

visitor

They follow us.

Trish's careful words rang through my ears while I tried to process the appropriate response. I didn't want to tip this woman off, that I knew Michael or what my true thoughts were. But I was never good at hiding my thoughts.

I glanced up, finding Cody's intense gaze eating away at me. His eyebrows were drawn together and his arms were crossed over his chest. A sudden, invasive thought had me tearing my eyes away from him and focusing back on Raya.

She was studying us intently, and had fallen quiet. We locked gazes for a moment before her thin smile broke into a worried line.

"I do understand it's beyond the ethics of what was appropriate before..." her eyes flickered to Michael and she took a step towards him, resting her hand on the glass, "but this could be the start of finding normal again, of setting things right. I could save us," she blinked then, as if catching herself and straightened, withdrawing her hand. "My team and I have been working tirelessly. This boy was dead already, and now he could save us all. Surely you must understand the sacrifice behind it?"

During her speech my throat had tightened to the point of being unable to speak. I wasn't even sure I could unhinge my jaw from where it had clenched shut. I stared through the curved glass down at Michael's sickly face.

He wasn't dead.

She had said as much herself, not very many moments before. It was only our hesitation to be on board that had her claiming otherwise.

I couldn't help but look to the heart monitor, those sluggish beeps feeling like a punch to the chest.

Ben is dead, my oh so helpful inner voice reminded me.

"These are different times," Cody's voice interrupted my trance.

His voice, deeper than Raya's, and more familiar, washed over me like a weighted blanket. I pretended to be interested in something on the wall, a sort of poster. It was of what we knew of the brain before everything had crumbled.

Raya couldn't see my face from the place she stood, and I could tell she hesitated in her response.

"We... we've decided it best not to inform his family of his conditions. We've told them he's in a medically induced coma, that his injuries are sufficient enough to need multiple sensitive surgeries. Trish, the young woman you traveled with, is among his... family."

I turned back to join the conversation.

"So if he's a failure, it wouldn't be hard to believe he'd succumbed to the stressors of surgery?"

My voice felt flat, but I knew it had worked by the small spark of hope in Raya's eyes. It was clear the woman was becoming desperate. It was also no wonder that this place was a few months at best away from some sort of civil war.

Cody, if he was surprised, didn't show it. He nodded at my words and looked to Raya as if expecting the answer for himself as well. The next half hour or so Raya explained Michael's daily work up. They fed him through a tube. Apparently human food was still sustaining his body but they wonder what would happen if they introduce the 'undead diet' to him.

I had to ball my hands into fists at that one, my uncut nails biting into the already abused flesh of my palms. Cody had noticed my tension and casually threw an arm over my shoulders, his hand came around and rubbed my opposite shoulder like he was trying to warm me up, or keep me awake.

"I know," he said, "I'm getting tired too. Hang in there, this is important."

I had to focus on the bite of my nails in my palms to keep myself from reacting too abruptly.