Light in Dark Places

Chapter Twelve

Part Two

Chapter Twelve

You are a failure. You are the worst and you should just die. No one loves you and you should just die.

No, Benedict. That is not true. You are loved. You are going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine now.

...Who are you?...

Someone who loves you very much.

Benedict wakes up.

Sometimes, in novels, when people wake up it takes them awhile to remember what happened, especially when they wake up in new places. But Benedict doesn't have that moment of disorientation. He remembers everything. Henderson's body, Eric and Thomas as Beasts, Susie dying. He remembers the Misery consuming him. He knows when he looks at his left arm it's going to be a large black-feathered wing. He can't see out of his left eye. When he touches his face he feels the bandage over it, so he's probably not blind but he can't be sure.

He remembers the girl. He knows too, somehow, that he will turn his head and she will be there sitting in a chair, at his bedside. She'll say, "You're awake. How are you feeling?"

He closes his right eye and takes a few deep breaths to compose himself. His echoes are still horrendous. He still feels anxious when waking up in the morning. But he feels strangely calm. He opens his eye again and turns his head.

"You're awake. How are you feeling?"

He struggles in his bed and discovers that his right arm has been handcuffed to the bed. His feet are restrained too. Only his wing remains unbound. (Perhaps they didn't think it was worth restraining, but perhaps they just didn't know how).

"I'm OK, I guess. Considering." He tugs at the restraints but gives up quickly. He flops back down in the bed and looks at her.

Joan Kaas, he thinks. But then he realizes that he didn't think that at all. Something that was not a thought, but like a thought, in his mind spoke. It was masculine but not him.

She is Joan Kaas.

Who are you? Benedict thinks. It is quite possible he is going mad. Except if he was insane, he would expect to hear voices. He is definitely not hearing voices. It's internal, like a thought he knows is not his.

You can think of me as an echo, the not-voice says.

Great, Benedict thinks. More problems with his Ash talent. He very much does not like all the changes his talent has been going through lately.

There are only so many things he can worry about right now. "Where are we? Who are you?"

"In the SDF base. And I'm Joan Kaas," she replies. "They came and took us and put us here."

Benedict struggles to look around again, suddenly feeling suspicion and dread.

Yes. They are in prison.

Or at least, they are in something that is very much like a prison cell. He is on the cot, and someone brought Joan a chair to sit on, but there are bars instead of a door. There's a desk outside, an office, something someone would work at. So they're not in a prison so much as a temporary holding cell. There aren't any guards around, though. Maybe that's promising.

"Kaas," he says suddenly, looking back at her. He has the time to study her face now, familiar to him as his own. But he thinks it can't just be his echoes acting up—there is a reason why her face would be familiar to him. "Like Seung-ri Kaas." He hasn't met many half-Asians, and he'd hate to assume they all looked alike, but the resemblance is uncanny to the most famous one in the city.