Once Loybol had sealed up the entrance, it was more or less pitch dark for everyone except me, who was completely unaffected. Now that we were outside the foundations of the basement, I could use moisture in the soil to get a feel for my surroundings. There was something warm at the head of the party where Eliza was pushing forward, so I assumed she’d lit a torch for the benefit of everyone else. The captive—the one body I didn’t recognize—stood as far from the heat source as she could without being too far from either the head group or Loybol and I in the back. I hadn’t shared a single word with her yet, and frankly, I wasn’t expecting to.

Eliza was sending a steady stream of dirt, rocks, and root debris along the sides of the tunnel back toward Loybol, who took hold of it and painted it across the back wall, effectively sealing up the hole behind us. I got the sense they’d done this before. It had to be something in their play-book. It was too well rehearsed to not be.

After a few minutes of walking—it was fairly slow going—Eliza stopped and turned around. She gestured to the captive and started walking back toward us, pausing for a moment to chop a long piece of a root off the wall and lighting the end on fire for a second torch. She came to the back of the tunnel where Loybol and I were, saying, “Hey—you wanna switch shifts? Repairing’s harder, so we should swap every little while.”

“I can dig,” Loybol said, toneless. She knew exactly why this was happening but didn’t have the spirit to fight it. “Watch yourself.”

“I will, Mom,” Eliza replied, rolling her eyes. Handing Loybol the fresh spare torch.

Loybol gave me a small apologetic shrug, which I returned in kind, if a bit apathetically. The adrenaline was fully gone by now, and the events in the basement were already boarding themselves up like so many other things in the dusty back-rooms of my mind. I could only devote so much time to every little thing, even if this one was my fault—even if it was directly traceable to a mistake I made.

Truthfully—more than Yoru being gone, more than my disposition toward the entire event, more than the ever-increasing list of unforgivable sins I’d acquired—I worried about what Ava was going to do when she found out her beloved was gone and her least favorite member of the team, someone she’d never liked, never trusted, never bothered to try and understand—did nothing to save him.

In fact, she explicitly, through directly traceable actions, let him die.

I’d run over that sentence and its soft variations so many times that it’d lost most of its meaning. It separated itself into raw syllables whenever I heard it, the words randomly recombining into nonsense. It’d be funny if it wasn’t unconscious and unstoppable.

“Please don’t talk to me,” I said to Eliza, before she even spoke and without a look. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“That went real well for you last time, didn’t it?” she replied. “Just because Loybol doesn’t trust me doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, either.”

I wanted to cut back, but that would mean talking to her, which I knew I wasn’t supposed to do, and at least—at the absolute bare minimum—if I did that, I could say I did one thing right today.

I may have blown the mission and let Yoru die and failed to properly scope the joint and let myself get baited by an obvious ploy to turn my attention—but hey, at least I correctly ignored Eliza when she tried to talk to me. Final score of negative eight-hundred instead of negative eight-oh-five.

Swell.

“I’m glad we’ve figured all this out, though,” she said, brightly. “Everything’s normal.”

“Normal?” I asked, toneless.

Idiot.

“Yeah,” Eliza said, sticking her fingertips into her pockets. The soil flowing alongside the corners of the tunnel simply moved itself up along the back wall without her looking at it or directing it in any way. If I didn’t know any better I’d think she wasn’t doing anything at all—but no, Eliza was simply that strong.

That, I guess, is why Loybol put up with her. I certainly wouldn’t have had the patience to.

“I mean, look at you,” she said. “You were practically catatonic ten minutes ago and now everything’s fine again. Grief doesn’t work like that unless you’re truly fucked up beyond repair, so Ava was wrong and everything we already thought is true. It’s good to have that cleared up.”

Loybol, at the front of the tunnel, stopped, glanced backward at us.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, neutral, in fear of what would happen if it wasn’t.

Eliza went on. “Now, I don’t give a shit what you do with your life as long as it doesn’t fall into my lap to kill you. And trust me, this wraps around to being supportive—I’m not trying to attack you. But I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove with this whole pretending-to-be-sad, innocence act.”

“Innocence act?”

Eliza pointed at me like I’d just solved the case. “That. Exactly that.”

“What—what about it?”

“You know what about it. But you’ve got to ask, because if you say you know, it ruins the whole thing. Breaks the entire illusion.”

I said nothing for just a touch too long, which incited her. “You’re putting on a show for an audience that’s not watching, Erika. We don’t care if you feel for these people or not. We’re all here because we don’t care, aren’t we? I mean, you don’t get on Unit 6 if you balk at a bullet or two, and—I mean, look at me, I’ve obviously made my case.”

Just to push the point, she lit her index finger’s tip on fire, put it up to her mouth, and blew it out like it was an old-timey revolver. While, of course, still moving the soil.

“What I’m saying,” she continued, “is that you need to relax. You don’t have anything to prove. Shit happens, but this is aside from that. I’m not asking you to ignore what’s happened—I’m asking you to stop pretending like you haven’t already done it. Being the way you are is a strength around here. It’s a plus. Mercy’s bad, Erika. It gives people free chances when they don’t deserve them. Sure, there’s a time and a place for it—but not here, not now, and certainly not with you.”

“Are you done?” I asked.

“If you are,” she replied, smiling all the while.

0 0 0

I don’t want to say if she was right or wrong. I don’t judge such things anymore.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I can say that it was a tough time, and we all said a lot of things we didn’t mean. It was better, I assumed—as I always, always do—to not think about it. Sure, it wasn’t sustainable, but it didn’t have to be. It only had to last until the last bullet shattered my skull.

I’d have all the time in the world to reflect on my sins in the infinite second before death.