“They could have trampled you.”
“They were scared! The Jay I knew wouldneverphysically hurt another person like that.”
“He wouldn’t?” I asked, genuinely curious. Milo’s eyes widened in shock.
I cocked my head to the side, trying to conjure up what it used to feel like…before.I couldn’t remember killing anyone before my time in The Cave… but that didn’t mean I hadn’t.
Milo looked so concerned that I was getting a little uncomfortable.
He reached out and cupped my face, his eyes darting back and forth between mine.
He traced his thumb over the scar that ran through my right eyebrow and down into the flesh of my cheek.
“No, he wouldn’t… How did you get this? You didn’t have this before either.”
It had been a tactical knife.
A soldier’s boot crushing my throat as he carved into my face in the middle of a sandstorm.
Real?
No… it had been a scalpel…
Me screaming as Dr. Grey sliced into me to insert one of his newest neurotransmitters.
Fake?
I shook my head, grunting in frustration.
My eyes burned, and when I looked at Milo again, he was pale.
“I don’t—I don’t remember,” I whispered.
“Jiminy Christmas…” he mumbled. “We need… we need to talk. Do you have anywhere we can go that’s not so…surgical?”he asked, and despite the shame I felt about how different I apparently seemed to him, I brightened at this.
“Yeah, of course. Come see.” I held out a hand to help him up, and the second he slid his hand in mine, the broken pieces of my mind that still clung to the soft memories of him fired off again.
The constant echo of gunfire that seemed to run in the back of my mind like some sort of deranged soundtrack finally faded, and it was replaced with Milo’s soft smiles and warm skin.
Just touching him seemed to slightly unravel the tangled mess of knots Grey and Luke had made of my mind, and I marveled at how just having him here made me feel more balanced.
“Jay!”
I snapped out of another one of my trances and blinked at Milo in confusion.
“I’ve been saying your name over and over. Why weren’t you responding?”
Oh.
I shrugged.
“No one’s called me that since you forgot me. No one except Seb… but he wasn’t around much. He left me there to rot after they took you away.”
Milo looked like my words caused him physical pain.
“What did they call you?”
“Patient 001, mostly. Luke called me the‘little forgotten boy’when he was feeling especially cruel.”
