Something told me I wasn't in Austin anymore.
I could smell the slightest hint of pine in the air. Not air freshener pine, real pine from trees. Underneath it, something medical. Antiseptic. And beneath all of that, so faint I almost missed it?—
The ocean at night and clean soap.
Milo.
He was in the room with me, but his breathing was wrong. It sounded shallow and tired, the rhythm interrupted by near silent sounds of distress.
I opened my eyes. Not that it mattered. The darkness was the same as it always was. But the reflex was still there, two years later. Wake up. Open your eyes. Hope.
At least the crushing feeling I always felt when I realized I still couldn't see wasn't as bad now.
"Milo." His name was barely a whisper, forced through a throat that felt like it had been scraped with steel wool.
A chair creaked. The sound of weight shifting forward, and then his breathing was closer. Right beside the bed. I heard him swallow. Heard the wet, thick sound of a man trying to speak through something sitting heavy in the middle of his chest.
"I'm here." The words sounded like they'd been dragged out of him with pliers.
I tried to sit up. The pain detonated through my ribcage and I couldn't hide a small, hoarse cry.
His hand was on my shoulder immediately. "Don't. Don't move yet. Let me call the doctor. He's been waiting for you to wake up."
His touch was careful. So careful it made my skin crawl, and at first I didn't remember why I was acting this way.
The memory hit me like a truck, all at once, and I suddenly remembered…because the last time his hands had been on me, they hadn't been careful at all.
The drive. The chair. His fist. His voice, flat and mechanical, asking questions I couldn't answer. The cigarette smoke from the man in the chair. Viktor. Viktor sitting there, watching, while Milo?—
While Milo?—
My hand shot out and found his wrist. Gripped it hard.
"Where am I?"
"You're at a safe house in South Dakota. In the middle of nowhere."
South Dakota. I turned that over in my mind, tried to make it fit into what I remembered.
I tried to swallow. "How long?"
He handed me a glass of water, but I shook my head. I didn't trust him.
"We've been here about a day and a half. The drugs kept you under longer than I expected."
Drugs. The needle sliding into the crook of my arm. The chemical cold flooding my veins, slowing everything to a crawl, pulling me down into a darkness I felt like I'd never be able to claw my way out of?—
"You drugged me."
"Yes."
"You beat me."
He was silent for a very long time.
"Yes," he finally said.
I released his wrist. Not because I wanted to let go, but because touching him was making it impossible to think, and I needed to think. I needed to understand why I was alive and in South Dakota and in pain and not dead on the floor of a warehouse south of Bastrop.
