What kind of changes are they making, hidden under my skin? In her mind’s eye, she saw hairs sprouting around her lungs. Teeth growing between her organs. Flaps of skin developing around her brain, pressing into it and crushing it.
She clenched her teeth as shivers ran through her. Dorran shifted so that he sat at her side, one arm at her back to hold her steady. A second later, a blanket was draped around their shoulders. Then Peter crouched beside them, unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water, and held it out to Clare.
“I’m so sorry.” He looked like he meant it. Sweat speckled his forehead, which looked even paler than normal. “I was so eager to tell my story—I didn’t even think about how it might affect you.”
“Please get them out.” She’d promised Dorran she wouldn’t dig anymore, but her fingers twitched, desperate.
“You—” He hesitated, seeming to weigh his answer. “Look, it’s not going to be bad for you. You’re not going to become like them. I’m really sorry, but we can’t get rid of the thanites once they’re inside you. But they’re in everyone. Me, you, everyone else out there, even your terrifying friend here. It’s just a case of how badly.”
Peter still held the water bottle out for her. He shook it, eyebrows raised. Her throat burned from the sickness. She hesitantly took the water and swallowed as much as she thought her stomach could handle.
“Wherever you were when the stillness hit, it must have been somewhere with a sparse thanite population.” Peter rocked back on his heels, forearms braced over his knees. “You probably have less than a hundred thousand in you.”
Clare choked on the water.
“Which is nothing!” Peter held his hands up, pacifying. “Those blighters out there? They’d have tens of millions. Maybe billions, for the worse ones. That’s why they’re becoming twisted from it. Millions of thanites, all trying to repair damage, all creating fresh damage with their over-eagerness, then trying to repair that in an escalating spiral of disaster. You… whatever you have is small enough that it’s not deforming you. It’s behaving more like it was supposed to. Repairing actual injuries.”
“What about…” She swallowed and sat up straighter. Dorran rubbed her back, comforting. “What about inside. Could it be… growing… stuff where I can’t see it?”
“Eh. Who knows?” Peter glanced towards Dorran and cleared his throat. He quickly amended, “But almost certainly not. If you can’t see anything on the surface, you’re probably fine. Absolutely.”
Clare looked up. Dorran’s chin rested near her temple. His expression was murderous as he glared at Peter. It had been a long time since Clare had thought of Dorran as frightening, but Peter didn’t know him like she did. “Even your terrifying friend there.”
“Look—how about we get you sat up.” Peter rolled to his feet. “We’ll stop that bleeding and get you something else to eat. Something with lots of sugar.”
“I don’t need that.” Clare pressed her eyes closed. “I just need to understand this.”
“Sure, of course you do. But we can talk and not drip blood on the carpet at the same time, eh?” He winked at her, but Clare couldn’t muster the energy to laugh. She let Dorran help her up, though. He moved her back on the couch and wrapped the blanket around her. Peter jogged to one of the cupboards near the door and searched through its contents.
Dorran nestled himself at Clare’s side, one arm around her back, the other holding her hand in his. He stared at her shoulder, which oozed fresh blood.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
Dorran bent close so that only she could hear him. “Don’t apologise for being human. If you want to know the truth, I was close to doing the same.”
Peter reappeared beside them. He held a kit—plastic, modern, and larger than the one Dorran had kept in Winterbourne. He flipped open the lid and settled it onto the table, beside the pile of snack food.
“You’re a couple, right?” He pulled his chair closer. “That’s nice. It’s good to see… I guess you’d call it life. Sounds awfully miserable, though, right? As though it’s a surprise to see people being happy. I’m glad you are, though. D’you want to take care of this, big guy?”
Dorran mutely took the cloth from Peter and pressed it over the tear on Clare’s shoulder. She flinched but didn’t complain as he applied pressure.
Clare’s brain felt as though it had been put on ice. Thoughts were frozen there, painful but refusing to budge. She took a stuttering breath. “Is it going to get worse?”
“Hah. I have no idea.” Peter pulled his legs back under himself. “Right now, I’m really just taking each day as it comes. I’ve been trying to calculate how many people might have survived the stillness… that’s what they’re calling it, you know? The stillness. At first, I thought it was a stupid name. There’s nothing especially still about those hollows. I can’t stand going down to the lower levels because of how loud they are. But now I’m starting to think it’s actually kind of appropriate. The hollows aren’t still, but the humans are. Once, you could turn on the radio, turn on the TV, turn on your smartphone or laptop, and have instant contact with other people. Now, you’ve got to search for it. Hunt through the radio, looking for any kind of life you can find. I feel it here, in the city, especially. You used to have to fight for even ten minutes of peace. But now…”
Fresh lightning, painfully bright, spilt through the windows. Clare found she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the blinds. A horrible paranoia wormed through her. “We’re in the city.”
“Hm?” Peter lifted his eyebrows, following Clare’s eyes to the window, then looked back at
