The Belly of the Beast

Ch. 72, Grief

The Admiral protects you.

The Admiral loves you.

Trust the Admiral and he will deliver you safely

To our new home set in the stars.

For the next three days, I was blind to everything but grief.

All I could think, breathe and feel was Xyla. Her lifeless form far below. Her hair spread out around her.Grief lodged itself inside my throat, like it was trying to choke me, kill me. . . and a part of me wished it would.

How could the world go on without Xyla? How could I?

It felt wrong that my chest still rose and fell when Xyla's never would again. It felt wrong when I realized that I sat inside a room like something from a fairytale, decorated in purples and violets and blues, with a bed with actual curtains, that Xyla would never get to see. She would never make it to the Top. She would never find out if the sky was blue.

I replayed the moment over and over again, trying to think of a million ways I could have changed it. How I could have saved her. If it was my fault. If this was all my fault. If I should have been happy in the life we'd once had together. If I never should have taken her to the Chute that day we met the woman from the Top, and never began this whole horrible journey to the center of hell.

More surprising than the grief, was the anger that came next— burning, blistering, terrifying. Anger against the Top, against Dagger, against myself, and even against her. I had failed her, but she'd also failed me. Why hadn't she told me? We could have made a plan, fought together.

No matter what I wished, no matter how deeply I grieved, nothing helped. Because nothing I did would bring her back.

My thoughts grew darker.

Guards brought food at regular intervals that I left untouched, and the lights dimmed and brightened with me barely noticing. I fought against sleep, finding that when I closed my eyes, instead of escaping to memories with Xyla, the dead were there to haunt me. They reached out to me with angry fingers and empty eyes, and when I lurched upright, finding myself screaming, there was no one there to talk to, no one to comfort me. No one to tell me if all of this sacrifice, all of this death was worth it.

At one point, I found the energy to pick the lock on the door. But when it opened, there were only more guards. Their surprised, but not threatened, faces stole the energy from my limbs. Where would I even go? I was aimless, lost without Xyla.

And, I couldn't help but admit, lost without Dagger. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he sent no message, gave no hint that he didn't hate me for my plan to keep him in the dark. Like everyone else, I wondered if he too had abandoned me.

Finally, I'd found what it meant to be a Z.

Alone.

Worst of all was the realization that I'd made it to the Top, and wished only to undo it all. I wished I could go back to where I started, when Xyla and Yana and I were together, and tell that girl to be happy with what she had. Maybe I didn't have a letter, maybe my people were slowly dying, but wasn't anything better than this aching hole in my chest?

After the trial, we'd risen into a sort of cave-like room. I didn't remember much beyond that. Dagger had been yelling at me, but the memory, when it finally resurfaced, was blurry and indistinct. Still, I'd gotten into this room somehow. Again, I distantly remembered walking down a hallway, led by guards, but the details slipped away and I didn't try to chase them.

Then, on what was maybe the third day, or at least the lights had gone dark for a loud period three times I remembered, a knock sounded on the door. Whoever had brought the food and water hadn't bothered to knock, so I forced myself up, and opened the door.

Dagger.

After days of torment and darkness, came the first surge of life within me.

Dagger was here, staring at me with the same darkness in his eyes as the first time I'd met him. I didn't care. He was alive, that was all that mattered.

My eyes went to his leg, where the deep cut had shown before. Now it was covered by black pants, the same with his top, a uniform I'd never seen before. The ugly gash that I'd seen on his face after the trial was now a faint pink scar.

I missed you. I'm sorry. Where have you been? Why are you looking at me that way? There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but words refused to come, tangled in my grief. He stared over my head, not meeting my eye, his back straight, hands folded in front of him. I didn't think it was possible that my heart could hurt more, but his refusal to look at me cut deep.

"Dagger?" I pushed hair from my face, realizing it had been three days since I'd even touched it. "Are you alright?" My voice sounded hoarse, nearly unrecognizable. "What's happening?"

For the first time, I looked out at the hallway behind him. It felt like waking from a dream— or a nightmare— knowing I'd walked through these halls and absorbed none of it. But I forced myself to look now. What I saw reminded me of pictures I'd once seen of cathedrals. Hallways tall and arched, with information monitors that gleamed with light, filled with moving pictures of trees and grass. Windows, they're mimicking windows.

Had Dagger not stared at me with such coldness, had my heart not twisted with pain, I would have tried to joke about how only rich people tried to make new things look old. And then I remembered he was one of those people.

"Dag?" I whispered. He didn't answer. Instead he stepped to the side, nodding to two women I hadn't even noticed waiting behind him. They stepped forward, each taking one of my hands, guiding back into the room, their eyes averted from my face as if I were an embarrassment. Maybe I was. But it didn't stop me from staring at Dagger, waiting for him to say something. Anything.

He didn't meet my eye as one woman pulled the door shut.

Maybe something happened to him. Maybe they hurt him.

He didn't look hurt. He looked like he belonged here. No, he did belong here. And I never would. Our partnership was officially over.

Maybe that's all I ever was to him. A partner to make it through the trials.

The women's hands clawed and prodded my body, like Old Earth birds digging for worms. I didn't protest or resist; the pain meant I could feel something beside grief. The women stripped me of the trial clothes, bathed me, painted my face, curled my hair. I was docile as a lamb led to the slaughter, consumed with thoughts of Dagger. If they'd hurt him, I could save him.

But maybe that was the problem: I couldn't save anyone. Yana, Nuka, Xyla, Level N, and now another level would die, because I had failed them all. I was a doctor of the dead.

It was only when one of the women grabbed the necklace around my neck that my iron hand whipped out and seized hers. She whimpered as my steel dug into her flesh, her eyes filling with tears as I glared at her until she dropped the necklace.

"The necklace stays." My voice was hoarse, unused, yet, somehow still strong.

Saying the words brought the truth of my situation back like a blast from the Incinerator. Xyla was dead: ash and dust, burned in the Incinerator, expelled in the dark, vast expanse of space. She hadn't wanted to fight for me, to die for my cause, but she had. I couldn't fix that, but I could honor her death. I am a doctor of the dead... but I'm not dead yet.

I would find Androcles, and give him the necklace. And if it were the last thing I ever did, then I would die as I'd lived: a Z.