Page 42 of The Quiet
Ella.A voice impressed softly into her brain.
She shifted, feeling like a teenager again when Samual had prompted her out of bed before dawn to tend to the animals. The idea of going back to where she was in reality sent grief blooming through her.
She got the strangest sense that she was indeed lying in a bed, in a place very far away. She stretched her arm, experimenting with the dream and the idea of waking up.
She felt renewed, body buzzing with energy, more alive perhaps than she’d felt in a long time.
Ella opened her eyes, and she was lying on the same hard surface. The feelings of relief hadn’t faded, her face wet with tears.
She moved her body against the marble, head drifting over to her arm as she began to move and test it.
It had been completely healed.
She sat up frantically, scanning the room and she inspected her arm. A presence faded from the room and Ella laid back down, closing her eyes as she tried to focus on it, catching up with it.
This time, the presence swept around her and she was standing in a grand room, like a ballroom, the faintest outlines of it lingering like a bright light after the lights went out. She could almost trace the outlines, and eased to her feet. She was standing on a carpet, someone sitting several feet away from her on the stairs of a grand, empty staircase.
Welcome back.
“You,” she whispered with the faintest feeling of recognition, doing her best to trace the feelings, leaning heavily on Samual’s early teachings for Listeners.
She felt crippled by the limited nature of her abilities, accidentally opening her eyes and stepping back as a strange headache formed in the pit of her skull. She pushed her eyes closed again and there she was back in that strange, distant room.
“What are you?” she asked.
You know.
“A Strike?” she replied, and remembered the dangerous feeling she’d found at the bottom of Jackson’s memories. She’d told Jackson she hadn’t seen anything when he’d been so intent on asking. The creature she sensed hadn’t looked like a Strike. Then again, she’d only really seen a twisted shadow.
Without saying anything more, she opened her eyes, stood, and turned back toward the door.
And what do you think Jackson will do when he knows you can hear me?The impression came like a whisper, as if through a tunnel, but Ella stopped.
She stood there in complete silence, arm pressing up against the nearest wall as if to steady herself as she closed her eyes and focused back on the source of the voice.
She was standing in a different version of the current room, a version where a murky figure waited there with her.
“I want my bullet wound back,” Ella said, “everything you did. Reverse it. Now.”
You want to be in pain?
“I can’t afford to owe someone like you.”
There was perhaps a chuckle, or the sensation of humor, Ella picking up on the subtlest impression of it through her senses.
I’m in your debt for setting us free, and the pleasure of power is to be used, you know.
“I doubt that’s how Strike use their power. Give it back. Now.”
The mirage sitting nearby lifted a hand, fingers poised to snap. Ella opened her eyes and eased down against the wall, focusing on the floor ahead of her as she waited.
I’m not like the other Strike. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. I never served Peter.
She heard the finger snap and pain, made so much worse by the contrast of her good health ravaged through her. Ella nearly threw up, heaving against the floor as she bit her sleeve to try and muscle down the intensity of the groan that surged through her.
Her entire body shook, and she trembled as she remained huddled against the wall. She felt lightheaded, eyes closed.
You’re going to need me to get to the truth,the voice echoed from a distant place.
