Page 62 of The Quiet
“All afternoon?” Jackson paused. “He was here all afternoon? You can see him that clearly?”
“Yes!” she shouted back. “And of course I had no idea, because someone couldn’t just be honest with me!” she nudged his chest, pushing him back toward the door.
She knew Jackson didn’t fully deserve her anger, but she was infuriated to feel so caught off guard and needed to direct it somewhere. She’d just kissed a Strike! Her mind spun through all of the hours she’d spent talking to him. She could hardly remember how much time she’d actually spent with the version of Jackson that stood in front of her versus Lambspeak. Her confusion mounted into a firestorm of feeling.
“I didn’t realize he’d show up so quickly, Ella! He shouldn’t be so clear to you so soon. Have you been talking to him? Trying to communicate with him?”
“No!” she half lied, slamming the door and locking it.
“Ella!” Jackson called back. “Don’t let him get inside your head.”
“Too late!” she said, walking back over to the chair opposite the couch. “You should have told me. I can’t do this. Not right now. Not with both of you.” He kept knocking.
“Ella, I mean it! I can help you, alright? Let me back in! We can block him out together.”
Ella closed her eyes, and focused hard on Lambspeak, allowing her mind to follow where she’d met him only moments ago. When she opened her eyes again, there he was, the knocking of the present moment silenced as she focused on another point in time.
“I’ve been trying to reach you too,” Lambspeak said. “I thought it might be better for Jackson to tell you first, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen you. It’s nice to be around.”
“You’re in the future. Right now?” she said, furiously trying to sort herself out.
“Yes. Of course, you found me in the past in Jackson’s memories because he communicated with me in the past. It’s all a little complicated, but it’s safe to assume that at this point I am everywhere but the present… at least for now.”
“We still know each other in the future?” she asked sharply, questions lining up much faster than Ella could organize them. If her understanding of the world was a bookcase, it had been toppled over, and now all the books were scattered across her brain. She struggled to assemble them again.
“Yes,” Lambspeak said, “you see the empire Paris is hoping I’ll help build.” He paused as if giving Ella space to ask another question, but she was still filing through them by importance and so he continued on his own.
“By this point, we have a longer history,” Lambspeak said. “Every now and again when I can’t see you for a long time, I visit past versions of you.”
“For what?” she asked incredulously, enraged about the kiss and flustered by the disruptive knocking she could hear tugging her back to the present.
“To see you. That’s all,” he said, “You have a fundamental distrust of power, Ella. It’s something that’s always been a point of friction for us. You became a figurehead of a growing group that opposes the existence of Strike in any form of government. It’s non-violent, for now. Or you are, at least. It all started as negotiation,” he turned the handle of the teacup, spinning it ina slow circle on his plate and in an almost hypnotic gesture. For the first time, Ella noticed the gloves for what they were.
“Some espionage sure, that you aren’t quite sure if I know about yet. You’ve gotten quite good at hiding your thoughts, but you have a few tells, ones that developed mostly after you started trusting me again and our negotiations broke down into something more…personal.”
His eyes flickered back to hers. “I agree to your demands to get you to come back, and you started creating them as a pretense to meet. Although, it’s been a few weeks by now.”
The familiarity of the kiss made striking sense, and disgusted, Ella shook her head. “I could never…” Never what? A striking image of Peter’s slaves erupted through her brain with so much clarity that she wanted to wince, memories of Marnie lying naked in Yun’s arms, sold out and empty in a life that had been too much for her to stand. Her heart began to race with terror as the memories struck her brain in brief, sharp glimpses.
Lambspeak smiled, a smile not so unlike one of Peter’s that hit her with the faintest sense of nostalgia. “No need for that,” he said, as if to curb the anxious direction of her thoughts. “It’s not the Strike of me that you fell in love with anyway.”
Ella’s expression faltered, and Jackson’s knocking reeled her right back into her seat where she stared at an empty couch.
Love? Lambspeak had just so clearly watched her thoughts and her feelings unfold. He knew her. He knew her better than she knew herself. He knew where her life was headed.
But still. Love? She’d never been in love, and it had become a point of pride. The word struck something deep and long abandoned at her core, a longing wrapped in steel and coated in dust.
Jackson was quiet now. The silence on the other side of the door was louder than the knocking had been. Teeth clenched, she threw the door open, Jackson stumbling as he’d been leaning against it.
He opened his mouth and she cut him off, “Why are you so scared of the future?” she said sharply. “The future is changeable! It’s always changeable! There are so many different futures!”
“And Lambspeak has systematically managed to eliminate the ones that he doesn’t exist in,” Jackson said.
Ella’s mind only raced faster.
“I’ve thought through every option,” Jackson said, “which means so has he.”
“Well, I haven’t! Other people haven’t.” She gestured to her chest. “I have free will! I have choices!” She stormed past him and whipped back around.
