I completely destroyed my phone yesterday morning, so there’s no longer a wake-up call. Nobody knocks or shouts my name either, and when I rouse myself it’s simply at the time that my brain decides to switch on.
It’s 11:25.
“I’m te…?”
Even though I said my mind was “on,” as always there’s a slight dey before I can fully understand the world.
“I’m te!”
I take a bag of chips from the mini-fridge, change into rumpled clothing, and stroll out into the hall. That’s funny. How can Lily compin about me being sloppy when she’d left her own door ajar?
I move to close the door. Then I remember, and then I understand—the noises I had heard st night were no dream. Inside her suite, the carpet’s coated in gss shards and in rich, red blood.
A table frame sits empty, its gss top removed. The rest of the furniture is in a tumult: the nightstand’s knocked over, the mp’s toppled and unplugged, and the bedsheets are agonizingly twisted.
I check under the bed, where there’s nothing but another red pool. The trial will be soon, but Lily’s clock is stopped at about 2:04— abandoning its endless march on time.
“God, please.” I lower myself among the sheets, head in my hands.
It’s obvious that whatever happened, Lily put up a fight, and maybe even tried to escape. Opaque metal sheets seal her room’s windows, and the room’s vent sts are trim and snted shut. There’s no secret passageways so if she did leave, it must have been through the doorway. And come to think of it, while there’s plenty of blood, there’s no organ chunks or pieces of bone.
“She’s okay… she’s okay, she’s okay, she has to be okay!”
She’s resourceful and reliable. We had pns to spend time together after the game, and Lily’s the kind of friend who follows through. When the wolves came, she bloodily fended them off… and then she probably… fell back asleep. Then, afterwards, she woke up, walked out the door and… traveled to the trial room. Yes, she has to be in that trial chamber. Of course. Why was I so worried? It’s almost time for the council to begin, and she’s never te after all.
She’s got to be waiting for me there… so don’t worry Lily, I won’t let you down.
I drift down the stairwell, sleepwalking past the maintenance closet and the six lower suites. Almost everyone else must already be in the voting circle—there’s still about ten minutes left til the trial begins today, but the threat of impending death has a way of making people punctual. But, one of the other pyers still loiters by the set of double doors; the hooded figure slouches near the entryway, grim-faced like some derelict reaper.
“I can’t believe it. She actually showed up.” The Rat scratches his head. There’s a slight gap between the wood and the hinges, and soft voices drift into my ears: whispers, small talk, and gossip about a certain missing girl. I’d have been able to witness a slim vision of the scene inside through the crack, but whether on purpose or by accident the boy’s lean body obstructs me.
“Who showed up?” I ask.
“You did,” the Rat says. “You sure took your sweet ass time… the Horse even knocked on your door earlier, but you were completely out of it.”
I grimace. Then, in one of his hands, the Rat flicks open a cracked cell phone, and when he flicks it open his face briefly glows blue. The time on the outside dispy is a strangely familiar 2:05, and on the inner monitor is a picture of me and…
“I cleaned this up for you. It was sopping wet, you know,” the Rat says. “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
I’m silent, as I look idly at the glowing pixels.
I don’t need a photo to know how Lily looks. The Rat, meanwhile, is wearing a bashful, ‘it-was-nothing-but-it-was-really-something’ kind of grin, palm through his fuzzy hair as though his wild, untamed mop was some kind of interesting pet. Then his fidgeting stops. The grin stops. He gnces uncomfortably, his two eyes against my one. Inside them I used to see a swirl of complicated emotions, but now I just see a ft reflection of my own empty face.
“Let me inside,” I mumble, though I’d be surprised if those words were something he could hear.
“Don’t want to talk, Snake? You don’t have to, but I still should still give my report. The Tiger isn’t a wolf… go ahead and tell that to everybody.”
“Lily. Where’s Lily?’”
The Rat frowns, and fumbles the cell phone into my palms. He falls back when I pull away, and through the door’s cracks I catch a glimpse of the inner trial chamber. Almost everyone’s there. Dragon, Horse, Pig, Ox, Rabbit, Tiger—
“The Dog’s dead, probably,” the Rat says quietly. “Didn’t you see her room?”
I did. The bed, the blood, the walls, the gun, the desk, the cabinets, the screen, it’s all blurred and mangled in my tortured mind.
“You don’t know that! She could just be hiding, or perhaps she’s somehow escaped.”
“Snake, if I’m someone who doesn’t know anything, why’d you ask me where she was in the first pce?”
Rat refuses to budge his station, so I can’t make my way into my chair without pushing past him. He stares at me, intently, and though I’ve lost my ability to understand the emotions on his face, I can still consider dispassionately strings of logical words. He must be waiting for Lily too, though the clock is ticking down.
When I raise my voice, it sounds surprisingly raw.
“Even if I don’t trust you, I know you’re somebody sharp. So I’m asking you, commanding you, begging you to tell me—where is she? Why is she so te?
““Her being dead just doesn’t make sense! She’s someone the seer has information about, so the healer should have protected her! And the wolves shouldn’t have attacked her if they thought the healer would guard her, and besides, it’s her! She wouldn’t, couldn’t, can’t-
Tk!
The Rat strikes me again. Or at least, he almost does. He slows his palm at the st moment so it’s just one light tap on the cheek.
“Pull yourself together. I don’t need your tears; I need your mind for the trials ahead; that’s all we can really hope for, right now.”
I csp my cheek and my stare burns into him, into dark eyes that I could not read, like a glimpse of the night.
