Processing III

“Can I talk to you?” Ky'cina asked.

I glanced away. “Rather you not.”

She had come into my cell, and was sitting composedly at a small table. I sat in the corner, looking at the wall.

“Come sit.”

“Do I have to?”

“Listen. You’re a smart woman. I think you understand the reasoning behind what I did, right?”

I did, sure. I’d known her name and her rebel status, and wouldn’t explain what more I knew or where I was from. It made sense to have me on probation, to see if I was a spy, and to act like I’d been accepted into the fold so that if I was a spy, I would be careless. It even made sense to hold Jayla as a hostage. That didn’t mean I was happy about it.

“I live my life like I’m tiptoeing around dominoes. One false move, and they could all collapse.”

“Life’s not a game.”

“But games are useful metaphors. Look. The situation has been stressful—”

“Is she dead?”

“I heard you were feeling better,” Ky'cina said instead of answering.

“Well, not anymore.”

“If you’d like trust, I’d like to know where you’re from. Jayla mentioned ‘Canada’—”

“When? When you had her locked up?”

Ky'cina sighed. “On the trip here.”

“Oh, when you were planning to lock her up.”

“In any case, Canada isn’t a real country. Or if it is, we’ve never made contact. So, tell me about where you came from and what your intentions are.”

I kept quiet.

After some time waiting, Ky'cina sighed again and left.

The next day, Lil came back. Balanced on the tray was a mug of hot milk. “I thought it would help your nerves,” she explained. “This might be pretty stressful.”

“Sure. I’ve been nothing but stressed.” I took a gulp from the mug and side-stepped so I could see behind Lil. Ky'cina was there again. “Another interrogation?” My nerves really were already frayed. Every day I didn’t hear about Jayla was stressful. This was the third or fourth day now that I was trapped here. “Tell her to leave, unless I get to actually know something.”

“I think that could be arranged,” Ky'cina said, stepping forward.

“Ew, get out.”

“Naomi!” Lil said in shock.

“No, it’s fair for her to be angry. But first I want to hear something from her.”

“This again?” I asked, flopping down into some cushions with my mug of milk. “You either wouldn’t believe me or hate me if I told you everything, you know.”

“You’d hate me?”

“Yes…well, obviously I can’t say.”

“You really care about Jayla. How did the two of you end up traveling together?”

“We met, uh, back a little less than two months ago, I turned up on her doorstep, and she took me in, but then Casselian, he died because of me.” My head was cloudy, and words were spilling out.

“Because of you?”

“Because I’d, I’d written that this attack thing happened. That’s why I’ve got to look out for Jayla,” I said earnestly. “Because if she dies, it’s my fault, because of this hard world I put her in.”

“Were you a powerful person?”

“I’ll say. I don’t know how but I created a whole world.”

The milk was strangely sweet. Under even that sweetness was a strange bitter undertone, I was realizing now.

“Wha…what’s in this?”

“It’s just honey.”

Could it be… no. No, it wasn’t! My head was spinning, making it hard to keep track of what was going on. Was it poisoned? No, what had been happening…I’d been saying things I didn’t want to say.

I covered my mouth and hunched over the table, dropping the mug. White splashed up, and the ceramic broke into a hundred tiny pieces on the ground.

“You created a whole world?” Ky'cina asked.

“I, I, I can’t tell you any more. You’ll be angry at me. You’ll know it’s my fault—” I bit down on my lip and made myself keep the words in.

Ky'cina took my hands and re-cuffed them. Lil knelt down, picking up pieces of broken mug. She was uneasy, wouldn’t look at either of us. That was how Lil was. Unlike Ky’sy’ana’s resilient resolve, she was someone who had to be pushed to be okay with morally gray actions.

She was kind. A kind girl who I’d broken down until she killed her best friend. I really hoped the same thing wouldn’t happen.

I could tell her not to do it, said my spinning brain.

“Lil. Lil, you know Sai-ee…? Don’t kill him. Find a better way. It’s my fault that you killed him.” I glanced to Ky'cina. “Mine and hers.”

Lil stared at me, eyes wide and startled. “I wasn’t going to kill him? Ky'cina and me are going to help him escape!”

Oh, wrong point in the timeline. That was later, right.

Had I said that out loud?

“Where’s Jayla?”

“When’s later? Ky'cina—”

“It was only my worst case scenario.”

“I’m not killing him! No matter what!”

“Calm down.”

“Let me go,” I said, “don’t you see this kind of, of truth serum is dangerous? I know way too much—and I was going to tell you! Any military secrets, or anything, I would have helped you!”

“Tell us, then.”

“No! I won’t anymore!”

“Don’t we deserve the truth? Why are you keeping so many secrets?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s because you would hate me; I deserve it…”

The truth serum wasn’t forcing my mouth to open. It was more like, it felt good to spill all my secrets. The tension collected in my chest had released. It was like being drunk.

Ky'cina waited patiently. I hated her. Ms. Put Together, drugged me and thought she was so good. But I was scummy too, huh? No, not for the novel—I couldn’t’ve known about the novel—I had to treat myself better. But I couldn’t escape my guilt. It’d been inside me, twisting up my insides and screwing up my head, since last year.