Ebb was in the hazy blue semi-reality that signalled the descent after a long, floating high. He was neither asleep nor awake but drifting somewhere in between, half-seeing, half-knowing, lost in his thoughts.
There was pain, somewhere, but he didn't feel it. He was aware of it as the messages tried to reach his brain but his mind was too distant and distracted, made of mist, and the feeling simply couldn't get through so while he knew about it, Ebb didn't feel the hurt.
He remembered Sandy telling him that your brain was the only part of the body that felt pain, that your limbs felt nothing at all. They merely conveyed the information to your head, which is where the agony is felt, where the message came to mean something. This was why, Sandy had said, physical pain and emotional pain felt so similar. They were the same warning lights for different problems. It was all brain hurt, all of it.
This hadn't made sense to Ebb at the time but it did now.
He undulated through the cloudy landscapes of his half-dreaming mind, surfacing briefly in and out of consciousness but never long enough to get a grip on what was going on around him. He was aware, albeit uncertainly, that he was still alive. That was more than he had been expecting when the pain had hit him first.
It would have to do, for now.
When Ebb finally awoke for real, he found that he was back on his bed in the medical bay and that Cass was leaning over to place a cup of something on the table by his head. His mind still felt woolly and insubstantial around the edges but it would come back to itself. When it did, the pain would return in full force.
Cass noticed him as he stood back up and they made eye contact almost accidentally. Cass sighed, brushing his fringe back from his face, frowning slightly.
"I don't like you, you selfish bastard," he said, quietly, "but I guess I can forgive you anything for what you did yesterday."
Ebb didn't know what he was talking about so he simply stared back in silence.
"He hasn't left," Cass gestured with his thumb. "Been sitting there all night waiting for you to wake up."
Ebb followed his gaze to the chair where Sandy sat slumped, asleep, head fallen sideways.
"Just you be careful," Cass added. "I don't owe you anything. Don't make me regret saving your life."
He turned and shook Sandy's shoulder gently.
"Hey," he said. "The boy's awake."
Casting one last look back at Ebb, Cass left the cubicle, pulling the curtains back across. Ebb lay still, staring at the space where he been, managing somehow to think nothing at all.
"Ebb?"
He turned and saw Sandy's face. In this state, he couldn't read it. He couldn't translate the messages of eyes and mouth and all the other little signs that people are supposed to know. So he simply looked and said nothing at all.
"How are you feeling?" Sandy swallowed hard, sitting forward. "Are you...are you in a lot of pain?"
"Not yet," Ebb managed to reply, and his voice scraped his throat. "I'm still floating."
Sandy nodded. "I...listen, I have to say thank you. Thank you. Really. More than anything. I...I owe you everything."
Ebb didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about so he just kept watching. Sandy looked as though he might cry. Ebb fervently hoped that he wouldn't.
"I'm sorry," Sandy whispered. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that you're hurt."
He didn't cry. Ebb breathed a sigh of relief.
"Sorry for what?" he asked. "I don't understand. What happened?"
Sandy stared at him. "You...you don't remember?"
Ebb shook his head. "No. I remember...I remember fighting. I remember you and Cass and that woman trying to shoot you down..."
"You destroyed her," Sandy murmured. "Annihilated her. Exterminated her."
Ebb nodded. "Yes. Yes, that sounds familiar. And then...there was someone else...aiming for you..."
Sandy waited for a moment. "You really don't remember what happened next?"
Ebb shook his head again. "Not a thing. Why? How did I get hurt? How...how come you're alright?"
"You stepped in front of me," Sandy said, softly. "You moved so fast. I didn't even think it was possible for anyone to be that quick. But you just pushed me back and stepped in front of me and then..."
He broke off, taking a deep breath, while Ebb tried to fit this story into his version of events, his knowledge of how things went and how he behaved. It didn't work.
"There wasn't time to stop him shooting," Sandy continued. "Nobody could do anything. He just kept firing at you and you were there, shielding the two of us...well, mostly shielding me. And they kept hitting you and the blood and then..."
"Is that my blood?" Ebb asked, abruptly. "On your face?"
Sandy nodded. "It sprays. When you puncture someone. The blood sprays everywhere."
Ebb stared at him for a moment. He felt as though the depths of his mind that he might need to comprehend any of this were closed off from him, behind the wall of white.
"What happened to the person shooting me?" he wondered aloud.
"I killed him," Sandy said, without any inflection.
Ebb nodded. There was a kind of hatred in that statement, a rage so deep and complex that it didn't need to be expressed in shouts or violence. It was the kind of rage that could simmer below the surface, stored away in a great reservoir, and never be seen...until somebody had to die. Ebb could respect that rage. Ebb could respect Sandy for possessing it.
"I'm sorry," Sandy whispered. "I never meant...I never wanted..."
"I didn't save you on purpose," Ebb interrupted. "You do realise that? I didn't save you on purpose. I don't even remember doing it."
Sandy frowned. "You stepped in front of me. You don't just step into the path of a bullet by accident. You can't."
"Well, I did," Ebb said, angrily. "Stop with this. Stop making me out to be some kind of hero. Enough."
Sandy stared at him for a few seconds before nodding once. "But all the same. Thank you."
Ebb closed his eyes, feeling the crushing weight of Sandy's guilt and gratitude pressing down on him. He didn't want it. He didn't need it. He didn't deserve it.
"Where am I hurt?" he asked, as coldly as he could.
"Your right leg, just below the knee. Your hip bone was shattered. One bullet went right through your hand and out the other side. Another grazed the side of your head. It didn't break the bone but..."
"I get the point," Ebb sighed deeply. "I'm pretty much ruined."
"No," Sandy said, quickly. "Not ruined. Just hurt. Lots of people are hurt. You're not even the worst of them. I just..."
"No fighting," Ebb mumbled. "No moving. I'm stuck being an invalid again."
"I'm sorry," Sandy said, remorsefully.
"Shut up with your sorry!" Ebb yelled. "Shut up! Shut up!"
Sandy went still, kept his mouth closed, didn't say another word. Ebb sucked in air, collected his breathing. The blissful oblivion of the drug was falling further and further away, leaving behind all the pain he had been managing to avoid.
"I'm sorry," Ebb said, through gritted teeth. "It just...it hurts, ok? It hurts."
Sandy nodded. "I'll put you to sleep again. It'll be easier that way."
Ebb watched him as he prepared the syringe, filling it with the infusion that would send Ebb far away on the wings of dreams, to where pain couldn't touch him and worries couldn't form and fear was an alien thought.
"You don't want to be a hero, do you?" Sandy asked, after a significant silence.
Ebb was taken aback. "No. Not really."
"Why?"
Ebb hesitated. "I don't know. I just...it's not what I want to be."
Sandy nodded. "Lie still. This should put you out for another day."
Ebb closed his eyes. "Sandy?"
"Yes?"
"Cass says you didn't leave. All night."
The sharp point of the syringe scratched at Ebb's neck but didn't enter. Ebb could feel Sandy's hand tremble, just once, in surprise.
"That's right," he said, his voice catching slightly.
"Why?" Ebb asked. "Why didn't you go?"
He could hear it in Sandy's voice when he spoke, the bitterness, the resignation, the exhaustion, the sad, wistful sigh.
"I couldn't," he replied. "I couldn't leave you. Even if you'd asked me to go."
He pressed the syringe into Ebb's neck and there was nothing more of consciousness or pain.
"She's your mother?" Nigs yelped. "But...that's impossible!"
"I don't see how," Miriam said, reasonably. "Biologically speaking, there's no argument against it."
Jonathan closed his eyes. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! But she is."
"How did you know?" Natalia asked. "I mean...when did you find out?"
Jonathan shrugged. "I think I knew for a long time. I think I knew back when I was John. He knew. Not me."
It was a greatly depleted company sitting in the office now. Carmen, Ebb and Sandy were all absent. Nobody had bothered to find out where they were.
"And because of that, you couldn't kill her," Natalia said, sadly. "You just couldn't do it. Oh, John..."
"I thought people didn't know who their parents were around here," Nigs frowned. "I thought, you know. We were all sent off and separated at birth."
"We were," Jonathan explained. "I was sent to join the youth corps as soon as I was born. She wanted nothing to do with me."
"Harsh," Puck said, the first time he'd spoken all day.
"Does it really surprise you?" Jonathan answered, bleakly. "She doesn't look like someone who'd want to read you bedtime stories."
"But she did care about you," Miriam pointed out. "She must have done."
"Oh, yes," Jonathan said, sarcastically. "Yes, she loved me."
"She did," Natalia looked surprised. "Of course she did. You and the field-marshal were always very close. Everyone always said she cared a lot about you."
Jonathan shrugged. "Maybe. Once it turned out I was being the perfect little soldier boy, the son she would have chosen. Maybe then she decided to care. And she never told me who my father is."
"Well, at least something else makes sense now," Miriam broke the subsequent pause.
"Oh goody, does it?" Nigs said, irritably. "What could this possibly explain?"
"The day we broke into the archives." Miriam's face was screwed up in thought. "When we were hiding from Bone and that man. And he asked if she didn't think her trust in you was a little biased. That must be why. He knew you were her son."
Jonathan nodded slowly. "That makes sense. Though, I must say, I don't see how he could ever believe she'd be biased in my favour. Do you think she told him about me?"
"People must know she had a child," Puck said, rationally. "You can't hide an entire pregnancy, not in a place like this anyway. Maybe people just worked it out. You do look kind of alike."
"Says the blind man," Natalia murmured.
"I used to be able to see," Puck snapped. "Well, don't they still look similar? Same kind of hair, same kind of eyes?"
"More similar now than they used to," Natalia agreed. "I wasn't arguing. No, now it's been pointed out it seems so obvious."
"Whatever," Jonathan stood up. "It doesn't solve the problem. We have a lot of dead soldiers on our hands and we don't even have full control and, at any moment, they could come bursting out of their hiding place and overpower our guards or people from the sub-dwellings might advance or..."
"Calm down," Miriam said, gently. "Breathe. It's ok. We can deal with it. Right now, you need to sleep."
Jonathan shook his head. "I'm fine. We have things to do. I owe it to these people..."
"You're going to run yourself into the ground," Miriam interrupted. "You've been up nearly forty hours, and half that time was spent in a battle. Trust me. You can't do anything when you're this tired."
"I'm fine," Jonathan repeated. "I've had some coffee. I can keep working for a good six hours more."
Miriam folded her arms. "Coffee buys you time. It doesn't keep you alive indefinitely. It's not magic, Jonathan. Go to bed. Now."
She spoke in tones so familiar and precisely calculated that Jonathan's muscles were obeying before he even had time to register it, carrying him out of his chair and towards the door. It was a voice from the nursery, speaking straight to the part of Jonathan that would always need to be told to drink his milk and go to bed on time without fuss.
"Jonathan?"
Just outside the door, Natalia's hand landed on Jonathan's shoulder and he stopped.
"She did love you, you know," she said, softly. "She loves you a great deal."
"Oh yeah?" Jonathan snarled, pulling away from her.
"Yeah," Natalia's voice was still calm. "You know how I know? She could have killed you out there yesterday. And she didn't."
Jonathan shrugged her off and walked away. Natalia leant against the wall, resting her temple against the reassuringly solidity of it and sighing deeply. She wished she could sleep too, but there were still things for her to do before rest.
"But I have promises to keep," she recited, under her breath, "and miles to go before I sleep."
"And miles to go before I sleep," Miriam completed, behind her. "How do you know that poem?"
"It's from centuries ago," Natalia pushed herself off the wall and turned, forcing a smile. "Robert Frost. How do you know it?"
"There was a Frost in my dream too," Miriam shrugged. "I thought...I guess I thought he was only there."
"Things cross the boundaries when we sleep. I guess much of the literature you know would be the same as what we have preserved here. Otherwise, how could your mind have invented it all?"
"A valid point," Miriam smiled faintly. "I thought you didn't get to read books and see things from before Subterra. I thought that was the whole point."
Natalia's smile twisted at the edges. "I suppose it's a kind of corruption. The scholars, the high-ranking ones, can get their hands on old books and things. For research purposes. And I...I was in charge. If I asked them to give me the book, they did. They couldn't say no."
"So you've read a lot of poetry?" Miriam wondered.
"A little," Natalia nodded slightly. "Some of it's good. Some of it's just tiresome."
Miriam laughed. "Yes. I suppose I can understand that. But I love it, all of it."
"You like pretty things."
"True," Miriam said, unconcerned. "So, has Jonathan broken your heart?"
Natalia took a step back, her heart leaping up into her throat, shocked and panicked, and in the second it took to compose herself again she saw Miriam's sly smile.
"What do you...I don't know what you mean."
"It's ok," Miriam shrugged. "Some people want to talk about it. Some people don't. I don't think most people would know, by the way. But most people don't know how to look."
"You can't tell anyone!" Natalia's eyes were wild. "You can't say a word!"
"I wouldn't," Miriam replied, seriously. "I know how much that means. I would never say anything."
Natalia nodded slowly, her heartrate returning to normal. "You startled me."
"So has he?" Miriam asked. "Broken your heart?"
Natalia closed her eyes. "Maybe. No. I don't think it's broken. It's just...he's turned it into a compass. You know? It will always point right back to him."
Jonathan sat on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes. Despite everything, he couldn't sleep. He was bone tired but the coffee was still buzzing in the distant corners of his brain and, underneath all of that, was the fear of nightmares.
Because there were always nightmares after a fight. There had to be. The day you stopped dreaming and waking up screaming and crying at the horrors you had seen, and the ones you had committed, there was something severely wrong. But, he realised, it had been so many years since he had endured that alone.
He was scared. Scared to sleep. Scared to close his eyes. Scared to let it all flood in: faces he hadn't yet seen, screams he hadn't yet heard, wounds he hadn't yet felt himself cause, actions he hadn't yet had time to analyse but would soon find ample space within him to regret. Scared to face again what he had faced a million times before, and know again the price of fighting back.
He felt it like a sickness, the misery at his own actions. He couldn't stop thinking now, couldn't keep it all out. There was nothing else for his mind to do. Miriam had been right; he did need sleep. But the reason he was keeping awake and keeping working was because the alternative was to think and dream and he wasn't ready. He wasn't ready.
How could he have done that? It was his fault. It was his fault that this whole operation had gone wrong, his fault that they were now caught in a siege rather than striding around the high command searching for the elusive key card. It was his fault that more people were going to have to die for this.
Because he couldn't pull the trigger. He couldn't make a kill. He had killed so many people by now. Perhaps, if he tried, he could remember each distinctively. Or perhaps he couldn't, when he took into account the ones he'd taken down with explosives and traps in his old resistance days. But nevertheless, it was nothing new.
What had been his problem? That is was his mother? The thought was laughable. Jonathan didn't feel bonds based on family connection. He didn't believe in that kind of thing. She hadn't raised him or cared for him or loved him. She was just a soldier, just an enemy leader, just a threat.
So why hadn't he killed her?
It was because of John. It was all because of John. It was clear to Jonathan now that they weren't precisely the same person. It was like having a split personality, though one half lay dormant and little more than a snatch of memories. Up until now.
There was no denying it. John had risen up inside of Jonathan, risen up and taken command of his mind and his body, forced him not to shoot, forced him to let Bone live. Jonathan had been powerless because, ultimately, he hadn't been Jonathan. At that moment, Jonathan didn't even exist.
That was terrifying. That was potentially more terrifying than anything else. That he might not have control over himself, that he might be unpredictable, that he might not even be able to trust in himself...the very thought made his skin crawl.
He was a threat. A danger. Unsafe. As long as there was the potential for John to take control of him – John, with different loyalties and different values and different beliefs – then Jonathan was useless as a soldier and useless as a commander. He was nothing but a risk.
He had to get a grip on himself. He had to. He had to find a way to get rid of John entirely, to exorcise the boy completely from his mind. All the people he loved. All the things he thought he knew. All the memories he had. It didn't matter. They had to go. Otherwise, Jonathan was stranded.
He didn't know where to go from here. He didn't know how to. He wanted to run and run, keep running forward, not look around, not see what was happening. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to turn. He had no idea what to expect now. He had no plans.
Jonathan sat on his bed and he was the one tiny person in a whole universe, alone in the vast expanse of darkness that stretched on and on to infinity.