At twenty-four years old, Eliza had still never spent the night with a lover. She couldnt bear to have anyone in the room with her. For ten years shed been made to sleep on a dais in the center of the temple, the congregation clustered around its base. Dear god. The wheezing and weeping, snoring, coughing. Whispering. Even, sometimes, in the dead of night: rhythmic, tandem panting that she hadnt understood until much later.
She would never be able to scrape away the memory of the collective, unwelcome breathing of dozens of people surrounding her in the night.
Theyd been waiting for the dream to visit her. Hoping for it. Praying. Vultures, hungry
for scraps of her terror. If they couldnt have the dream for themselves, they wanted to be near it. As though her screams might impart salvation, or better yet, as though maybe, just maybe, it might burst free of herthe dream, the monsters, terrible and terrible and terrible forever, amen and pour forth its annihilation, to the woe of sinners everywhere, and the glorification of the chosen: themselves.
As though Eliza might be the actual fount of the apocalypse.
Gabriel Edinger had gotten nightmare ice cream, and she had gotten that .
I still do. I still hate them, she said now, maybe a little too fervently. Dr. Chaudhary had put his glasses back on, and his eyes were wary behind them. When he spoke, his voice had the stilted delicacy reserved for talking to those of unsound mind.
You should have told me, he said, with a glance at Dr. Amhali. He cleared his throat, evidently uncomfortable. This could be considered a a conflict of interest, Eliza.
What? Theres no conflict. Im a scientist.
And an angel, said the Moroccan doctor with a sneer.
Who sneers? wondered Eliza, fadingly. Shed thought it was something only book characters did. We arent I mean they arent. They dont claim to be angels, she said, unsure why she was making any explanations on their behalf.
Pardon me, of course not. Dr. Amhali was all chill sarcasm. Descendants of. Oh, and incarnations of, lets not forget that. He stabbed her with a pointed look. Apocalyptic visions, my dear? Tell me, do you still have them? He asked it as though it were worse than absurd, as though the very notion profaned decent religion and must be punished.
She felt herself diminishing, shrinking in the face of double accusation and scorn. Disappearing. She wasnt Eliza, right now, in this tent, in the eyes of these men. She was Elazael. Im not her, Im me. How desperately she wanted to believe it. I left all that behind, she said. I left. The last part was emphatic, because it still seemed simple to her. I left. Doesnt that mean something?
It must have been very difficult for you, said Dr. Chaudhary.
It wasnt that it was the wrong thing to say. Under other circumstances, this conversation might have led there: to his legitimate pity in the face of her tale of hardship. Damn straight it had been difficult for her. Shed had nothing, no money or friends, no worldliness at all. Nothing but her brain and her will, the first woefully neglectedshe hadnt been given an educationand the second so often punished that it had become stunted. Not stunted enough. Kiss my will , she might have said to her mother. You will never break me.
But under these circumstances, and in the tone in which he said itthat stilted delicacy, that patronizing indulgenceit wasnt the right thing to say, either. Difficult? she returned. And the Big Bang was just an explosion.
Shed said that to him last night, in jest. Shed smiled ironically and hed chuckled. She meant it in the same spirit now well, sort of but Dr. Chaudhary raised his hands in a calming gesture.
Theres no need to get upset, he said.
No need to get upset? No need . What did that even mean? No reason ? Because it seemed to Eliza that she had plenty of reasons. Shed been framed and shed been outed. Her hard-earned anonymity had been snatched from her, her professional credibility from this moment forward would be entangled with the history that shed fought so hard to hide, not even to mention this vicious allegation and the damage it could do to her, the legal ramifications of breaking her nondisclosure agreements, and hell, the violent fallout on the world. But the most immediate reason was taking shape in this hazmat tent, in the company of two presumptuous men bent on treating her like their cardboard cutout of a long-lost victim.
Reflexively she glanced at the laptop screen that had shown her her undoing. It was frozen on that old photo of her, with its same old caption. CHILD PROPHET MISSING, BELIEVED MURDERED BY CULT.
Im not upset, she said, taking a series of measured breaths.
I dont blame you for who you are, Eliza, said Anuj Chaudhary. We cant change where we come from.
Well, thats big of you.
But perhaps its time now to seek help. Youve been through so much.
And
thats when things started to go sideways. He still had his hands upraised in that lets-not-do-anything-rash manner, and Eliza just stared at him. What was that all about? He was acting like she was hysterical, and for a second, it made her doubt herself. Had she raised her voice? Was she wide-eyed and nostril-flared, like some kind of lunatic? No. She was just standing there, arms at her sides, and she would have sworn by anything worth swearing onif there was anything worth swearing onthat she didnt look crazy.