Chapter 281: Mei’s Dream

Mei could still remember it clearly.

The strange thing about memory was how it picked its moments. Not the big ones, not always, not the dramatic turning points or the days when everything changed. Sometimes it reached back and pulled out something small and ordinary, something that hadn’t felt important at the time, and held it up to the light like it was the most significant thing that had ever happened.

This was one of those.

Jackson Township. Their house. An afternoon that had felt like every other afternoon.

A couple of days before the nightmare unleashed by the Screamer

She’d been in her room reading, which was the only thing she’d asked of the world on her quieter days, a few hours, a good book, no interruptions. That request had been, as usual, completely ignored by Ryan, who had materialized in her doorway at some point with a book of his own and the energy of someone who had already decided they were staying and was simply waiting for her to accept it.

She’d told him to get out.

He’d pointed out, with the infuriating reasonableness he occasionally deployed, that this was also Ivy’s room, that the spot he was occupying on the bed was technically Ivy’s half, and that Ivy had said nothing about it.

Mei had grumbled. She’d decided that arguing further would require more energy than the outcome was worth. So she’d gone back to her book.

And that had been fine, for a while. Ryan reading beside her wasn’t the worst thing in the world, as long as he was actually reading and not starting conversations. She’d gotten used to his presence the way you got used to background noise, not exactly welcoming it, but no longer actively fighting it either. It had happened gradually, without her permission, the way most things involving Ryan seemed to.

What she hadn’t expected was the silence.

Not the comfortable, occupied kind, the other kind. She’d caught it at the edge of her awareness and tried to ignore it, but it persisted, and eventually she’d lowered her book just enough to look at him.

Ryan was flat on his back, book resting open-faced on his chest, completely forgotten. His gray eyes were fixed on the ceiling with the distant, unfocused look of someone whose brain was somewhere else entirely.

She watched him for a moment.

“If you have something better to do,” she said, “the door is right there.”

“Why are you always trying to get rid of me?” Ryan asked sighing.

“Because this is my room,” she said.

“It’s also Ivy’s room and she doesn’t have a problem with it. And it’s her side I’m on,” he said.

Mei made a sound of irritation low in her throat and went back to her page. Or tried to. The quality of his silence kept pulling at the edge of her attention like a loose thread.

“Did Rebecca say something to you again?” She asked, without looking up.

“No.”

“Alisha? Elena?” She turned a page she hadn’t actually read. “Those are twins You’re basically a permanent third wheel in that arrangement because you hang too much around Elena. Same as with Rachel and Rebecca. You should mind your own business.”

She could feel his expression shifting without looking at him.

“I don’t think I’m quite that much of a third wheel,” he said, frowning and thoughtful.

Then he turned. She caught the movement in her peripheral vision, as he repositioned to look at her instead of the ceiling.

“Do you miss your father at all?” He asked.

Mei lowered her book slightly. “What?”

“You mentioned him before. That he’s somewhere out there, probably. Do you ever think about it? Wonder if he’s still alive?”

“Not even a little. He wasn’t a father in any meaningful way. He paid for my education and presented me at business dinners to impress his associates. That’s the full list of his contributions.”

Ryan was quiet for a moment, absorbing that.

“So there’s no one,” he said. “No one out there you’d miss. No one you find yourself thinking about.”

“No one,” she said, simply and without hesitation.

Another pause. Longer this time. She could feel him working toward something, circling around whatever the actual point was, and she was trying to decide if she was curious enough to wait for it or just annoyed enough to cut it off.

He shifted again. Closer this time, not intrusively, but measurably closer, enough that she was suddenly aware of the reduced space between them. She pulled her knees up without thinking about it, creating distance.

“Imagine,” Ryan started, his voice careful in a way it wasn’t usually, “that you were close to someone. Not together, not officially but something like that. Something in the territory of that.” His gray eyes were on her, steady and serious in a way that landed differently than his usual scattered, half-present looks. “And imagine that person had to go. Not because they wanted to but because it was safer. For them and for everyone. They’d be fine, somewhere else, just not here.” He paused. “Would you accept that? Because at least they were safe? Or would you—”

“What are you actually asking me?” Mei asked, watching him.

She already had a sense of it. The question wasn’t abstract. Ryan didn’t really do abstract, when he got quiet and careful like this, it was because something real was sitting underneath the words and he was trying to approach it sideways.

“Mei,” he said, just her name, and the directness of it caught her off guard. His eyes hadn’t moved from hers. “Would you miss them? Imagine in my case, would you miss me? And if yes, would just leave it at that or try to stop me from leaving if my wish was to stay with you? As expected you would try to stop me leaving right?”

She stared at him.

Those gray eyes.

They were, objectively and she acknowledged this only as a neutral fact, the way you acknowledge that weather exists unusually striking. The kind of gray that wasn’t flat or dull but had variation in it, like the surface of water before a storm. She noticed this in the way she’d have noticed anything with interesting colour contrast, which was to say clinically and with no further implications whatsoever.

She blinked and looked away.

Her face had gone warm without her awareness.

She set her book down and pushed him back firmly with her foot, planting it against his shoulder and applying pressure until he retreated.

“Stop getting so close,” she said.

“Alright, alright,” he said, not sounding particularly offended. He shifted back and returned to his previous position, flat on his back, book on his chest, eyes on the ceiling again. But the thoughtful look had acquired a layer of something more tired now, more resigned, like a question he’d hoped might get a real answer had come back empty.

“I would.”

The words were out before she’d made a decision to say them.

Her hand flew to her lips.

She had said that out loud.

She had, actually said that out loud.

Ryan turned his head. “What was that? Did you say something?”

Mei stared directly ahead, jaw tight, face burning.

“Look away,” she said, her voice coming out remarkably level given the circumstances. “You perverted Abraham Lincoln!”

“What is happening right now?”

The door swung open before the situation could deteriorate further.

Elena stepped in, taking in the scene with her blue eyes.

Ryan grabbed for the book beside him with visible urgency and held it up. “Not at all. Just reading.”

Elena tilted her head. “Upside down?”

Ryan looked at the book.

He flipped it.

“Oh no.”

“I genuinely cannot believe,” Mei said slowly, setting her book down and pressing two fingers to the bridge of her nose, “that this person is supposed to be any kind of leader for any group of people.”

“Oi,” Ryan said.

Elena laughed. “He might be hopeless with books and personal awareness,” she said, moving to lean against the doorframe with that grin of hers, “but when you actually need someone? When things are bad and you don’t know what to do and you need someone to show up?” She glanced between them. “He’ll be the first one through the door. You’ll understand that one day, Mei.”

The room went slightly quieter.

Mei found her eyes drifting, without permission, to Ryan, who had turned his head and was looking at her at the exact same moment, caught in the same pull of the same beat.

“I mean, yeah,” he said, with a small, lopsided smile. “If you’re in trouble, I’m coming. That part’s not complicated.”

Mei reached up and raised her book in front of her face.

High enough to cover her cheeks.

She stared at the words on the page without reading a single one of them.

’Stop it. This is nothing. It means nothing. He says things like that to everyone.’

She turned a page.

’It means nothing.’

°°°

“Mei~”

Her name, drawn out soft and singsong in a voice that had no business being that close.

She came awake fast. Her eyes opened and found him immediately.

Gaspar. Crouching directly in front of the sofa she’d been sleeping on, close enough that she could see the exact moment the yellow light in his irises pulsed slow and, like something behind them was breathing. Brown eyes that didn’t stay brown.

Mei recoiled backward in a single sharp movement, pulling the thin blanket up against her body, spine pressing into the back of the sofa.

Gaspar watched her reaction amused.

“Calm down,” he said, the smile already in place. “Your body isn’t what I came here for. Though I should mention, plenty of others would disagree with my priorities on that front.”

“Get out,” Mei said. Her voice came out flat and cold, which was exactly how she’d intended it.

“In a moment,” he said pleasantly, standing up to his full height and reaching for a chair nearby. He turned it around, sat down on it backwards, arms folded across the top, watching her. “I want you to tell me something first. Tell me about Ryan.” He tilted his head slightly. “What does he look like? What is it about him that makes you trust him enough to want to kill me over? Because you did, back there. I saw it in your face.”

Mei held his gaze without flinching.

“Go find him yourself,” she said. “If you’re that curious.”

Gaspar’s smile widened.

“Oh, I fully intend to,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been looking forward to it. I’m going to find that Starakian girl you guys have been sheltering, and everyone I missed that day, I’m going to finish what got interrupted. Should be a good time.”

Mei’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Then why haven’t you already?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

“You’re scared,” she said. “You don’t want to move until you know where the Starakians are and how many they are here. Because if one shows up while you’re in the middle of it—” she let a small, thin smile cross her face — “that’s a problem for you, isn’t it.”

The smile on Gaspar’s face didn’t disappear all at once. It faded in sections, like a light being slowly turned down, until what was left was just the bare frame of an expression with nothing genuine behind it.

The silence stretched.

Mei immediately recognized she’d pressed on something real and felt the familiar instinct kick in. She looked away and said nothing else.

Gaspar was still for a moment longer. Then he stood, smoothly and without apparent emotion, and let out a low sound that might have been a laugh.

“You are a genuinely interesting girl,” he said, moving around the chair toward the door. He paused just before reaching it, half-turning back, and when he leaned in and dropped his voice.

“Williams is going to love you,” he said quietly. “He has a thing for girls like you, the ones with fire in them. Says they’re the best kind.” He paused. “He’ll enjoy breaking it out of you. Piece by piece, night by night.” Another pause, shorter. “They always scream for him. Every single one.”

Mei kept her eyes forward. She didn’t move. She controlled her breathing and she didn’t move, and she kept her face absolutely level, and she was very aware of the slight involuntary stiffening that moved through her body despite all of that.

Gaspar felt it too.

“Not much longer now,” he said. Almost gentle about it, which was worse. “I’ll send Williams your way before you know it. And you won’t even see it coming.”

He walked out.

Standing in the doorway, where she’d apparently been for at least part of that exchange, was a woman Mei hadn’t seen before. Hispanic, somewhere in her forties, with the kind of face that had been through things and come out the other side carrying all of them. She was watching the direction Gaspar had gone with a hard expression.

Gaspar glanced back as he passed her in the corridor.

“Don’t worry, Doctor,” he said, loud enough to carry back into the room, back to Mei. “We haven’t fucked her yet. But when we’re done, there’ll be plenty for you to treat. We’ll call you in when she needs putting back together.” He laughed at his own words and moved away.

The woman stood in the doorway for a moment. Then she stepped inside.

Her gaze went to Mei, noticing the rigid posture, the controlled expression, the white-knuckled grip on the blanket and she let out a quiet breath that held a lot of things in it.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

Mei didn’t answer.

“My name is Pamela,” the woman said, moving carefully. “I’m a doctor. I’m not going to pretend that means much to you right now given the context, but I want you to know—”

“You’re with them,” Mei said coldly.

Pamela stopped. Then shook her head, not defensively, just honestly. “Not by choice. I was working at the prison infirmary when the infected got through the perimeter. The whole facility collapsed in about forty minutes, it was chaos, bodies everywhere, no coordination, no plan. I barely got out with my life.” She sat down on the edge of the chair Gaspar had vacated, which seemed to cost her something, sitting in that specific spot. “Callighan found me in the aftermath. He needed a doctor. I didn’t exactly have a better offer on the table at the time.”My husband told me to give up that prison posting years ago. I really should have listened.”

She said at last her smile going sad.

Mei’s gaze shifted, just slightly. The hard line around it didn’t go away, but it adjusted.

“I’m not asking you to like your situation,” Pamela said, folding her hands in her lap. “I’m just asking you to be smart about it. For your own sake. Most of the people here have histories that didn’t start with good choices, you’re not going to appeal to anyone’s better nature because most of them have buried it. So you have to think about yourself. You have to be cooperative enough that no one decides you’re more trouble than you’re worth.” She held Mei’s eyes steadily. “You’re young. You have a life ahead of you that none of this has taken yet. Don’t let it.”

“I’m not going to do any cooperation for people like that,” Mei said quietly. “I’m not going to smile and make it easy for them.”

Pamela was quiet for a moment. She didn’t argue. Just looked at her with the expression of someone who understood and knew that understanding changed nothing.

“I’m just advising you,” she said softly. “That’s all I can do.”

Mei sat with it for a second. Then she pushed the blanket off and stood, moving toward the door with the intention of going anywhere that wasn’t this room.

She got there at the same moment Liam arrived in the corridor outside.

He was carrying a small stack of folded clothes, women’s clothes, she registered immediately, clean and clearly chosen.

“For the princess,” he said smiling, holding the stack out with that smile of his. “Fresh change. You need to come down for lunch if you want lunch.” He tilted his head, letting the smile do something it had no business doing. “Want some company while you change? I’m generous with my time.”

Mei ignored him.

She turned back to Pamela, held the door open in a clear, wordless invitation.

Pamela walked out without needing to be asked twice.

Mei took the clothes from Liam’s hands without touching his fingers, stepped back inside, and pulled the door shut behind her.

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