The Slipper Slick with Blood

[Iceblock]

It was 3:26 AM, and Sylvia couldn't sleep.

That was no longer a surprise to her as she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Her head whirled. She was getting that feeling again, like she wasn't supposed to be here, like she was about to float away and disappear. Maybe that was just because of the sleep deprivation.

There was an obvious reason why she couldn't sleep except in fits, and as she thought about it for at least the fifth time since she had gotten into bed this night, she made a decision and parted the covers to get up. At least she could move. The sling, no longer a Mexican flag but a real sling, got in the way, but collarbones didn't heal that easily. She'd been right after all, in that she hadn't been hurt all that badly. Not compared to some of the others. Not even on an absolute scale. Now it was only an inconvenience - unless her fears came to pass.

She moved carefully out of bed, got her feet under her, switched the light on in one not entirely awkward movement. Outside her room the halls were dimly lit and quiet. There were other patients in the building, even besides them.

Them.

Sylvia sat on the bed, and turned her free hand over to examine her nails (clean, pink, expected, regular), looking but not really seeing. She considered trying to go back to sleep now that the lights were on, but was drawn back again to the thought of "them."

It was a weird thing to think. She was part of them - the American children who had been rescued by the British. In other eyes, the American children who had turned traitor and abandoned their country and their duty to flee into the arms of the enemy. But what weighed on her mind right now was that she no longer had any reason to work against the others, to put them in the line of fire to save herself. When she had fumbled her way into suggesting that she stick with Leo, with Charlie and Buddy and eventually Edward, she hadn't meant this. None of them had. It had been temporary, temporary for her because she had just wanted to use it for all she could, and temporary for the others because even if they were able to face their deaths in the way they wanted, the Program was supposed to end with just one person standing. She'd been flinging things at the wall in wounded desperation and dreading that nothing would stick. Now things were different; now things stuck.

She was one of them for real. Without her family, without her other friends who were in America and might as well have been in Antarctica, they were all she had now. She couldn't lose them. But thinking like this might be exactly how she could lose them.

She'd never thought she was the clingy type, but she was afraid.

She was afraid, and that was the silliest fear she had, that she would somehow alienate the others that she hadn't really deserved to call allies anyway, because she was afraid of so much more. She was afraid of the attacks that had come at night, the figures at the window, at the doorknob, the shape of the gun through the crack of the door, the glint of moonlight on the wrench coming down, the gunshots loud in the silent bar. She was afraid of the obvious signal of her arm, of showing exactly how she had been hurt because probably only two people had hurt someone that way and they would know exactly who she was if they didn't already. She was afraid of being alone. She was afraid of the dark.

None of those had to be rational for them to be real to her, and she was afraid too that she'd changed too much, that somehow she was broken as the result of only two days in the Program and that she'd never be anywhere near who she was before.

She did know where the others' rooms were by now, not that she could visit at this time on a whim. She could go into the hallway. To the library, to somewhere. They were probably sleeping. She would probably be alone. Without thinking about what she was doing she was already dressing herself in something more presentable than pajamas.

The two who had attacked her in that house - no, who she had attacked before they could attack her - had they lived, in the end?

Her heart was pounding as she turned off the light again and let herself out of her room, her steps soft in hospital slippers. She wasn't going to wake the others. She didn't think she could unless she knocked on their doors as she passed. She just needed a walk. To somewhere public, where the camera eyes that watched them would keep her safe.

She didn't come back for a long time. She didn't come back at all until the next night to start it all over, because morning came and found her still awake.

((Sylvia Veneski continued elsewhere))