Chapter 14

Sera Westbrook's POV

Kyle looked at me. "How could you possibly not know?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. A long time ago, I stopped being able to feel pain or negative emotions—maybe even earlier. My memories seem to be missing too. Though I can't really call it missing—it's more like someone tampered with them. It's hard for me to recall things from the past. I feel like I should know, but I just can't remember."

Outside the porthole, the wasteland stretched on under a sky the color of wet ash. The mutated kapok had long since swallowed the old highway, their swollen trunks leaning over the cracked asphalt like something breathing in its sleep. Gray-white spores drifted between the branches in slow sheets, settling on abandoned cars, on the rusted skeletons of billboards, on everything the world had left behind. Farther off, a collapsed overpass cut across the horizon, its broken spans jutting up at angles no structure should hold.

"Your memories…" Kyle asked, "is it because of the vampire squid? They merged you with the vampire squid… so your memories have problems, and your sense of pain has problems too?"

I looked a little lost. "I don't know. Maybe."

The wind pushed another wave of spores against the glass, a soft, dry sound, like sand thrown at a window. Somewhere below, among the ruins, a loose sheet of metal clanged once and then went still.

"All right, I understand." Kyle patted my shoulder. "When you remember, we'll talk again. Don't put too much pressure on yourself."

I said, "Got it."

Kyle watched me and suddenly sighed, his tone softening. "No matter what happened in the past, at least right now, you're safe. With me here, nothing's going to happen to you."

I looked at Kyle silently. In that moment, there were too many things I wanted to say to him. Ever since the Eroded appeared, ever since the apocalypse came, my life had seemed to fall to pieces. Outside these walls, the world was a graveyard of broken towers and dead roads, where the Eroded wandered between rusted cars and the mutated vines crawled over everything that had once been human. Kyle was the only pillar in my life. I'd lost seven years of memories—I only remembered Kyle.

Seeing Kyle again, I really was very happy. I'd thought I would never see him again.

I lowered my head. "Mm, I'll be careful."

Kyle looked at me quietly, was silent for a few seconds, and said, "Since there's nothing else, you can go back first."

Under his gaze, I walked out of the command room, went back to the second deck, and lay down beside Vera, playing with my hair. Through the narrow window, the wasteland had gone dark—the spore snow glowing faintly under the last gray light, the ruins fading into one long shadow. Vera leaned against me and asked about my past with Kyle.

Vera asked curiously, "So why did you two break up back then?"

I thought about it and said, "The reason we broke up… I've forgotten that too…"

"Forgotten?" Vera tilted her head. "Why would you forget?"

I shook my head. "I've probably even forgotten the reason I forgot."

"All right. Maybe you have something you can't talk about." Vera patted my shoulder. "So were you two very close before?"

I said, "Mm, very close." I paused, then added, "He was very good to me. He wasn't this cold before."

Vera let out a puzzled "Hm." "Not this cold? Was he warm before?"

Without any hesitation, I admitted, "I suppose you could say he was warm. At least he would smile at me."

With that, I looked at Vera. "You didn't know what kind of person he was before?"

Vera shook her head. "No idea. When I met him, he was already like that—cold as ice."

I asked, "When did you two meet?"

Vera held up one finger. "About a year ago. We all met about a year ago—except Dorian. Dorian and the Captain have always been on very good terms."

I didn't remember whether I'd ever heard Dorian's name before. Maybe he was a friend Kyle made after we broke up.

Vera said quietly, "So the Captain really changed that much."

I didn't respond to her sigh.

I hadn't expected Kyle to have changed that much either.

Before, he would smile and pinch my cheek, hollow out a pumpkin in the kitchen and fill it with pudding, tease me into laughing, tell me jokes. But now he had become so cold.

Or rather, it wasn't exactly cold—it was that he'd stopped indulging me.

Maybe after seven years, his personality had long since changed.

Vera stroked my head and comforted me. "It's okay. I promise you, the Captain definitely doesn't have a second relationship. The fact that he's willing to take you in means he must still have feelings for you."

I said quietly, "Maybe he just thinks I'm strong."

"Not at all." Vera said, "Trust me, the Captain definitely has feelings for you. If you want to get back together with him, you could try getting closer to him."

I said, "Okay."

Vera smiled. "All right, let's sleep. There'll probably be a new mission tomorrow."

I set the small heat lamp between us. "Goodnight."

After saying goodnight to each other, we lay in bed. Outside, the spore snow kept falling over the ruins, soft and endless, burying the dead roads a little deeper. Before long, we were asleep.