The Host (The Host #1)(188)

“Well, it feels good to have my head back,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “Thanks.”

CHAPTER 53

Condemned

The Seeker’s host body was named Lacey; a dainty, soft, feminine name. Lacey. As inappropriate as the size, in my opinion. Like naming a pit bull Fluffy.

Lacey was just as loud as the Seeker—and still a complainer.

“You’ll have to forgive me for going on and on,” she insisted, allowing us no other options. “I’ve been shouting away in there for years and never getting to speak for myself. I’ve got a lot to say all stored up.”

How lucky for us. I could almost make myself glad that I was leaving.

In answer to my earlier question to myself, no, the face was not less repugnant with a different awareness behind it. Because the awareness was not so very different, in the end.

“That’s why we don’t like you,” she told me that first night, making no change from the present tense or the plural pronoun. “When she realized that you were hearing Melanie just the way she was hearing me, it made her frightened. She thought you might guess. I was her deep, dark secret.” A grating laugh. “She couldn’t make me shut up. That’s why she became a Seeker, because she was hoping to figure out some way to better deal with resistant hosts. And then she requested being assigned to you, so she could watch how you did it. She was jealous of you; isn’t that pathetic? She wanted to be strong like you. It gave us a real kick when we thought Melanie had won. I guess that didn’t happen, though. I guess you did. So why did you come here? Why are you helping the rebels?”

I explained, unwillingly, that Melanie and I were friends. She didn’t like that.

“Why?” she demanded.

“She’s a good person.”

“But why does she like you?”

Same reason.

“She says, for the same reason.”

Lacey snorted. “Got her brainwashed, huh?”

Wow, she’s worse than the first one.

Yes, I agreed. I can see why the Seeker was so obnoxious. Can you imagine having that in your head all the time?

I wasn’t the only thing Lacey objected to.

“Do you have anywhere better to live than these caves? It’s so dirty here. Isn’t there a house somewhere, maybe? What do you mean we have to share rooms? Chore schedule? I don’t understand. I have to work? I don’t think you understand…”

Jeb had given her the usual tour the next day, trying to explain, through clenched teeth, the way we all lived here. When they’d passed me—eating in the kitchen with Ian and Jamie—he threw me a look that clearly asked why I hadn’t let Aaron shoot her while that was still an option.

The tour was more crowded than mine. Everyone wanted to see the miracle for themselves. It didn’t even seem to matter to most of them that she was… difficult. She was welcome. More than welcome. Again, I felt a little of that bitter jealousy. But that was silly. She was human. She represented hope. She belonged here. She would be here long after I was gone.

Lucky you, Mel whispered sarcastically.

Talking to Ian and Jamie about what had happened was not as difficult and painful as I’d imagined.

This was because they were, for different reasons, entirely clueless. Neither grasped that this new knowledge meant I would be leaving.

With Jamie, I understood why. More than anyone else, he had accepted me and Mel as the package deal we were. He was able, with his young, open mind, to grasp the reality of our dual personalities. He treated us like two people rather than one. Mel was so real, so present to him. The same way she was to me. He didn’t miss her, because he had her. He didn’t see the necessity of our separation.

I wasn’t sure why Ian didn’t understand. Was he too caught up in the potential? The changes this would mean for the human society here? They were all boggled by the idea that getting caught—the end—was no longer a finality. There was a way to come back. It seemed natural to him that I had acted to save the Seeker; it was consistent with his idea of my personality. Maybe that was as far as he’d considered it.

Or maybe Ian just didn’t have a chance to think it all through, to see the glaring eventuality, before he was distracted. Distracted and enraged.

“I should have killed him years ago,” Ian ranted as we packed what we needed for our raid. My final raid; I tried not to dwell on that. “No, our mother should have drowned him at birth!”

“He’s your brother.”

“I don’t know why you keep saying that. Are you trying to make me feel worse?”

Everyone was furious with Kyle. Jared’s lips were welded into a tight line of rage, and Jeb stroked his gun more than usual.

Jeb had been excited, planning to join us on this landmark raid, his first since I’d come to live here. He was particularly keen to see the shuttle field up close. But now, with Kyle putting us all in danger, he felt he had to stay behind just in case. Not getting his way put Jeb in a foul mood.

“Stuck behind with that creature,” he muttered to himself, rubbing the rifle barrel again—he wasn’t getting any happier about the new member of his community. “Missin’ all the fun.” He spit on the floor.

We all knew where Kyle was. As soon as he’d grasped how the Seeker-worm had magically transformed into the Lacey-human in the night, he’d slipped out the back. I’d been expecting him to lead the party demanding the Seeker’s death (I kept the cryotank always cradled in my arms; I slept lightly, my hand touching its smooth surface), but he was nowhere to be found, and Jeb had quashed the resistance easily in his absence.