The Host (The Host #1)(68)

“Green screen,” I added.

“Exactly.”

Jeb took me back through the big garden room, around the perimeter to the opposite side, and through the biggest tunnel exit. When we passed the irrigators, they stiffened and turned, afraid to have me behind their backs.

This tunnel was well lit, the bright crevices coming at intervals too regular to be natural.

“We go even closer to the surface now. It gets drier, but it gets hotter, too.”

I noticed that almost immediately. Instead of being steamed, we were now being baked. The air was less stuffy and stale. I could taste the desert dust.

There were more voices ahead. I tried to steel myself against the inevitable reaction. If Jeb insisted on treating me like… like a human, like a welcome guest, I was going to have to get used to this. No reason to let it make me nauseous over and over again. My stomach began an unhappy rolling anyway.

“This way’s the kitchen,” Jeb told me.

At first I thought we were in another tunnel, one crowded with people. I pressed myself against the wall, trying to keep my distance.

The kitchen was a long corridor with a high ceiling, higher than it was wide, like my new quarters. The light was bright and hot. Instead of thin crevices through deep rock, this place had huge open holes.

“Can’t cook in the daytime, of course. Smoke, you know. So we mainly use this as the mess hall until nightfall.”

All conversation had come to an abrupt halt, so Jeb’s words were clear for everyone to hear. I tried to hide behind him, but he kept walking farther in.

We’d interrupted breakfast, or maybe it was lunch.

The humans—almost twenty at a quick estimate—were very close here. It wasn’t like the big cavern. I wanted to keep my eyes on the floor, but I couldn’t stop them from flashing around the room. Just in case. I could feel my body tensing to run for it, though where I would run, I didn’t know.

Against both sides of the hallway, there were long piles of rock. Mostly rough, purple volcanic stone, with some lighter-colored substance—cement?—running between them, creating seams, holding them together. On top of these piles were different stones, browner in color, and flat. They were glued together with the light gray grout as well. The final product was a relatively even surface, like a counter or a table. It was clear that they were used for both.

The humans sat on some, leaned on others. I recognized the bread rolls they held suspended between the table and their mouths, frozen with disbelief as they took in Jeb and his one-person tour.

Some of them were familiar. Sharon, Maggie, and the doctor were the closest group to me. Melanie’s cousin and aunt glared at Jeb furiously—I had an odd conviction that I could have stood on my head and bellowed songs out of Melanie’s memory at the top of my lungs and they still would not have looked at me—but the doctor eyed me with a frank and almost friendly curiosity that made me feel cold deep inside my bones.

At the back end of the hall-shaped room, I recognized the tall man with ink black hair and my heart stuttered. I’d thought Jared was supposed to take the hostile brothers with him to make Jeb’s job of keeping me alive slightly easier. At least it was the younger one, Ian, who had belatedly developed a conscience—not quite as bad as leaving Kyle behind. That consolation did not slow my racing pulse, however.

“Everybody full so quick?” Jeb asked loudly and sarcastically.

“Lost our appetites,” Maggie muttered.

“How ’bout you,” he said, turning to me. “You hungry?”

A quiet groan went through our audience.

I shook my head—a small but frantic motion. I didn’t even know whether I was hungry, but I knew I couldn’t eat in front of this crowd that would gladly have eaten me.

“Well, I am,” Jeb grumbled. He walked down the aisle between the counters, but I did not follow. I couldn’t stand the thought of being within easy reach of the rest. I stayed pressed against the wall where I stood. Only Sharon and Maggie watched him go to a big plastic bin on one counter and grab a roll. Everyone else watched me. I was certain that if I moved an inch, they would pounce. I tried not to breathe.

“Well, let’s just keep on movin’,” Jeb suggested around a mouthful of bread as he ambled back to me. “Nobody seems able to concentrate on their lunch. Easily distracted, this set.”

I was watching the humans for sudden movements, not really seeing their faces after that first moment when I recognized the few I could put names to. So it wasn’t until Jamie stood up that I noticed him there.

He was a head shorter than the adults beside him, but taller than the two smaller children who perched on the counter on his other side. He hopped lightly off his seat and followed behind Jeb. His expression was tight, compressed, like he was trying to solve a difficult equation in his head. He examined me through narrow eyes as he approached on Jeb’s heels. Now I wasn’t the only one in the room holding my breath. The others’ gazes shifted back and forth between Melanie’s brother and me.

Oh, Jamie, Melanie thought. She hated the sad, adult expression on his face, and I probably hated it even more. She didn’t feel as guilty as I did for putting it there.

If only we could take it away. She sighed.

It’s too late. What could we do to make it better now?

I didn’t mean the question more than rhetorically, but I found myself searching for an answer, and Melanie searched, too. We found nothing in the brief second we had to consider the matter; there was nothing to be found, I was sure. But we both knew we would be searching again when we were done with this asinine tour and had a chance to think. If we lived that long.