“Who?” I said to Jeb, whispering again. This space so obviously belonged to someone that I no longer felt like we were alone.
“Just one of the guys out on the raid. Won’t be back for a while. We’ll find you something by then.”
I didn’t like it—not the room, but the idea of staying in it. The presence of the owner was strong despite the simple belongings. No matter who he was, he would not be happy to have me here. He would hate it.
Jeb seemed to read my mind—or maybe the expression on my face was clear enough that he didn’t have to.
“Now, now,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. This is my house, and this is just one of my many guest rooms. I say who is and isn’t my guest. Right now, you are my guest, and I am offering you this room.”
I still didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to upset Jeb, either. I vowed that I would disturb nothing, if it meant sleeping on the floor.
“Well, let’s keep moving. Don’t forget: third from the left, seventh in.”
“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.