Bloodshot by Cherie Priest Page B

me.”
    “But I
am
asking you, Ian. I’m asking you to tell me what you know, and what you learned about the project, and how you left it. I’m sorry if you feel like I’m prying, but I think it’s important that I know how you escaped.”
    “I can’t imagine what that has to do with anything,” he said, but I could tell I’d worn him down. His words said “No, and go away.” But his tone said, “If it’ll get you off my back,
fine.
”
    He sighed and folded his hands in his lap, though he twisted them together as the story began to unspool.
    “It was summer and quite warm, I remember that much. And I could smell the ocean, but then again I always could. The island was scarcely three miles long and a mile wide; regardless of how deeply they kept us underground and isolated, the smell of salt and seabirds always wafted down. They opened doors, they closed doors. The breeze came and went, even in the filtered air down below. After a while it was something I lived for, small and sad as that may sound. I lived to hear the slide of the glass and the peep of the electronic lock, because when the doors opened, I could smell the night outside.
    “In time, I could tell when the tide was high or low, just by the scent. I cannot explain how, not in a thousand years. But that
awareness
, for lack of a better way of putting it … that awareness was the first sign that something was changing.”
    “In the laboratory?” I asked, not sure where he was headed with this.
    “No. In
me
. And I’m sorry, but I can’t be more precise. I can’t give words to something like this. I can only describe what happened,I can’t tell you
how
it happened. And what happened was that, at first, I could sense the tides outside—just by the smell of the air the workers brought downstairs with them when the shifts changed.”
    “All right, I’m trying to follow you.”
    “Good.” He nodded. “So first I knew about the tides changing, and before long I could tell things about the weather, too. I could smell rain, and dampness. I knew when it was storming, and when it was about to storm. Write it off to barometric pressure if you like, but I could feel the air above and the water outside, working together, pushing against each other. Let me ask you something, Ms. Pendle.”
    “Go for it,” I urged. I seriously had no clue where he was going with this, but I was willing to grasp at whatever straws he offered.
    “When you were still alive,” he broached, “did you ever have migraines?”
    “Migraines? I don’t know. I had headaches sometimes, sure. It’s been a long time.”
    “I’m not speaking of ordinary headaches. Migraines are different, from a neurological standpoint, or so I have been told. I had them, and I sought treatment for them for years before I was turned. And I can only compare my new forms of awareness to the sensation of having a migraine. There was pressure across my forehead, and a light, tingling feeling at the base of my skull, where it meets my neck. I saw lights, too—bright swirls that dipped and rolled across my right eye’s field of vision. These things, these sensations. My knowledge of the weather and the water … it came from the same place.”
    “So … having a built-in meteorologist is kind of like a really bad headache?”
    He appeared to struggle with his words—wanting at first to argue, then changing his mind. “It is not altogether different. Butit’s as if the pull goes both ways. I …” He untucked his hands from each other and used them to gesture again, drawing the words in the air in front of him—trying to force this odd communication. “I could feel the ocean and the clouds pulling at me. And one day, it occurred to me that I might be able to pull … back.”
    I frowned without meaning to. “Are you trying to tell me you can control the weather?”
    He unleashed a nervous laugh and said, “No, no. Nothing like that. Not anything as huge as the weather … but