The kill isn't pretty. Kimi is agile and light on her feet, but taking down a deer is no small feat, even for a Chupa. It takes Forty spooking the doe right towards Thirty-Seven for him to get a swipe at it, and it's only a luckily placed claw to the belly that sends the animal to their fangs.

Forty stares at the viscera hanging out of the doe's belly, at her tawny pelt. The tongue hangs limply out the side of her mouth, her eyes dull and watery. Forty has to remind herself that this sort of feasting is necessary, swallowing down her bile as she nudges Thirty-Seven to give her space by the deer's neck. He watches her out of the corner of his eye as they feed. He says nothing, just as he has for the past few days. Forty wishes she could crank his head open to see his thoughts.

After they bring the rest of the carcass back to camp, Kimi offers to brush Forty's hair. The gesture is alarming, especially coming out of Kimi's frowning mouth. I must look disgusting, Forty thinks. She joins the other girl by the fire anyways, watching Cade play chess with Missy as Thirty-Seven curls up with his back turned to her. She can feel him listening as they talk, can pick out the twitch of his ear. She swallows back a smile, relieved that he isn't totally ignoring her.

"Did you have any friends in your compound?" Kimi asks, for once not unkindly. She's concentrated on a particularly matted part at the base of Forty's skull, her fingers strong but gentle.

"Yes. Her name was Forty-Five. She was my neighbor." What a sanitized thing to call her. Sometimes at night, she dreams of grass green eyes and a wide smile. She hears her laugh, knows the shape of her voice. Forty can only hope she's surviving in the compound, can only wish she still believes in Forty's promise to return for her.

"I... I wasn't very popular, before I turned," Kimi begins, moving her comb through Forty's hair in long, smooth strokes. "I was a diplomat's daughter, so we moved around a lot. That's like a person who goes to other places to discuss problems–" Forty is grateful for the brief aside. "–and when I would go to school, I didn't know what to chat about. My parents weren't very affectionate, and we didn't talk about much but academics and my dancing. I didn't know... I didn't know how to talk to people my age."

She pauses, and Forty gets the idea she's waiting for a response. "I understand," she says honestly, fighting the urge to turn around and meet Kimi's eyes. She can't tell what the girl is thinking otherwise, doesn't know if Kimi thinks she's lying. "Chupas didn't like me at the compound. I was attacked a lot." She tucks a lank hunk of hair behind her ear, revealing the jagged tip and pale pink scar. "Forty-Five was special, is all."

Kimi hums, working her fingers in waves through Forty's hair. She separates pieces and starts looping them together. "I had one of those too, I guess. Her name was Sravya, from when I lived in Austin. I still think about her sometimes, wonder what she's doing." She sighs. "But it doesn't help any of us to dwell on our human lives. I envy you, sometimes, that you never had to grapple with the transformation. You're so sure of yourself, when I still don't know my body."

Forty can't help it. She lets out a wheezing laugh. Thirty-Seven spins around to face her. "I'm sorry," she says, wiping a tear from her eye. "But I'm afraid you're wrong. I've never, even now, felt comfortable in my body." It's not hers, after all, never has been. Forty thinks of the quartered cow illustration on the chopping board in Missy's rudimentary kitchen. She too has given away hanks of her flesh to meet the needs of others.

Forty grabs Kimi's hand and leads her fingers to the keloids dotting her cheeks. She rolls her neck and shows the multitude of scars around her upper body, the tiny dark spots and spidery veins from being hooked up to machines. "At the compound, they had to take pieces of us– to study, or just because. Eventually, you stop knowing what's yours." Kimi's hands go limp in her hair, the braid she was forming unraveling. She looks angry, but Forty can smell frustration coming off of her, not rage.

Maybe this is why Kimi and Thirty-Seven get along so well. Forty is not much of a talker herself, but she believes that if it was up to Thirty-Seven and Kimi, no one would talk back to them at all. People are sounding boards for them, a face to shout at and eyes to reflect their visages back towards them. During the hunt this morning, not a word was said. It was just the sounds of nature, a hand signal from them, a knowing look. Forty envies the easy silence between the two of them. She's spent so long trying to understand Thirty-Seven, yet she's never been able to speak his language, only absorb the bitten off pieces he gives her. Kimi, however, is fluent.

"I've learned while traveling," Forty says, plopping her thin yellow hair back into Kimi's hands. It's gotten lighter under the sun, her skin warmer. "That it's okay to not know everything. That's what makes us all important after all, that we all have our own skills."

Kimi sighs, resuming the messy braid. Forty can see her small smile out of the corner of her eye, so she rests her head on her chin and watches the fire crackle in the waning dusk. Movement alerts her, and she looks over to see Thirty-Seven combing his broad fingers through his messy hair, his face stony and concentrated. She can't help the grin that spreads across her lips, and the flush that rises to her cheeks isn't from the fire. You needed to hear that too, huh?

She isn't sure what possesses her that night, if it was the heat from the fire getting to her, or her contentment after talking with Kimi, but she stops Thirty-Seven before he curls up in his bedroll. She knows not to touch him without asking unless it's necessary, and she does as much, her palm splayed on the earthen floor between their sleeping bags.

He stares at her in the hazy twilight, his double membrane making his eyes glow yellow in the darkness. Forty remembers that first night in the deer blind. I like how your eyes look right now. Except, this time he doesn't flinch. This time he reaches out too. Thirty-Seven lets out a harsh breath before tucking his cheek against her palm, his eyes tightly shut. She rolls the pad of her thumb across his deep under eye bags, the touch so gentle she isn't sure he can feel it.

The shifting of blankets alerts her to the hand coming up by her own face. His touch is a warm pressure against her cheek, the palm rough and the fingers twitching with restrained anxiety, but he copies her movements. She seeks out his eyes in the darkness, his thumb resting on the bow of her lip.

They don't need to say words. Perhaps after these months traveling, the constant bickering but also building trust, they've mastered this push and pull. Even if the others try, no one can quite understand all they've seen, all they've done. They're an island out in a deep, twilight sea, the shores too craggy for ships to dock, and yet they are content, too distracted by the curves of each other's faces to notice the stars fading to day.

☠️☠️☠️

Overnight, a new curiosity awakens in Forty. She seeks out Andres that morning, remembering his confession that he smuggled his collectibles with him when he turned, but no money or food. "I mean, I guess pleasure has always been my top priority," he had joked on their way back from skipping rocks in the large canyon dividing Grandpa's land in half. This was how Forty found out Andres was turned by a kiss.

"She was a girl in my gender studies course. We worked on a project together. She liked to talk in metaphors, and I guess I was too focused on how pretty she was to realize the similarity between Marion's eating disorder in The Edible Woman and Cara's lack of appetite. Except, Marion didn't turn into a Sucker. I kissed her the day before she turned, the day before our project. We would have gotten an A." Andres scoffed, his eyes suddenly angry. "She was shot down in the middle of campus by a security guard. He saw her turning. I left as soon as I could."

He grappled with his thoughts for a few tense moments, then almost as if a switch had been flipped, he looked at Forty with a genuine smile. "Do you want to see everything I brought. It might help you feel more connected to the people that were humans before they turned."

If there's anything that could lead Forty willingly to her own demise, it's the prospect of learning. In fact, it had done so before. This time, however, feels much different, more warm and inviting. Andres opens his home to her, his heart, his life before now. He wears big t-shirts and pats her hair while the monitors wore Kevlar and strapped her to tables.

Khal doesn't look pleased to find Forty at the entrance to his temporary lodging. "Thank you for your house," she says to him as a greeting. He scoffs, curling onto his side and pulling his pillow over his head.

"Come on, Khal, it's not like you hate chillin' with me that much," Andres laughs, rolling the other man's scrunched back with the toe of his sneaker. Khal groans, snarling at Andres before skulking out of the house to find Kimi. Andres' smile immediately drops when he's out of the room.

"Jesus. That kid needs to loosen up a little. I know he's touchy, but fuck." He bends down to straighten out Khal's bedding, fussing over the pillow and puffing it out as high as it can go.

"He doesn't like me," Forty says, peeling her eyes away from the scene to stare at the bookshelf tucked in the corner of the house. It's made of red clay and shiny rocks, the shelves amorphous and the books haphazardly stacked on top of each other.

"He doesn't like anyone but Kimi," Andres says. "I don't take it personally. Neither should you."

Forty stays quiet in favor of running her fingers over the dusty spines of the hardcover volumes strewn inside the shelves. Some have painted edges, their spines decorated in shining gold that glimmers even in the dusty half-light.

"Your monitors taught you to read, right?" Andres asks sincerely, coming up behind her to pull one of the thinner books from the stacks.

"Yes. My old monitor did, and Jane would supply me with books for good behavior." She preens at the memory, the sensation of the clean, plastic covers in her hand. Story books, textbooks, instruction manuals, farmer's almanacs from thirty years ago. The taste of the words in her mouth was more fulfilling than blood ever was.

"These are some of my dad's collection. He had an artist friend who would paint the edges for him."

"What's this one?" Forty asks, pointing to a thick, leather bound book tucked towards the back. A large, ornate pattern decorates the cover, the shape reminiscent of the necklace Jane used to wear.

Andres lets out a small laugh. "It's a Bible," he says, tucking the thin book away and replacing it with the other.

"What is that?" Forty murmurs, fingering through the thin, waxy pages. Andres looks at her like she's grown another head.

"They didn't have religion where you're from?" Andres asks carefully, raising a brow at her. Forty shakes her head softly.

"It is a thing humans do, yes? I would read about it sometimes, but I figured this God person was another character in the book." Forty feels the heft of the thing, sees the stains of age and overuse. There's an ornate necklace tucked in the spine, separating two pages.

"Yes. There's a lot of different types. Khal is Hindu, and the rest of us are Catholic. Or, was, I should say." Andres shuts the book roughly, a plume of dust following the action. He shelves the book away near the back.

"You don't think like that anymore?" Forty asks, still confused on why people would follow one book. There are many things to learn, surely they can't get it all from one place.

Andres smiles sadly, his eyes wistful. "I wouldn't call it thinking, really. It's more like believing. We call it having faith. When I turned, it was very hard for me to believe this was God's plan for my future. I figured... I figured I was a demon now, because I hurt others. He had forsaken me. It's easier not to give something like that power, to just keep living instead."

"This God, he was your monitor?" Forty says, trying to connect the pieces in her mind. The outside world is so strange, yet no one seems to have time to explain anything to her. Or perhaps she isn't asking the right questions.

"You could say that." Andres nods, chewing on his cheek. "But he has special powers. He doesn't just watch over us. He made us."

"Our monitors did that too," Forty says. "In tanks. I saw them."

"What," Andres says hoarsely. "What do you mean made?"

Forty flinches at his reaction. He sounds angry, his voice high and strained. "Females produce an egg within the age range twenty-five to thirty. They remove it, fertilize it with human sperm, and grow it in a perfect environment."

"You're saying that where you come from, the people are making Suckers?" Andres scoffs, his brows knitting. "What the fuck?"

"They cannot be produced otherwise. I am a special case," Forty says, slowly backing away from Andres. His scent is smoky, full of rage.

She sees his nostrils flare, then his dark eyes flick up at her. "Sorry," he says, taking a deep breath. The scent of fire clears from the air. "I just can't wrap my head around why someone would do something like that."

Suddenly, the door swings open violently, leaving a dent in the earthen wall. Missy pants in the doorway, her face dirty and hair wild.

"You need to see him, now," Missy commands, tugging on Forty's arm. Her hand is dainty where it rests on Forty's skin, too cold to belong to a Chupa. Forty is immediately unnerved, but she lets the girl pull her along anyways. Andres watches emptily from the doorway.

Missy takes her to the home she shares with Cade, slightly larger than the rest. Forty can tell it's the oldest, the walls cracked and the the outside decorated with cactus bug paint. She knocks three times on the repurposed door blocking the entrance. It swings open quickly, and Forty is immediately tugged in by Cade's forceful hands.

It's sweltering inside the house, too warm even for the fall. A strong cooking fire casts bulging shadows along the walls. Forty smells rabbit inside. She scans the room immediately, the hair on the back of her neck raising. The air is thick, seeming to rise up and dome at the top of the room. It smells fleshy with overuse, like Cade and Missy haven't left in days, thought Forty knows this isn't right as she'd seen them just yesterday. The atmosphere seems to vibrate with barely restrained anxiety. Something is very, very wrong.

"This morning, he... he flared up," Cade explains shakily. Forty barely hears him through the adrenaline rushing in her veins. Right, the grandpa. Forty has learned that means this man is the father of one of the sibling's parents. She takes a long, deep inhale of the sweaty air in the building, baffled when it still comes up empty for a third body scent.

"He is not in here?" she asks, tipping her head this way and that in case she's missed something.

Cade gestures for her to follow, stopping just a foot short of a blank wall. Come to think of it, the outside of the house looked much bigger than the inside. The reason why manifests itself to Forty when Cade pushes against a door camouflaged with red clay.

It swings as if attached by a pole in the middle, ensuring Forty is dragged into the room by the trailing end. Instantaneously she's hit by a wall of odor, so strong she's astonished she didn't catch it from the outside. It's pitch black in the room, not a single window or crack in sight. Forty is blasted by the smell of waste material and the fetid pungency of infection. Her eyes adjust to the dark quickly, but what she sees makes her wish they didn't.

The figure is more skeleton than man. He lies on his side wrapped in old, yellowed cloths, his head cushioned on his bony wrists. When he breathes, it seems his whole body rattles, his lungs too big for his frame. Forty can't see his legs, but she is positive the man is unable to walk.

"This... this is Grandpa?" she asks fearfully, barely getting her voice out. She feels Missy like a ghost beside her, catches the girl nodding in the gloom.

Forty forces herself to walk closer. She drops into a kneel next to the man's head, though he seems unable to hear her. Up close, she can hear his racing heartbeat, smell the feverish breath leaving his stale mouth. Across his patchwork torso, large, gaping wounds lay half-healed. When she looks at him, really looks at him, she knows. This man is beyond saving.

"It started maybe two weeks ago, just a little before we left to hunt the outer lands," Cade whispers. Forty looks over to find him tucking Missy against his side, shielding her eyes from the scene. "He used to be able to hunt normally, then one day he just fell and couldn't get back up. He can't eat, can't talk. All he does is sleep and breathe, and he can't even do that anymore. I– I don't know what to do!"

Forty examines the large gashes in the man's side. They don't look like injuries from an animal or a Chupa. Forty has seen gun shots, knife wounds, the remnants of attacks. This is nothing like any of that. The man looks to be disintegrating from the inside out, his body nothing but a decaying husk.

"He didn't get attacked, right, by an animal or something?" Forty breathes, worried any loud noises will make the man crumble like sand out of a glass.

"No. When we went out with him, it was like any other day. We caught some birds before to fuel up for the hunt, then we were off."

Forty leans down by one of the injuries to take a deep inhale. Sure, there's the overwhelming, putrid odor of infection, but there's something else. It's sharp, metallic, unlike anything Forty has scented before. Out of all the odd chemicals and medicines in the compound, she cannot discern a single one from this decidedly fabricated smell. A thought occurs to her, making chills travel down her spine.

"Did you eat the birds that day?" she asks fearfully, senses on high alert to pick out even the smallest trace of this smell on the siblings.

"I did, but Missy didn't like the kind of birds we caught," Cade replies, a question in his voice.

"And have you eaten any since then?"

"No. We took turns looking for bigger game in the area so we could stock up for winter. We didn't have time for snacks like birds. Then we left soon after and met you."

Forty feels a tremendous weight leave her body. "And you haven't hunted this area since your grandpa got sick, right?" She hopes, prays that Thirty-Seven hasn't done such a thing. At least when she hunted with Kimi and him, it was about five miles away from the camp.

"We tend to hunt farther out and work our way in as the seasons change. It means less movement for us if the weather is bad."

Forty lets out a breathe she didn't know she was holding. "You absolutely cannot hunt anywhere near here from now on," she says. She isn't sure of much in this world, but she will always follow her instincts when it comes to science. The time she spent whittling question after question out of the monitors seemed like a good time killer at the compound, but now it serves a much more realistic purpose.

"What?" Cade yells frustratedly, remembering only at the last syllable to keep his voice down.

"He got this way after eating the bird. If you smell real closely, there's a chemical scent. This has to be some sort of poisoning." Now that she's sure of the cause, Forty feels an overwhelming helplessness when she looks at the man. He looks like he was once kind. Though his face is now sunken and gray, smile lines and crow's feet spell out a lifetime of laughing. Now, if he had the strength to emote, Forty is sure he would be grimacing in pain. "Whatever he ate that day was poisoned, and anything in this area could now be poisoned too. We are all lucky that we did not end up like this."

"So, you can't– it's not a sickness?" Missy cries, pushing her way out of Cade's arms to barrel over to Forty. When she gets closer to the sick man, she slows down, her steps gentled.

Forty shakes her head. Missy's face turns inward, flashing between sadness and hurt. "You... we brought you here for fucking nothing?" she spits, pushing Forty's shoulder roughly. Fortunately, like when she grabbed Forty earlier, the hit is nothing more than a whisper of sensation. You used to be so good, Forty, Dr. Daas' voice whispers in her ear. Now look at you, you can't even fix something for the people who helped you.

"I'm sorry," Forty whispers sincerely. She doesn't want to be in this room anymore. She can smell death on this man like an impending storm, and being next to his grandchildren as he fades from this world is less than ideal. Andres' haunted voice whispers in her ears. He had forsaken me. "This is something I can't fix. I– I recommend you make him comfortable. He will not be long now."

"Not be long?" Cade asks hurriedly. He positions himself in front of Missy, though he leaves room for the girl to reach over and grab one of those bony hands.

"I'm sorry," Forty says again. "I'm sorry I can't be much help." She wants to wrap her strong arms around the two siblings, comfort them in this time of misery, but Forty has never been good at soothing people. She thinks she is more of a hindrance at this point, and makes to move away.

"Forty!" Cade calls just as she begins to push the door. "Can you bring us a blanket? It's on top of a shelf near the fire. White and red."

Forty looks down to find her hands trembling, her cuticles cracked and bleeding. She quickly obeys. The blanket is stowed exactly where Cade said it would be, a patchwork of white squares and red borders, little poppies stitched delicately in the middle of each block. It's the cleanest thing she's seen since the compound, and when Forty runs her hand over it, she feels comparatively soiled and evil. She hands the blanket off as if it is burning her, then quickly stumbles out of the house.

When she gets back to Khal's house, she finds Thirty-Seven leaned up against the wall groggily. The midday sun filters in and sets his hair in a heavenly blaze. "Where did you go?" he asks, gentle in his half-asleep state. She just shakes her head, too afraid that tears will begin if she opens her mouth, too selfish to risk changing this beautiful sight in front of her. His golden eyes block out the hollow ones she just stared into, his blush mouth and messy hair nothing like a corpse.

"Forty?" Thirty-Seven presses, his voice rising with anxiety. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, and she panics.

"This place is no different from the compound," she finally grits out. Like she guessed, she can't help but cry when she practically vomits the words. The tears stain her white shirt a bloody red, the pools blooming like poppies.