Diary Entry: When the bell Tolls

The walk down the corridor to Sam's room was not the same this time.

Once, it had been caution. Today, it was fear. Edward moved slowly, boots scraping softly on the buffed floor. Inside his ribs, the pain had returned—low, dull, insistent. As if something within him throbbed in sympathy with the buzz of the building's fluorescent lights.

She is not like the rest, Shadow Man murmured inside him. Not yet. But she's paying attention. She listens to us, even when you don't talk.

Edward did not respond.

Two guards stood watch outside Sam's room now. That had not always been so. Kyle nodded to them subtly, and the door creaked open.

The lights were out inside. A half-drawn curtain shaded Sam's face with pale light, so that she looked even more delicate than Edward remembered. But awake—slightly lifted, dark hair rumpled, eyes open.

She smiled faintly when she recognized him. "You came back."

Edward let the door close behind him. "I promised I would."

He stepped ahead, and with that, the memories of Eli's voice grated the back of his throat. You bear its disguise so well. You're the first mouth. He clenched his jaw until the thoughts thinned.

"I heard the noise earlier," Sam spoke softly. "The other room. Was that…?"

Edward nodded. "One of the others. He… knew me."

Sam did not look surprised. "They're all beginning to. Even if they don't say it, they know. I dreamed of your voice, Edward. A few days ago. Before you even arrived."

Edward's breast tightened.

"I think I sensed your pain," she continued. "Not the hurts near the surface—the deep ones. As though your bones were attempting to hold in a tide that kept on rising."

He blinked, unresponsive.

She's feeling the fringes of you, the Shadow Man panted. Your vibration. It's muted now. Faint. But soon it'll catch its grip.

"Did you summon me?" Edward asked, trying to steer the talk, to shift the gravity of the situation.

Sam nodded. "I didn't want to see anyone else. You're the only one who doesn't look at me like I'm a ticking time bomb."

Edward looked at her warily. "What do you mean?

"I know what they notice when they look at me. Ordinary. Crisp. 'No signs of infection.'" She said it with a straight face, no punchline. "But I feel it. Not like illness. More like… a humming. Inside. Sometimes it feels like something is tuning itself to me. Like I'm being prepared."

Her hand flexed at her side under the blanket. Once. But Edward saw.

Sam met his gaze with anguish sharpness. "You sense it too, don't you?"

He looked down at his hands. They weren't trembling, but they did feel brittle. His body still ached—not in one place, but everywhere. A kind of whole-body tension that wouldn't ease.

"I do," he admitted.

Sam laid her head back against the pillow, eyes closing for an instant. "Do you recall when we first met?"

Edward stopped. "The orientation at the field unit."

"You had a broken watch," she said. "You kept looking at it as if it would suddenly work again if you looked hard enough."

He chuckled quietly. "I forgot about that."

"You never fixed it."

"I decided that it was already keeping the right time.".

Sam opened her eyes again, more lucid now, but a shadow clung to her gaze. "I'm scared, Edward. But not of dying. Not really."

"Then what?"

She turned her face slightly, as though afraid someone else might hear. "Of becoming something that looks like me. Sounds like me. But isn't."

Edward felt a sharp twist of recognition in his chest. That was the exact terror that had followed him for weeks now.

She does. She knows. Even if her body hasn't caught up yet.

"Would you tell me?" she asked. "If you thought I was slipping?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "I'd tell you."

"Would you stop me?"

"I don't know."

There was a silence after that, thick, heavy with the words they hadn't said—and with the weight of something else listening between their thoughts.

Sam ended the silence after a moment, in a soft, barely-a-whisper voice.

"Do you ever feel it, like? Like a rumble in your spine? Not a sound, exactly. A vibration. A… pull?"

Edward's throat was dry. "Yes."

Sam nodded slowly, as if that established something. "It's not painful, exactly. More gravity. Like something is waiting."

Her breath stopped, and she reached out to him suddenly—but not in fear—but out of necessity. He took her hand.

Her skin was warm. Real. Still human.

And yet, underneath, Edward could feel it—the same hum he'd felt in Eli, but fainter. A whisper to a scream. But present. Still occurring.

Still waking.

"Promise me," Sam whispered, now tear-stained eyes. "If I change. if I start to remember who I am not."

"I'll find a way."

"To stop it?"

He shook his head.

"To save you."