I woke before sunrise.
My right hand hurt—a deep ache in the bones, like someone was pulling my marrow out with a hook. I removed the glove. The leather stuck to my palm, damp with sweat or something else.
Black substance covered my palm. It pulsed, a slow rhythm that matched my heartbeat, then sped up, then slowed, as if it were experimenting with different tempos. I stared at it. It stared back, though it had no eyes.
Then it disappeared beneath my skin, sinking into the pores, leaving only pale flesh behind.
I immediately put the glove back on. Then the second glove over it. Double layers. Thick leather.
No exposed skin.
I now wore them constantly. Two pairs. I even began sleeping with them, waking every few hours to check that they were still in place, that no skin had slipped free, that I hadn't accidentally touched something living in my sleep.
Mara noticed. Of course she noticed. She noticed everything now.
"You're afraid of touching me," she said one morning.
I looked at her. "Yes."
She frowned, hurt flashing across her face.
"Because you think you infected me."
"I know I did."
"Can you remove it?"
"I don't know."
"Then what happens to me?"
I looked away, toward the concrete wall, toward the nothing I could see through it. "I don't know."
Mara laughed bitterly. "You're really good at that."
"At what?"
"Saying you don't know."
I didn't respond. She was right. Ignorance was my only defense. If I admitted how little I understood, maybe no one would expect me to fix it.
She stepped closer. I immediately stepped back, my shoulder hitting the doorframe.
Mara stopped. For a moment, we simply looked at one another. Two monsters in human skin, afraid of what they'd become, afraid of each other.
Then she said: "I'm not afraid of you."
I answered quietly, the truth of it heavy as stone: "You should be."