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Or at least my brain will be. Perhaps they won’t stop my heart. They’ll probably keep me alive. I can’t imagine how hard it was to keep my vitals going after my brain was thoroughly gone. They’ll want to make quick work this time, cutting through the mycelia until every part of me—thisme—is gone.

“God, she’s heavy,” Everly complains to Michael as we approach one of the maintenance sheds, grunting as she carries me. “She was so light when we first brought her back. Remember? I thought for sure she would have noticed something was wrong with the way her muscles had atrophied. Guess she was a lazy bitch back home.”

“Everly,” Michael warns her, breathing hard. “Now you’re just being a cunt.”

“Can’t help it,” she says. “Didn’t take long for her stomach to stretch back to normal size. She got her appetite back, and now look at her.”

“Well, you know Andrew’s cooking,” Michael comments. “Last week, when he made that foie gras pie, I thought I was in heaven. Could have eaten a dozen of them.”

“Ugh, yes,” she says, huffing away. “But the calories in that were absurd. I mean, fine for you men, but if you want a fit wife, Andrew has to be making concoctions out of carrot sticks. Hey, maybe he can do a cauliflower foie gras. Why not?”

“You ask him.” Michael groans as we enter the shed. “That sounds ridiculous.” While holding on to me, he swipes a key card, and a hidden door swings open.

Oh fuck. This is the entrance to the tunnels, isn’t it? The ones that run to the labs? Which means no one will see me go into the lab. I was hoping that maybe Lauren or Munawar or someone would see me being taken.

But it’s still the middle of the night.

I’ll probably be dead before the sun rises.

Then I’ll be awake again.

Someone else.

With no memories except for stepping off that seaplane and wondering where Amani had gone.

And Wes…

Fuck.

If he’s brought back here and he has to see me go through that all over again, with no idea of who he is and who he is to me…

My heart breaks open at the thought.

I can’t imagine what he’s had to go through this last month. Or the months before that. Or the years before that.

The man has been put through the wringer, accidently killing his ex-girlfriend and then seeing her brought back to life in a myriad of failed attempts until the one that finally sticks.

I want to scream.

But the puzzle pieces rearrange and slide back into place again.

Because it had to have been an accident. Wes never would have killed me. I know he loved me so; I knew back then.

But he pushed you, I think.He shoved you. Laid his hands against you.

Did he though? Wes had mentioned that there were cameras on the boat. Could I get ahold of that footage to see? Wouldn’t Everly and Michael have seen that footage? Why did she try to make it seem like it was believable that Wes would have done that?

She’s gaslighting you again, I think to myself.She’s manipulating you even still.

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

Everly and Michael carry me down a narrow hallway, not unlike the one in the lab building. I do what I can to scream, to move, but while my mind works, my body doesn’t. I’m just a brain with no attachment to my body. Which is ironic because in a few hours, I’m going to be a body with no brain.

The thought is worse than death.

It’s erasure.

Everything that I am, everything that is right now, will cease to exist. Some other me, severed from the one that I’ve known here, will continue, and the same thing will happen again.