I began keeping my distance.
Mara noticed. Of course she did. She was observant before; now she was something else, something that saw through walls and heard lies in heartbeats.
"You've been avoiding me," she said. She found me in the alley behind the workshop, where I'd been hiding between fights, pretending to check my equipment.
"I'm trying to keep you safe."
"From what?"
I looked at my gloved hands. The leather was scuffed from the arena sand, stained with old blood and older fear. "I don't know."
That frightened her more than an answer would have. She stepped closer. I immediately stepped backward, my shoulder blades hitting the corrugated metal wall, my heart rate spiking.
"Don't."
She stopped. "Why?"
"Because I don't know what happens when I touch people."
She looked at the gloves. Then at my face. At the way I wouldn't let her get within arm's reach. "You think you did something to me?"
I didn't answer.
That was answer enough.
Mara looked away. For several seconds, neither of us spoke. The generator in the building next door hummed, and I could hear three different heartbeats in the street beyond. One of them was hers. It was faster than it should have been. Afraid. But there was something else beneath the fear. Something that hadn't been there before. A rhythm that was too slow, too strong, too deliberate .
Then she whispered: "I've been seeing things."
"What things?"
"Not things." She rubbed her eyes. "Distances. Details. The world is... louder. Brighter. More than it was."
I frowned. "Explain."
"I can see details from far away." She pointed toward a building several hundred meters away, past the wall, past the guard tower, past the industrial smoke. "I can see the rust on that antenna. I can count the rivets. I can see a bird's eye, and it's looking back at me."
I stared. I couldn't. Not at that distance. Not with my eyes.
Mara continued. "And sometimes..."
She hesitated.
"I hear things before they happen."
I kept my expression still. "What?"
"Nothing important."
"Mara."
She looked at me. "Birds. I hear wings. Before the birds are there. I hear them deciding to fly, and then they fly. It's like... like I'm hearing their thoughts. Or their instincts. Or something."
It didn't sound stupid to me. It sounded familiar. Too familiar.
I had heard things that shouldn't have been audible.
I had smelled things no human should have been able to smell. I had killed a man with my bare hand and felt the black substance celebrate .
I looked at her again. Really looked. Past the fear, past the confusion, to the changes beneath.
The syndrome had chosen a second host. But whatever was happening inside Mara...
It wasn't the same as what happened to me.