Chapter 115: Dangerous Knowledge

"What the fuck did you do to me?" Rook demanded. "Who gave you permission to go through my head?"

His attention shifted toward Mara. Recognition returned then, but it brought an accusation with it.

She felt the answer before he spoke.

Rook's head shuddered against the stone. His eyes squeezed shut, and a broken sound caught behind his teeth as another memory forced itself forward. For several seconds, his body stopped fighting the restraints entirely.

Mara looked at the strand between his forehead and the old man's finger. "Pull it. He isn't handling this."

"No."

"You said you would use the safeguard if this became dangerous."

"And I will if he loses himself. At present, he knows who I am. He recognizes you and understands that you authorized the procedure. He also knows the restraints around him do not belong to the memory frightening him." The old man watched Rook without taking his hand away from the strand. "His panic is severe, but it remains connected to reality. He is remembering. He is not lost."

Rook drew several uneven breaths. The first came too quickly to fill his lungs. Each one after entered more slowly. His fists gradually opened, and the strain against the ropes eased until only the trembling in his arms remained. Sweat covered his forehead beneath the white strand.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked first at the ceiling.

This time, he saw it.

His gaze moved to the old man and then to Mara. Neither disappeared into whatever memory had seized him.

"Who the fuck is this old fart?" Rook asked.

"This man… he saved us back at the Forty Second, when the pale abomination ate you."

"Tsk, another shitty memory added to my list. And Why did you trust him with my body?"

"Because it was that, or you dying to the digestive fluids of a seventh rank. I had to make a choice."

Rook was about to berate her for the foolish choice of trusting someone unknown, but decided otherwise.

"Fuck, there's an abomination here…" his eyes locked onto the feline that seemed to be playing with its tail.

"Tamed," Mara said.

"That's not a thing."

"Yes it is."

"No, it is not."

"Yes it is."

"No it is not!"

"We can do this all day, the damn cat is tame, and this guy found out how from old records. Older than you records. The old reapers used them in fights, against other abominations. So you better believe it, and stop being so strong headed."

"Says the one that really wanted to know what's in my head. I hope you're happy you did what you wanted. You can cut the ropes now," he said quietly.

His words felt like a stab in her chest. But she decided to not speak.

The old man did not reach for the knife. "Tell me where you are."

Rook swallowed. "I'm inside your dead Bastion beneath the Skyraisers. I remember someone shouting that… Mara brought me here after I was almost eaten, and you put your hands inside my memories because apparently nearly dying wasn't enough for one day." He looked down at the rope around his wrists.

"I know where I am. I'm capable of proper reasoning. Take them off."

The old man watched him for several more seconds before cutting the binding across his chest. The grey rope loosened immediately. Mara removed the loops from his arms and wrists while Rook lay still, neither fighting them nor helping.

Once his hands were free, he pushed himself upright.

His restored body moved without difficulty, but his attention remained fixed upon the markings covering his arms. He turned one wrist beneath the white light as though seeing the Brand for the first time and followed its dark lines toward his elbow.

"Fucker did a number on me…" Rook sighed. He apparently could still remember the pain of being crushed and almost turned to stomach soup inside an abomination.

Mara remained beside the table. "Do you remember what happened?"

"I remember," Rook said without looking at her. "Every damn bit of it. Thanks to you."

There was no gratitude in the words.

He pulled the remaining rope from around his waist and dropped it onto the floor. "Get this shit away from me. I'm not in the mood to look at it."

Mara gathered the rope and carried it to the far end of the table.

"Where's my damn coffin?" Rook asked, Mara was too far to reply, so the old man did.

"Back there, had her go back and bring it after we got here."

"You know me, don't you?" Rook asked.

The old man didn't answer, he simply smiled.

When Mara turned back, Rook had raised one hand toward his forehead. The old man caught his wrist before his fingers reached the white strand.

"Leave that alone for a moment. Pulling it in the wrong direction would undo several hours of work."

Rook followed the thread from his forehead to the old man's ring finger. "What is it?"

"A final connection to the memories I restored. If you had awakened unable to control yourself, I would have pulled it free and sealed those memories again. They would have remained part of you, but you would no longer have been able to reach them."

Rook studied the strand for a long time. His wrist remained in the old man's grasp, but he made no attempt to pull away.

"Remove it."

The old man's gaze narrowed slightly. "Do you mean you want me to seal the memories?"

"No. I mean I want your finger out of my head." Rook finally looked at him. "I remember what happened. I don't like knowing someone else can take it away whenever he decides I'm behaving incorrectly."

The old man released his wrist. "That is reasonable."

He placed two fingers against the strand near Rook's forehead. Rather than pulling, he loosened it slowly, separating the connection from his ring finger without disturbing the pathways he had restored. The thread withdrew into Rook's head and disappeared without leaving a mark.

Rook touched the place afterward, checking the skin with the tips of his fingers. Only when his hand fell away did Mara move closer.

"What happened to you?"

His eyes shifted toward her. The anger she had expected was absent, leaving something far harder to face.

"It isn't worth knowing."

"You don't get to decide that after everything we did."

"Yes, I do."

"The Fourth Rank recognized you. Its memories showed people dying because of something done inside that laboratory." Mara gestured toward the Brand covering his arms. "Whatever happened there might explain what you are, why you cannot Cull, and why those souls blamed you for their deaths."

Rook looked away. "It's too messed up to explain, Mara."

"Then explain the parts you can."

He remained seated at the edge of the table, shoulders bent and hands hanging loosely between his knees. None of his familiar irritation entered his face. He did not threaten to leave her behind, tell her to stop asking questions, or find some insult sharp enough to end the conversation.

He merely stared at the Brand as though every dark line had acquired a meaning he could no longer avoid.

That frightened Mara more than his screaming had.

Rook angry was predictable. Rook cynical was exhausting, but it meant he still possessed enough distance to make everything around him sound stupid. The man sitting before her looked tired in a way three hundred years in the Underworld had never managed to make him.

"The depressing part," he said at last, "is that I spent all this time thinking I must have done something terrible before I died. Something bad enough to explain the Brand, the missing memories, and every soul that looked at me as if I belonged beside the Abominations."

He rubbed one thumb across the markings on his opposite wrist.

"I thought remembering would at least tell me what I deserved."

Mara's guilt tightened until she could no longer ignore it. "Did I do something I shouldn't have?"

Rook released a slow breath. "You tampered with my memories without my permission. You gave a stranger permission to open parts of my mind that it had sealed for a reason, and now I can see things I would have preferred to leave buried forever."

"You were dying."

"That explains why you let him heal me. It doesn't explain why you chose the rest."

Mara glanced toward the old man, but he offered no interruption. He stood at the far end of the table, quietly cleaning the curved blade while leaving the argument to them.

"I thought returning your memories would help you," she said. "If you understood your death, you might finally be able to Cull. You might have had a way out of this place."

Rook lifted his head and looked at her fully. Whatever he had remembered sat behind his eyes, stripping away every sharp answer he might once have used to end the conversation.

"It didn't help. I still can't Cull."

Mara struggled to understand. "You remember your life now. You remember your death. How can you still not understand your death?"

"Because remembering it didn't make it make sense."

He looked down at his hands again, closing his fingers over the Brand.

"I remember what they did. I remember what I did afterward. I remember everything that led to the moment I ended up here, but I still don't know what killed me."

Mara took another step toward him. "But at least now you remember."

Rook's mouth tightened.

"Thanks to you, I do."

He turned his arms beneath the white light and stared at the darkness covering them.

"And I wish I didn't."