Page 74 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

Even though not enough time for this person to get enough sleep has passed, immediately three dots fill the screen.

T (9:13 AM): And let me guess, now he’s bothering you to eat and that sounds horrible.

AMBRA (9:14 AM): He’s still asleep and there’s nothing appetizing in the apartment.

Then—

AMBRA (9:14 AM): How much can I talk to you? How much do you know?

She sips from the juice—it’s fine, if cloyingly sweet—and props the phone up on the desk, so she can see the response without holding it up.

The three dots appear, then disappear, a few times.

With a start, Gurlien jerks himself awake, flailing in the blankets, and Ambra blinks over to him.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and she hadn’t spoken yet, her own voice almost foreign against her throat.

He stares wildly at her, then scrambles for his glasses.

“Just how bad is your eyesight?” she asks, sipping from the juice again, the idle motion somewhat entertaining while he’s so flustered.

He shakes his head, more of getting himself together than a negative.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks, voice still bewildered.

The answer is not terribly, but not critical at that very moment. “We can discount the idea that they’re going to give up on retrieving me.”

He rubs his entire face, still disoriented. “Are you a morning person?”

“I didn’t need a sleep schedule before the merge,” she points out, “so who knows.”

“Right,” he says heavily, then swings his feet to the side of the bed, right as her phone buzzes again.

T (9:32 AM): I don’t want to give too much information in case of a success from them.

Ambra expected that, with how secretive they seemed to be.

T (9:32 AM): And Axel halfway thinks that Gurlien is going to turn on you, if push comes to shove.

Ambra slates her eyes over to Gurlien, who’s staring blankly at the middle distance, blinking behind his glasses.

AMBRA (9:35 AM): He’s saved me twice now.

T (9:36 AM): Axel has his reasons and they’re good.

It’s still puzzlingly vague, and Ambra scowls at the phone.

T (9:37 AM): All of that to say, no specifics. But I can talk emotions, and I know that in times like these emotions get pushed to the back of the priorities and that can be just as hard.

And with that, right then, Ambra decides that there’s no way this expert is a demon trapped in a human body. No demon would talk like that, no demon would offer that unprompted.

It’s still nice, though, and the temptation to push on it, to needle it out, still digs underneath Ambra’s skin.

AMBRA (9:39 AM): So human emotions are odd and don’t make sense, right?

T (9;39 AM): Lol.

AMBRA (9:40 AM): They all manifest in physical ways and I can’t stop the reactions even when I want to.

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