Page 57 of Runaways

I don't know what he's talking about, and I don't care. I don't bother taking any kind of intentional breath because how could anything hurt right now?

My momtried to kill me.

My mom didn't want me on the planet, breathing air anymore.

As I sob, Tate rips the torn sleeve from my sweatshirt, tying it around the top of my arm, and then pours what I assume is alcohol of some sort onto the wound.

I guess it burns.

He sits me up, pulling me into his lap just in time to watch Silas split Paul open from his sternum to his waistline. Then he—or it least it looks like it's what he's doing from this angle in the darkened room, but it doesn't make sense—plunges his fist into the wound.

"Silas…"

It comes out in a whisper. It took every ounce of my energy to produce that one word, just his name, and it doesn't even register.

Stop.That's what I want to tell him.

"It's better not to talk to him when he's like this, baby," Tate says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. "You know that. This is how I like him, though—hard."

When he removes his hand from Paul's chest cavity, there's something clutched in his fist.

It's a part of him—maybe the spleen. I think it's too small to be a liver, but I don't really know; I've never seen either in real life, fresh from a dead body.

I watch as Silas sinks his teeth into it, and when he turns to me again, blood drips down his chin while his jaw works, grinding the organ between his teeth.

"Take a bite," he says, holding it to my mouth.

Pressing my lips together in a tight line, I shake my head.

"Just do it, Noah," Tate says. "It's not a big deal. We're all just meat."

"Just a little bite. He should have stayed out of our woods. This is what he gets," Silas says.

I shake my head again.

"Do it now!" Silas screams, pushing it past my lips. I feel the organ against my teeth, taste the blood in my mouth, and I just want it to stop.

And so, I take a bite. A small bite, turning my head to the side and gagging at the feeling of flesh on my tongue.

Tate slaps his hand over my mouth before I can spit it out.

"Swallow it," he says.

I shake my head.

"Swallow it fucking now, Noah, or the next bite will be bigger."

I try my best to swallow it three or four times, but it won't go down whole. I give up, crushing it into tiny pieces between my molars. It's soft, kind of like fruit, and easy to grind.

It takes a few tries, but I manage to swallow the tissue.

"Is it done?" Tate asks once I finally stop retching.

When I nod, he removes his hand. "Show us."

I wipe my bloody mouth with my remaining sleeve and then open wide for both of them to see. Once satisfied that I've swallowed it all, Tate takes the organ from Silas and sinks his teeth into it.

"Mmm. It's a texture thing. I get it; it's not great," he says, tossing the bloody mass aside. "All right, let's go. Can you walk?"

---