Ezekiel stared at him in shock and horror, his gravelly voice cracking as he cried out, "What the hell are you?!"
Peter stirred himself to wakefulness as that dream faded out.
He didn't move.
At least… not this time.
He was definitely still Peter.
Dumas was something for people to call him by.
Maybe if he learned enough to be Dumas properly… he'd stop having Peter's stupid dreams.
He continued to lie on his side and tried to take stock of what he could before he opened his eyes.
Caliban had taken him towards one of the enclosures a bit of a distance away from the central plaza area they had initially appeared in. Caliban had said that this was closer to his home. It was in a less crowded area so there were fewer of the structures built up. There was also a persistent ammonia tang to the air that the breeze wasn't getting rid of. He could also hear the faint, if constant, sound of water flowing.
He wasn't sure what the plumbing arrangements were like in the tunnels, but he imagined that new folks (and possibly people with no sense of smell) were the ones most likely to get a placed where the plumbing was set up. Which made him wonder where that put Caliban on the totem pole.
The faintly damp, smothering warmth of the alley weighed him down still. A very distinct change compared to having the stabbing cold winter air he'd become accustomed to for the last week or so.
Unlike the night when the place had been almost oppressive in its silence, he could hear people now. A lot of them. There was talking and movement all around. The stone tunnel was causing confusing echoes to ripple all around, magnifying the noise.
His sense for prey sharpened once more. Not with him as the target this time… there was something close by that qualified.
He opened his eyes to find that while the night before everything had been lit by dim candles, now there were distant fluorescent lights in the ceiling that illuminated everything. It also probably explained why no one bothered to cover the structures that people lived in. It's not like there was any weather down here. All they really needed the dividers for were privacy.
The little chamber he'd been given was surrounded on three sides by crumbling, plain sheetrock indifferently nailed to a frame of two by fours. He'd been sleeping on a futon on the floor and the only other furnishing the room held was a coffee table made of plywood and metal tubing that at one point had been painted a flat green which was now peeling to reveal badly chipped brown paint underneath.
His eyes narrowed as he saw with his eyes what he'd been sensing. A small child of around six years old squatting on her haunches, staring at him curiously. She was painfully thin. He hesitated to call her scrawny, but it was a word that fit. She was barefoot and wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, both so badly stained that it was impossible to tell what their original color might have been.
Her eyes were blue and curious. Her hair was an odd shade of pale reddish-pink and was only growing out in a few random patches across her scalp. Where the hair wasn't growing seemed to be ugly, barely-healed scars. There were also spurs of bone poking up out of her skull. Where they'd erupted from her skin, seemed to have a ring of scabs and badly inflamed skin. The more Peter looked, the more of the spurs and jags of bone he could see. The spurs were particularly large around her knuckles, elbows and knees. Consequently the wounds and scabs in those areas were worse. He could see scars built up over scars. She was trying to hold still while watching him, but she would reflexively reach over to scratch and pick at one of her scabs, wincing whenever her fingers brushed up against the bone spurs.
"It's rude to stare." She told him gravely.
He stared at her harder. "Yes," He replied with equal gravity, then paused significantly, wondering if she was old enough to know what sarcasm was. "It is."
She nodded at his acknowledgement and asked. "You're new. This room was empty yesterday."
He returned her nod, sitting up and maintaining eye contact with her. "Yeah, I am. I'm… Dumas."
She delicately waved at him, declining to come any closer. "I'm Sarah."
He wondered if she was simply too young to take a pseudonym or it wasn't actually a requirement and he'd just happened to meet with the weirder members of the community?
Peter rose to his feet and so did she. He towered over the small girl and wondered faintly at how she was registering on his… what to call it? Preda-vision? Prey-o-meter? He sighed. She was tiny and weak and that alone was enough to trigger the sense, but there felt like a nuance to the sensation. Something in between hearing and scent and taste that told him in no uncertain terms that she was frail. Injured. The barely scabbed over wounds around the protruding shards of bone and the multitude of scars up and down her arms, scalp and face, were testament to that.
"So what makes you different?" She asked suddenly, staring up at him. She fingered a sharp spur of bone at her cheek. "I keep growing bones where they're not supposed to grow." There was a sullen air to her words. Resentful at what should be a gift twisted to something unfortunate. "It hurts when it's under my skin, pushing it up. But it also hurts when it pokes out like this."
"Sorry," Peter mumbled.
She brightened slightly. "When they get big enough I can pull them out, tho."
"That's… good?" He answered uncertainly.
She paused, smiling now, albeit, the smile was a little wobbly. "Except that hurts too."
"Oh." He didn't know what else to say to that and was very subtly scanning the room for a way to exit without hurting the little girl's feelings.
She blinked and asked. "So, what do you do?"
He sighed, trying to smile, but found the expression seemed unfamiliar to his face now. He scratched at his ear, not sure how to answer the question. "I…"
What do you say to that? I'm tough? I'm strong? I can kind of fly? I can consume their–
He stopped that line of thought and simply said the first thing that came to mind.
"... I hurt people." Peter admitted.
Sarah's visibly wilted. "Oh. So you can't help me, I guess?"
Peter stopped to stare at her. If her power was what was hurting her… this uncontrolled… unchecked bone growth… could he perhaps?
"Only if you need me to mess someone else up?" He offered weakly.
She seemed to seriously consider the offer for a few seconds before putting a wobbly smile back on her face. "That's okay. I can't think of anyone who really needs it. Except maybe Hemmingway. He's a jerk."