Cecilia had memorized her subject number long ago. She hated it, she resented it, she was offended by it on every possible level, but at night when she couldn't sleep she would find herself pouring over each and every character, trying to decipher a meaning. It wasn't hard to find the container meant for her. It had fallen a bit further away from the house, just past where the road dead-ended, where grass began to give way to rocky terrain.
She so desperately didn't want to open it, but not knowing what was in there would drive her mad – even if she'd be allowed to ignore it, and she didn't for a second believe that she would. She scanned her bracelet and watched the container pop open with a flurry of packing peanuts with a still mounting sense of dread. Her mouth had gone dry, and her heart was pounding in her ears. She had been vaguely aware of someone crying, but the sound of that and the helicopter seemed very far away now.
Carefully, cautiously, she began rooting through the packing peanuts. She wasn't really sure what to expect, and in all honesty hadn't let herself think too much about what it could be. The possibilities would have driven her insane, just as surely as the attempt to ignore the contents of the box. The small cardboard box was in the very bottom, and for a moment, some stupid voice in the back of her mind actually tried to tell her it was too small to be anything that terrible. Something felt wrong though. The bottom of the box was unstable. Soggy.
She opened the box. At some point her knees buckled, but it never even registered in her brain when she hit the ground. The world had narrowed to the contents of that tiny cardboard box and the gathering blood at the bottom, but most of all, on Neptune's collar. The little zig-zagging stripes of silver, blue, and green that had had once faded to partly black and grey, but now covered and stained in red and brown. The smell occupied all of her senses. She felt like she was swimming in it. Consuming it. Tasting it. “No,” she murmured, her tongue feeling heavy and foreign in her own mouth. “No, no, no...”
Gently, gingerly, she took his collar in her hands and let the box fall away. She cupped it the way one might a baby bird they were trying to coax a bit of life into. “No, no, no...” His license dangled from the ring, right behind the custom nametag she'd had made for him. A little silver globe, engraved with the message, My mommy loves me more than anything in the world. If lost, please call her! Her phone number was on the back.
Her chest was seized with pain. She couldn't remember how to breathe. She was still moaning her denials, her prayers, and slowly they rose to a scream. To a sob.
The world could have been burning around her. The world was consumed with grief. The loss was so great to her heart that she might as well have ceased to exist. She couldn't be alive, not if he wasn't. This was hell.