Текст книги "Never Fade "

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“Jude!”

He stopped mid-ramble. “What?”

“…I need you to go ask Olivia where they store the jackets and stuff they swipe from the kids they recruit,” I said.

“Why?” Jude asked. “To try to find Liam’s?”

Vida snapped her fingers, cutting him off. I shot her a grateful look.

“No—no, we don’t have time to look through them all, and another kid might have grabbed it. We need Liam to be able to tell us what happened to it. What I want you to do is find the jacket I was wearing—the leather one, remember? The Chatter is in the inside left pocket. That’s all I need you to get.”

He stared at me, clearly not comprehending this.

“The Chatter,” I repeated. Vida, oh so helpfully, poked him through the fence, directly between his unblinking eyes. “In the inside left pocket. Can you get it for me?”

“You… You want me…”

“Yes!” Vida and I both hissed.

He hesitated for a split second, then broke out into the biggest, goofiest grin I had seen in a long time.

“All right, cool!” he said. “Of course I can do that! Do you think I’m going to have to pick a lock, though? Because I never got that one door open at HQ when Instructor Biglow tried to teach me—Wait.” Jude looked from Vida’s face to mine, the bright eagerness in his eyes fading quickly with his smile. “Why are you guys in a cage?”

Very quickly, with as few interruptions from Jude as we could manage, I told him what happened.

“Which means you can’t go right now, okay?” I said. “You have to wait until tonight, when we’re doing the initiation.”

“What is it?” he asked. “Some kind of a fight?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “You can do this. It’s simple. We’ll have most of the attention on us, so you just need to find the right moment to slip away. Then you need to contact Cate and have her put Nico on the search for a place we can hit for whatever medicine Chubs needs. Tell them we need it now and that it has to be close by. Can you remember that?”

“Okay.” Jude took a step back, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His face split again into another quick, nervous grin. “I’ll take care of everything.”

His hand instinctively went to the place where the solid lump of the compass should have been.

“Where is it?” I asked, startled.

“They took it. When they brought us in. It’s cool—it’s fine. I’ll find it. It’s probably in that room.”

“Are the others all right?” I asked. “Liam?”

“Umm…” He hesitated, biting his lip. “Not good. He won’t say it, but I think Chubs is really worried. He said if we don’t get medicine, there’s a good chance that he and the other kids could die. And I believe him. Roo, it’s bad. It’s really, really bad.”

I pressed my hand against my forehead, closing my eyes, trying to control the rise of bile in my throat. You had him right there, and you couldn’t stop him. Liam is going to die, and you couldn’t do anything. After everything, Liam is going to die, and it’s on you.

“Jude,” I said. I slipped a hand through one of the warped sections of woven metal, reaching for his shirt to bring him close again. He had a few inches on me, but I had a few years on him and a fair bit more experience when it came to slipping in and out of places unnoticed. “I know you can do this. I trust you. But if you think you’re about to get caught, ditch the Op, you hear me? We can figure out another way.”

“I got this, Roo,” he said, his voice thick with promise. “I won’t let you down.”

He backed away, flashing us a thumbs-up that all but proved to me he had no grasp on how serious the situation actually was. I let out a long breath, watching the evening steal him away in a cloud of white, the swirling paths of the snow altering their course to follow. He was moving fast, with so much unchecked energy, even the wind seemed to shift direction to catch his heel.

I knew he could do it; in training, a break-in was one of the very first simulations they put us through. And, honestly, the awful truth of it was that while the kid was about as sneaky as a pair of cymbals crashing to the ground, he was also the kind of person you wouldn’t necessarily notice was missing. Not from a crowd, at least not right away.

“Five minutes, max,” Vida said, leaning against the fence beside me. “That’s how long I give it before he gets his skinny ass caught and handed to him.”

“Then we’d better put on a good show,” I said, closing my eyes against the snow, “and give him a fighting chance.”

They came for us silently, emerging from the night’s cold, clammy hands like ghosts.

“Stop,” I muttered to Vida. The kids shoving us forward, six in all, evenly divided between girls and boys in their very best white, didn’t speak a word. The old linen sack slipped easily over my head, but Vida wasn’t about to let them dull a single one of her senses.

“It’s okay,” I coaxed, “stay with me here.”

Every limb and joint felt heavy and stiff; just walking sent a spike of pain through my shoulders and hips. We made a sharp turn back in the direction of the warehouse. I felt the water from the parking lot splash up over the tops of my heavy boots and grimaced. We’d be inside soon enough. At least it’d be dry.

But the metal door never groaned. It never opened.

Vida’s mind must have been guiding her along a similar line of thinking, because I heard her say, “Ruby?” once, a mumble as it rolled past her lips.

“Stay with me,” I said again, because what else could I say? It’ll be okay?

I remembered, when I was little, my dad used to take me to some of the high school sports games. Football mostly, sometimes baseball. He loved a good game—any game—but what I liked best was just watching him. Seeing his whole body turn to follow the path of an incredible pass, the grin that broke out when the baseball blew over the far fence. Dad knew the cheers for each team by heart.

So I recognized the tone when I heard it, the growls of a hungry crowd. The pulsing beat of clapping hands as they finally found the same rhythm. It set my teeth on edge, long before the fire smoke curled in my nostrils.

I stumbled again and again as the kids pushed me forward, dragging me over the crumbling edges of pavement onto the soft, sinking earth, back again onto ground that was harder. Solid. A wave of scorching air brushed my arms as they led me past what felt like a wall of fire.

I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over everyone else’s voices. I thought, just for a second, I heard Chubs bellow out my name and a softer girl’s voice echo it back. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby—and something else, too.

They herded us right into a small crush of bodies, and it felt like every single one was trying to push back, to keep us from getting in.

The minute my face was clear of the mask, I sucked in a lungful of warm air, trying to shake off the feeling I had a thousand pins pumping through my veins. There were too many faces around me—too many big eyes, cracked lips, scarred faces. The sight of them, the smell of their unwashed clothes and bodies combined with the earthiness of the smoke, until it became something else entirely. I craned my neck around, searching for Chubs’s face through the hands that were stretched out toward us. Firelight flickered in the dark.

I found him eventually, Olivia by his side. Jude, thank God, was nowhere in sight or earshot, but the wave of relief that washed over me at the thought only lasted until the terror came spilling over their faces, their lips, their entire bodies as they tried to push their way forward. The panic buzzing at the back of my mind drowned my ears with something that sounded almost like white noise.

Olivia had her hands around her mouth, shouting something to us. Dead, I thought.

We were in another building, likely the one I’d seen set off to the side of the warehouse. Part of the roof and eastern-facing wall had collapsed in on itself, forcing us to drag our numb, exhausted bodies over the piles of downed cement and twisted metal. It was another, smaller version of the warehouse, nearly burned out by the look of it. The walls and cement floors were bare, with the exception of the black shadows the kids were projecting onto them. At the very center of the room was a large ring of metal trash cans, golden flames leaping up past their lips, stretching toward the kids in white watching from overhead.

In Thurmond, the Factory had been set up in a very particular way to ensure that all of the PSFs would be able to watch a building full of freaks do their work. The floor plan there had been open, much like this, and stacked in the very same way. Hanging overhead were the two remaining metal pathways—low-hanging rafters, really.

It was a sea of white up there, Knox positioned comfortably in the middle of them, sitting at the edge of the rafter. Michael sat at his right, leering down at us with a can of something at his side. At the sight of their grinning faces, my hand pulsed in pain. I pressed it flat against my pants, my mind racing as they pushed Vida and me through to the center of the circle of fire.

Dammit. We really were going to have to fight each other.

I glanced over, watching as Vida ripped the old sack off her head and threw it into the nearest flaming trash can. The veins in her neck were bulging with anger, and she looked as close to tears as I had ever seen her. That was the first moment I actually felt fear. I needed Vida now—I needed her sharp intuition and her refusal to back down, even for a second, from a losing fight.

“Stay with me,” I murmured again. Her hands flexed and clenched at her sides, as if she were trying to work her anxiety out that way.

Then, one voice rose above the others.

“Hellooo, ladies,” Knox called. “Have you been behaving yourselves?”

The ring took up most of the room on the ground level, but there was enough space that the kids from outside, the ones not in white, could have squeezed in if they had wanted to. Instead they kept their distance—even Chubs, whose shape I could just barely make out through the screen of hot, shimmering air streaming up from the fires.

“I could bring him down here,” Vida whispered. “Catch him by surprise and put him right in your hands.”

I shook my head. “Too many guns.” And all aimed at our backs. Too many Blues, too. We’d have to wait until he chose to come down, then I’d have him. I felt the steady rise of rage and let it fill me, pump through my blood, drive out every single thought of mercy. I felt like a predator, ready to step out of the shadows and make my true face known.

“The rules here are simple,” Knox said. “You get pushed out of the ring, you’re out of the fight. You get knocked out, you’re out of the fight and I get to do what I want to with you. There are no mercy calls. The only way out is to stay standing or throw yourself out to get burned. Got it? Oh—how could I forget? Because it’s the two of you, I’m bending my own rules. No powers. This is a fist fight for you, girls, so don’t hold back.”

Vida and I shared a quick glance. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but the only thought rocketing through my skull was figuring out the fastest way for her to beat me without cheating. Flat-out refusing to fight would mean the deal was off, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of Vida literally kicking me through a ring of fire.

“What about the deal?” I called up. “Supplies in exchange for letting me join one of the hunting parties?”

Knox stiffened at the word supplies—more importantly, the kids around him leaned forward. A little reminder for them of what their leader was withholding.

“Goddamn,” he said, “you are annoying. Win, and maybe I’ll think about it.”

I took a few steps back, closing my eyes. How hard would she have to hit me to knock me out with one blow?

“Bring him in!” Seeing our reactions, Knox laughed. “What? You actually thought you’d fight each other? God, that’s hilarious.”

Vida spun back toward me to the demolished opening of the building. I didn’t; I knew by the look on her face that whatever it was, it was bad.

There was a whisper from above, quickly stifled as new sounds replaced it. A groan, the long, low purr of something heavy being dragged against the ground.

A line of sweat slipped down my back at the grunts of effort, the throaty scream, the jangle of what could only be chains.

The mind is a strange thing, mine stranger than most. It’s selective about what it remembers and even pickier about which memories remain as clear and cutting as a shard of glass. Those were the ones that stayed with you, that a single sound or smell could drag out. I had forgotten so much about my life before the soldiers had picked me up, but I would be damned if I ever managed to banish one single black memory from camp.

There was no forgetting the sorting, the test I almost failed.

There was no forgetting the look on Sam’s face as I wiped myself clear from her memory.

There was no forgetting the gleam of black guns in the summer sun or the snow falling softly on the electric fence.

There was no forgetting the long line of dangerous ones chained together, their faces hidden beneath leather muzzles.

“What the… What the actual f**k?” Vida breathed, her hand reaching out to yank me toward her, behind her.

There he was, pale as a new morning sky, dressed in the tattered remains of camo pants and a shirt that hung off his sunken chest. On first glance, I thought he must have been my age, but it was impossible to tell. He looked shrunken and soft now, but the way his pants were being held up by what looked like a plastic bag threaded through the belt loops made me think he had once been much bigger.

Knox had made sure to wrap him up real pretty in a series of robes and chains. There was a bandanna over his mouth, clenched between yellow teeth, and all I could think was, I wish they had covered his eyes instead.

Rimmed with crust and lined with bruises, his eyes pierced through the shadows between us, black and bottomless. He was looking at us, straight through us, into us.

I knew what Olivia had been calling out to me now. I could hear her voice ringing high and clear in my mind.

Red. Red, Ruby, Red.

SEVENTEEN

THERE ARE NIGHTMARES, and then there are nightmares.

The Red lowered his face, a thick curtain of long, dark bangs falling over his brows. But still, it didn’t hide his eyes. They watched us through the gaps between his tangled curls. His body gave a sharp jerk, like his muscles were seizing up, and he blinked to ride the spasm out. When his eyes opened again, they were wider, glassy—but another jerk tightened his body, and the hint of humanity was gone.

“Ladies, may I introduce you to Twitch.” Knox looked like he was enjoying our stunned expressions. “I picked him up in Nashville after he bolted from the PSF holding his leash. He was stumbling around, jerking like some tweaker. He’s come a long way since I started training him.” Knox waved a hand toward a kid who, with a look of undeniable terror on his face, walked up and began to cut through the Red’s ropes with a knife.

“I think you guys are gonna get along real damn nice,” Knox called. “Have fun.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two teenage boys run faster than they did once the last metal chain was in a puddle around Twitch’s feet. He took one step forward, walking through the wall of flames the trash cans provided. A ripple went through the glowing circle, dimming just for an instant, then flaring up to a blinding white.

“That ass-sucking mofo,” Vida muttered. She turned to look at me. “He actually sicced a firebomber on us.”

Twitch made good on his name. His head cocked to the right, then jerked to the left in a way that looked painful. In the moments—those precious half seconds—between movements, the only noticeable change was the flash of something like confusion in his eyes.

Knox put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Then there was no more thinking.

Vida and I dove away from each other as the first kick of fire jumped from the flaming garbage cans to the ground between us. I hit the ground and rolled, trying to put out the smoldering edges of my right pant leg. The burn on my palm felt like it was about to burst open with a blast of fire on its own.

The air above my head grew hot—hotter—then deadly, eating the oxygen and forcing me to roll again. The fire in the barrel I had crashed into flooded over the edge of the metal can and came pouring toward me. It raced along the cement toward us.

The Red lifted a hand in front of him and snapped his fingers. A burst of flame appeared between his curved fingers, and he lobbed it my way like a ball.

Get up, get up, get up, my mind screamed. The sweat on my palms slid against the loose rubble. I pushed myself up and looked for Vida.

She was running, her arms pumping at her sides, charging for the Red’s center.

“No!” I cried. The fires from the garbage cans rose up again, crossing the circle to connect in a series of bridges. Vida hissed in pain as a whip of fire branched out and caught her across the shoulder blades.

I really thought Vida was going to charge straight through the lines of fire in front of her; there were only two between her and the Red, but they were there, burning, golden red, lighting her skin to a warm, earthy brown.

“Vi—!”

She landed on her hip, sliding the last few feet of distance straight into the Red’s legs. He went down with an inhuman roar of protest that was only bounced back to him by the kids in white watching above us. I risked a look up.

Most of the garbage cans were still burning, as were patches of the cement where the lines of fire had collapsed. I stomped one out as I ran toward Vida.

Twitch surged up off the ground, throwing Vida off him with a fierce, pulsing hatred that filled the space between us. I got there to catch her before her burned back could slam into the ground. My vision blanked as her head made impact with my jaw, but I didn’t let us fall. I hauled her right back up onto her feet.

I had only ever sparred against Instructor Johnson once, and the “fight” had lasted all of fifteen seconds. It had been right at the beginning of my training, when he needed to “evaluate” my skill level. I walked with a limp for two weeks and had two hand-shaped bruises on my upper arms for twice as long.

Instructor Johnson would have wilted like a daisy under this Red.

Twitch was no longer twitching. His movements were sharp, precise, schooled—something in him had clicked. Vida and I danced away from him time and time again, twisting and bending to get out of the way of his fists sailing toward our faces.

And I had thought the kid looked scrawny.

“Come on, ladies!” Knox heckled. “This is so boring!”

I caught Vida’s arm before she could launch toward him again, pulling her back a few steps. Twitch didn’t follow immediately; instead, he kept to his half of the circle, pacing back and forth like a panther, military-issue boots squeaking underfoot.

It was the first time I had been able to think this entire fight. My body shook with exhaustion and pain. Think.

He hadn’t been in a rehab camp, not recently at least. Maybe never—but then, where had his gear come from? Twitch didn’t seem like he had enough independent thought to rob a National Guard station. In fact, save for the brief bursts of confusion on his face, it didn’t look like he had any independent thought at all. Which meant…

No way, I thought. It’s not possible.

But at this point, what wasn’t possible?

“Jamboree,” I gasped out to Vida.

She blinked. “No shit?”

Vida knew Operation Jamboree the way some kids know about ghost stories, from whispers and the darkest dreaming of her own imagination. President Gray’s secret army of trained Reds was common knowledge in the League; they’d been trying to leak information about it for months with no success. The whole thing, apparently, was too “preposterous” for the Federal Coalition to believe, and the Internet watchdogs snagged and blocked any reference to the project before word had a chance to bleed out to international papers.

What Vida didn’t know was that the original idea had wormed its way out of the most warped corner of Clancy’s mind. He had been the one to plant the idea in the president’s, and all of his advisers’, minds. Right up until the moment his father had finally realized what his son was doing, Clancy had played a key role in the Reds’ training program.

My whole jaw hurt from where Vida had nailed it, and my lip dripped with blood. I spat it out on the ground, swiping an arm over my eyes to clear the stinging sweat away. How had Clancy planned to control them? TheRed was acting like his brain had been shattered by rage one minute, while the next he was a carefully trained soldier. He was clearly disoriented, not following anything other than his instincts—all of which looked like they had been reprogrammed to one setting: kill.

God, I thought, fury cutting swift and neat through my fear as I watched Twitch. God, what they did to those kids…

For years, I had been so sure the camp controllers and PSFs took the dangerous ones out to put them down. The knowledge had lived like a devil around my neck, his grip tightening and tightening to the point I couldn’t breathe when I thought about it. I had been so relieved when Clancy told me that wasn’t the case. But now…now I wondered if death wouldn’t have been the better deal after all. At least they wouldn’t be animals. This kid’s mind wasn’t even his own anymore.

“Hey, boo,” Vida said through gritted teeth. “We have to double-team him.”

“What good is that going to do?”

“He can create fire and control it, but look at how much concentration it takes him,” she said. “He stops the second you go for him, like his brain can’t handle both at once.”

She was right. For all the damage he could do, he was the same as any of us—using his abilities took effort and practice. But this kid was so damaged, his sense of reality had been warped—whether Clancy had done it through his influence or whoever was running Operation Jamboree had through conditioning, it was clear Twitch had been trained in such a way that when he saw someone, he knew to attack.

“Shut up and fight!” Knox yelled.

“Distract him,” Vida said. “I’ll end it.”

Knox only said we had to stay inside of the ring—he never said anything about what shape the ring itself had to be in.

The audience above cried out in alarm as I kicked the nearest can over. The smoldering remains of wood spilled out against the ground, but the fire that raced along the cold cement worked itself through in seconds. Twitch stopped mid-step, staring at the dying flames in confusion. By then, I was already on to the next can. I heard Vida’s low cry as she dove for the Red again.

“Stop!” Knox yelled. “You bitch! Your friend is gonna have Twitch all to herself—”

A yelp drew my attention back to Vida. She was patting the ends of her hair, trying to put out the flames licking at the strands. Vida dropped to her knees, panting, cussing viciously between her sobs. I started toward them, but the fire from the bins around them surged up and out again, twisting into shimmering webs of intense heat and light.

“Don’t, Ruby!” Vida screamed.

Twitch had one hand closed around the back of her neck, the other was raised high above his head. A sliver of fire slipped up from the nearest garbage can, curling around his fingers and wrist like a snake. They were screaming in the rafters, but the one sound we needed to hear, it never came. Knox wasn’t going to stop him.

No one is going to stop him. I brought my fingers to my mouth and tried to imitate the noise Knox had made, but I couldn’t get a strong enough breath out of my chest. The smoke stung my eyes and burned my throat.…

He is going to kill her, he’s going to kill her, he’s– There was no other option this time.

“Red!” I shouted, my voice hoarse.

The boy looked up, and I had him.

It was almost unconscious, the letting go. It was complete and immediate, like releasing a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I felt the tangles of fingers in my mind begin to unfurl—anger, terror, desperation peeling each thread of power apart until I felt a surge of tingling warmth spread out along the base of my skull. The wall of fire in front of me throbbed in time with the Red’s frantic twitching. Overhead, I heard Knox start to yell, but the kid was mine now. I was in his head without a single touch.

In a typical mind, there’s this feeling of sinking into his or her thoughts. It’s a slow, slippery sensation, one that’s usually accompanied on my end by a massive migraine. Sometimes I fell slowly, other times all at once. I could tell a lot by the shade of a person’s memory, the tint to his or her dreams.

But Twitch was broken. So, so broken.

I didn’t slip so much as stab my way through, like a knife driving deep into a pile of shattered glass. His memories were sharp, small, here and gone faster than a blink. I saw a dark-haired girl on the swings, a woman bent over an oven, a line of stuffed green lizards, a name spelled out in block letters on a shelf. Everything sped up then—black boots, wired fences, the green fake leather of a school bus seat. Mud, mud, mud, so much digging, the rattle of chains, the pinch of a muzzle, a fire in the dark burning hotter and hotter. I had to remind myself to breathe. The burning air set my lungs on fire.

I found Clancy’s refined face among the fractured images, standing alone behind a glass wall, his hand pressed against it. He only ever came in the dark, like a walking nightmare. Clancy mouthed something, and every thought exploded to white.

I couldn’t hear myself over the hollering of the onlookers. I couldn’t tell what they were shouting; it was all rabble and noise. But I had this Red in my hands; I had his power at my disposal, and I felt it as deeply as if the fire were running through my veins. I turned back toward where Knox and the others stood stunned, their eyes focused on us from their safe place above.

Not safe anymore, I thought, turning back to the Red. What would Knox do when I turned his little pet against him? What would he do when he felt his skin catch fire?

Twitch stared at me, his pupils shrinking, exploding out to their full size, then shrinking again. His mouth began to work silently, letting out low moans of pain until he finally began to cry. He waited for a command. An order.

Mason.

That was the name I had seen spelled out on his door, the one his mother had whispered lovingly as she tucked him into bed.

His name is Mason. My thoughts were spilling over themselves, trying to comprehend what had just happened. He lived in a house with a blue fence. His mom made his lunch for him every day. He had friends and a dog, and all of them disappeared when the men came and took him into the van. He had White Sox posters on his bedroom wall. He rode his bike in the abandoned lot behind his house. His name was Mason, and he had a life.

I stumbled onto my knees, pressing a hand to my forehead. The connection snapped with the next jagged memory that filtered through his head. He fell a short ways away, near a stacked pile of debris. For a moment, I heard nothing outside of my own harsh breathing and heartbeat. Then, there was an audible snap in my ears—a sickening crack.

“Stop!” I heard Vida scream. “Stop it!”

Even as I watched Mason take the jagged hunk of cement and smash it against his skull, it was like my mind couldn’t understand the movement. Vida ripped the stone out of his hand with a cry of protest. The Red lifted his head off the ground, straining his neck, and flung it back again against the ground. He didn’t stop, not until I slipped my hands between the heavy bone and the unforgiving cement.

All at once the stink of blood broke through the heady cloud of smoke. I felt it slick and hot against his fine hair.

“Stop!” Vida pressed her hands down against his shoulders, trying to pin him in place. I pried another hunk of cement out of his fingers. The moment it came free and clattered against the floor, he had my hand in his grip.

“…help me,” the boy was sobbing. “Please, please help me, please, I can’t—not anymore, oh God, oh God, they’re coming again, I see them, they’re coming in the dark—”

“It’s okay.” I leaned down close to his ear.

“Help me,” he begged, “please.”

“It’s all right, Mason. It’s okay; you’re safe.” I could dive into his thoughts again—my mind spun with possibilities. I could erase his memory, what he had been through, everything he had seen. I could leave the skinned knees, sunshine days on the playground, his mom’s sweet smile. Only the good. He deserved that. Mason needed to be free from this.

“I’m scared,” he whispered, his cheeks slick with tears and blood. “I wanna go home—”

The bullet cut so close to my ear, it nicked the edge of it. I felt a stab of pain and a warm rush of blood, pitching forward against Mason to protect him. The shot had come from above—I heard Vida scream something, but I didn’t fully register what had happened until she grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me off the Red, throwing me down to the ground. Knox or whoever had taken the shot at me wasn’t going to get another clean one off, not if she had anything to do with it.

My front was drenched in warm wetness. My shirt clung to my skin awkwardly; I tried to smooth it all out, but my hands were frozen as I looked down at myself. Half dazed, I wondered how it was even possible my ear could have bled so much already.

“No, dammit!” Vida’s voice rose above the buzzing in my ears. “No, goddamn you!”

I pushed myself upright and turned toward her horrified voice. The faint hum in my ears sharpened, distilling until I could make out the distinct crying and whispers from the kids above us. They were all looking at the Red boy, watching the blood bubble up from where the bullet had lodged in his throat, watching him choke and sputter, his hands clawing at the ground. The space between his breaths stretched longer and longer, until the last exhale came out in a strangled sigh.

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t hear, couldn’t see anything but Mason. My hands rose in front of me with a life of their own, my eyes fixed on the pool of blood that spread across the cement until the edge reached my knees.