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Day’s grin fades—he senses my grief. He reaches over and touches my cheek with one hand. His face is so close, radiant in the soft evening glow. I lift myself up with what little strength I have and let him pull me close. “Oh, Day,” I whisper into his hair, my voice breaking with all the sobs I’ve been holding back. “I really miss him. I miss him so much. And I’m so sorry, I am so sorry for everything.” I repeat it over and over again, the words I said to Metias in my dream and the words I will say to Day for the rest of my life.
Day tightens his embrace. His hand brushes through my hair, and he rocks me gently like I’m a child. I cling to him for dear life, unable to catch my breath, drowning in my fever and sorrow and emptiness.
Metias is gone again. He is always gone.
IT TAKES JUNE A HALF HOUR TO FINALLY FALL BACK asleep, loaded up on whatever drugs a Colonies nurse injected into her arm. She’d been sobbing over her brother again, and it was like she’d fallen down a hole and crumpled in on herself, her bleeding heart torn open for all to see. Those strong dark eyes of hers—now, their expression was just . . . broken. I wince. Of course, I know exactly what it feels like to lose an older brother. I watch as her eyes dance around behind closed lids, probably deep in another nightmare that I can’t help her out of. So I just do what she always does for me—I smooth down her hair and kiss her damp forehead and cheeks and lips. It doesn’t seem to help, but I do it anyway.
The hospital is relatively quiet, but a few sounds form a blanket of white noise in my head: There’s a faint whir coming from the ceiling lights, and some sort of dim commotion on the streets outside. Like in the Republic, a screen mounted to the wall broadcasts a stream of warfront news. Unlike the Republic, the news is peppered with commercials the way the streets outside had been, for things that I don’t comprehend. I stop watching after a while. I keep thinking about the way my mother comforted Eden when he first got the plague, how she whispered soothing words and touched his face with her poor bandaged hands, how John would come to the bedside with a bowl of soup.
I’m so sorry for everything, June had said.
Several minutes later, a soldier opens the door to our hospital room and walks over to me. It’s the same soldier who’d realized who I was and had us delivered to this twenty-story hospital. She halts in front of me and gives me a quick bow. Like I’m an officer or something. Just as surprising is the fact that she’s the only soldier in the room with us. These guys must not see me and June as threats. No handcuffs, not even a guard to watch our door. Do they know that we’re the ones who botched the Elector’s assassination? If they’re sponsoring the Patriots, they’re bound to find out sooner or later. Maybe they don’t know we worked for the Patriots at all. Razor had added us fairly late in the game.
“Your friend is stable, I presume?” Her eyes rest on June. I just nod. Best if no one here figures out that June is the Republic’s beloved prodigy. “Given her condition,” the soldier adds, “she’ll need to stay here until she’s well enough to move around on her own. You’re welcome to stay with her in here, or DesCon Corp would be happy to sponsor an additional room for you.”
DesCon Corp—more Colonies lingo I don’t understand. But far be it from me to start questioning the source of their generosity. If I’m famous enough over here to get star treatment in a hospital, then I’ll take it for all it’s worth. “Thanks,” I reply. “I’m fine staying in here.”
“We’ll have an extra bed brought in for you,” she says, motioning toward the room’s empty space. “We’ll come check on you again in the morning.”
I go back to my vigil over June. When the guard doesn’t leave, I look up at her and raise my eyebrows. She turns red. “Anything else I can do for you?”
She shrugs it off and tries to look nonchalant. “No. I just . . . so, you’re Daniel Altan Wing, eh?” She says my name like she’s trying it on for size. “Evergreen Ent keeps printing stories about you in their tabs. The Republic Rebel, the Phantom, the Wild Card—they probably come up with a new name and photo for you every day. Say you escaped a Los Angeles prison all by yourself. Hey, did you really date that singer Lincoln?”
The idea is so ludicrous that I have to laugh. I didn’t know Colonians kept up with the Republic’s government-appointed propaganda singers. “Lincoln’s a little old for me, don’t you think?”
My laugh breaks the tension, and the soldier laughs along with me. “Well, this week you are. Last week Evergreen Ent reported that you’d dodged all the bullets from a Republic firing squad and escaped your execution.” The soldier goes back to laughing again, but I fall silent.
No, I didn’t dodge any bullets. I let my older brother take them for me.
The soldier’s laugh trickles away awkwardly when she sees my expression. She clears her throat. “As for that tunnel you two came through, we’ve sealed it up. Third one we’ve sealed in a month. Every now and then Republic refugees come in just like you did, you know, and the people living in Tribune have gotten really tired of dealing with them. No one likes civilians from an enemy territory suddenly taking up residence in one’s hometown. We usually end up kicking them back over the warfront. You’re a lucky one.” The soldier sighs. “Back in the day, this all used to be the United States of America. You know that, yes?”
My quarter pendant suddenly feels heavy around my neck. “I know.”
