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That quickly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bryn told her. It was too late, but she said it anyway. “You were just a kid, sweetie. It wasn’t your fault. ” She glanced down. Her sister’s eyes were open, and at peace.
Riley was still fighting, but it didn’t last long. She couldn’t speak, but the fire was there, raging and fighting, until it finally guttered out. Then she was gone, too.
Joe’s low voice stopped. Bryn heard Pansy let out a low, anguished sob.
Mr. French had laid his warm weight down in her lap, and he was whimpering with distress. He knew, too. Poor thing. She put a hand on his warm head.
“You have to let me go,” Bryn said to Patrick. “Please let go now. I can’t be a monster
. We can’t be that. ”
He knew. Finally, at last, he knew. She felt it in the way he kissed her.
And that was the last thing she felt.
One last glimpse of light, one last whisper of sound. Manny’s voice. Get the . . .
She was curious, even now. Get what?
But then it didn’t matter, and she was gone, too.
Chapter 26
She didn’t feel it, that exact moment when the world came back; it happened in slow stages. A flare of light peeking in between her fluttering eyelids. A dreadful dry taste in her mouth, like smothering on dust. The shock of nerves sparking like short circuits.
Pain. A lot of it, slow hot waves washing up and down her body like tides.
Faces.
“She’s coming back,” someone said. She heard the words, but she didn’t understand them. Her brain felt sluggish and unresponsive, late to a party her body had already crashed. “Sinus rhythm. Oh my God. ”
She was so tired. Closed her eyes a moment, and opened them because someone was rubbing knuckles against her breastbone. “Ow,” she whispered. Her lips felt painfully dry. As she blinked away fog, she felt the firm pressure of a straw against her lips, and automatically sucked in a mouthful of sweet, cool water. She swallowed it, took a second mouthful, and then the straw was withdrawn.
“Hey. ” The voice was rough and familiar, and this time, when she blinked, she saw that it was Patrick. He looked . . . different. He’d grown his hair out, hadn’t he? Thinner, too. She reached out clumsily, more of a flail than a controlled motion, and he took her hand in his and kissed the back of it.
She remembered, then. Not everything, just pieces . . . Manny. The computer. Annie’s slim fingers pressing ENTER.
Going away.
“No,” she whispered. “Can’t—can’t come back—”
“You didn’t,” Patrick said. His eyes were shimmering with tears, but he blinked them away and didn’t let them quite fall. “Not on your own. Manny said that if you were healed well enough before the nanites died, your autonomic system might come back online. So he shocked you until your heart started beating again. It wasn’t the nanites that brought you back. We brought you back. ”
She shook her head. But she had to admit, the pain she was feeling . . . That was something the nanites would have fixed. “Can’t be,” she said.
“Want proof?” He reached to the bedside table that held the cup, pitcher, and straw, and picked up a hand mirror. “Look. ”
She was a mess. Bruised. Her nose had been broken and reset, and was braced with tape and a metal band over the bridge. Her face had healing scratches, and she remembered Riley clawing at her in desperation, trying to live.
When she touched them, the bruises ached. So did her nose, with a constant dull throb.
Healing, but healing slowly. At a human rate.
And something else. A dull ache farther down, low in her torso. Familiar, but something she’d forgotten until now.
“I’m bleeding,” she said, and pointed down. For some reason, it made him smile. Sure. He wasn’t the one menstruating.
