“I left them there.”
The pain in her voice tears straight through me.
“You were young.”
“I promised Avery I’d come back.”
Her voice cracks harder.
“I forgot her.”
“No.” I pull back just enough to make her look at me. “They took your memories, Hannah. That’s not your fault.”
Her eyes search mine desperately.
“What if I still become what Wu made me?”
Absolutely not.
I cup her face carefully.
“Look at me.”
Rain runs between us.
Thunder shakes the sky again.
But the second her eyes lock onto mine, everything else fades.
“You are nothing like him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Her breathing stumbles.
“How?”
Because Wu would’ve left people behind.
Wu would’ve protected information before human beings.
Wu would’ve saved himself first.
And Hannah?
Hannah tried to run back into a collapsing tunnel for Avery’s dead body.
She comforts terrified children while bleeding.
She remembers names.
She sees people.
She feels everything.
I brush rainwater gently from beneath her eye.
