For a while, there is nothing.
Then Halo returns in pieces.
Rain on my face.
Neon flickering blue above me.
Someone screaming.
My shoulder burning.
My lungs trying and failing to pull air.
The front of Sweet Tooth swims in my vision, upside down and blurred. The blue tooth sign hangs broken above me, sparking gently in the rain. People appear at the edges of sight.Mrs. Pell’s terrified face. Renn shouting into a comm. Darlene kneeling beside me, her hands hovering because she does not know what can be touched without making me worse.
“Oh, baby,” Darlene whispers, voice shattered in a way I have never heard before. “Stay with me.”
I try to answer.
Only a wet sound comes out.
Her hand finds mine. “No, no, no. You look at me. You hear me? You look at me, Evie Mercy.”
I look.
Or I try.
The sky above Halo is dark and wet and full of reflected city light.
Somewhere far away, sirens begin.
My last clear thought before the darkness pulls me under is not about Ron, or the fall, or even fear.
It is Kauss.
I hope he comes back as the man who said it.
I hope he comes back at all.
CHAPTER 28
KAUSS
The hospital corridor is too white.
That is the first thing my mind understands because the rest refuses to assemble. White walls. White floors. White light pouring from recessed panels with no mercy in it. White uniforms moving fast around bodies on hovering gurneys. The air smells of antiseptic, sterilized air, burned fabric, blood scrubbed too recently from skin, and the sharp ozone trace of advanced medical equipment working beyond civilian poverty and into Alliance-grade intervention.
I arrive covered in rain, smoke, and other men’s blood.
People move out of my way.
Not because I ask.
Because whatever is on my face tells them survival favors distance.
Darlene is the first person I see. She stands outside a trauma bay with blood on her cardigan and both arms wrapped around herself like she is the only thing holding her bones in place. Her hair has come loose from its pins. One cheek is streaked with tears she would deny under interrogation. Nara stands beside her in surgical scrubs, talking to an older physician with silver implants at both temples and the tired eyes of a woman whohas argued with death for thirty years and still takes each round personally.
Darlene sees me.
