Nara snaps, “You are not helping.”
“I am absolutely helping.”
“You are aiding a patient in fleeing post-operative care.”
Darlene points at me. “That patient fell out of a window and still has more sense than both of you when it comes to that alien idiot.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“That was not praise. You’re also an idiot.”
“Fair.”
Darlene steps closer and lowers her voice. “Margrave Hotel was a decoy. Ron moved back to the zoo.”
My stomach twists.
The abandoned zoo. Of course. The place Kauss humiliated him. The place this all turned from neighborhood violence into myth and obsession.
“How do you know?”
“Al woke up.”
Emotion slams through me. “Al’s alive?”
“He called me an elderly plague and demanded coffee. He’s alive.” Her mouth tightens. “He heard tunnel boys talking before the flood. Ron always planned to return to the zoo if things went bad. Called it the stage.”
Nara mutters, “I hate theatrical criminals.”
Darlene looks at me. “Kauss’s already there or close.”
“Then we go.”
Nara grabs my good arm. “No. I am coming too.”
“You can’t?—”
“I can, and I am. Someone has to keep you from dying dramatically in a second location.”
Darlene snorts. “Road trip.”
We leave through a service corridor because Nara has keys, authority, and the kind of face that makes people assume she is doing something important instead of helping a concussed baker escape medical supervision. Every step hurts. The elevator’s smooth descent makes nausea crawl up my throat. By the time we reach the back entrance, rain is falling hard again, cold and silver beneath the hospital security lights.
Renn waits outside with a battered delivery skiff.
He looks at me and goes pale. “Evie.”
“Do not say I look bad.”
“You look terrifying.”
“That’s better.”
Darlene helps me into the back while Nara climbs in after me with a med-kit. The skiff lifts into the wet night, rattling harder than any legal vehicle should. Halo rolls beneath us in fractured light: patched rooftops, flooded alleys, flickering signs, the bakery’s blue tooth sign dark and broken above the street where I fell.
I look away.
Pain rises like a tide.
