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I can’t bring myself to answer his question. Valery will be dead soon. There’s no way to stop it. If one of us is infected, we all will be soon.
“Ad!” Dante shakes me.
“She’s clean,” Erik says. “If any of us were infected, there would already be signs. You saw how quickly it infected Valery.” He places a protective arm around my shoulder, and Dante turns his attention to the rest of us. No one shows signs of infection. We have to hope we’re safe, but the truth is that none of us knows what we’re dealing with.
We keep our lights on and move in a huddle. No one talks. A sense of shared urgency pulses among us.
“Why would she do that?” Dante finally says. His words are a mix of disgust and admiration, and I’m almost certain he’s not looking for an answer.
“Guilt.” Erik answers anyway, though his eyes never waver from the street ahead of us. “She betrayed us. This was her way of making it right.”
I want to thank him for this obvious answer, but I know I’m looking for an outlet for my anger. I want to crack a joke and make the ache in my chest go away. But it’s not going to be that easy this time. If it was ever that easy before.
“She didn’t have to get herself killed.” Erik’s words are few, but full of meaning.
“Sometimes death is the only absolution,” Dante says.
I shake my head. I don’t buy that for one minute. “There is no absolution in death, only escape.”
“There’s absolution in sacrifice,” Erik says softly. I hear it in his voice—the pain of his own sacrifice. But what has he given up, and why?
“Sebrina’s house should be another block,” Jost says, switching the topic to something practical to distract us from what we’ve lost.
“What if she isn’t there?” I ask, immediately wishing I hadn’t.
“She’s there,” Jost says. There’s not a trace of doubt in his voice.
I wish I had that kind of conviction. I wish it were as simple as deciding to believe—in our plan, in the future, in who I am. My world is so tinged with little gray lies I can’t be sure I know what to do or what to believe in anymore. The Eastern Sector is playing tricks on my mind.
The darkness creeps around us and I’m reminded of the world I left behind at the Coventry. But here the monster we face cannot be outwitted. It’s simply a matter of being faster than it.
It’s as simple as not being touched.
NINETEEN
THE STREET IS FULL OF HOUSES THAT blend into the night, each perfectly plain and unobtrusive. The trees are dying, their thin branches drooping like broken limbs to the clumps of grass and remains of plants in each yard. What was once precise and pleasing is now a neighborhood of ghosts. Any of these houses could be infested by whatever the Guild has unleashed. There’s no vitality to the weave. Tarnished time threads knit through the brittle, frayed threads that make up the world around us. Only a few hours ago I believed there was no Eastern Sector. Now that I’m here I know that, without looms, there won’t be one much longer. Everything here is dying as time and space slip back into the universe.
We quietly pass each house and I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting for the next attack.
None comes and that almost makes it worse.
The space between fear and anticipation is a waking nightmare of recrimination and doubt. I’m perpetually trapped in the knowledge of my own inferiority.
Could I make the sacrifice Valery did?
Would it even matter in the end?
The farther we walk in silence, the more questions tumble through my head. I have no answers and the lack of finality breeds more doubts until my mind is numb, overstuffed with questions I can never answer. It is a table of plates with no food—a feast of famine to gorge my mind on as we move closer to Sebrina.
I focus myself on this mission. I can effect change. I can save Jost’s daughter.
I can.
I can.
I can.
I repeat it over and over in my head, but I come no closer to believing it.
