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He looks me over as though mourning time soon-to-be lost. “Ey, it was a good run.” He smiles off in the distance. “Can’t ask for more, can I?”
I can pull strings.Could I?
Maybe that’s not the right question.
Should I?
“Donnelly,” a cop calls out.
Our eyes shoot forward.
She glances up from an electronic tablet. “Paul Donnelly. You’ve posted bail.” In a matter of minutes, she’s unlocked the cell and me from the bench and chains. Rubbing my sore wrists, I step out while the hefty metal slings shut.
“What about him?” I ask her under my breath.
She leads me down a hallway and whispers, “With major felony charges, the court has suspended the right to post bail for the rest of your family. He’ll likely be held until his hearing or until the court changes its decision. There’s a vehicle waiting for you out back. Press can’t see you’ve been released this quickly, or else it’ll blow your cover.”
I’m shocked they decided to release me at all then.
She sees my surprise. “Your security firm has ensured us you’ll enter the hospital undetected.”
The hospital.I don’t ask her about Luna. I’m brought to the rear lot of the police station, where paparazzi are forbidden to go, and I climb into the back of an SUV, windows tinted pitch-black.
The driver throws a red baseball cap and a pair of gray sweatpants at me. “That’s all I had in the car.”
“Thanks, boss.” I sound a little choked, but I put the Studio 9 baseball cap on, brim low over my eyes.
“You okay?” Akara turns to me.
“Is Luna?” I ask him.
He can’t hide his wince. “She hasn’t woken up, Donnelly.”
My nose flares. My heart is being shredded alive. “And Lily?” I wonder now.
He just shakes his head, unable to speak. It takes him a second. “We’re headed there. You did a really good job tonight.”
“No,” I tell him, my insides crushing with this cold reality. “I was too late.”
PART TWO
“While you slept, the world changed.”
- Xavier, House of X #6
24
LUNA HALE
Sterile lights beamdown on me in hot waves, and I imagine this is it.I’m on a spaceship.Taken away by an intergalactic species to be experimented on or be crowned queen. A hammer swings against my head,thumpingandthumping.My bones feel like seven-tons of bricks. Are there bricks on this planet?
Have I turned to stone?
Am I still even on Earth? I’m sinking…or I’m too drained to move.
I squint harder and try to distinguish shapes, but everything is justfuzzy.
Maybe I’m dreaming. One of those half-awake kind of dreams that’s sleepy and fogged. They’re not my favorite. I like the vivid tapestries of my imagination to overtake my subconscious. Not this cloudy, murky distorted confusion.
