Do it, Ory, Max said in Ory’s mind, the same way he always imagined it before he had to kick open an abandoned Arlington door or go into a deserted shop, to give him courage. He clung to it fiercely now, the memory of the sound of her voice. Go!
He ran with everything he had, as fast and quietly as he could. The Reds were all still fixated on their leader as they escorted him and Imanuel in, some excited, some entranced. Ory skirted the outside of the crowd, hoping he looked like just another eager warrior. Past the rubble, into the courtyard, up the stairs—through the darkness of the doors.
He was in.
Hide, Ory, Max’s voice urged again. He ducked behind the first set of shelves he saw, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. Overhead, a few books glided between the rafters of the library in slow circles, mournful birds separated from their flock, pages fluttering like wings. The Red King and Imanuel entered, flanked by crimson warriors. Across the main lobby, the pregnant woman was still there where Ory had seen her last, still swollen with child, still in pain. But now there was much more blood. Much more. She was pale with fatigue, the skin of her trembling lips almost gray.
The longer Ory watched her from behind the bookcase, the more he didn’t know how much Imanuel could do for her without a hospital. In fact, it seemed like it would be almost nothing. Even if she still had the strength to push, too much could go wrong. Ory couldn’t understand how Imanuel thought he was going to save her—or get the book.
He isn’t, Ory.
He refused to believe Max’s voice. He refused to believe that Imanuel had come only to see Paul’s book one last time, and never hoped to make it out anyway. Surely his life was worth more than this. One pointless, unwinnable quest.
So is staying here to look for me, her voice said, but the Red woman’s wailing drowned it out.
The procession began to lumber past Ory’s hiding place then. First the Red King swept farther inward, dragging layers and layers of red cloaks, velvet curtains and afghan rugs stacked on top of one another beneath his armor. It looked so heavy Ory couldn’t believe he could still stand under their weight. Then the rest of the Reds came, panicked, hopeful, ushering a trembling Imanuel deeper inside.
The woman cried again as they reached her, and Ory scooted back for more cover, deeper into the tangled maze of wood and books.
“Baby,” he heard Imanuel say, to see if even though they could no longer speak, perhaps they understood.
The word seemed to do nothing. The Red King roared.
Find the book, Max told Ory. He turned around and peered into the nightmarish forest of shelves. Find the book for Imanuel and then save him, while there’s still time. Before the woman dies.
He crept deeper into the library. The stacks twisted, some dead-ending, some spiraling back on themselves, some too tightly packed to squeeze through. He tried to work his way toward signs still hanging on the walls, hoping for directions to different sections and genres, but every time he heard a Red, he had to divert behind another overturned bookcase or sideways shelf to hide, getting more and more lost.
Hurry, Max’s voice whispered to him. Find the book before it’s too late.
Ory glanced back, and through two half-empty shelves glimpsed Imanuel, his lab coat already stained with blood, his tools emptied out all around him, trying desperately to hold the woman still so he could try something, anything. She wailed, delirious, clawing at her bare belly. Blood was smeared on the floor all around her.
Then there it was—the sign near the back, on the wall—POETRY.
Ory scrambled faster, heart racing, as the Red woman’s scream shattered the room again—but this time it was different. There was death in the scream. Turn back! Max whispered suddenly. There’s no time. He ignored her, and threw himself against the shelf, nose pressed against hundreds of musty spines, searching for the W names. Paul Jeremiah West. Paul Jeremiah West. Paul Jeremiah West.
Ory, Max begged in his head.
He found the Ws all near the bottom. Wallace, Walter, Webb, Wepford, White—
“No,” he breathed. The seconds were racing by. He checked again, but there was nothing. Nothing in the space between Wepford and White.
It wasn’t there.
Ory leaned closer. On the spines of the books on either side of where Paul’s should have been, there were old stains, the streaks long dried, as if someone had come to this exact place and sorted through, looking for something in particular. Someone covered in red.
“Yes!” Imanuel shouted then, from far across the library.
Ory jerked back toward the sound and peered through the fractured shelves. The Red King had pulled something small and rectangular out of the jagged angles of his armor, and held it toward Imanuel as a last, desperate offering to stop the woman’s pain and save her life. A book.
No, Ory thought.
The cover came into view as the Red King reached down to hand it over.
No.
But it was. Paul’s poetry.
Ory stared, transfixed, as Imanuel reached for it and the Red King roared back at him.