“OH, NO. NO, NO, NO.”
I press my hand against hers, guiding it back to the wound. The blood seeps through our fingers, sticky, warm.
“Emma!” I shout toward the roof.
Bree’s breathing is labored. Her eyelids flutter.
“Did you get him?” she asks.
“Yeah. We got him.”
She manages the smallest smile, then leans against the wall and groans.
“Emma!”
She’s at the top of the stairwell now, looking down on us. “I can try,” Emma says. “All I can do is try.”
I pull Bree to her feet. She can’t hold her own weight anymore, so I slip an arm beneath her knees and carry her. Emma squeezes past us to lead.
The hospital is full of workers, most of them tending to injured Order members that have been transported back to Union Central from the square. Emma points to a vacant bed and I lower Bree onto the stiff mattress.
“You’re fine,” I tell her, but I’ve never seen her look worse. There’s so much blood and her skin is too pale and something is off in her eyes. She’s half elsewhere. “Bree?”
Her head rolls to look at me. I kiss her knuckles.
Emma shouts orders to another medic. Bree’s jacket needs to come off. And she needs a sedative.
“Gray, you have to move,” Emma says.
But I don’t want to let go of Bree’s hand. It might never be warm again. Emma pushes against me. Bree’s fingers are sticky in mine.
“Someone get him out of here,” Emma yells. “Get him out!”
I’m heaved away by a burly medic and shoved into the hallway. The door slams in my face. When I try the handle, it’s locked. All I’m left with is a window view of the chaos. Fists against the glass, throat tightening, I watch.
The sleeve of Bree’s leather jacket is sliced open, then freed at the shoulder. Her entire right side, from shoulder to rib cage, is dark with blood. They cut away her shirt and roll her onto her stomach. A medic walks to the window and pulls down a shade.
I slam my palms against the glass, scream Bree’s name. The shade remains down. For a long time. Long enough that I quit pounding on the glass and instead slide to the floor. My father, Blaine, now her? It will actually break me. I will come apart at the seams. How many pieces of myself am I expected to lose and still remain standing?
I stare at her blood on my hands.
I can’t stop shaking.
Someone needs to tell me what to do. Someone needs to tell me because I’m about to shatter.
You can’t sit there feeling sorry for yourself, that’s for sure, I hear Blaine chide in my ear. Frank’s dead and everyone’s still fighting. Go tell them it’s time to stop.
He would judge me, even now. But haven’t I done enough? Sacrificed plenty? How much am I expected to give?
Everything, Blaine says. Because people believed.
And right then, the true influence of Bea’s work hits me—the stories in the Harbinger, the propaganda that’s been hung throughout towns, the rumors that have been whispered in quiet streets. I thought they were all lies, but they’re not. They’ll only become lies if I don’t do this, if I choose to make them such.
I’m not the only one who’s lost a brother or father or friend. I’m not the only one who’s been wronged. Down in that square, everyone’s future is a breath away, or maybe a bullet too close to being taken from them. And if I can’t stand with them now, what the hell has this all been for?
I glance at the window to Bree’s room. The curtain is still drawn.
This is the last thing you have to do, Blaine promises. She’ll understand.
There’s always one last thing. There will be another after this. That’s life.
But he’s right. If our fates were reversed, I know he’d already be downtown.
I take a deep breath and stand. Because I must. Because really, when I look at the whole of the matter, there’s no other option.
Several blocks from the square there’s so much debris in the road I have to abandon the car I took from Union Central and continue on foot. The gunfire is deafening, the world an inferno of flames. I end up cornered in a narrow alley, cowering behind a Dumpster while Order members try to take me out from the roof. I’m an idiot, armed with the same handgun that’s been without ammo since I shot Frank’s pilots and no plan whatsoever. Somehow, this all seemed a lot easier in my head.
“You trying to get yourself killed?”
I look across the alley and see Elijah’s cousin peering from behind a door. He points at a trail of dark liquid on the ground. At first I think it’s blood, but notice it’s leaking from an overturned Order vehicle at the end of the alley.
Elijah’s cousin lights a match and tosses it onto the gasoline. The flames snake up the trail, and when they meet the car, I can feel the explosion in my ribs. The gunfire falters. Momentarily deaf, I dart across the alley beneath the cover of smoke and into the opposite building.
We race up a few flights and find Elijah hunched over a table with a half dozen other Rebels, shouting into a radio. He’s covered in blood but he’s fully mobile, so the blood can’t be his. I tell him about Frank, and he immediately starts firing off orders.
“Someone get a call back to Union Central. I want video of the body ready to go. Two guards for Gray over there.” He points to a balcony that overlooks the square. “And get him in a bulletproof vest. I’m not taking any chances.”