Kyron
The pain started before Beckett said a word.
A tight band around my ribs that doesn’t have a cause.
I walk it off. It doesn’t walk off. It gets worse.
By the time the trees thin and the facility comes into view I’m working harder than I should to keep my breathing even, and the mark on my wrist is hot in a way that has nothing to do with the mark.
I look around at the rest of them. Locke is sweating and the rest of them look some variation of green or pale.
Something is wrong with all of us.
Nobody says it.
We’ve slowed more than I realize.
Nova is in trouble.
We need to move if Nova is in trouble.
“Come on. Faster.”
Someone grumbles, but we move.
The facility is set into a low rise. White lights along the perimeter. A side door fifty feet across an open lot, gray, no markings.
Beckett checks his watch and his hands are shaking too hard to read it cleanly.
“Ten seconds,” he says.
The door opens.
There’s a woman in the gap. Smaller than I expected from the voice. Hair pulled back. Hands already up.
“I’m Linda. Hurry.”
We shuffle past her, still moving too slow.
The corridor is too bright. Linda’s already past me, walking fast.
“Down two. Left. The door at the end.”
I can’t get a full breath but I keep moving.
Halfway down the second flight Vaelor stops. Hand against the wall. He’s not breathing right.
“Vaelor.”
“I’m—” His voice is wrong. “Yeah. Yeah.”
He nods, moves again.
The corridor at the bottom is too short and too long at the same time. There’s something at the end of it, a brightness leaking around the edges of a door.
That’s not right.
Linda stops short of it. She’s already turning. Already making herself small against the wall.
“Go. I can’t—”
Locke pushes past her.
He grabs the door.
He looks at me. I don’t know why he looks at me. Maybe because I’m the one still mostly upright. Maybe because once he opens this door, something changes that we can’t take back.
I nod.
Because whatever has changed, it’s already happened.
He opens the door.
The light hits us first. So bright I have to fight to open my eyes.
Then she comes into view.
Because the light… It’s her.
The room stops.
I can’t tell if what I’m seeing is real.
She’s in the chair but she’s not.
There are straps on her wrists and ankles like her body remembers where it was supposed to be. Her hair — silver-white, floating — is lifted off her shoulders like there’s no gravity in the foot of air around her head.
Light is coming up through her skin. Not from the mark. From her.
But she keeps changing like she’s shifting through forms between her human body, her phoenix and something… other.
There are wings.
Light shaped like feathers. Lifting from her shoulders and reaching past the chair on either side. Something in the corner of my vision is bending where the wings touch it.
She’s beautiful.
She’s beautiful in a way I’ll never recover from.
The sound that comes out of her almost brings me to my knees.
Because it can only mean one thing.
She’s dying.
And suddenly the pain is gone.
Gone.
Like it was never there.
My knees hit the ground hard but I can’t feel it.
The pain.
It was never mine.
It was hers.
I’ve been carrying her pain and I didn’t know.
She’s been carrying it alone.
I can’t breathe.
“No!”
Laith yells and I watch his hand cover his mouth. He’s looking at her like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
Someone is pressed to the glass watching her die. They laugh and my body goes rigid.
Lena.
Locke makes a sound behind me. Not a word.
Beckett is breathing hard. I can hear it.
No one is moving. I don’t know if any of us can.
But I know Nova is dying.
We have to move.
We have to.