Chapter 2
Pain first.
Sharp and bright behind Harper's eyes, radiating down her neck, across her shoulders. Then sound—a low groan of metal settling, the drip-drip-drip of something liquid hitting concrete, distant wailing that might have been sirens or might have been her own voice echoing in her skull.
She opened her eyes.
Smoke. Gray and thick, hazing everything, making the emergency lights strobe red and blue through the murk like a nightmare given color.
The seatbelt cut across her chest, holding her at an angle that made her ribs ache with each breath.
Glass littered her lap, glittering in the strobing light.
Sharp edges pressed into her palms where her hands gripped the seat.
Where the hell was she?
How did she get here?
The question floated through her mind, but the answer wouldn't come. She remembered the subway. Delilah talking about Marcus and Jennifer. The poster for the Latharian Mate Program. Going home. Then—
Nothing.
No, wait. Not nothing. Fragments. Delilah's voice, bright and reckless: "Come on, Harp, one wild weekend before we marry scaly aliens!
Live a little!" The sharp smell of alcohol.
She'd tried to say no, tried to be responsible, but Delilah had pulled her toward the flyer car rental kiosk, laughing about how they had money now, real money, enough for one night of fun before they left Earth forever.
The bars. Too many bars. She'd nursed one drink while Delilah threw back shots with strangers, the signing bonus disappearing credit by credit. Her voice, tight with anxiety: "We need to go back to the LMP office. We're supposed to wait for pickup. Delilah, please."
But Delilah had just laughed and ordered another round.
And then—the flyer car. Delilah at the controls, too drunk to be driving anything, her climbing in anyway because what else could she do? Leave Delilah alone? Let her crash without anyone there to—
Oh god.
The memory slammed home and her stomach twisted.
She hadn't stopped it. She'd gotten in the car knowing Delilah was drunk, knowing it was dangerous, and she'd done it anyway because she always did. Always followed, always tried to fix it, always failed.
She blinked, trying to focus. The world tilted, refused to straighten. Underground bypass. Concrete walls. The flyer car Delilah had hired—
The smell hit her then. Burning metal, acrid and chemical, mixing with fuel and something sweet that made her stomach turn. The scent crawled into her lungs, coated her tongue, and her mind stuttered.
No.
Not again.
The spinning started before she could stop it.
The world twisted, metal shrieked, and she was twelve years old, trapped in twisted wreckage with her parents dying.
Her hands flew to the seatbelt, fingers scrabbling at the release.
Trapped. She was trapped and the groaning wreckage would collapse any second and crush her and she couldn't get out, couldn't—
The release clicked, but her hands were shaking too hard to pull the belt away. It tangled around her shoulders, across her chest, holding her in place while the smoke thickened and the sirens wailed and somewhere someone was screaming.
Was that her?
She didn't know. Couldn't tell. The sound filled her ears, high and terrified and endless. Her throat was raw, but the screaming wouldn't stop.
"—survivors in the wreckage—"
Voices. Distant. Muffled like they were coming through water. She tried to focus on them, tried to grab onto something real, but the smell of burning metal dragged her under again.
Her parents' car. The intersection. The truck that ran the red light.
No. The flyer car. The bypass. Delilah at the controls, drunk and laughing, ignoring her warnings to slow down, to be careful, to—
Both. Neither. The crashes bled together, two moments occupying the same space in her mind. She was twelve and thirty-two simultaneously, watching her parents die and watching Delilah die and surviving both because that's what she did. She survived. Always survived while everyone around her—
Her fingers found the scar on her left forearm, traced the thin ridge of tissue that marked where glass had sliced her open in the first crash.
The touch grounded her for three seconds before fresh pain flared and she looked down to see new cuts crossing the old scar.
Blood welled up, bright red against pale skin, past and present literally layered on the same patch of flesh.
I survived that one too.
The thought came with bitter certainty. Of course she had. She always did.
Her vision swam. The smoke thickened, or maybe it was her own tears, she couldn't tell anymore. The seatbelt finally came free and she lurched forward, gasping, reaching for the door handle with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Movement to her left made her freeze.
Delilah.
Her cousin slumped in the driver's seat, head lolled to the side at an angle that made her stomach drop.
Blood matted the honey blonde hair she'd watched Delilah style just hours ago, bright and dark against her too-pale face.
The fitted top she'd changed into for their "wild weekend" was torn, soaked through with red.
So much red.
Too much red. She didn't need medical training to know that much blood meant nothing good.
The angle of Delilah's neck, the shallow breathing, the way her skin had gone gray under the strobing emergency lights—this was bad.
Critical. The kind of bad that meant minutes mattered and she was pinned three feet away, useless, watching her cousin die the way she'd watched her parents die.
"Delilah?" Her voice cracked. She reached out with trembling fingers, touched her cousin's shoulder. "Delilah, wake up. Come on, we have to—"
Nothing. No response. No movement except the shallow rise and fall of Delilah's chest that she had to watch for ten seconds to even confirm.
Alive. Still alive.
But for how long?
The guilt crashed over her in waves that stole what little air she had left. This was her fault. She should have stopped Delilah from taking the money, from going drinking, from hiring the flyer car. Should have refused to get in. Should have been more responsible, more forceful, more—
More what? She'd tried. God, she'd tried.
Spent the whole night trailing after Delilah through bars she couldn't afford, watching her cousin drink away the signing bonus that was supposed to save them both.
Reminding her over and over that they should go back to the LMP office, wait for pickup like they were supposed to.
But Delilah had laughed and ordered another round and she'd stayed because she always stayed, always tried to keep her cousin safe, always failed—
"I can't—" Her hands clawed at the door handle, found it jammed. She pulled harder, panic rising in her throat like bile. "I can't get out. I can't—"
The metal groaned. Somewhere behind them, something sparked and caught, sending orange light flickering through the smoke. The chemical smell intensified and her vision tunneled.
The truck hit them from the side. Her mother screamed. Metal crumpled. Glass exploded. Her father's hands on the wheel, knuckles white, trying to regain control but the car was spinning, flipping, and she was twelve years old and couldn't do anything but scream—
No. She was thirty-two. In a flyer car. Underground. Delilah was hurt. Had to get to Delilah, had to help her, had to—
But the seatbelt was cutting into her chest again even though she'd released it, and the screaming wouldn't stop.
She couldn't tell if the blood on her hands was from this crash or that crash or if it even mattered because people were dying and she was surviving and that's what she did. That's all she ever did.
Survive.
While everyone else—
"—multiple casualties—"
"—careful—"
The voices were closer now but they didn't make sense. The words scrambled in her ears, broke apart into meaningless sounds. She pressed her hands over her face, felt blood and glass and smoke coating her skin. Her pulse hammered in her temples, at the base of her throat, everywhere at once.
Breathe. She had to breathe.
But the air tasted like burning metal and death.
Her parents had died instantly, they'd told her later. Quick. Painless. A mercy, the social worker had said, like that made it better. Like she hadn't spent three hours trapped in the wreckage waiting for help, listening to silence where her parents' voices should have been.
Three hours alone with corpses while she survived.
And now Delilah—
She lunged for her cousin again, grabbed her shoulder, shook hard enough to hurt. "Wake up. Please wake up. You have to wake up because I can't—I can't do this again. I can't watch you die. Please."
Nothing. Just that awful, shallow breathing, too much blood and her own voice rising higher, breaking apart.
"Please. Delilah, please. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have stopped you. Should have made you stay at the office. Should have—"
The list was endless. All the ways she'd failed. All the ways she'd let this happen.
All the ways she was responsible for another person dying while she survived.
The pattern held. It always held. Her parents, the guardians who'd raised them, and now Delilah bleeding out in a crashed flyer car because she hadn't been good enough, smart enough, strong enough to prevent this.
Cursed. She was cursed.
Everyone she loved died, but she kept living and she didn't know how to make it stop.
Her fingers found her scar again, pressed hard enough to hurt, hard enough to feel something other than the crushing weight of guilt.
The fresh cuts bled over the old tissue, twenty years of trauma layered in the same small patch of skin.
Evidence. Proof. She'd survived before, she'd survive this, Delilah would die and it would be her fault—
"—got a survivor here—"
"—female, conscious—"