have lost everything already. My hands shake as I stop by the control room to watch the city on the screens. Johanna is arranging transportation for those who want to leave the city. They will come here to learn the truth. I don't know what will happen to those who remain in Chicago, and I'm not sure I care.
I shove my hands into my pockets and watch for a few minutes, then walk away again, trying to match my footsteps to my heartbeat, or to avoid the cracks between the tiles. When I walk past the entrance, I see a small group of people gathered by the stone sculpture, one of them in a wheelchair—Nita.
I walk past the useless security barrier and stand at a distance, watching them. Reggie steps on the stone slab and opens a valve in the bottom of the water tank. The drops turn into a stream of water, and soon water gushes out of the tank, splattering all over the slab, soaking the bottom of Reggie's pants.
"Tobias?"
I shudder a little. It's Caleb. I turn away from the voice, searching for an
escape route.
"Wait. Please," he says.
I don't want to look at him, to measure how much, or how little, he grieves for her. And I don't want to think about how she died for such a miserable coward, about how he wasn't worth her life.
Still, I do look at him, wondering if I can see some of her in his face, still hungry for her even now that I know she's gone.
His hair is unwashed and unkempt, his green eyes bloodshot, his mouth twitching into a frown.
He does not look like her.
"I don't mean to bother you," he says. "But I have something to tell you. Something . . . she told me to tell you, before . . ."
"Just get on with it," I say, before he tries to finish the sentence.
"She told me that if she didn't survive, I should tell you . . ." Caleb chokes, then pulls himself up straight, fighting off tears. "That she didn't want to leave you."
I should feel something, hearing her last words to me, shouldn't I? I feel nothing. I feel farther away than ever.
"Yeah?" I say harshly. "Then why did she? Why didn't she let you die?"
"You think I'm not asking myself that question?" Caleb says. "She loved me. Enough to hold me at gunpoint so she could die for me. I have no idea why, but that's just the way it is."
He walks away without letting me respond, and it's probably better that way, because I can't think of anything to say that is equal to my anger. I blink away tears and sit down on the ground, right in the middle of the lobby.
I know why she wanted to tell me that she didn't want to leave me. She wanted me to know that this was not another Erudite headquarters, not a lie told to make me sleep while she went to die, not an act of unnecessary selfsacrifice. I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes like I can push my tears back into my skull. No crying, I chastise myself. If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.
Sometime later I hear voices nearby —Cara and Peter.
"This sculpture was a symbol of change," she says to him. "Gradual change, but now they're taking it down."
"Oh, really?" Peter sounds eager. "Why?"
"Um . . . I'll explain later, if that's okay," Cara says. "Do you remember how to get back to the dormitory?"
"Yep."
"Then . . . go back there for a while. Someone will be there to help you."
Cara walks over to me, and I cringe in anticipation of her voice. But all she does is sit next to me on the ground, her hands folded in her lap, her back straight. Alert but relaxed, she watches the sculpture where Reggie stands under the gushing water.
"You don't have to stay here," I say.
"I don't have anywhere to be," she says. "And the quiet is nice."
So we sit side by side, staring at the water, in silence.
"There you are," Christina says, jogging toward us. Her face is swollen and her voice is listless, like a heavy sigh. "Come on, it's time. They're unplugging him."
I shudder at the word, but push
myself to my feet anyway. Hana and Zeke have been hovering over Uriah's body since we got here, their fingers finding his, their