even feel the sting. Because right in front of me, Remi crumples, eyes closed, face pale, slipping through Jaesin’s arms to the ground.
Every single almost moment flashes through my mind.
The rooftop, just a few hours ago, shoulder to shoulder, stars in my hair.
Out at the club, dancing close, hands on waists and hips.
That one time, when we were barely fifteen . . . that first almost . . .
No.
“We have to get out of here,” Ania says, voice gone calm and even. “If there’s another pressure surge, we’re all dead.”
“Diz, help me,” Jaesin snaps, and that shakes me out of my horror. One of Remi’s hands flopped outside the second set of wards when they collapsed, and I leap forward to grab it and help Jaesin haul them back. Once they’re clear of the protective barrier around the tap point, Jaesin and I throw Remi’s arms over our shoulders and half drag, half carry them back to the access hatch, Ania jogging ahead of us to clear the newly fallen debris from our path.
Behind us, secondary explosions ring through the tunnels, with screeching pipes and a threatening rumble that feels almost like an earthquake aftershock. Remi’s electric blue rain boots drag over the moist, nasty concrete, the color quickly erased by grime and clinging wet weeds.
By the time we catch up to Ania at the end of the tunnel, she’s woven a quick combination of vitaz, the healer, and magnaz, the amplifier, an odd bright green glow in the cavernous filthy darkness of the sewers. Jaesin and I brace Remi long enough for Ania to slip the tiny spell onto their tongue, where it dissolves in a wash of green static.
An eternal ten seconds pass before there’s any visible effect.
Finally Remi’s eyelids flutter, their breathing going uneven for a moment, then cool gray eyes stare back at me, growing sharper and more alert by the second. The relief nearly chokes me breathless. My eyes burn with the effort to hold back tears.
“Can you walk?” I ask, brisk and clipped. They pull away from me, letting their arm fall from my shoulders and trying a tentative step.
“Yeah,” they rasp, pressing a hand to their temple with a wince. “Ania, gimme some of that.”
Remi gestures at the vial of extra vitaz Ania has pulled from her bag, and the maz lifts out of the vial like an ivy vine, twining through the air toward them. A bit of magnaz from the stores in their necklace, a tight and complex weave, and the whole thing goes straight into their mouth. A bit of color returns to Remi’s cheeks, but it’s a temporary fix at best. Without a word, they shrug Jaesin’s arm off and step onto the bottom rung of the ladder. Jaesin follows them up, close enough to catch them if they fall, and we climb until all four of us are back at the hatch. There’s no time to make a clean, stealthy exit, not with Remi’s condition and the constant threat of more explosions at our back. I push my way to the front and throw the door open, letting the late-morning sun spill over us, and step back.
When I turn to watch Remi emerge behind me, the wreckage beyond the park comes into view.
The explosion wasn’t just belowground.
Fire. Debris strewn through the streets. People running, screaming, crying. Loose maz pouring into the air from a gaping wound in the junction station.
Then the contamination sirens kick on, wailing their shrill warning, a savage punch to the gut.
Is the maz spilling from the station untreated? It’s moving fast, overtaking block after block, spilling, infecting.
Killing?
I wrap my arms around my middle, physically holding in noxious, nauseating dread.
What have we done?
Nine
I CAN BARELY SEE WHERE I’m going as we stumble through the park to the sight of people running through the streets, away from the junction station. My vision blurs, my mind one solid, silent scream as we run, my feet following Jaesin on autopilot as they have for the past ten years, since our first day in the group home together.
“We need to get to the train station,” he says, his voice hoarse. He wraps an arm around Remi to keep them on their feet as he turns toward an alley that dumps out on the nearest main road. “Come on!”
The four of us blend into the crowd, our breathing as harsh and panicked as everyone else’s. I hardly see any of it. My brain spins in endless circles, replaying every second