how to earn the right to Heaven. He saw everyone’s life as split between that destination, and another very different one below. I guess some of his words have burrowed into my heart deeper than I imagined, sinking in like thorns, because there was a moment before I reached him, when Lucas was standing in the middle of a ring of fire, and all I could think was I’ve already lost you.
Hell isn’t a place you go; Hell is where we live now. Hell is being helpless to protect the people you care about the most, and save them from themselves.
We will never have that Lucas back, I think. Not the one we grew up with. Even if I can shake him from this, the last thing to heal will be his soul. It will break his heart, and no matter how many times I’m there to help piece it back together, the cracks will always be there, the mends will only harden it. But then again, am I the Sam he grew up with? Is Mia the same sister? How can we fit together, now that this world has snapped and bent our edges?
“Girls!” The word is barked at us from across the street.
I sit up again, bracing myself. The soldier in charge is cutting a path toward us, shouldering aside anyone who stands in his way. The woman who processed us with the device makes a quick, quiet report to him, and both of their eyes shift to Mia, who is glaring back at them from under a mass of curly black hair.
“Girls,” he says again, standing over us, hands on his hips, “I need to know who the young man is.”
Here is something else that’s different: they ask us questions like they expect to believe us. And, well, the PSFs would have already had us rolling in the direction of the nearest camp. I wonder for the first time if the only reason we’re still here is that these people literally have no clue what to do with us now, or who should make that call. With the PSFs, at least I knew what to expect. I have no idea what these people are capable of, what they’re willing to do, and that’s a whole new flavor of fear.
Closing the camps didn’t knock the players off the game board. It didn’t even rearrange them. It just added unknown rules and elements; now we have to learn how to live all over again, and it’s still not even on our own terms.
“He’s no one,” Mia says.
“Yes, apparently,” he says, impatience rushing the words. “There isn’t a record of him. No ID, either.”
“He’s no one,” Mia repeats, daring the man to ask her one more time. He senses the challenge in her voice and shifts the full weight of his attention to her. I can barely make out his face in the dark.
I know what Mia is trying to do; if he’s no one, then they won’t send him wherever they’re sending us. But that’ll only last as long as he’s unconscious. When he wakes up, and he’s surrounded by people in a hospital he doesn’t recognize, then what?
“He’s her brother,” I say, and my shoulders hunch at Mia’s hiss. At this point, I don’t think she could hate me more than she already does. But this might be our only chance to stay together. “He’s a Green. There’s no record because he was never taken into a camp.”
“That so?” The soldier glances back at the ambulance, and I think, Is that a hint of admiration in his tone? “What happened to him?”
“He tripped as he was coming down the stairs, knocked his head,” I say. “We were running to avoid these people…they were trying to kidnap us.”
He looks like he can’t quite believe this.
“Didn’t you see them?” I ask. “Two men and an older woman.”
The man shakes his head and my fragile little piece of hope starts to splinter. I’m so used to thinking about life in terms of action and reaction, crime and punishment, that I can’t take my eyes off his sidearm, or the baton hanging against his thigh. A new thread of worry weaves in and out of the mass already choking me.
“We didn’t mean…the fire was an accident,” I continue, and I can’t believe he’s let me say this much. “We were just trying to protect ourselves.”
“You could have destroyed this whole neighborhood,” he says sharply. “You shouldn’t be out here running around—this isn’t