Theo rises from his chair to crouch beside me. “I’m going to bring your mother back, okay? As soon as I can.”
I try to focus on his blurry face, but instead I’m seeing my father’s smiling one, feeling his tight hugs. “Mom? She’s still alive?”
He swallows. “Yes, she’s alive and well.”
“H-how did he die?”
“I don’t know.”
Is that true? Would he lie to spare my sanity? Would I be able to handle it if my father was tortured to death?
I roll onto my back, and the fractured chandelier light dances in my vision, rainbows sparking in the crystals.
My heart is mutilated. Am I even human anymore?
“What can I do?” Theo asks.
Nothing. He can do nothing.
I wish I’d never met Theodore Harrison.
When I don’t speak, he continues, “I’m taking you out of the field, Sophia.”
Too numb to respond, I blink at the chandelier.
“Your squad will be dissolved, with the remaining members moved to another. I promised your father I’d keep you safe, and you’re too reckless for fieldwork. I will not let him down.”
“What will you do with me instead?”
He pauses to lower himself to the floor beside me. “You wanted to go to med school, didn’t you?”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of that, my silly desires from the life before. I’ve killed more people than I will ever save.
“We can train you in the hospital wing. You can be a medic.”
I say nothing.
His voice gentles. “You can save lives instead of…”
“No,” I said to Theo now, shaking myself of the memory. “You’re not wasting me.”
He scrutinized me, his mouth tight with displeasure. “I wish you hadn’t agreed to this assignment.”
“Williams clearly wanted me to do it.”
“Williams is desperate.”
I shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”
Somehow, his posture grew more rigid. “There are some things that should not be sacrificed.”
I smiled. Or I thought I smiled. Maybe I frowned. Or laughed. “Like me?”
A silence stretched before he said, “Yes.”
“I am no one,” I said. “And you know that, or you wouldn’t have even considered asking me.”
“She didn’t give me a choice,” he said, and I detected the faintest hint of defeat wafting from his very essence. He was so different now from what he’d been at the beginning. His impassioned words back then had given me hope.
