“Upstairs. Asleep. Late night for him.”
Whatever I said next made him laugh, but my heart and thoughts floated far away.
Distant.
Distracted.
Scared.
When it grew late, I forced myself to my bed.
As usual, my mind wrapped itself in dark, anxious thoughts, my eyes wet with tears. When I managed to sleep, I dreamt of my old squad, plagued by the belief that it should have been me. None of them had deserved what had happened to them. They’d been better and stronger than I ever was, and yet mine was the only heart that still beat. How did it do it when it felt so utterly demolished?
The grief was like cancer, hidden, invisible amongst the valves and ventricles and arteries. It weaved through each muscle fiber, strangling them one by one. Slow and deliberate and cold.
My chest hurt.
The ache was constant, ebbing and flowing like waves on the shore. Sometimes the tide receded, and my thoughts cleared, but then a storm surge would drown me. It weighed on me, stealing my breath from my body.
My chesthurt.
Tekqua had always been my rock.
When the tears came, she chanted my mantra. When I couldn’t sleep, she sang. When I needed distraction, she talked until I’d forgotten why I was hurting to begin with. In the summer, we’d laze in the coolest parts of headquarters while she mocked my hair’s ever-expanding entropy. When snow coated the overgrown gardens in a sparkly white blanket, Tekqua dragged me into the cold for snowball fights. We would shiver and laugh until our stomachs ached, then trudge inside to drink cinnamon moonshine Adam had stolen from who-knew-where.
Without her, I was stumbling on unstable ground, and everything hurt—my heart, my skin, even my fingernails. My mind was a mess of hopelessness, my soul missing pieces shaped like the people I’d lost. In every spare moment, I wondered whether I’d ever be normal again.
But I already knew the answer.
No, there was no going back to normal after this.
8
Safe House Red
Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them…
—ARTICLE 3, U.S. CONSTITUTION
Our van jerks to a stop, and my squad hustles into the afternoon light. The air reeks of smoke and gunpowder, and shots pop in a metallic wheeze through the skies. Cherry Street had been a trendy nightlife spot prior to the war, and the road is narrow, with the abandoned shells of bars and restaurants standing on either side—the ghosts of normalcy.
Safe House Red used to be a glamorous luxury apartment building.
Now it’s on fire.
Several blocks down the street, black smoke billows into the sky. Even from our distance, I can see the residents jumping from windows and balconies, trying to escape the flames.
My squad is meant to keep the combat soldiers armed, but in the mayhem, that goal melts to the concrete beneath our feet.
Sergeant Taylor whips around. “Change of plans. Keep safe. Stay together. We head to Safe House Red to evacuate civilians, got it?”
Time slows as I peer around, the world tilting while the colors shift. It takes on that darkened texture, that film that tells me this isn’t real.
Not anymore.
But I have been here before. I didn’t like how it ended.
Maybe I can change it this time.
