I braced my hands on either side of the sink, taking deep breaths and blinking away the tears before they could fall. I felt as though I was going to pass out and suddenly all I wanted was to be alone, away from here, far away.
“Adrian.”
The way my best friend said my name nearly shattered me to pieces. I reigned in my emotions and heaved a shaking breath as I turned to face him.
“I know how hard this is,” he told me, taking a cautious step forward. “Believe me, I do.”
I clamped my mouth shut and nodded. I knew he did. Better than anyone else, the Culled could understand. I knew that. And yet I couldn’t quite forgive him for having never tried to get home. Not even once.
“I know acceptance feels impossible now,” he said and my brow furrowed in confusion. “But it’s so much easier when you finally find it. When you realize this is your life now, that this is the hand you’ve been dealt and you have to make the most of it. There’s a life to be found down here for you, Adrian. And I hope that I, that Roxy and Kane and Hugh, can all be a part of it. It'll take some time but I think—”
“Acceptance?” I asked. “You think I’ve given up?”
He blinked at me as though he was just as stunned as I was.
“You—what do you mean?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“I haven’t given up on trying to reach Sanctuary,” I told him. “Ineverwill, Darius. I’m not you. I can’t just wipe my family, my friends, from my mind. I can’t just find a new life here because it’s easier.”
“You think I just forgot about them?”
“What am I supposed to think?” I snapped, throwing my arms up in exasperation. “You never talk about them. You never tried to get back. You never—”
“But you did!” He was shouting now.
Our argument was beginning to catch the attention of the others. Roxy came to the threshold of the kitchen. Her wide, sad eyes swung from Darius to me and back again.
“You tried and you failed and you can’t accept that!" he screamed at me. "You’ve always been so damn stubborn, Adrian, and never satisfied.”
“Iwas the one who was never satisfied?Youwere the one who wanted your name in the Hall of Heroes!Youwere the one who wanted to sign up for the Trials in the first place! You’re the whole reason I’m even here!”
His shoulders fell at that. I saw the moment his jaw clenched, the heat of fury went out of his eyes.
“So that’s it,” he muttered, his voice colder and more distant than I'd ever heard it before. “You blame me.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t—” I started and then sighed. “I don’t know, Darius. I know it isn’t your fault, not really. After you were gone, I didn’t have to join the Trials. But I did and now I’m here and you’re standing there judging me for trying to get back. I don’t understand you. I don’t understand what you’ve become. Theboy I was friends with before would have done everything in his power to get back to his parents, to get back to Dahlia, to me.”
“Then maybe I’m not that boy anymore.”
His tone was cold, so cold. I felt then, even more than I had when he'd been Culled, that I'd truly lost him.
“Maybe you aren’t,” I said, my voice a whisper in response as we simply stood there, staring at one another.
“Adrian, please—” Roxy started, but I'd already slammed my empty beer bottle on the counter.
I pushed past her and Darius and headed for the door.
“Adrian,” Kane called out as I reached it.
I didn’t even look back when I wrenched it open and slammed it behind me, storming down the hall of the fourth level to the elevators beyond.
Acceptance.The word rang through my mind again and again as I made my way through the empty halls. I wouldn't accept this. I couldn’t. Because accepting the Underground meant accepting Dante’s betrayal and my newfound immortality. It meant accepting that I would live forever. That, someday, Darius would die. Roxy, Kane, and Hugh would die. My mother and my brothers would die, having never known I still lived just below them. Sophie and Graham and Harrison would die. The Finnegan brothers and Dahlia andBriaand Milo would all die and I would be here, alone, supervising work that meant nothing to me, overseeing labor that continued a cycle without purpose.
We keep them alive, that’s what Tiberius had told me. But alive for what? What was living if it never amounted to anything at all?
I stepped into the elevator and hesitated, my eyes roving over the buttons before me. I could return to my level, go to my apartment, take a shower, fall into my bed, and wait for my next assignment in the morning. But that would be acceptance. Thatwould be giving into my fate, forgetting my people, my purpose. I couldn’t stomach it.
