Or maybe the problem wasn’t other people at all. The problem wasn’t trusting in traitors. It was Dara. Dara, the common denominator at the end of the function, the first glinting chunk of superdense matter at the start of the universe.
All his fault.
Born broken, as Lehrer had told him so many times.
He twisted round again, back toward the dresser. Picked up the glass and hurled it against the far wall.
Crystal shattered, shards spraying across the hardwood floor and spinning underneath his bed. Dara screamed until his throat ached, until the neighbors pounded on the ceiling, until he had nothing left but air and anguish.
Then he made himself sweep up the broken glass and pour the whiskey out his window, sat on his bed, and glared at the opposite wall until his pulse slowed again.
A practical person would have picked up his burner phone and called Claire or Priya, told them everything Noam had said, everything Noam had gotten himself involved with.
They’d call the mission a failure. Pack up and flee back to the quarantined zone, regroup to try again some other day.
But how many people would die in the meanwhile?
Dara gripped his phone in one hand, staring down at the blank screen.
Maybe he was as bad as Noam, though, because Dara couldn’t bring himself to dial. He couldn’t walk away and leave Lehrer here, still living.
Dara had come to Carolinia to burn Lehrer’s kingdom down. He wouldn’t leave until he stood on its ashes.
He was about to go downstairs to get Ames when the burner phone buzzed against his palm. Dara glanced down, and his heart slammed to a stop.
Noam:downstairs, come get me. fast
Dara pitched himself up off the bed, shoving his feet into shoes and grabbing his coat from the hook by the door. He was still pulling it on as he clattered downstairs, running into Ames on the way. She caught his elbow and said, “Where are you going, mister?”
“It’s Álvaro,” Dara said. “He just messaged me. I don’t know why, but it sounds—he’s outside.”
Ames let go. They both dashed down the last flight of stairs and tumbled out into the snowy night. An unfamiliar car idled on the curb, something ancient and barely functional puffing exhaust into the dark.
The windows were tinted. It could be a trap.
Dara didn’t care if it was.
He yanked open the passenger-side door.
Noam lay slumped in the driver’s seat, blood dripping from a gash on his face and one arm—the one resting in his lap—so red and swollen it had ripped the seams of his shirtsleeve.
“Shit,” Dara gasped. He crawled into the car, bracing his knees on either side of the gearshift to slide a hand onto one of Noam’s cheeks, tilting his face toward him. Noam’s eyes cracked open, fluid-clumped lashes fluttering like it took effort just to look at Dara. “What did he do to you?”
Only Dara already knew the answer to that question.
Ames had moved round to the other side of the car, opened the driver’s door. Noam’s weight dropped back, and Ames braced against him just in time, looping both hands under his arms to keep him upright. She didn’t say a word, but her eyes were wide and her face gone pale. A muscle twitched in one cheek.
Dara wondered if this was how she’d looked with him, every time she dragged him home too drunk to stand. Too out of it to keep from aspirating his own vomit when withdrawal hit.
“Get his seat belt,” Ames got out. It sounded tight, like her teeth were clenched.
Dara jabbed his thumb against the latch and leaned forward to grab Noam’s ankles from the floor, pulling his legs up and onto the seat as Ames dragged him bodily out of the car. Noam cried out when they did that, his whole body arcing forward like he’d been shot through with an electric current.
“Don’t,” he mumbled when Dara had finally made it back out, grabbing one of his arms to take the burden off Ames. “Not ... we have to go. Away.”
“What’s going on?”
Leo had emerged from the bar, messy haired and with a towel still thrown over one shoulder—he’d left midshift. He blew out heavily when his gaze fell to Noam, taking a halting step forward across the icy sidewalk. “Jesus Christ.”
