The next, it was me.
I was looking down at my own face.
Pale. Still. Eyes open, but not looking at anything.
I blinked, and it was Rue again.
Or maybe it had always been Rue.
Or maybe I'd killed myself, and this was hell, and I would spend eternity standing over my own body, trying to remember how it had ended.
"Rue?"
My voice was small. Broken. The voice of someone who'd stopped hoping for anything.
"Rue, please. Wake up. Please."
She didn't wake up.
She would never wake up.
She was dead.
And I had killed her.
The blood was warm.
I looked down at my hands, and they were red. Red and wet and dripping onto the floor, onto my jeans, onto the white tile that wasn't white anymore.
Whose blood?
Rue's.
Or mine.
Or someone else's entirely.
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't remember anything.
"Please."
The word came out as a sob. I was crying—or maybe I'd been crying for a while, and I'd only just noticed. Tears were streaming down my face, hot and salt and endless, and I couldn't make them stop.
"Please, someone help."
My voice echoed off the walls, bouncing back at me, distorted and strange.
"She's dead—someone killed her—I don't know who—"
I didn't know.
I didn't remember.
The last thing I remembered was Rue leading me into the building. Her voice, soft and sure. Her hand, reaching for mine.
And then—
