When Sky hits the asphalt, the hospital doors open with a whoosh reminiscent of the infirmary and spit out a dark-haired man in threadbare clothes. His eyes sweep over us as he jogs our way. Over the old crusted stains and the newer, brighter blood, and the bruises and the dirt and the torn, ragged clothes. He stops midway and I can practically see him re-considering the decision to come near us. He has a child with him, a little girl with a red snotty face and green eyes that wobble like little squishy marbles. Her white-blonde curls stick to her tear-stained cheeks. For some reason, she looks familiar. Maybe she's related to someone from the Compound, who knows, it doesn't matter.

Something Russian comes from his mouth. Delilah, kneeling beside Sky, answers him.

He retreats back into the hospital, child in tow. The moment his back is turned, Delilah smacks my leg, sending sparks down to my toes. I'm almost too tired to feel it, certainly too tired to complain.

"That's Anushka's kid," she whispers, "she looks just like her."

That's it, that's why the kid looks familiar. Not an Experiment's relative; a soldier's. That was Marsya. That was a toddler, a four-year-old at most, and her mom—images flash in my head. Bullet holes and caves and blood and falling and falling and falling.

"Trick," Delilah says quietly.

"Hm?"

She glances pointedly at my arm, where my fingertips are turning white from how hard I'm gripping it. My bone creaks when I let go. The outline of a bruise is already welling in the new sore spot.

The doors whoosh open and release the man, followed by a small woman in nurse's scrubs the color of pine needles. She pushes an empty wheelchair, her auburn hair swinging to the beat of her quick steps.

"You need to tell him to run," I say. "Remember what Anushka said when we found her?"

What I'm doing is traitorous...they will try to hurt her...

She nods, eyes glued to the man. They're halfway to us. "What if he's here for the kid?"

My heart stalls. If he's here for the kid then he knows what happened at the camp. He knows Anushka was a traitor, he knows the four specters in the parking lot are escapees. And if he knows, then this a trap.

There's no time left, and no way to run. The man and the nurse are on us. So I do the only thing I can think of, and dig the broken dog tags from my pocket and hold them out to the man.

It only takes a second for recognition to dawn on his face. And then, tears. In spite of everything, relief trickles through my system. That is not the face of a man here to punish a child for her mother's crime. He takes the tags delicately in one hand, holding Anushka's daughter close with the other.

"Pochemu u vas est' metki Anushki?" he whispers. I look to Delilah for answers, and at that moment, a siren wail splits the air.

The man's head jerks back to search the dark sky. He hoists the little girl onto his hip, taking a few unsteady steps toward the hospital. Delilah reaches for him, takes him by the arm. At the same time, the nurse taps me. I must flinch something awful because she yanks her hand away with a startled expression.

"This is bomb siren," she says, motioning to the hospital. "Inside now, inside."

She bundles us towards the hospital, somehow managing to both push the chair with Sky, and herd both Delilah and me. Light pools in front of the hospital, a beacon. We're short a body when we reach the doors. Somewhere on the trek across the parking lot, the man and Anushka's daughter vanished.

"I told him," Delilah says, barely audible over the wailing siren.

Inside; chaos. A crush of bodies seethes through the small lobby. I have a spare second to take in the cramped quarters, mouth turning desert dry. I can't do this, I think, and the lights cut off. There's a moment of dark, a shroud hanging over the impenetrable black silhouettes. Then dim red emergency lights flicker to life and someone shoves me inside.

The crowd disperses slightly, only to swarm back in and cut off escape. There are too many of them. Too many. I hit a wall. Cover Elle's head. I'm cornered. Clammy sweat drips down the back of my neck, an arm pops up in my peripheral, and I shy away, batting at it weakly. Whitecoats with cold hands. There are hands on my shoulders, on my head, on my legs. My legs, my legs, my legs. Sharp shooting pains. Crushed.

"Trick!" For the second time this evening, Delilah dredges me halfway out of an ever-more familiar spiral. "Snap out of it. Help me with Sky."

He's on his feet, sort of. The wheelchair and the nurse lost to the crowd. I don't know if I can hold his weight. A breathless kind of pain is working its way up my body doing its damndest to paralyze me. I loop my arm around his waist anyways.

"Where—" that's as much of that sentence as I can get out. She points deeper into the hospital, in the direction the crowd is flooding towards. A pair of double doors are pinned wide open, the space beyond nothing but dark. Bodies pass over the threshold and sink down. That's the entrance to a basement.

My broken pinned-together legs stall out from under me. "Del, I can't."

At once Delilah's fist is balled in the collar of my sweater. She glares down at me, not furious, but something I could mistake for fury if I hadn't seen what it really looks like to receive the brunt of her anger.

"We do not have any other options. Get down those stairs or I will throw you down them." She bites out.

The crowd grinds my bones into dust as we creep down the endless stairs into a pitch dark, windowless dungeon. Other people's sweat mixes with mine and stings in open wounds. Sky's weight across the back of my neck digs in like an anchor, a concrete block, and I feel it down in my brittle hips every time I limp down another step. Any second now, my bones will snap and crumble, and Sky and Elle and I will smash to the bottom of the stairs and get trampled into dust.

Delilah, holding up Sky's other side, forces us all the way down to the bottom, where the walls are close in. The people are too close, it's suffocating. I can't breathe and I want to scream. The door at the top of the stairs slams shut, plunging us all into the shadows. Now we're all trapped in a dark, crowded room, and my claustrophobia creeps in. The cramped room spins, my heart feels like it's spinning too. My shoulders hunch and I tuck my chin to my chest, drawing my arms in as if squishing my body smaller will make the room bigger.

"Get against the wall." I can't connect the voice to the person. I shuffle to a wall, my feet drag on the concrete, I can't pick them up all the way. The alarm blares again, startling me, and I find myself curled up on the floor with my knees to my chest and a sharp ache shooting up my spine. Elle's horns press into my sore legs. I have to stuff my fists in my pockets, a fragile imaginary line keeps me from putting my arm through the wall pressed against my back.

It's too dark, it's too small. I can't see, I can't breathe. I can't breathe, I can't. I can't stop my thoughts from racing and they ricochet too fast off the inside of my skull.

We're going to die. This hospital is about to explode with us in it and we're all going to die. And if that doesn't happen I'll suffocate in this tiny room. Elle won't have a chance to wake up if a bomb goes off now.

Somewhere between my own hyperventilating and speeding thoughts, I hear crackling.

A bomb. Do bombs crackle? No.

Sky is sitting beside me. His fingers are snapping, the rest of him is shaking. His eyes are wide and his lips are pressed together so hard they're white from lack of blood. He's snapping faster than any normal human being can. Someone's going to notice. That won't matter if we all die in the next seven seconds, but if we don't die that will be a problem.

"Sky." The word can't make it past my too-tight throat.

I pry my hand out of my pocket and reach out. My hand closes over his, muffling the snapping, then stopping it completely. Sky grips my hand. I feel him shaking into pieces right next to me. The alarm blares, and Sky jumps, his hand squeezes mine, I can't squeeze back for fear of crushing his bones.

"Está bien," I hiss like a deflating balloon. Spanish works better than English. "Está bien, está bien." Maybe if I keep telling him that it will come true.

Somewhere around the fifth alarm my skin falls off.

It's strange, losing myself when there's no one real attacking me. There have only ever been short moments before and after duels when I floated like this. Hollow and numb, save for the sense of being wound too tight.

Wherever the rest of me went, it took my thoughts with it. I'm sitting now with nothing except the aches and pains to fill my headspace. Sky's hand in mine acts as the only contact point between me and the real world.

Delilah says something, her voice sits in the air like film. I know it's there, but I can't hear it. She speaks again, Sky answers. Him I can hear.

"It's very very very very tight in here," followed by, "I know, Dels, I know. But I'm trying very hard not to cry right now, please just give me a bloody minute."

The bodies press in, blocking out all the air. My shins are more bruised with every touch, my knees ache harder with each passing brush of a finger. I turn into a cage around Elle. An unbreakable metal shield.

Two-point-nine.

They're crushing me.

Two-point-nine. The bodies clear out. It's better, but I can't move. My muscles are locked up. And I can't breathe. Air is entering my lungs, but it's not enough. There's not enough oxygen in this tiny tiny space. I'm going to suffocate. I'm going to die.

"Hello."

My name is Trick. My name is Trick. It's not working. I'm still hyperventilating. Still shivering. My name is—my name—

"Hello, can you look at me please?"

English. Someone is speaking English to me. Badly accented, but at least I can understand it. It takes effort, but I manage to pry my gaze off the floor and find the source of the voice. It's the woman with red hair from earlier, she's kneeling halfway across the empty room, staring at me. Her eyes are large and crystal blue.

"My name is Yana Karusev, what's yours?" she asks me.

"Trick—Sanchez-Fernandez," I answer, my breath hitches in my chest.

"How old you are, Trick?" Yana asks.

"Nineteen."

"What your favorite color?"

"I don't know."

"How about a favorite thing to touch? You have one of those?"

"I can't—breathe."

"You are having panic attack," she tells me. Is that what this is? It's awful.

"I'm claustrophobic." My voice won't rise above a whisper. My muscles are so rigid, clamping me into this balled-up position around Elle, that they all shake from the effort. Yana looks around the room, her short curls are pinned back with glinting bits of metal.

"Then this room is no good." She clucks her tongue.

"No." It's an unbearably tiny room. I hate it.

"Trick, focus. Take deep breaths." Her instruction forces me to become hyperaware of my rapid breathing.

"I can't," I gasp. My face is flushed, and my toes are numb, like all the blood in my body decided to defy gravity. "Can you—help—my sister?" I ask around periodic gulps for air.

"Is that who you're holding?" Yana asks.

Yes, and I'm afraid that I can't let go, and I need someone to pry her out of my arms before I crush her, and I can't say that because it's too many words for the thimble-sized bubble of air I'm sitting in.

"What your sister's name?"

"Elle," I answer.

"That is pretty name. You know her favorite color?" she asks.

I do. I think. It takes me some time to sift through a jumble of thoughts but I finally get to the answer.

"Indigo."

Yana nods, "A pretty color. She is younger or older than you?"

"Younger, she's thirteen."

"You are older brother then, protector, yes?" She doesn't know the half of it. I find my muscles are loosening, I can nod my head, albeit slowly. "You do good job. Can I see her?"

Yana reaches across the gap between her and I, her fingers hover closer to the scraped raw skin on the back of my arm, to grab, to pull, to pry. Someone else grabs her first, yanking her hand away.

"Ne trogat'," Delilah says, looming over Yana. She doesn't let go until Yana agrees. Yana folds her hands neatly in her lap, a smear of dirt on her otherwise clean skin. She doesn't have any scars.

"I know it is hard, but you try and let go. I look your sister. We see what is wrong," she says, slow and even.

Okay, let go. I have to let go. I can do that. With significant effort, I pry my arms from my knees and my knees from my chest, waves of pain roll over every bone in my body, and my old friend, the hot iron, is back with a force. I hiss out a groan, blinking to stop the room from swimming. The bruise on my chest feels more like a nasty dent.

"Maybe we should look you as well?" Yana suggests, closer now than she was before.

"Elle first." I shift Elle to face Yana, holding her head so it doesn't flop. I watch Yana's expression morph into open shock at the sight of the bundle of ashen skin and bones in my arms. She shakes her head, as if trying to clear it. With a glance at Delilah for permission, Yana takes Elle's limp wrist between her fingers.

"She does not wake up?"

"No."

"When did she pass out?"

"This afternoon."

Or yesterday. I don't know what time it is.

"She hit her head?"

"No, she's sick." The room begins to feel tight again.

Yana touches my shoulder lightly, laying Elle's hand in her lap. "I will get doctor and bed. Okay? You stay here a little longer, with your friend, I will come right back, okay?"

"Okay."

She retreats up the stairs, out of sight.

Out of the blue Delilah's hand is on my cheek, wiping away something wet and warm. A tear. I hadn't realized I was crying. And just like that, I snap back into myself.

I wipe the tears from my eyes. I wish I could pretend that they were never there to begin with. At least it's Delilah crouching in front of me, anyone else might have tried to say something nice. She only hovers there, one hand on my shoulder, until the moment passes and I can lift my head again.

"Where's Sky?"

Delilah grimaces, her uninjured shoulder shrugs up a couple of inches in reluctance.

"He's getting a head scan. The doctors are worried about his brain swelling," she answers.

"That sounds bad."

"It can be," Yana says, back sooner than I thought she'd be, a wrinkled old man at her heels. Delilah cuts them a sharp look.

"Shit," I swear. I run my fingers over the edgeof the burn, then swear again. Can we not, for once, catch a break? Delilahdoesn't try to offer a positive outlook. After so long, it's easier to be preparedfor the worst than to be crushed when your hope doesn't follow through. Still,if Skyelar dies, I'll drag him back from the grave and kill him myself forputting us through that.