The shock of seeing him there, in her home, combined with the spinning in her head made Everly fall back against the wall she was standing near. She looked up with dizzy eyes at Jamie, who stood with his hands in the pockets of his red uniform, watching the scene that unfolded before him impassively.
Everly tried to ask what was happening but found that it was exceptionally hard to speak. She swallowed thickly, focusing on her words, then tried again.
“What are you doing here,” she croaked out, blinking back tears she hadn’t noticed rising to her eyes.
And then her dad was there. She blinked and he vanished, but then she blinked again and he had returned, sitting by her side. He looked pained, unsure of himself. Her father’s expression held a rage that was so rare and intense that it frightened her. He held Everly tightly, and in a strangled whisper said, “Evs, why did you do it?”
Not able to summon the will to speak, Everly just shook her head, confused.
Her dad took a shaky breath. “Why did you go to that place? Why—” He shook his head, looking down. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Everly swallowed thickly, then spoke, words slow and drawn out. “No,” she said to her dad. “Why did you go? Why didn’t you tell me?” She felt her head drooping back against her dad’s chest, and it was an effort to keep her eyes open.
Ridiculously, her mind chose then to trickle back to something she’d read in one of Richard’s journals the night before, while waiting in Luca’s room for him to return.
Mary has been coming by with her husband these past weeks, he had written. I think I shall have to resort to telling her the truth, though she might very well have no reason to believe me. She cannot remain at the Eschatorologic.
Everly looked up at the specter of her dad. “What happened to Mom?” she asked in a croaking whisper.
But then her dad was gone again, and she was alone on the floor in her house, with Jamie still looking down at her with cold eyes.
“You have to come back with me, Everly,” Jamie said in a voice void of emotion.
Confused and disoriented, Everly leaned her head back against the wall and eyed Jamie as he stepped farther into her house. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t find it in her to ask him what was happening. So instead, she could only watch as he slowly approached her.
“You shouldn’t have spent so much time in the Eschatorologic,” Jamie said.
Everly wanted to deny it, to say that she had been here all night, at home, but the words would not come, and she could only look beseechingly up at him, praying that he would leave her house, leave her alone. He steadily met her eyes with his own cold, hard ones, and she felt an urgent panic rising in her throat.
“You ran out of time,” Jamie went on in that same monotonous voice, unsympathetic to the desperation that was overtaking Everly. “Now your energy’s all used up. You have to come back.”
She wanted to shake her head, to say no, to fight back. It didn’t make any sense, and she didn’t understand why Jamie had come here, why he was telling her these things.
Jamie sighed deeply, looking annoyed at Everly for not understanding. “You’re dying,” he said bluntly, peering into her eyes, and Everly shook her head violently, trying to turn away from him. He grabbed her chin, and while Everly tried to make a noise of protest, Jamie didn’t seem to care.
“I know you can feel it,” he murmured close to her face. “None of the enhanced could survive much longer than this.” He frowned slightly, still holding Everly’s chin. “I would try to explain it to you, but suffice it to say that your type uses up all your energy by the time you turn twenty-five. I guess happy birthday is in order.” He paused, looking at her carefully.
“You can feel it now, can’t you? The pounding in your head, the heaviness that won’t go away. The hallucinations. You can stay here, if you want, but I promise you won’t outlast the week. You need to come with me, Everly.”
She wanted nothing more than to deny all of it—to pull out of Jamie’s grip and to say that he was wrong, that she was okay. But she could feel it—whatever it was—pulling her down. She thought she saw her dad again, standing behind Jamie with a concerned expression on his face, then a woman with fair features and long blond hair briefly standing next to him, a hand on his shoulder and a frown on her mouth, but then Everly shook her head and they both vanished. Something was very wrong, and though Everly would have given anything for it to be a lie, a part of her knew that Jamie was telling the truth.
Before she could decide anything—before she could know for sure if she would have gone with him or fought against his words and stayed behind—the heaviness within her reached a peak. She felt herself falling, sinking, and right before she collapsed into darkness, she realized that she had heard his voice before.
Jamie’s.
He had been the man in that woman’s room on the hundredth floor the other day—so cold, so dark, so empty.
And then she sank far and fast into a deep, dark oblivion.
Chapter Thirty
Everly Tertium entered the building for the last time tossed over the shoulder of a very tall man dressed in blood-red scrubs.
She was not awake to bear witness to her final entrance.
Well, her final entrance for now.
Chapter Thirty-One
Everything was in flashes.
She was on the ground. There were hands around her, a voice in her ear, a whisper, a sob. Hers? She didn’t know.
Then it was all black and nothing and gone.
She was in a car, she thought, but she couldn’t open her eyes, she couldn’t move her head, she could barely breathe.
And then more arms and she felt rocking and everything hurt.
Needles, thorns, nails piercing through her blood, her skin, her bones, her soul. Digging deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. She wanted to scream, wanted to fight, but she couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t, she couldn’t do anything, and she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t bear it she couldn’t—
But then, with no warning, it all stopped. The relief, so sudden and so blissful, was too much, and Everly succumbed once more to the darkness, giving herself over more willingly this time, free at last from the heaviness, the anguish, the pain. Free.
Everly woke up and had no idea where she was.
Her head hurt, but not like it had before. It was now nothing more than a dull thud at the base of her skull, and she rubbed at her eyes, breathing deeply, trying to remember what had happened.
