“There’s nothing,” Caleb said, voice scratchy. Everly decided to back over to a corner of the room, turning away from them. She was having difficulty breathing, thinking, but she knew she didn’t have the right to be a part of what was happening between the two of them.
And besides. There were the visions again.
Not Caleb—or not only Caleb—but dozens, hundreds of others, just like him. Tied to a table. Needle through the skin. They all fell, hard and fast.
She thought she could recognize some of their faces, but then she couldn’t, and she really wasn’t even sure anymore.
She couldn’t even really see Caleb now. Or rather, she did, but she also saw all the rest: each image superimposed over the last, lined up like a collage of sick and dying and dead.
But she could hear. She could hear as Caleb and Luca spoke in soft, urgent tones, every once in a while interrupted by another string of coughing. Luca mumbled something Everly couldn’t make out, but Caleb’s voice rose sharply in response.
“No, Luca. Don’t. You can’t blame yourself for this. It’s no one’s fault but the runners who brought me down here.” Luca started to say something else, but Caleb cut him off. “You were the best part of being stuck here. Living in this building would have been unbearable if I hadn’t had you for a friend. I need you to know that.”
“I should have been there. It was my job to—”
“It was your job to be my friend. And you were. It wasn’t your responsibility to protect me. I’m my own person. I was supposed to look out for myself—I couldn’t rely on you for the rest of my life, anyway.”
“I failed you,” Luca said in a shattered voice.
“Luca, please. I don’t want you leaving here with the weight of this on your shoulders. I’ve always been weaker than all the others, and you knew that. We knew it was probably only a matter of time before they took me away. I wasn’t worth their time or effort anymore, and that’s that. Please can you not blame yourself for this? Can you do that for me, this last time?”
For a while after that, neither of them spoke, and Everly was caught up once more in all the others—their last words, their final breaths. Some pleaded, some sobbed. Some looked on with stoic eyes and calm resolve. Some already looked vacant, already looked dead by the time they were brought in.
But none of them had a chance.
And so, she knew Caleb didn’t, either.
Eventually, the silence was broken as Caleb began coughing violently, not letting up. Everly was able to focus, just barely, just enough to see him bending over, to see Luca patting his back softly, with a pain-stricken expression.
Caleb didn’t stop. He bent over, one hand against his chest, the other gripping the edge of the table, knuckles white. Blood began to trickle out of his mouth, and then he was gasping, gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come.
Caleb’s eyes had begun to close, and even through her fog, even through the visions that were continuing to spin, spin, spin around her head, Everly could see that Luca was panicking.
“Caleb? Did you hear me? We’ll work this all out.” Luca’s eyes were red, his jaw hard. “Together. I need you here, Caleb. You can’t,” his voice broke. “You can’t leave me here. How am I ever going to survive this alone?”
Caleb’s eyes flickered slightly, his head turning to face Luca. “You’ll survive because you have to,” he whispered. “You have to, Luca.”
Luca grabbed one of Caleb’s hands, and Everly wished, she wished, that she could walk over and take the other, but she wasn’t even really sure that she was there anymore. She wasn’t even really sure what was real, and she was afraid to move, afraid that if she broke free of the spiraling images that she wouldn’t end up anywhere, that she would just collapse into a great nothingness, and never be able to find her way back. So instead, she stood, and she watched, as well as she could.
The seconds continued on. Caleb’s chest was rising and falling in rapid succession, his breaths coming out shallowly. He took in a quick breath then, his lips parting open.
“You’ll find a way.” His voice faded as he talked, drifting off into the room around them. “If anyone can, it will be you.” And with those final words, the remainder of the breath left Caleb’s body, and he fell still.
And along with him, Everly saw as all the others fell, too.
And still she watched on passively, waiting for whatever it was that was supposed to happen next.
And still she stood there.
And still she felt nothing.
She felt nothing.
She felt nothing.
She felt nothing.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Luca felt nothing.
Not true—Luca felt everything, and it was too much, he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t—
And so instead, his mind had gone numb. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—think, or feel, and in the moment he was glad for that. Glad for the layer of nothingness that had descended over him as they left that room. The room with . . .
He couldn’t think, and so he couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to do next. He hadn’t really been aware of them leaving that room, but Everly was leading him along, her fingers clasped tightly through his, and he was thankful for it. Without her hand in his, carrying him down one dark hall and into the next, Luca wasn’t sure he would be able to move at all. Wasn’t sure he would want to.
The warmth of her palm pressed up against his skin, skin that had gone so cold, as though his life had seeped away right along with . . .
It was Everly’s warmth that gave Luca a glimmer of light at the end of the empty, caved-in tunnel he had found himself suffocating in. So, he trailed after that, and after her, as they continued to make their way through the inky blackness of the floor they were still lost on.
Luca didn’t know how she had done it on her own, but somehow Everly had managed to bring them to the elevator. Creeping in through the mist of numbness grew an awareness that they were so, so exposed in these halls, beneath the cameras that Luca knew ran up and down them. Someone must have noticed they were missing by now. It was only a matter of time before they were found, before they were taken, just like Caleb had been, just like every person in this building was, sooner or later, caught and brought down there, to that dark floor, to that red room, and there wasn’t anything any of them could do about it.
This was the threat Luca was realizing had always hung over all of them, like a guillotine blade ready to come slicing down. This is what must happen to all of the people who vanished from the building, never to be seen again.
Just like would probably now happen to Everly and him.
Luca found his breath coming faster and faster and he had to stop, yanking his hand out of Everly’s and putting it against his chest until slowly, painfully, his breathing evened out again. Everly stood watching him with empty eyes. As he counted his breaths, Luca settled his features and stood up straight, walking over to stand next to her. Gaze focused straight ahead on the metallic doors of the elevator, he spoke without turning to face her. “We should go. They’ll be headed this way soon,” and he pushed the elevator button.
