Blood pulses from my mouth when I speak and I don’t know if they’ve even understood what I said. I’m swimming in blood and darkness, but I concentrate—I can’t black out, not now. Think. This isn’t going to be quick, what they do to me. I need to get out of here. Christ, Christ—
“Rory, he’s all yours,” says Gregor. A dark, swift shape kneels over me. I see his eyes through the gas mask lenses.
“An eye for an eye, brother,” he says.
He pulls a serrated hunter’s knife and I feel the blade slide cleanly into my shoulder, snagging on muscle and bone as he pulls it out. The knife slides into my chest, rips me as it comes out. I can’t breathe, but don’t realize I can’t breathe—I can’t scream, but still try to scream, my breath like a fog of blood. He swipes his blade across my face like he’s a calligrapher writing something sacred into my skin. Pain flares through the right side of my face, a deep pain—like he’s reached into my skull through my eye socket. I wonder at all the blood—is this all mine? It doesn’t seem possible—
I’m lifted.
It must be Cormac who lifts me.
I’m falling—
They’ve pushed me out, over the ledge. Falling. The apartment recedes from me—
“Dominic—”
That voice.
I recognize that voice. From where? I try to open my eyes, but can’t.
The camphor scent of coagulant and the cottony rank of blood and gauze, but also the smell of dirt and something like milkweed and grass.
“You need another dose of morphine,” says that voice.
Open my eyes—
Everything’s blurred—no, everything to my left is blurred. Darkness to my right. I’m blind to my right side. It’s like a charcoal cloth covers everything to my right but if I close my left eye the world goes dark. Daylight—I can see well enough to know there’s daylight.
I lift my head but the movement cramps through my chest, an agonizing soreness, and I collapse back down, panting. Every breath is pain.
“You’re awake,” he says. That voice.
Timothy.
“Where is she?” I ask him.
“Do you remember what happened?” he asks. “Do you know where we are?”
I’m here. Theresa, I’m here—
“You’re at the site of your apartment in Pittsburgh. Three men attacked you,” says Timothy. “Do you remember? You fell. I haven’t moved you—”
Rory Waverly carving me with a knife.
“I can’t see very well,” I tell him. “Come over here where I can see you—”
He blocks the sunlight when he stands near, but I still can’t see him. I hear him kneel. A damp towel touches my face. He wrings water over my eyes and wipes gently with the towel—once I blink away the water, I can see him, but it’s like I’m looking at him through a scrim of steel wool. He’s examining me with those pitying blue eyes. I want to ping Albion, ping Gav, someone who can help me, but the virtual interface I’m so used to seeing isn’t here.
“You’re very injured,” he says. “I did what I could, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to practice emergency medicine—not since school. I stopped most of the bleeding. I’m so sorry, Dominic. I didn’t intend for this to happen—”
“Did you kill her? Did you kill Albion?”
“She’s safe,” says Timothy. “She’ll be here soon—”
My body’s numbed from coagulant and painkillers but whenever I move, profound pain ripples through me. Something plastic’s draped over me as a blanket—a tarp, maybe—the corners weighted by bricks. My head’s cushioned by a rain jacket—Timothy’s, it looks like. He’s wearing a T-shirt and khaki hiking pants, but nothing to protect him from the radiation or the rain. His backpack’s nearby, cherry red. What will happen here? Where are the others? Why didn’t they just let me die?
“Did you kill Twiggy?” I ask. “Why? Why her?”
“I didn’t kill her,” says Timothy. “My father knew you’d be interested in her—he’d studied your Adware, knew your tastes. He hired her, made sure she’d cross your path by making sure your cousin worked with her. My father paid her to give you hard drugs so that once you were arrested on felony drug charges I could commandeer your case from Simka. We knew we had to get close to you, one way or another, to find out what you knew about the woman’s body you discovered in the Archive—”
“Hannah,” I tell him. “Her name was Hannah—”
“My father thought he’d taken care of that mistake years ago, but when you found her in the Archive, he panicked. He wanted to have you killed—he thought killing you would solve these problems from the past. I had to convince him to let you live. I told him that we should figure out how you found Hannah, what you knew—what else you might know about us. I convinced him that you might be able to help us with another problem we were having—”
“Albion—”
“The dead don’t stay dead,” he says.
“Albion wanted to stay dead. She wanted no part of this—”
“We didn’t know Albion was alive until she disappeared from the Archive—she wanted to disappear, but that’s what exposed her. Albion vanishing was like a dead woman rising to life, and then you found Hannah’s body. My father was haunted by these Lazarus women. He met with his brother and told him he wanted Albion dead. My uncle and cousins remembered Albion. They wanted to kill her, they’ve always wanted her… but I couldn’t let them. I can’t let them—”
The door to Room 208 is at least two stories above us, leading into the scorched hallway—I remember falling, but don’t remember hitting—I’m so numbed I feel like I’m hovering inches above my body, like I haven’t quite finished the fall. I glance around—the flowers I’d brought for Theresa are all around me.
“Are you going to kill Albion here?” I ask him. “Kill us?”
Timothy’s incredulous. “I’m saving her,” he says. “I’ve tried to save you. This whole time, I’ve been saving you—”
“Bullshit,” I tell him. “I saw what you did to Hannah. I saw everything, you sick fuck. I saw everything—”
“I’ve saved you three times,” he says. “When you found Hannah, I saved you from my father. I saved you a second time after my father’s party—when you quit working for him, you ceased having value to him, but I convinced him that we could still follow you to Albion. I saved you a third time just a few hours ago, when my cousins were scrambling down here to mutilate you, Dominic—”
“You don’t want me to live,” I tell him. “You’re luring her here because you don’t know where she is—”
“The first night I met you I told you that I’d been saved—”
“When you tore out your Adware—”
“I was Saul on the road to Damascus,” says Timothy. “I lived with the shadow of my father—that Adware, those images that filled my mind, were him. They were him. I slit myself open and tore out my Adware and it was like I was tearing him out from me. I knew I might kill myself but tearing out that Adware was like tearing sin from my soul—”
“Twiggy didn’t have to die—”
“No,” says Timothy. “No, she didn’t, but once she served her purpose, my father saw her as a liability. He gave her to his brother and his sons. Killing her was a mercy, by the time they were through with her—”
“You keep saying ‘my father.’ ‘My father.’ You keep saying, ‘They did this.’ You did this—”
Timothy’s not listening—something’s caught his attention and he stares out over the ruins into the far yard, intent like a hunter who fears his movements might scare off the prey.