Chapter 156

Nolan landed flat on his back.

He knew he’d been hit. The bullet had sent him flying backward.

His ears were ringing painfully from the gunshot blast. The high-pitched squeal was brutally loud, rendering him deaf to all other sound.

But he didn’t feel the injury. There was no pain in his body. He figured he must be in shock.

He didn’t like that he didn’t know where he had been hit, or how bad it was.

He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. The ceiling above, the only thing in his line of sight, was a blur of gray. Then it started moving. It looked like ocean waves moving over the surface of the water. Then it looked like a watercolor painting.

Nolan tried to move his legs. Tried to plant his feet on the floor. Tried to roll onto his side.

Nope. None of those things were going to happen.

He did manage, with incredible difficulty, to slowly lift up one of his arms. It felt like he was trying to drag it through wet concrete. He brought the hand to his chest, then lifted it up to his eyes.

His entire hand was bright red, drenched with blood.

It dripped down onto his face.

Then either his arm fell down to his side, or someone put it there.

Cindy’s face appeared, hovering over Nolan’s. Her features were slipping in and out of focus.

She was slapping Nolan in the face and shouting his name.

The awful ringing was still there in his ears, but it was starting to fade. Now Nolan could hear the shrieking screams of the children that were filling the air. As well as heavy, hurried footfall.

Gamma warriors were shouting, “STAND DOWN! DROP THE WEAPON!”

Then there was a single, short battery of suppressed machine-gunfire. A loud thud. More rushing footsteps.

And then a frame of blackness arrived around the edges of Nolan’s vision and started creeping inward, fast.

Cindy looked very small. Then she was gone.

“Don’t, Nolan! Don’t you die on me! Stay with me, Nolan! Open your eyes! NOLAN!”

He forced his eyes open and saw the shape of Cindy, now a blurry smudge of colors hovering over him again. She was moving around frantically now. That, or his vision was skipping, making it look like she was.

“Keep those eyes open now,” she said. “That’s good. Stay with me. Help is on the way. You just have to stay awake, Nolan. Stay awake and you’re going to be okay.”

It was taking every ounce of his will and effort to keep his eyelids from snapping closed. They were so heavy.

Something was very wrong. Something other than a bullet wound somewhere in his body.

Cindy was still shouting. Telling Nolan to stay awake. Telling him help was almost here.

His brain wasn’t working properly, but it snagged for a moment on the clear, coherent thought that he needed to remember to thank her for this later.

The darkness came back, starting at the edges again. But this time it took over even faster.

“OPEN YOUR EYES, NOLAN!”

He really tried to do it. He had never tried so hard at anything in his entire life. But it felt like his eyes were sewn shut now. He was helpless to pry them open.

All that was left, then, was the darkness.

Until his mind’s eye turned a light on, and suddenly everything was blinding white.

And there was Yena, standing right in front of Nolan. He could see her lovely face clear as day. Her blue eyes and golden hair caught the light, shining.

She smiled, then shook her head at him disapprovingly, sending her blonde curls bouncing.

She said, “You have to open your eyes now, Nolan. You have to wake up.”

YENA

I screamed like I’d never screamed before, surprising myself more than anyone.

The pain was sudden and extreme, and it came out of nowhere.

I clutched my chest reflexively—that’s where the pain came from. I was glad I was already on the ground. If I’d been standing, I probably would have collapsed.

It felt like I had been shot in the heart. With a lead ball fired from a cannon.

“Yena! What’s wrong, Yena?!” That was Evan’s voice.

All I could do was scream some more. It was not something that I had control over.

Evan tore my hands away from my chest, looking for an injury and apparently finding none. “What’s happening, Yena? Look at me.”

As I looked up at Evan, the very worst of the pain actually started to taper off. It was still there, a horrible, aching pressure in the center of my chest. But the worst of the splitting, stabbing pain was edging away.

“Call an ambulance!” someone said from faraway.

“No,” I croaked. My voice was thin and hoarse from screaming. I tried to take in a stabilizing breath. And another. I swallowed. And tried to clear my throat.

“Yena, we’re gonna get you to a hospital, okay?” Evan was trying to lift me to my feet now. Maybe trying to pick me up, carry me in his arms.

“No,” I said again, louder and more clearly.

Evan paused and stared at me, his face blank. “What’s going on, sis? You’re really, really scaring me.”

The mass of people surrounding us was getting thicker every second as my odd behavior attracted more and more onlookers. Evan shouted at everyone to back off and give me space. His sharp, growling tone surprised them, hushing the crowd and pushing it back away from us.

“Yena, tell me that you’re okay,” he said to me quietly, taking either side of my face in his hands and forcing me to look at him again. His eyes were full of worry.

“I’m okay,” I answered honestly. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t sick. “But something else… something else is very wrong.”

“What? What’s going on?”

“This is going to sound crazy, but…” I shook my head, hesitant to say what I was thinking.

“You’re running that risk either way,” Evan said. “Tell me.”

“I think it’s Nolan. I think that something bad happened to him.”

Then Evan’s eyes went round. A look came over his face that I didn’t know how to interpret. It almost seemed like he’d had a sudden, overwhelming revelation.

He pulled his hands away from my face. It was a relief. I don’t know why, but I’d been feeling suffocated by his touch.

The pain in my chest was rapidly subsiding now, dimming to a dull ache in my heart.

“Do you wanna get up?” Evan asked cautiously. “Do you think that you can stand?”

I nodded, peeling my hands off of the hot black asphalt. They came away with crumbly bits of it all stuck to my now filthy palms. Evan offered one of his hands for support, but I pushed up off the ground with my fingertips instead.

Someone in the crowd around us started clapping. Then others began to join in. They were all staring at me, applauding my apparent recovery. I know it was good-natured, but it made my face go bright red, and I wished that they would all disappear.

Evan was looking at me expectantly. “What do you wanna do, Yena? Where do we go now?”