“Ishmae’s a High-Four,” said Shane. “The first one in almost a decade, and she’s known it since she was a child.”
“And?”
“And the difference between a High-Four and the rest of us is like the difference between us and normals. Maybe even bigger.”
“Yeah, everyone keeps saying that. So what?”
“So she thinks a High-Four should be able to do everything better than the rest of us, whether that’s acing math classes she doesn’t even have the foundational knowledge for, or—”
“Or running the Maze two years earlier than anyone else,” I concluded.
“Exactly.”
“Well, it makes sense, but…” I waved at the still-silent building. “…it doesn’t seem like she’s here.”
“Well, we should make sure—”
“Actually, someone is here.”
Shane looked from me to the blue-haired Empath. “You can sense someone inside? Is it Ishmae?”
“I’m not using my powers.” She rolled her eyes and nodded to the side door. “The door is open.”
•—•—•
At first, the interior was every bit as dark as it had seemed from the outside, but as we rounded the corner, a dim light split the gloom. At the back of the meditation studio, the door to the Maze’s room was open, and in the chair, her bald head slick with sweat under the wire helmet, was Ishmae Naser.
I caught Shane before he could rush in. “If she’s running the Maze, we don’t know what interrupting her would do.”
“We can’t just leave her there, Damian!”
Again, it was Kayleigh who pointed out the obvious. “Do either of you smell smoke?”
Now that she’d mentioned it, we did. In fact, as we crept closer to the unconscious Pyro, we could see the smoke as well. It wasn’t coming from her—always a concern with someone who could probably burn the whole city down—but from the device itself, slim threads wafting up from visibly blackened circuitry.
“I think she broke it,” continued Vibe.
“Then why isn’t she awake?” Shane shrugged free of my hand with one of the slick grip escapes Nikolai had taught us, and made it to Ishmae before I could react. He thumbed back one of the Pyro’s eyelids and frowned. “No response to light stimuli. Irregular breathing.”
“Meaning what?” I guessed.
“I don’t think she’s just unconscious… but there’s only one way to be sure.”
“Winter will be here any minute with one of the school Healers, Unicorn. We should just wait.”
“Every second might matter, Kayleigh,” he said absently, rolling up his sleeves, “and the school Healers can’t fix much more than a simple break. If there’s internal damage, let alone brain trauma, they’ll need me to handle it.”
Without another word, he placed one hand on the Pyro’s forehead, and the other on her twitching bare arm.
•—•—•
A minute passed, then another, and nothing changed other than the amount of sweat beading on Shane’s forehead. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, Ishmae’s twitching limbs stilled. Color flooded back into her dark-skinned cheeks, and her breathing deepened from its shuddering rasp.
“It’s working,” whispered Vibe.
Which is, of course, when everything went to shit.
In his own way, Shane was every bit as unique as our High-Four Pyro. There was a reason Silt had named him Unicorn, and a reason that name had stuck. Healers like him came once a generation, if that. With the proper training, there was no telling what a High-Three Healer might accomplish.
But for all his power, Shane was just a first-year, like the rest of us. Partially trained. Still tripped up by the occasional bad habit.
Like forgetting to keep his patient sedated while he healed them.
Ishmae’s eyes snapped open.
The world went white.
CHAPTER 36
I’m sorry, Shane.
Sorry I didn’t stop you. Sorry you fell in love with a Pyro. Sorry it only took a single mistake to turn everything to ash.
In a better world, you’d still be here and I’d be gone.
In a better world, you’d be fixing this fucked-up life, one person at a time, like a ginger-haired promise of a future filled with something other than violence and death.
But this is Dr. Nowhere’s world; cold and hard and bloody to the bone.
This is a world of Crows and monsters, of desperation and despair.
It has no time for hope or for healing.
It doesn’t believe in unicorns.
CHAPTER 37
If there was any justice in the world, it would’ve rained at Shane’s funeral; thick, fat drops exploding like liquid bombs against the hard earth, wind whipping between us with an almost-audible growl. Instead, the sky was cloudless, the sun was warm, and the clearing we’d gathered in behind the dean’s office was fucking beautiful.
It was one of the few times since I’d left with Mr. Grey that I actually missed Bakersfield. There’s a city fit for funerals.
There were twenty-one first-years present, arranged in uneven rows facing the casket the faculty had found for this occasion. The empty casket, because Phoenix hadn’t left enough of Unicorn to even fill an urn.
Twenty-one students in the clearing because Ishmae herself was elsewhere, hidden away and drugged to her eyeballs.
Twenty-one because Vibe wasn’t in any sort of state to be around people after experiencing Shane’s dying emotions and the ensuing storm of Ishmae’s own shock and mounting horror.
Twenty-one because Shane Stevenson was dead.
Twenty-one first-years and only three pairs of dry eyes among us.
The first belonged to Silt, who was busy comforting a sobbing Wormhole. The second belonged to Alan Jackson, who made a better stone wall than my roommate ever would.
And the last pair of dry eyes? They were mine. Because of course they fucking were.
Truth was, I hadn’t cried since I was six. Spent a whole year after Mom’s murder crying. Crying for her. Crying for myself. Crying whenever the older kids at Mama Rawlins’ beat the shit out of me for crying.
By seven, I was all cried out. At eighteen, I could barely remember what it was like. I hadn’t cried when they dug me out of the remnants of the Control class building, peeling me off of Vibe, who I’d shielded from some of the blast. Hadn’t cried when they’d started treating
