How are the two of them so . . . uncaring? Are they just that good at blocking out the awfulness? If so, they should teach me, because I obviously can’t handle it.
Ania sits on the plush couch, her face shadowed with concern. I flop down beside her and throw one of the fancy cushions at Jaesin, way harder than I mean to.
“Okay, can we be serious for a second?” I say. “A bunch of people just died because of us and we should care. The cops are out to get us, the media will be all over us the second they release our info, and the guy we were doing this job for is probably gonna be pissed because, unless one of you thought to grab it, we don’t have his maz.”
I pause for a minute to swallow against the constriction in my throat. “I don’t know what happened. This is such a mess. Nothing like this has ever happened to us, and it’s just . . .”
Somewhere above us, a muffled thump echoes, followed by what are unmistakably footsteps.
Ania glances to the corner of her vision where her lenses show the time. “My parents are home. I’m serious, though, they never come down here. They never even speak to me unless spoken to.”
Her expression grows pinched, and she changes the subject.
“I guess first thing we should do is try to get in contact with the guy who gave us the job. Return his money, tell him the deal’s off. We can’t have him after us, too.”
She’s right. This is the first job we’ve ever failed to come through on, and the funny thing is it’s absolutely the least of our worries. Now that we’re murderers. Now that we’ve let loose a new plague upon the Industrial District. Now that we’ve irrevocably damaged the lives of thousands of people. All the guilt and shame Jaesin and Remi were trying to avoid shows plainly on their faces, in the way they sit slouched over, shoulders pressed together. I’m tempted to hack into the hospital’s records and see if Ginny from the bakery is among the ill or dead, but I don’t.
I can’t.
“I have to figure out why it happened,” I say, trying so hard to keep my voice from shaking. “Yes, I made a mistake. I pushed it too hard, but that shouldn’t have caused such a huge rupture up the pipe unless there was already something else wrong. You felt it, Remi,” I say, pleading for them to back me up.
They only shrug, avoiding my eyes as they wipe a tear away. “I definitely felt something surge or change right at the end there, but I have no idea what it was or where to go about looking for it. Besides, I think Ania is right here. I hate that it happened, but what will knowing change? It still will have happened. Those people will still be ill. Or dead.”
I blink, stunned. I want to protest, to say something in reply, but I can’t force my brain to comprehend. I know Remi can’t mean that the way it sounds. They must be hurting, hurting so bad, thinking of all the newly ill. So how can they not want to figure this out? I look to Jaesin to back me up, but he only nods, leaning forward to brace his forehead on his folded hands.
“I think what we really need to do here is take whatever money we can pull from our accounts and get out of town,” he says. When he lifts his head, his eyes are shiny with tears, but hard. “We head to Jattapore a few days early, that’s all. Ania, you come with us for a week, just to lay low and let this pass. And we forget this ever happened.”
My vision whites out with a surge of anger.
“No. NO!” I shout, momentarily forgetting about Ania’s parents. “We have to figure out what we did wrong. What if it happens again? Or what if it wasn’t our fault and there’s something wrong with the system down there, just waiting to set off another spellplague?”
Ania’s expression is pained, but she shakes her head. “I’m with Jaesin here,” she begins. “They’ll be investigating for a long time. If there’s something wrong, they’ll find it. We need to—”
“You’re a bunch of fucking cowards!” I spit, my throat raw and tight. My hands clench into fists, the knuckles going white. “Hundreds of people dead or dying, they said, and you just wanna skip town?”
They’re so fixated on leaving, so constantly ready to just abandon Kyrkarta and leave everything behind. We grew up here, Davon is here, our parents died and are buried here, and they can just walk away? Just ditch our home city to fend for itself in the wake of a disaster of our own making? How can they find it so easy to leave this place?
To leave me?
They should know. I shouldn’t have to ask them to stay and deal with this, they should know.
We were supposed to have more time.
“I won’t leave,” I say, quieter, low and furious. “I won’t run away from this.”
Jaesin, the perpetually patient one, finally snaps, that fury I glimpsed on the bridge boiling over.
“Why not, Diz? Isn’t avoidance your default way to deal with everything? You never wanted to leave with us anyway. You cared more about yourself and this city than about our ten years of friendship. You decided to take that job with Davon instead of going with us, but you’re too much of a coward to just say it. Don’t think I didn’t notice that slipup yesterday. So what’s the difference? You don’t want to join us? Fine. Stay here and rot in everything you refuse to get over, become an MMC zombie and look over your shoulder every single day, wondering if anyone’s going to figure you out. Go out in the middle of the night and hang out with Davon and dance with random girls, even though there are people right here who care about you, who are offering you another option.”
He pauses, then shakes his head. “I’ve always known where we stood with you. I guess I just thought you might change your mind before we actually all fell apart.”
I laugh, harsh and unkind.
“Well, you should really know better by now, shouldn’t you,” I say. Joke’s on him. I fell apart years ago.
“Yeah,” he says, quieter. “Yeah, I guess I should.”
He takes a long breath in, then blows it out slowly.
“Well, we’re leaving tomorrow. With or without you. Right?” he asks. The others nod their assent, tears running down their cheeks, Remi’s eyes pleading.
I can’t look at them. I can’t look at any of them. My blood boils hot under my skin.
“Fine,” I say. “Fine.”
My chest tightens, the vise grip around my heart squeezing until it crumbles away to ashes.
“Goodbye, I guess.”
It comes out rough, the last syllable barely audible, because a little dignity is apparently too much to ask for.
A notification pops up on my lenses as I snatch my boots up off the rack and tug them roughly onto my feet. Davon.
(private) Davon: Hey, I’ve been buried in code all day and only just heard about the maz accident. You weren’t on the west side of town today, were you?
Please get back to me
Please Dizzy, gods, where are you?
I almost laugh. At least someone’s still in my corner. Until I screw that up too. Until he finds out what I’ve done.
I walk over to the shoulder-height window that borders on a back alleyway, tuning out the muttered argument going on behind me. It slides open easily when I touch the controls, because of course everything in this house is in perfect, pristine working order. I take a steadying breath and place my hands on the windowsill.