“NEIL.” I CHOKE OUT HIS name. I can’t understand why he doesn’t open his eyes. I need to get closer.
Behind him lies the still-smoking ruin of the records building where we first entered Level Three. Everyone who can move crawls away from it. I reach out my arms, dig my fingers into the ground, and pull my body toward Neil an inch at a time. My muscles groan with the effort, but I won’t stop. Neil’s life is at stake.
When I reach him, I try to push the rock off his leg, but it won’t budge. All I can do is cradle his head in my lap. He bleeds from a gash in his temple, and I search desperately for something to staunch the flow. My dress is torn and dirty, but I tear off a scrap from the full skirt, rip the hem, and press the clean side against his wound.
He’s not breathing. But of course, in the afterlife, breathing is a habit, not a necessity. I run my fingertips over his eyelids and eyelashes, and then squeeze his shoulders with the little strength I have left. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. If I lose Neil, I don’t think I can go on.
Libby gets up right in my face. She shakes me, and all I can think is, Where did she come from? Her lips are moving, but no sound emerges. She seems to repeat the same word over and over. It finally dawns on me that she’s mouthing the word “healer.” She gestures at Nate and two guys dressed in black. The three of them lift the rock off Neil and carry him away from me.
“Take me, too,” I croak out, but they ignore me and rush off. I try to lift myself to my feet, but my limbs don’t respond.
“He’ll be fine, and so will you.” Libby must be yelling, but I can barely register her words.
That’s when I notice the blood. The falling debris banged up my arms and torso. Libby is as pristine as she was before, and miraculously, she doesn’t have a scratch on her. It doesn’t seem possible that a blast that ripped Megan’s leg off does not affect Libby at all and leaves Nate still strong enough to lift a boulder. Or maybe Libby wasn’t in the records hall at the time of the blast. Was Autumn still there? Will I lose my best friend and my boyfriend on the same day?
People stream around us, and it is like I’m in the middle of an action movie with the mute button activated. Libby touches my forehead and enunciates, “You can hear fine.” I’m blasted with sounds of anguished moans and frenzied shouting as more people in black and gray descend upon the injured.
Libby’s up again in a flash, directing the crowd. I follow her gestures, hoping for some insight into where they’ve taken Neil so I can go to him when I’m able to get up. But so many panicked people run in all directions that I quickly lose sight of Libby.
My gaze flickers across a roman profile and shaggy blond bangs, and a sudden euphoria lifts me out of my worry and exhaustion. Julian! Julian will know what to do. I bite my lip, hard, when I realize it’s not only Julian’s competence but also his closeness that I crave. I can’t afford to think that when Neil could be dying. I crane my neck back and forth trying to catch sight of that distinctively messy blond hair again, but it’s gone. Maybe it was never there. Maybe it was merely a figment of my overstressed mind.
But it’s not my imagination that Autumn heads straight for me, and she appears to be in perfect health. That’s one blessing I can count.
“Felicia! I’ve been looking all over for you.” Autumn sinks to her knees and inspects my cuts with deft hands. “Are you in pain?”
“They took Neil somewhere. Megan died in front of me.” I touch my hand to my chest, over my heart, where it hurts more than I could ever put into words.
“Megan?” Autumn whispers. She sags into me and sighs into my hair. “She was always so eager to include everyone. She wasn’t here for more than a couple of months, but she made such an impression. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
But gone where? I thought the one advantage of dying was that you’d finally know what happens to you after you die. But here I am, dead, and I’m still in the dark as to what comes next, if anything. A better place? A worse place? Or no place at all?
We don’t say anything for a few moments. Autumn’s grandmother, an early widow, always used to tell us that grief needs room to breathe. And here, in the midst of all this chaos, we form an island of calm, letting the sorrow sink in deep.
Finally Autumn pulls away, drawing in a ragged breath. “It takes most people a long time to adjust to their afterlife bodies. You still believe you can bleed. That you can die. It’s something you have to unlearn.” She tucks a strand of her blond hair behind her ear. “Watch this.”
She pulls up a pant leg and slips a knife out of a sheath strapped to her shin. Arcing the knife downward, she jabs it into my middle finger, causing a pinprick of blood to well up at the tip.
“What was that for?” I scowl up at her as I suck on my finger, tasting the metallic tang of blood. I’m surprised she even carries around a knife, considering the way she died, stabbed to death in my bed. Maybe it’s a coping exercise they’ve assigned in her training. I wonder if they know she goes around cutting people.
Then Autumn positions the knife so that it’s pointing straight at her heart.
My eyes widen as I realize what she plans to do, and I reach my arms up to try to stop her. “No! Autumn!”
It’s too late. She plunges the knife in, and I look at her, horrified, expecting a gurgle of red to stain her shirt and for the light to dim in her eyes as she falls over.
But she simply pulls the knife back out, flashes the clean blade in front of my face, and returns it to its hiding place.
It’s horrifying that she is so casual about stabbing herself after all this carnage.
“Everything you feel, every physical reaction you have—it’s all because you believe it can happen. You’re still programmed to believe it can happen from your time in Level One. On Earth, you get cut; you bleed. You fall; you break a bone.”
Very carefully she pulls me to my feet and drapes my arm around her neck to support my weight. We pick our way through the debris, heading away from the chaos and toward the dorms. “It’s funny, though. You understand you don’t need to eat or drink, of course, and that’s why you’re not starving or thirsty. But your body’s hit with trauma, and wham—you react like you still have a functioning and tragically fragile system.”
For most of my stay in Level Two, I was too drugged to feel anything at all. Then as the drugs wore off, I began to register pain. The drugs probably blocked my natural reactions to physical trauma. But there was also the man whom Julian punched in one of the hives so that I could use his memory chamber. The drugs didn’t stop him from falling unconscious immediately. Obviously, what your mind makes you believe has a lot of effect on what happens to you in the afterlife. “But you’re above all that now,” I say. “You don’t bleed.”
“Exactly. I’ve evolved. I know I can’t die, and so I can’t.”
“But Neil—”
“Don’t be scared. I’m sure they got him to a healer in time.”
“What can a healer do if all the physical stuff doesn’t matter?”
“Healers enter a traumatized person’s head and convince them they’re not dying.” Autumn taps her forehead. “It doesn’t always work. Depends on the healer’s talent. But for some, the power of suggestion is truly a skill.”
“Libby fixed my hearing.”
“Really? Hmmm.” She stops and seems to ponder this for a moment. “Can you walk on your own now?”
Autumn’s explanation has helped me to make sense of things. I tell myself I feel fine, and even start to believe it. “Yes, I think so.”
She disentangles from me in one smooth motion, and I sway a bit on my feet before taking a deep breath to steady myself. I run my hand over the broken right strap of my dress to repair it, but I don’t attempt a full overhaul yet. There are more important things to use my energy on right now than my appearance, such as helping Neil.
We reach the big double glass doors of my dorm. Autumn raises her arm, and the doors open for us. It’s impressive.
We enter the foyer and turn right immediately into a large common room. Cots are set up in a triage situation, with about a dozen bodies lying down and three healers in long red dresses tending to them. I scan all the faces but recognize only the girls Nate was flirting with before. They’re totally knocked out.
“Neil’s not here,” I say to Autumn, my voice tinged in panic. “What if they couldn’t save him?”
It’s now clear that Level Three may be even more dangerous than Level Two. I imagined a place of peace. A place I could finally rest. Not one shock after another. Arriving only to hear that the Morati did make it through after all. Discovering I didn’t die when I thought I did. Surviving a bombing. Realizing Neil could disappear from my afterlife at any second.
Autumn hugs me fiercely. “I’ll try to find out, okay? I’m sure he’s fine.”
“This can’t be happening,” I mumble into her shoulder.
“Cash,” she calls to one of the security force guys, stepping back from me. “Did the team bring everyone here?”
Cash strides over to us and bows to Autumn, low and courteous like they do in Japan. Autumn bows too, but not as low. “The explosion damaged only the facade of the records hall. But there’s a mandatory curfew starting now.” Cash’s voice is as slick as his dark hair. “Nate told us to take Neil to Neil’s room, but everyone else is here. Everyone who hasn’t terminated, that is. Nine casualties so far.” If Neil is in his room, that’s all I need to know. I rush for the stairs and get caught up in the throng of people fleeing to their rooms. The atmosphere is tense. We are so jammed together, the waves of fear and unrest from the bombing cause my teeth to chatter.
By the time I make it to my floor, the crowd is thinning. But when I get to Neil’s room, I come face-to-massive-chest with a burly guy from the security team. “Let me in,” I demand.
I try for the door handle, but he blocks me. I have the urge to kick him in the shins, but a hand grabs me from behind. “Let me talk to him,” Autumn says. “Go on into your room.”
I don’t want to, but Autumn stares me down until I do. Once inside my room, I pace over to the window and look out.
From this vantage point I can see the wide, treelined avenue that separates the dorms from the central buildings and courtyards. Beyond that is the lawn where we stood, where the explosion happened. Except there’s no longer any outward trace of damage. Benches have been righted, rubble cleared away, and greenery revived. There’s also a life-size stone statue of what looks like a samurai. The statue stands out next to the more Western-style buildings.
“I got you permission to visit Neil,” Autumn says, making me jump at least an inch off the floor. I didn’t even sense her coming in or up behind me. “They’ll knock when they’re ready for you. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Thank you.” I stare out the window, trying to keep myself composed.
“That’s weird. Furukama-Sensei is outside,” Autumn says. “He’s kind of like the president high commander of Level Three, but he never leaves his office in the administration building except for seraphim guard training.”
“Where?” I don’t see anyone.
“The statue. Turning to stone is Furukama’s way of meditating,” Autumn replies.
I look again at the stone figure. “Weird.”
“I know, right? Furukama is by far the oldest human here. He claims to have left Level One sometime in the thirteenth century. Everyone else is from the twentieth century or later, since the older generations retire eventually and ascend to Level Four. No one knows for sure if Furukama made that story up to add to his mystique or if it’s really true.”
“Did Furukama call the mandatory curfew? Does he do it often?” Even though the room is relatively large and empty, the walls seem like they’re closing in on me.
“This is the first time.” She materializes an armchair. It’s my dad’s favorite chair, the patched-up one he always read in. “You look like you need to sit down, Your Highness.” Her tone is solicitous but cheeky, like the court jester she used to play to my queen back when we’d pretend the chair was a throne.
I sink into the chair, running my hands over the worn leather and the smooth wood. Autumn knows instinctively what I need, like a best friend should. I took her friendship way too much for granted, and I have to make it up to her somehow.
There’s a sharp knock on the door, and I dig my fingernails into my palms. A lanky guy enters dressed in black except for an enormous silver belt buckle. He heads straight to Autumn and whispers something into her ear. Alarm flits across her features, but she composes herself quickly. The guy glances at me before exiting and shutting the door firmly behind him.
“What did he say?” I brace myself for the worst.
Autumn doesn’t answer me. She stares at the carpet, her eyes mere slits and her brow furrowed in concentration.
Is this the moment that will divide my existence forever? The moment when “before I lost Neil” slips cruelly into “after I lost Neil”? I try again, needing to know but not wanting to know at the same time. “Autumn? Tell me already!”
Autumn finally looks at me, her eyes shiny and sad. “William, the head librarian, was killed in the bombing.”
I suck in a breath of relief. Not Neil. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. But if Autumn is this sad about the head librarian’s death, they must have been close. “I’m so sorry.”
“So am I.” Autumn sniffles. “Because if William could die, any one of us could.”