Luka hadn’t moved. He sat on the farmhouse steps, cradling his face inside his elbows, and kept sitting. The dead dog hadn’t moved either, but its stench was starting to fade. It was amazing what olfactory nerves could adapt to, what levels of denial the human body was capable of.…
“Luka?”
Yael. He hadn’t heard her approach. Everything in Luka wanted to look up and greet her. Everything in him dreaded it. But when he tried to move, he found that he couldn’t. The crush of skies remained. Who was he to slough it off?
Yael settled on the step beside him. Her sweater brushed his bare arm. She said nothing. The silence squirmed inside Luka, twisted, twisted until he could no longer keep it.
“I’m sorry, Yael. I didn’t know about the experiments. I thought the camps were for labor. I thought…” Luka stopped. He couldn’t imagine what he’d thought now: away and all. There was no excuse. Not for murder this massive. Not for all the suffering that had happened while he was off smoking cigarettes.
He lifted his head. Most of the moon had decided to take the night off; what little remained hung as thin and useless as a fingernail clipping. Yael was but a sketch beneath its light—hair dripping silver down her shoulders, washed-out face. Her eyes were the focal point: dark as danger, whet by emotion.
“You didn’t know. Is that the truth?” she asked finally.
The truth. That’s what sat between them now. Not a wall of unknowns, but a chasm, bottomless, without end.
How could things ever be even between them?
“Yes. And no. I never knew, but I was too scared to know. But fear isn’t an excuse, and I—I don’t want to be a coward anymore.” Luka rubbed his hand through his hair—over the pearly scar (which felt like nothing now), down to the base of his neck (so empty without the dog tag links). “Is it too late to join?”
“What?”
“The resistance. Can I still join? Is there some list I add my name to? A blood oath? Or something?”
Yael watched him for another moment. Her stare could not be more different from Miriam’s, but Luka still got the distinct feeling he was being judged. Every word weighed, every flicker of his pupil noted.
“Consider yourself a member,” she said.
“That’s all?” It didn’t feel like enough. (Why did it never feel like enough?)
“I already did your background check. Luka Wotan Löwe. Born February 10, 1939, in Hamburg to Kurt and Nina Löwe.”
Wotan. The wince-worthy name belonged to Luka’s grandfather. Antiquated even then. “You certainly were thorough.”
“I had to know what I was getting into.”
“So what am I getting into?”
Yael’s arm drew away from his and pulled something from her sweater. She placed it in Luka’s palm. It was paper, he realized. Another photograph. He had to tilt it toward the distant barn light to see what he already knew was there: another young girl. Her portrait was made of opposites. Dark hair. Light skin. Terrified lips. Eyes that looked ready to make something flint, catch, explode. These held a different kind of strength. Something far deeper, far truer than the blitzkrieg brutality his father upheld.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” The picture felt so very rippable against Luka’s palm as he turned it over to read the faint words on the back. “Yael Reider.”
“I found it in the Doppelgänger Project files with all the others. I’d forgotten what I looked like. Until today.”
“I can’t imagine,” Luka whispered. There were so many things he couldn’t imagine.
“For years I just kept drifting. Face to face. Name to name.” Yael rolled up her left sleeve until her arm was bare next to his. “These tattoos were all I had to hold on to who I was.”
Luka’s eyes struggled to adjust with the view, just as they had with the photograph. They focused first on the light parts: spots of star-kissed skin. It was only after a few seconds that the black lines seized his focus and would not let go. Wolves he couldn’t unsee. Marks that meant something.
Luka was still afraid, but what good was it? His jacket was gone, and the truth was already between them, and he wanted to know who the hell this girl was and what made her so strong.
“What do they mean?” he asked.