* * *

Sarah’s steps slowed, a stark contrast with the increasing rhythm of her heart. Somehow, she was able to find her way to the medical area. The hallways were vaguely familiar from when she came to get some x-rays done some weeks back.

Was the fact that she could tell these gray hallways apart a sign that she’d been trapped too long in this place?

Her heartbeats felt as loud as her footsteps in the silence, but soon she identified voices. A couple of nurses rushed past her, but they didn’t even spare her a glance.

It was too much to hope that she was actually invisible, but she’d take being ignored. Especially since she had no desire to detract their attention from any actual emergencies.

She followed the murmur of voices to an open door further down the hallway. Hiding herself right outside the door, she tried to listen in.

Her hand pressed against the wall, sweating even though it too was cold. Her one bare foot was the same temperature as the tiles now.

A conversation was taking place inside between several people, but Robyn’s usual loudness wasn’t among them. Sarah was about to move on when she recognized Pegasus’ voice.

“How do you want us to proceed?” He sounded concerned.

“Griffon, did you get a good look before the explosion? Was it all there?” Zeus asked.

“We think so, yes,” an unfamiliar and strained male voice replied. Sarah guessed it would be their team leader, Griffon.

And if Griffon was back, didn’t that mean Robyn would be back as well? Her foot edged forward to take her out of hiding, but she caught herself in time. The last thing she needed was to go back to being suspected as a spy.

“At least the stolen canisters had been recovered before any of it was used this time,” Pegasus said. “One less issue to deal with.”

“Aren’t you suddenly optimistic?” Griffon asked.

“Well, the New Nation can still go ahead with their plans, but dealing with a conventional explosive is better than dealing with a device designed to disperse deadly gas. Anything that doesn’t involve wind conditions is less complicated.”

“We change nothing then,” Zeus said. “In case they decide to hit the conference as we suspected.”

“Do we have a casualty count yet?” Griffon asked.

Sarah inched closer to the door. Casualties?

“They’re still going over the debris,” Pegasus said. “It’ll take a while since a lot of it is in the water.”

“So far, the media is reporting it as an accident. Are we going to set them straight, sir?”

“Not unless we have to,” Zeus answered. “Let us leave it alone for now.”

“Are we done with that then?” There was something in Pegasus’ voice she couldn’t identify. A long pause followed, and she was wondering if she’d missed something when Pegasus once again spoke. “What happened? Why didn’t you go to a local hospital?”

“I didn’t think we needed to. She got thrown against a wall by the explosion and hit her head, but she said it wasn’t anything to worry about,” Griffon said.

“Obviously, she was wrong,” Pegasus said. “And one of you should have known better.”

Sarah was caught off guard by the anger in his voice. She’d never seen him angry before. She clenched her fists tighter. Was it Robyn they were talking about?

“It looked no worse than a bump,” Griffon said. “Aside from Python and me getting shot, everyone else had minor injuries.”

“Doctor Blue explained they’ll need to alleviate the pressure,” Zeus said. “They’re prepping her now.”

Sarah willed herself to move, but she found her back glued to the wall.

“She did seem more or less fine,” another familiar voice piped in, though not the one Sarah had been hoping for. Scorpion’s being there underscored Robyn’s absence from the mix. “She didn’t collapse until we were halfway here, and then we were already halfway here.”

Sarah pushed herself from the wall, leaning in enough to get a look inside.

A man she didn’t recognize was lying on a hospital bed with a bloody thigh being cleaned by the nurse who’d run out of her room.

Zeus was standing nearby with his back to her. Another unfamiliar man sat in a chair, sleeve rolled up to expose a few cuts.

A woman lay on another bed across the room, her arm resting over her face as someone cleaned a gash right under her ribs.

Sarah wasn’t fooled for even a second, the blond hair told her straight away it wasn’t Robyn.

Pegasus was leaning against the far wall, looking almost at ease except for his expression. His sharp gaze met hers and, feeling like she’d touched a live wire, she retreated from the doorway.

She flattened herself as much as possible against the wall, wishing she really could be invisible.

To her left, a body was lying in a pool of blood.

Her heart skipped a beat. Unable to catch her breath, Sarah clasped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from making a sound. She shut her eyes, letting the cold from the wall seep into her back.

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Placing her clenched fists over her closed lids, she attempted to ward off the unwanted images.

She didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to see if it was real.

A hand touched her shoulder and she startled.

Pegasus broke through her panic, telling her to breathe. She tried shoving him back, but it was like trying to push away a wall. He removed his hand.

“Sarah?” His voice came from right in front of her.

She focused on each inhale and exhale, trying to steady herself.

“Robyn’s fine,” he whispered, as if he’d known those were the words she’d been wishing for.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and met his gaze. She wanted to believe him—there was no reason not to—but she was afraid. The air behind him shifted, but she was too scared to look, so she kept her gaze on him instead.

“Robyn’s fine,” he repeated. “She has some cuts from a broken window, and she dislocated her shoulder again. It’s nothing serious.”

The air went out of her in one long breath. The nightmares and waking fears had made her expect the worst. Her mind was still having trouble letting go of that.

A tear rolled down her face and she wiped it away, but she was still too shaken to feel embarrassed. She tore her gaze away from him, choosing to focus on the ceiling.

He took her hands in his, trying to undo her clenched fists. “Sarah, can you look at me, please? Your sister is fine, I promise. Trust me.”

Sarah looked at him then. “Trust the guy whose name I don’t even know?”

Pegasus countered her glare with a smile and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Tobias.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

His lips twitched in an aborted laugh. “That’s my name.”

“Seriously? You don’t look like a Tobias.”

He spun on his heels, coming to lean back against the wall right beside her.

Thankfully, there was no sign of blood or a body anywhere in sight.

He lightly bumped his shoulder against hers. “What does a Tobias look like?”

Sarah shrugged. She wiped at her eyes again, but they were dry. Calmer now, she succeeded in disconnecting herself from the feeling eating away at her insides.

“Better now?” he asked.

Probably. The embarrassment had finally shown up.

“How’d you get here?”

They’d find out sooner or later, but she didn’t feel like talking about it. Maybe she was being contrary. “Can I see her?”

“They have to set her shoulder, and then she needs to be debriefed. Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere.”

Sarah must have shown some doubt in her expression, because Pegasus nudged her. “Come on, let’s get you back to your room.”

Pegasus pushed himself off the wall, but Sarah refused to move.

Smiling, he leaned in closer to her and very deliberately bat his lashes at her.

Sarah snorted.

When she still didn’t move, Pegasus placed an arm around her and started leading her towards the elevator. For lack of viable options, she let him.

Sarah glanced back towards the infirmary a couple of times, but she chose to believe him when he said her sister was fine. Hanging around here wouldn’t do any good if she wasn’t allowed to see Robyn. Besides, most of the fear had subsided.

When they got to the elevators, he planted her in front of the doors as if to send her off.

Distracted by the overhead lights that announced its approach, she was surprised when Pegasus followed her into the elevator. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

He shrugged. “Only way I’ll be sure you make it back.”

Sarah emulated his shrug. “Suit yourself.”

He stuck out his hand at the last moment to stop the doors from closing and peered back out. “Did you lose a shoe?”

She dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand. “It’s back in my room.”

When they returned to her room, Pegasus snickered when he saw what had become of her other sandal.

“I tried calling you when I heard the alarm,” she said defensively.

He picked up the sandal as he ushered her inside and handed it to her. “I have to get back up there. Will you be alright on your own?”

Sarah nodded without meeting his gaze. Now that the despair had subsided, embarrassment really was all that was left.

“I’ll make sure Robyn comes by as soon as she’s clear.”

“Yeah, sure, if she doesn’t avoid me so I won’t yell at her—that seems to be her thing now.”

There was a touch of mischief to his smile. “Trust me, I’ll get her here.”

Sarah pictured him tossing Robyn over a shoulder and bringing her over by force. She laughed. “It’s okay, Robyn’s a handful when she wants to be.”

He scoffed. “I knew she needed managing the moment I saw her.”

“Was that before or after you pulled a gun on her?”

He frowned. “She told you I pulled a gun on her?”

Sarah bit the inside of her lower lip. Maybe Robyn had said too much about her friends that time.

“She didn’t really say much.” The last thing she needed was to get Robyn in trouble. Maybe this was more of the things she wasn’t supposed to know. “She didn’t really tell me anything about how you met, just that. Can we pretend I didn’t mention it?”

Something changed in him with those words. “Sure, no problem. Why were you talking about that?”

Sarah shifted uneasily. She didn’t know what would be an appropriate answer. “It was nothing, really. She was trying to get me to trust you.”

Pegasus frowned harder. Sarah didn’t think she could explain. Robyn’s logic hadn’t made much sense to her either.

“When was this?” he asked.

Sarah cocked an eyebrow. “You wanna trust my memory?”

He shrugged, his usual response to her questions, but she could swear there was a stiffness to the movement that hadn’t been there before. Sarah felt as if an invisible wall had fallen between them, some of the ease with which he interacted with her suddenly gone. As if they truly were the strangers he’d pretended all along they weren’t.

She tried to hide her unease with a shrug of her own. “I guess it was my first week here. Correction, the first week I was awake for, I think.”

He nodded, letting the air out as if he’d been holding his breath throughout her answer.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked.

He smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

Was she imagining things? Again, it seemed like his manner was slightly disconnected from his words.

Pegasus turned to go with no other explanation. Before Sarah could say something, he was gone.

Her eyes, wide and haunted, found their reflection in the mirror. Just like that, the fear that had stopped squeezing her insides returned.

* * *

Sarah pressed her back against the wall, struggling to calm her breathing. The phone started slipping from her hand—she’d forgotten it was there.

A boy’s voice on the other end called her name. It was only vaguely familiar, not enough to be comforting.

She tried to speak, but nothing came out. A tear slid down her cheek and wet her hand.

Lost in the nightmare her mind had showed her, Sarah was trying to pull her thoughts from the haze. It was hard to separate the present from the illusion.

She gripped the phone tighter. That was real. Since she was holding the phone, had someone called her?

No, she’d called someone.

The recollection pulled a conversation with Becca, from whom she’d gotten some boy’s number.

Robyn!

When the voice insisted again, she remembered. The boy—Tim—was with her sister.

She clutched the phone tighter when Robyn’s voice came next. “Sarah? You still there?”

“Robyn?”

“You’re sounding kinda distant. Are you in the library?”

“No.” She looked around, only then recognizing where she was. “Near the chemistry lab in the main building.”

When she blinked, another cascade of tears fled from her eyes.

Somewhere in the distance, there was a scream. She flinched reflexively. It was the same scream she’d heard before. Her scream.

“Robyn?” She choked on a sob. “Please come get me.”

“What’s wrong? You don’t sound so good.”

Blood was on the wall. She covered her mouth to stop from screaming. Any relief she felt from hearing Robyn’s voice vanished at the sight of blood.

“Sarah? What’s wrong?”

The words echoed in her mind, half amused. What’s wrong?

“I’m bleeding,” she whispered, pulling the phone away without even noticing.

She was bleeding, but it wasn’t her.