I woke to the sound of pounding on the front door. Not the polizí, or my door would have been in splinters on the floor, a flashlight in my face as they dragged me out of bed. I stumbled over from the couch, whole body aching and bruised. The gashes on my legs stung, adhered to my pants by the blood that had seeped through the bandage.

I must have looked like a ghost with my stone-dust covered skin and hair, like a child pretending as they played in flour. I opened the door and Agathe almost fell into me, so furious was her knocking. “What?” My voice was a rasp from the gas and the smoke I had endured.

Agathe, normally so polished and serious, looked up at me with spectacles askew, sweat plastering her hair to her forehead. Most knew her as the editor of that paper, but I knew her as Endeis’s closest friend. “We need to go, Karsa!”

I blinked blearily at her, exhaustion weighting my limbs like lead. “Why?”

“They’ve arrested Endeis and the others! They’re going to come looking for us!”

I choked on my breath for a moment, lodged between relief and agonizing fear. Endeis was alive...but at a devil’s price. I grabbed the bag by the door. It was my sister’s go-bag, the one she said she would take to her grave. I was smaller than her, so the clothes would fit well enough and the cash would help. Besides, it held something even more important: Endeis’s fevered writings. If they found that scrawl, Endeis would walk into a cell she would never walk out of.

Why are you writing that down, End? Are you suicidal? The ghost of older sister past demanded that in my bleary head, but I knew her answer.

Because it’s true. All of it is true and you know it.

I grabbed Agathe’s arm and started walking, bare feet tender against the pavement. “Do you have a place to go?” My words came through numb lips. None of this seemed right.

I had always been a good little Lath. I worked hard, paid my taxes, kept my head down, and bit my tongue. I lived in the cracks and thanked our country for every breath of air they forgot to take away from me. Was that not enough? Even as I struggled to grip the situation, a familiar bitterness crept up my throat. It was anger, powerless anger, at this place I was in, where nothing I could do would change it.

Agathe nodded, guiding me down the steps and through back alleys. Our route took us through foreclosed houses and tenement buildings, across rooftops and down alleys so shady they seemed to exist in a perpetual night. It was agonizing for me, but you keep going through that kind of pain, that kind of exhaustion, after you see your first checkpoint and men with riot batons as long as your arm, overlooked by one armed and armored in military gear.

“They’ve shut the city down,” Agathe said as we crawled under an iron grate to get out into the street again. I cursed in pain. I scraped my skinned knees against rough pavement as I moved.

“I can’t hide forever, Agathe. It will look suspicious.”

“Would you rather be suspicious or in a grave?”

“Is there a difference?” I demanded.

“I do just fine,” Agathe said almost stiffly. Her publication gave her plenty of reason to know how to hide. It normally blew over, once they’d smashed the printing machines and burned the copies. Mostly because even polizí don’t want to deal with the four hundred people who showed up outside to watch. That was before a spire had fallen, though. People would want blood.

“I have to go to work.”

Agathe turned to face me as we stepped into a ramshackle apartment building. She whipped off her spectacles as if drawing the sword of God. “This is the work now, Karsa. Can’t you see that?”

I sighed and collapsed down on a bench. “I’m not Endeis.”

“You know what they do to people who set foot in those prisons. Are you just going to let her suffer without making a squeak, mouse that you are?”

My baleful eyes looked out of the stone dust covering my skin. I was angry, angry that she thought I loved Endeis so little. “And what are you going to do? Rabble rouse?”

“Enough people willing to go in and protest, and they can’t arrest us. Particularly if we come ready to fight this time.”

I looked down at myself, at the dirt clinging to my bloody pants. “I can’t, Agathe. I’m all torn up.”

She looked me over, face paling a few shades. It seemed to slap her back to practicality. “What happened, Karsa? Was it them?”

I shook my head. “I went looking for her.” The words felt dry and powerless in my mouth. No tears, no digging, no pain had brought my sister back to me.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Agathe sighed and reached out, touching my bruised cheek lightly in a familial concern. This was the woman I always fed, I always clothed, I never turned away. I knew that even when she was angry with the way I just went along with everything, she appreciated me for that. “We need to get you cleaned up.”

We have to stick together, Endeis always said. I learned that from watching you.

The apartment we climbed to had no power. The inside was lit by the open window and a few mirrors that caught the sun and reflected them into darker corners. Three young men I didn’t recognize met us. They were narrow-faced bags of bones with hunger-ravaged hopes and sorrowful eyes. They clustered around, chattering in our language so quickly that I struggled to keep up in my exhaustion.

“She’s hurt really bad. Is the water still running?” Agathe’s concern overwhelmed our earlier disagreement.

“I just got it turned back on,” the tall one said. His slouched posture and ink stained fingers were evidence enough to me that he could be trusted for the moment. He had to work with Agathe, probably the perpetual repairman for their precious printer.

My sister’s friend gave my upper arm a squeeze. “Go take a shower, Karsa. Don’t take the bandages off until the water has loosened them. I’ll bring more and some antiseptic.”

“You’ll need a lot. He said I needed stitches.”

“I can do that.” The young man at the back gave me a friendly smile, showing crooked teeth. “I work at a vet clinic.”

It made sense. They weren’t going to let Lathraí work at a real hospital unless it was in the laundry or cleaning the place. The idea of going to medical school was a joke that had never hit me as very funny.

“Sounds good,” I rasped, limping towards the dingy bathroom. If he sutured animals, he could close up a human wound fine enough.

It was miserable. The stone dust turned into a slurry that I had to stop from going down the drain for fear of blocking it. Then I had to peel off first the pants, mercifully already ripped. Then the bandages came off, swollen with water. The bandage-sutures were intact, but everything else came apart in my fingers, clotted with blood. I threw them away in the bathroom’s trash can as quickly as possible.

Agathe came in and left me clean underwear and a shirt so I could be somewhat covered during the stitching and bandaging. Her lips pressed small and eyes widened as she took in the extent of the injuries. “I’m sorry, Karsa. I didn’t realize. I shouldn’t have snapped.”

“It’s fine,” I said as water streamed down my body. The head of the shower gurgled every now and then. The last of the filth was on its way, washed out in a stream of orange as everything trickled blood anew. “Can you hand me a towel? Maybe a dark one would be best.” I offered her a faint smile. It was as close to joking as I could make it.

She grabbed a navy blue one and handed it to me. When she saw how stiffly I moved, she stepped in and helped me dry off. “I have some surgical antiseptic. Just rinse everything with that and Isidoros can stitch everything up. He’s a great medic.”

I nodded and cleaned everything out as well as I could, carefully rinsing every cut and scrape. She did so for the ones I couldn’t reach, then added antibiotic ointment. We went through several tubes of it, which made me wince. That was an extra expense that she didn’t need. Still, I was grateful for it.

There was no numbing when the time came to suture. Isidoros worked quickly and his friends, Linos and Markos held me down. Agathe combed her fingers through my hair like my mother used to, trying to keep me calm despite the pain. I barely moved, too tired to put up a fight even if it hurt.

“You are being very brave,” Isidoros said soothingly, repeating the phrase over and over. I wondered if he said that mostly to animals, or if he saved it for the people he treated.

By the time it was over and everything was bandaged expertly again, I was barely aware of anything. Yet I still grabbed Agathe by the arm when she went to fetch me a blanket and a pillow. They knew there was no way to move me from the couch or get me dressed the rest of the way. “If something happens with Endeis, come get me,” I pleaded.

“We will,” Agathe promised.

“No matter what it is. Even if it is bad. Get me.”

Agathe nodded. “We will.”

I slept like the dead, the taste of ashes still in my mouth. My dreams were of fire and screams, of gas that choked and the smell of blood.

Six hours later, I was up and moving despite the pain. I dressed as carefully as I could to avoid hurting myself or opening any stitches. Only Isidoros was in the front room. His sponge squeaked as he mopped up my blood. “Don’t hurt yourself, Karsa.”

“Do you have a clairá?” I asked.

His eyes became hawkish. “Who are you going to call?”

“My parents. They’ll want to know what happened.”

Isidoros softened considerably. He fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it over. “Don’t tell them too much, Karsa. You never know who is listening.”

I nodded. It was a warning I knew well enough to follow. Still, I wanted them to know that Endeis was still alive, that I was still alive.

My father answered despite the small hour of the morning. The arrests probably hadn’t been announced yet, but the bombing would have been obvious to everyone within hours. “Who is this?” he grumbled out.

I switched languages, discarding the official one with ease. He hated to hear anything else, even when I was much younger and just barely in school. “It’s Karsa, Deda.”

His sigh of relief was audible, his clairá probably held close to his ear. “We’ve been so worried about you two.”

He was the kind of man who always wanted his bad news first. “They arrested End at the protest, Deda, right after the bomb." Tears welled in my eyes. Now that I had the safety of his voice, I wanted to cry like a baby.

Deda made gentle shushing sounds until I soothed enough that I could talk again. “Are you safe, little bird?”

“For a little while.”

It wasn't an answer he liked. “Do you want me to come get you?”

I swallowed hard. I wanted that more than anything, but he wouldn’t be able to make it into the city without hitting a blockade. “They’ve locked everything down. You couldn’t get in if you wanted to. Besides, I want to be here in case…” The words frayed. “In case…”

My mother must have taken the clairá from him, because then I heard her voice. “If you need anything, if there is anything we can do, keep in touch and tell us. You should try to get back to Helike. Things are quiet here. Endeis wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

“She can’t always get what she wants.” I almost choked on the words.

“Be careful, Karsa,” my mother said. “I want both of you home safe.”

We both knew, in the deepest places of our hearts, that one way or another, that would not happen. “I love you both,” I said instead. “I’ll call again when I can.”