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  “And also,” Quint goes on, his voice a little lighter, “I seem to know all sorts of random crap about science, and I need you to help me figure out why.”

  I go still. The burning stops. A different sort of fire starts—something ugly. Something almost … angry, as if I were somehow still capable of any emotion other than emptiness after the end of my world. He needs me to help him? This speech, forcing me to wake up, forcing me to think about what I’ve lost, it’s so I can help solve his problems?

  He watches the thoughts play across my face. He lifts his hands, lets them drop again. “It turns out,” he says softly, “you’re the only one who can see me.” The easy conversational tone is gone and he sounds suddenly younger, and a little bit afraid. In the back of my head a voice whispers that if he is somehow real, his problems might be as terrible as mine. I don’t listen to it.

  I lift my head. I turn and look at him and open my mouth—and then the door creaks. A pair of scrub-clad legs stop in front of my bed. “Good morning,” says their owner, who must be my doctor.

  Quint and I are still staring at each other. I break eye contact first and he makes a frustrated noise, but I ignore him. I climb back into bed. “Hello,” I reply, because I can’t bring myself to say good morning back like everything is fine and normal and I’m okay with chitchat. My voice comes out rusty, which feels somehow right.

  “Glad to see you’re awake. I’ll have a nurse let your father know—he just stepped out a few minutes ago, I believe. How are you feeling?” He gives me a once-over, then purses his lips and leafs through a few pages on his clipboard. Dr. Browning, says his name tag, which also identifies him as an agent. Am I in a military hospital? Or did all the surviving agents in the city scatter to other posts when their workplace was destroyed?

  I shy away from the thought, lie down, and start pulling my sheet up off the floor. “I’m having hallucinations,” I reply flatly.

  Quint is still sitting cross-legged below me. A muscle in his jaw tightens but he doesn’t look up. “Please don’t call me that,” he says in a low voice.

  I ignore him. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. If he’s a figment of my imagination, then I’ve been changed in even more fundamental ways that I don’t want to think about; and if he’s a ghost, then I’m stuck with the wrong one.

  The doctor raises an eyebrow and scribbles something on the clipboard. I fight with myself for a few seconds before I give in to the faint pulse of curiosity. “What are you writing?” I ask. Thanks to having two doctor parents, I know all the diagnoses, all the reasons I might be hallucinating this boy—schizophrenia, PTSD, certain kinds of drugs—but none of them quite fit. Maybe the doctor knows what Quint is and how to make him go away.

  But a strange expression crosses Dr. Browning’s face and he steps back. “Sorry. Your medical records are part of an ongoing investigation into the explosion at the base. They’re agency property—I can only share limited information with you.”

  “You can only share limited information with me about my own condition?”

  He scribbles some more. “That’s correct.”

  I pause. When he looks up, I nod politely like a docile little patient, answer a few more questions about how I’m feeling, and then, when he’s distracted by a nurse who comes to check my IV, I steal the clipboard.

  So maybe I do care. Or maybe I just don’t trust people who won’t give me straight answers.

  “Hey!” The doctor turns, spots me, and snatches his clipboard back before I have time to do more than read my own name. He flips through, making sure I didn’t steal anything, and then retreats like he’s afraid I’ll make another grab for it.

  I lay back down and curl up on my pillow. It doesn’t matter, I remind myself dully. It won’t bring her back.

  Quint regards me from the corner of the room, thoughtful.

  I roll over and go back to sleep.

  The next day, the protestors descend.

  I’m hobbling down the sidewalk just outside the hospital. The air is cool and foggy. I’ve got my bathrobe on over my pajamas because I’m cold and also because putting on normal clothing felt too much like saying life is also back to normal. Quint drifts along behind me—he can never seem to get more than ten feet away. I don’t feel a thing when he reaches the end of whatever it is that tethers us together, but if I move too fast he gets dragged along behind. Not that I’ve been doing much hurrying.

  Every few yards we pass an agent. I ignore them. I ignore everyone. And that’s why, when I get hit by the first rotten apple, my only thought is that someone must’ve accidentally dropped their breakfast.

  And then the signs come out.

  PRESIDENT VASQUEZ=LIAR IN CHIEF. JUSTICE FOR FORT WELLS!

  WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND A PUBLIC HEARING!

  The protestors are lining the sidewalk, melting out of buildings and side streets. They’re heading for the agents behind me, who are clustering into a group and looking alarmed, lifting their walkie-talkies. One of them puts his hand on his gun.

  Someone shouts. A camera flashes. Splat! Another apple crashes near my feet, spraying brown rot on the hem of my hospital-issued bathrobe.

  I stare down at it. I wonder, faintly, where they got it. Have they been squirreling away their fresh apples for the last two weeks, waiting for them to rot for just this occasion? Is there some sort of rotten apple warehouse where people can get last-minute protest fruit?

  “You okay, honey?” says a woman’s voice, cutting through the jeers of the protestors and the agents’ shouting.

  I look up. A stocky, matronly woman is watching me, one hand on my shoulder and the other on a cardboard sign. She glances down, takes in the hospital bracelet on my arm, the entourage of agents huddled a few yards behind me. Her gaze softens. “You’re the sole survivor, aren’t you? The one everyone’s talking about.”

  The sole survivor. That’s what everyone has been calling me, even though it’s not technically true. Most of the northern half of the base survived along with the agents who were stationed there. But I was found in the south, near the epicenter. Everyone who was within a three-mile radius of me is dead.

  “I’m sorry about what you’ve been through,” the woman says, and there’s a choked quality about her voice that I recognize all too well. I don’t register it as grief quickly enough to move though, and I’m trapped in the line of fire for what she says next. “I lost my daughters in the accident. I can see you’ve lost someone too. I’m so sorry.”

  Too late, I take another step away. The grief roars up again, made fresh by her words, and I try to smother it before it can smother me.

  Three agents swoop out of nowhere, push the woman away, and clear a path through the other protestors. They hustle me back to my room. Two guard the door and shout into their walkie-talkies while the last one helps me to my bed and fumbles with an explanation. Someone leaked info about a potential person of interest in the investigation and now people think the agency has been covering something up about the explosion. They’ve been cornering agents with flash protests all over the city, demanding more information. They’re angry. They’re grieving. Things could get ugly, and I should make sure not to speak to any of the protestors just in case. Did I say anything to any of them? Anything that could be misconstrued, anything that might’ve been classified?

  Another agent wedges through the door and slams it behind him. Apparently some of the protestors followed him into the hospital and the agency is still separating them from the people who have a legitimate reason to be here. Did I see if there were any cameras? Could I identify who threw the fruit?

  Everyone asks questions. No one brings me a new bathrobe.

  I stand up. “Get out of my room. I am going back to sleep.”

  No one listens. I go to sleep anyway.

  My therapist visits and convinces my doctors that a brief field trip might do me good. Dad comes. He prods me awake, brings me a change of clothes, takes me out for a picnic lunch. We eat peanu
t butter sandwiches by the ocean and pretend we’re okay, but we’re sitting too far away from each other and there’s enough food for three people, not two.

  The peanut butter sticks to my throat. Quint sits at my side, silent for now. Dad takes me back to the hospital.

  I have a panic attack. I cry. I go back to sleep.

  Things go on like that for a week. Reporters call, and I ignore them. A parade of agency doctors interrogate me about my symptoms and, when they refuse to answer my questions, I ignore them too. I keep the TV off. I eat in my room. I tell Dad he should go back to work. I sleep as frequently as the nurses and my therapist will allow.

  Mom might’ve called it depression. I call it the world without her.

  It’s a lie that finally wakes me up.

  The agent who tells it is tall, black, and allergic to bullshit. She also has a security clearance higher than God, judging from the bright red number on her agency ID. She blusters into my room in the middle of the night, trailing a wake of spluttering nurses whom she shoos away with a look, and grabs an ugly plastic chair from the corner of the room.

  Dad’s been spending every night in that seat. Even my prodigal brother Kyle spent a few hours there while I was asleep, or so I’ve been told. So when the agent snatches it up like it belongs to her and drags it to my bedside—letting it screech against the linoleum and probably waking every patient within five rooms of me—a twinge of aggravation makes my shoulders hunch. It fades quickly, though. Everything does now.

  She turns the chair around, drops into it backwards, and folds her arms over the top. “So,” she says without preamble, “you’ve got some balls.”

  I blink—and then narrow my eyes. The line sounded offhand but her gaze is too calculating, too watchful. She’s trying to shock me. This is some kind of test.

  I bare my teeth in a syrup-sweet smile. “Thanks,” I reply. “You too.” Whatever she’s selling, I’m not buying. All I want to do is go back to sleep.

  She lifts an eyebrow. Her face looks like it doesn’t quite know how to smile, but one corner of her mouth pulls up in something that could almost be mistaken for approval. She holds out a hand. “Dr. Lila. I’m one of the agency’s directors.”

  She worked with Mom, then. She must’ve been off duty the day of the explosion. “What do you want?” I ask, ignoring her hand. My voice is rusty, and I hope she takes the hint to go away. Then again, she doesn’t look like the hint-taking type.

  She drops her hand. “You told one of your doctors you were seeing hallucinations.”

  In the corner of the room, Quint stirs.

  I don’t look up. I’ve gotten good at that.

  “That was right before you tried to steal your own medical chart,” Dr. Lila goes on. “Hence: balls. You do realize stealing classified information is a felony, right?”

  “Then take me to jail,” I reply flatly, and roll over so I’m facing the window. “How much worse could it be?”

  “Your dad could be completely alone,” she says, and suddenly the room seems too small and my blanket too heavy.

  I swallow. I roll back over to face her. She waits a second to be sure she has my attention, then continues. “They’re releasing you in a few minutes. Your dad is already in the waiting room. You could go home.”

  The if hangs in the air between us. I refuse to touch it.

  Her almost-smile flattens the tiniest bit with something like sympathy. It makes me hate her even more and also, against my will, like her a little.

  I give in. “If I do what?”

  “Assist the investigation. And your own treatment, for that matter. The more we know about what happened to you that day, the more likely we’ll be to find a cure for your hallucination problem.” She pulls a paper-thin tablet from her briefcase and powers it on.

  Quint moves closer and the room’s shadows slide through him. He steps around the end of the bed—he pretends he can’t walk through solid objects, as if it comforts him to fake interactions with reality—and ducks his head, trying to catch my eye. “I keep trying to tell you, I don’t need to be cured.” His tone is low and hard, but his voice catches at the end, just the tiniest bit.

  I look up. He blanks his expression out too late and I catch the glint of fear. Uneasy, I keep my eyes on him, but he looks away after a second. It’s odd to see him shaken. I don’t think I like it. And I don’t like that I don’t like it.

  Dr. Lila is still busy with her tablet. “Let’s get some history first. Your therapist and your mom were working with you on CBT therapy for your panic attacks, right? Does your history with that include hallucinations?”

  My gaze snaps back to her. “It’s panic disorder,” I correct her. It’s been a year since I was diagnosed and the words still leave a bitter taste in my mouth. “And it’s an anxiety disorder. It has literally nothing to do with hallucinations.”

  She ignores me, leaning over her tablet to enter her passcode, tilting the screen away from me. “What does he look like?” she asks in an offhand tone, like it doesn’t really matter.

  I stare at her. Slowly, in the back of my mind, suspicion stirs.

  “Miss Kingfisher?” she prods.

  I narrow my eyes. When I speak, my voice is steady. “I never told anyone my hallucination was a he.”

  She raises her gaze. Whatever she’s really feeling, it’s shuttered away behind a façade of cool amusement. “You mentioned it in your sleep,” she says, and her voice is just as steady as mine.

  I sit back. We watch each other. The suspicion in the back of my mind shifts, spreads.

  Quint is looking down at his hands, still tight on the bedrails. It takes him a moment to raise his eyes to mine, and when he does, I see that spark of fear one more time before he screws it down tight. He’s afraid of what answer I’ll give her. He’s afraid of whose side I’ll take. And what does it mean that my hallucination can be scared?

  I make myself hold his gaze as I answer Dr. Lila. “He’s pudgy,” I tell her. I lay down the lies in a neat line like I’m building a wall: “Short. Buck teeth. Terrible hair and the worst case of acne you’ve ever seen. Also, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like you.” That last one isn’t a lie, at least.

  Quint blinks. His hands loosen and drop away from the rail and he tilts his head. “Pudgy,” he repeats after a second, and his eyes are still careful, but there’s an almost indiscernible trace of laughter in his tone.

  Dr. Lila’s expression doesn’t change. She thumbs the tablet off and drops it back into her bag. “Your lack of cooperation doesn’t lead anywhere you want to go, Miss Kingfisher.” She gets up, walks over to the window. Distant shouting filters through the glass from outside. In the bottom corner of the frame I catch a bright blue-and-red flash. The police have had at least four cars stationed at the hospital’s main entrance all day, keeping the mob of protestors and conspiracy theorists at bay across the street—I’m guessing they decided to camp out here because it’s a military hospital with plenty of agency higher-ups to harass.

  Dr. Lila pulls back the curtain, revealing the protestors’ signs. One at the front is filled with the crossed-out photos of half a dozen smiling young agents who must’ve died in the explosion. The woman holding it is the one I met a few days ago, the one who put her arm around me, the one who’d lost her daughters. My gaze goes to the photos again, trying to pick out which women have her curly hair or kind brown eyes.

  Bile rises in my throat. I want to look away, but don’t.

  Dr. Lila waves a hand at them, motioning at the front row where protestors are yelling at the police and shaking their fists. “They know a rogue agent was responsible for the explosion,” she says.

  My breath stutters. I turn back to her, ice creeping through my veins. “The … the president said it was an accident.”

  “The president doesn’t know what I know.”

  She dangles the bait and waits, and I’m helpless to do anything but swallow it whole, because of course, of course, I need to know. It’s s
uddenly all that matters in the whole world: knowing why my mother died. I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter, dead is dead … but murdered, that’s so much worse, so much uglier than died in an accident. “What do you know?”

  She glances at me over her shoulder, eyes cool. “That your mother was working late on an unknown project every night for a week before the explosion. That she had contact during that week with individuals at higher clearance levels who were also flagged as potential rogues.”

  I try to understand what she’s saying, but the ice in my veins has crept into my brain too.

  Dr. Lila glances back at the mob across the street. “That group out there, they’re convinced someone is at fault. And now they’re convinced you have something to do with that someone. Probably because I’ve been leaking intel that confirms it. As of this morning, everyone in the city knows there’s a link between the sole survivor and our prime suspect. I only meant that you were a family member, of course, but naturally they assumed you’d been involved in the attack too.” She flicks the curtain, lifts her chin at the mob. “You think those signs are bad? You should see their social media. They were out for blood before, but now they’re downright vicious. It’s a good thing they don’t know your name. It’s a good thing they don’t know where you live.”

  She’s still looking down at the crowd. The curly-haired woman has flipped around her sign, the one with all the crossed-out pictures of the dead. On the back is a blurry picture of me in my hospital robe. It’s been slashed through with a bright red marker. Underneath it is scrawled No refuge for murderers.

  They aren’t camped out here because it’s a military hospital. They’re here for me.

  I’ve seen protests before. I’ve seen hate rallies on TV, I’ve seen mobs get ugly. But this—this kind woman, who found time to encourage me when she was grieving the loss of her children, who is now screaming at the top of her lungs and shaking that picture of me at the cops in front of her—this, I can’t process.

  And then I turn back to Dr. Lila. I look at her poker face, at that one raised eyebrow, and I watch her watching me, waiting for my reaction … and the suspicion in the back of my mind flares into something full of embers and the beginnings of fury.