Unable to stand any longer, I let her guide me to Ana’s cot and sank onto it. Black spots floated in front of my eyes. “I’m a little fuzzy. I think I spent all my energy sending Amid away.” I rubbed my eyes, trying to stop the spinning.
“Amid? Was that the Guard?” Nadia went to the door and peered out. I could just see her figure bobbing among the spots.
“Yes,” I breathed.
Nadia leaned over. Her face swam in front of mine. “Maybe you should lie down.” She pushed my shoulder, and I flopped back on the cot.
She stroked my cheek. Her brows were drawn together in concern. “I’m going to go get that doctor for you. What was his name?”
That had to be a good sign—Nadia was able to worry about someone other than herself. She was so much better. It was going to be all right.
“Raphael.” I covered my face with my hands, wishing I’d given myself a few more hours of rest before traipsing around the Station. But it had been worth it just to see she was okay. “I’m sorry. I think I kind of overdid it.”
She squeezed my hand, her grasp lingering for a few seconds before letting me go. “It’s okay. I’ll get Raphael. Wait here.”
I heard Nadia pull open the door and then shut it again. I lay still, focusing on breathing slowly and riding out the sloshing waves of nausea. Apart from my physical state, the rest of me was giddy with happiness. Nadia had come back to herself.
After a few minutes, my head cleared, and I was able to sit up. Raphael would be here any minute, and I would get to tell him I was fine. No help needed. Testing my strength, I got to my feet and took a few steps. A bit shaky, but no problem.
The single piece of paper on the desk caught my attention. What had Nadia been working on? I took a few steps closer, knowing I shouldn’t pry but unable to stop myself. I had so few hints at what had been going on with her. I’d buried my head in the sand when she needed the most help, so maybe being a nosy friend wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I flipped over the paper.
Dear Lela,
Thank you for trying so hard to save me. You are a true friend.
You always were, even when I didn’t really deserve it. You made the last year of my life worth sticking around for. But in the end, it was too painful to stay. I was just a fake, and everybody would have figured it out sooner or later. Including you. There was nothing inside me, just a pretty, empty shell. I’ve always been empty, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Now I’m here, but it’s no better. I need it to end. If you’re reading this, I’m gone. Please don’t come after me.
I barely took the time to read past the word gone before I was limping down the hall, screaming Nadia’s name, screaming for Raphael, for Malachi, for anyone and everyone. I made it halfway down the corridor before collapsing to the floor, and then kept crawling on all fours, shrieking hoarsely.
I’d fallen for it.
I hadn’t even considered that Nadia was capable of planning something like this. It hadn’t seemed possible. I had wanted to believe she was all right so badly that I’d ignored every sign…again.
“I’m an idiot,” I cried, bonking my head against the stone floor, tears mixing with the dirt beneath my fingers and turning it to mud.
Something crashed into the hallway with explosive force. I looked up to see Malachi sprinting toward me. He hadn’t left with his unit yet. I reached for him, and he pulled me to my feet and held me against him.
“She’s gone,” I blurted before he had a chance to say anything. “She said she was going to get Raphael for me, but she left a note. She’s gone.” I couldn’t control my sobs.
Malachi put a hand to my cheek and made sure I was looking at him. “There was a Guard at the door. How did she get away?”
“I sent him away,” I whispered, suddenly realizing why Amid had been posted there in the first place. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he was preventing her from escaping. I was a first-class moron. He’d been there because it wasn’t the first time Nadia had tried something like that. And I hadn’t even considered that possibility.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Raphael!” Malachi called. He looked around and spotted one of the other Guards. “Rais, get Raphael. Hurry please.” He turned back to me and gently wiped the tears from my face. “I’m going to go get her. She can’t have gotten far. Please, don’t worry.”
Raphael turned the corner, looking serene but moving quickly. “Lela, how about you come with me?” He seemed to know exactly what was happening. “Malachi, I’ve got her. Go.”
Malachi gave Raphael an unreadable look, kissed my forehead, and spun on his heel. He was out of sight in just a few seconds.
I sagged and Raphael caught me.
“Damn it.” I clenched my teeth and struggled to hold myself upright. I hated having to watch Malachi walk away, strong and independent, and being left behind, stupid and useless. Once again it was all my fault.
“Lela, you’re going to have to learn that you’re not the solution to all problems,” Raphael murmured quietly, though he may as well have punched me in the gut. The solution to all problems? I was the freaking cause of all problems.
He put an arm around my shoulders. I was too tired and too ashamed to wrench myself away. He led me to my room and helped me onto the cot. “Malachi will have no trouble finding her. You know he’s quite adept at tracking people. This is the fourth time Nadia has attempted to escape, so he’ll have an idea of where she’s going.”
“Why? Why would she do this? She’s safe here. She was so scared when she was out in the city by herself.”
Raphael sighed and pulled the covers over me. “But out there she didn’t have to accept that other people care about her.”
“What?”
“Your friend is convinced she is unlovable, unreachable. Depression can do that to a person. She thinks no one can understand her. She ignores all evidence to the contrary, and it has led her to make some very tragic decisions.” Raphael took my hand. His was warm, almost hot.
“I came here to get her. I gave up everything for her. I can get her back if I just have a little more time.” I wasn’t willing to accept any other possibility. Once we were out of the city, bathed in that piercing sunlight, Nadia would feel better. How could anyone feel good in a city smothered in constant darkness?
Raphael patted my hand. “Lela, everyone has lessons to learn.” He smiled that smile, dazzling me with its nondescript beauty. “Do you want to sleep?”
I turned my face to the pillow. My head pounded with dread and frustration. I couldn’t stand the thoughts looping around my brain. “Yes.”
Without another word, Raphael put his hand to my forehead, and everything went black.
TWENTY-NINE
WHEN I AWOKE, MALACHI was sitting on the chair next to my cot, his head resting beside mine. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he was asleep.
I took a moment to watch him, remembering when he’d been unconscious and how badly I’d wanted him to wake up. Now I wanted him to sleep. Shadows lay beneath his eyes, bordered by the dark fringe of his lashes. He probably hadn’t had a decent night of sleep since I’d come into his life. His cheekbones looked sharper somehow, and even though his cheeks were suffused with healthy color, they were hollower than when I’d first met him. I wondered if he’d started losing weight. If his body was telling him it was time for him to get out of the city. If he’d already started to weaken. He’d always seemed indestructible, but looking at him sleeping there, I could see the truth. He was human, just like me.
I ran my fingers through his stark black hair and kissed the tip of his nose.
Malachi’s eyes snapped open. “You’re awake,” he whispered.
“Did you find her?”
He nodded. “I got her in time.”
My heart stopped. “What do you mean, ‘in time’?”
He sat up and looked at me with that guarded expression, and now I understood what it meant. “I found her on the roof o
f a high-rise a few blocks from here. It was a near thing.”
I sat up stiffly. “Are you telling me she was going to try again? Is that what you’re saying?”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded.
My friend killed herself. I went to hell to rescue her. I killed someone, nearly got killed myself. A very good person died helping me save her. Then, after all that, my friend tried to kill herself again.
I waved my arms in the air like an idiot. “I can’t believe this! What the fuck is wrong with her? I don’t understand how she could do this. I came for her. I did all of this for her, and she fucking ran away from me.
“And you,” I shrieked as I pointed at Malachi, who’d been sitting very still as I lost my mind, “you told me she was better. Why did you say that?”
He sat up a little straighter. “Because she is better. Just not recovered. That would take a lot longer.”
“How on earth can being actively suicidal be better?”
“Because depressed people sometimes do stupid things when they have more energy. She was getting better and had more energy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yes, it does.”
“How can you defend her?” I yelled.
He stood up suddenly and his chair crashed to the floor, which shut me up for a moment. “Because I was her! I understand her! You don’t understand,” he growled as he stepped away from me. “You’ve forgotten. You’re so much stronger now, too far past it. But remember, Lela, what made you try to take your life that night. Some people can’t keep fighting. Some people want to escape. Some people are not ready—are not able—to find a way to deal with what’s in front of them. Sometimes there’s no one to help them. Sometimes they don’t know how to ask for help. Sometimes it feels like there’s no choice but to end it. No other way out. And sometimes it’s impossible to see past that.”
His expression changed from frustration to fear—like he knew I was going to look at him differently after this conversation. He stared at the floor for a moment, took a deep breath, and raised his head. “Nadia is not ready to go before the Judge. She will never be allowed out of the city in her condition.”
No. No. Stop saying everything I already know.
“She can stay here,” he said. “We’ll have someone watch over her until she’s ready—”
“You’re wrong,” I sobbed. “You saw her, how much she was hurting. She can’t stay here. She deserves mercy. She deserves to get out.”
His eyes widened and he shook his head. He approached the cot and sat next to me. “You talk about mercy like Nadia has a right to it. Like she’s earned it with her suffering. But that’s not the way it works.”
I pushed his hand away as he reached for me. “If anyone deserves mercy, it’s her. She’s a good person, Malachi, the best. She’s kind. She’s gentle. She never did anything wrong!”
He leaned until his face was inches from mine. The look in his eyes was deadly. “Tell me then,” he said slowly, annunciating every word in his clipped, precise accent, “when in your life did you ever receive mercy? Don’t you deserve it as much as Nadia does? Did that foster dad show you mercy? Did the people in the detention center? And what about me? What about my family? What about my people? Didn’t we deserve mercy?”
He laughed bitterly. “Mercy is not a right. Mercy is a gift from one to another. It can’t be earned. You can’t claim Nadia has a right to it any more than the millions of other souls who reside here.”
He looked away from me, focusing on the gas lamp at my bedside. “When I came here, I think I was like her. I don’t know how long I was here before I started to snap out of it; my memory of that time is quite hazy. But when I became more aware, I was angry. So angry. After all I had been through, after what I had suffered, how could I be in this hellish place? My only crime was escaping.”
The look on his face, that sad, helpless expression, killed my anger in a second. I laid a hand on his arm.
He sighed and kept his eyes on the lamp.
“How old were you?”
“I was almost nineteen.”
“Where were you?”
“Auschwitz,” he whispered.
“How did you do it?”
He took a breath. “Electric fence. They surrounded the camp, keeping us in, helping some of us escape in the only way that was possible.”
Oh my God. I scooted forward and put my arms around him, and as always, he leaned into me. It hurt to think of him doing that to himself, but I still wanted to understand. “Why?”
“I hadn’t been there very long. I was sick. We were all sick. The train ride to the camp killed my father. He was already so weak. And my mother, she…they took her away as soon as we got to the camp, with all the older ones and the very young. But I had Heshel. We were together, and he was strong. He said we could survive. We would work, and eat whatever they gave us, and adapt, and live, and when we got out we would escape to Palestine. It was a dream—one we could have realized if we’d gotten out of Bratislava in time. Imi, my brother’s friend—he got out. But my family stayed while the noose closed around us.”
Malachi wiped a sleeve across his face and closed his eyes. “Heshel was such a believer. Every moment, he encouraged me, encouraged others. He would have been a great leader. That’s what he was meant for.”
My heart began to beat faster as the tension built in Malachi’s body, drawing his muscles tight.
“We were at roll call one morning, and the guards were angry because someone stole something. I can’t remember what. They decided to teach us a lesson. They started randomly shooting people from the line, just to create terror and show they were in charge. I was swaying, sick and weak, and I knew they would choose me. Heshel did too, so he, he…”
Malachi stopped and seemed to be trying to catch his breath. I closed my eyes and breathed with him. “He made a commotion, coughing and heaving, and he distracted them, drew their attention. And they…”
In the moments before he spoke again, I held onto him. His eyes were dry, but his expression echoed the pain of his memories.
“Afterward, I could not imagine going on. My death seemed inevitable anyway. I knew all of us were going to die. I was angry. It was not where I was supposed to end up. I was strong. My brother was strong. We were educated. We had money. We were good boys. But there we were, being slaughtered like cattle. I could not see a way out, and without my brother, I had no strength to continue. I threw myself onto the fence two days after Heshel was killed.” He laughed sadly. “I thought I would see him again. I thought he would be waiting for me in Olam Ha-Ba, the afterlife.”
He rose abruptly and walked across the room, leaving my arms to fall to my sides. “When I became aware of myself here, I was shocked. Obviously, this was not Olam Ha-Ba. So where was I? Sheol? Gehenna? A place for the wicked? But I had never done anything wrong! How could I be anywhere but in a good place? I was furious that my naive expectations had been violated. There I was, awake, aware, just like Nadia is now. I had more energy, but I had not recovered. The only difference between us is that she is suicidal, and I was homicidal. So here’s the stupid thing I did: I stormed the Sanctum.”
My jaw dropped. “You…what?”
“The Sanctum is hard to miss. I asked one of the Guards what it was. He told me about the Judge. I decided I would go before the Judge and demand my right to get out and see my brother. To go where I deserved after all I had suffered.” He bent over and picked up the overturned chair. He set it down next to the cot and gripped the back of it tightly. “When I attempted to go in, one of the Guards got in my way. I dropped him and kept going. I took out three Guards before they could stop me, and by then I was in the Judge’s chambers, running up the aisle.”
“Did you see the Judge?”
He grimaced. “Yes, the Judge was waiting for me. He congratulated me for getting past the Guards. Then he asked me if I was ready to receive his decision. Of course I was—I expected to be f
reed! Who could hear my story and not have mercy?”
I gave him a sad smile. “I’m guessing the Judge?”
Malachi nodded. “He sentenced me to serve. He sentenced me to this.” He gestured at the walls, at his own body.
“For how long?”
“Until I am ready to leave. Ana was the same way. Takeshi as well. All of us, sentenced to lead the Guards of this city for decades, maybe centuries, maybe until another death, because we were powerful enough to fight our way into the Judge’s chambers and stupid enough to expect that we would be handed a free ticket out once we got there.”
The thoughts I’d been pushing back since Nadia ran away bubbled to the surface. Malachi watched me carefully. “Lela, don’t take this lightly. There could be dire consequences for Nadia if you send her before the Judge in her current state of mind.”
Those thoughts exploded into my consciousness like a volcanic eruption.
He was right. He was completely right.
This was what I’d already realized but hadn’t wanted to admit. There was no other way around it. I was certain Nadia needed to get out of the city, that it was the only thing that would make her better. But if I wanted to get her out, I couldn’t just send her before the Judge and hope for the best. I would have to do better than that. And I would have to do it soon, because I wouldn’t be around much longer.
Malachi sat down on the cot and took my hand. This time I didn’t resist; I was too numb with disbelief and sorrow. Then he looked at me with this incredibly hopeful, vulnerable expression, and I almost moaned aloud as my heart tore right down the middle.
“I’m going to go before the Judge again soon,” he said quietly. “I think I’m ready. And…and I thought maybe…I wondered if—”
I leaned forward and kissed him, unable to hear the words come out of his mouth. I’d never be able to say no if he actually asked. He was going to leave the city. He wanted me to go with him. He wanted to be with me. He wanted us to explore whatever was out there together. But I had to take Nadia before the Judge. I was going to offer myself in her place. I was going to beg for mercy and give myself as payment. It was the only way to get her out.