Consciousness returned in a fog of sterile white and dull, throbbing pain. Martin opened his eyes to the familiar, hated ceiling of a hospital room. His head was wrapped, his body a patchwork of bandages and plasters. Memory was shards of light and deafening sound.

  Moving slowly, every muscle protesting, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. The world tilted, then settled. He left his room, drawn by a need to move, to understand.

  The hallway was quiet. Down at the far end, he saw them: Andella, Loria, and his father, sitting in a tight, grim cluster outside another patient’s door. Their postures were hunched, their faces pale.

  “Mum?” Martin’s voice was a dry croak.

  Andella’s head turned. Her eyes found him, but there was no rush of relief, no sprinting embrace. Instead, she simply stretched an arm out toward him, her hand open, an invitation to come to her. The gesture was hollow, automatic, as if his waking was a minor event in the midst of a greater catastrophe.

  A doctor chose that moment to emerge from the room they were guarding. He cleared his throat softly.

  “The good news,” the doctor began, his voice professionally calm, “is that Sadie is stable. The blast debris caused significant trauma, but nothing immediately life-threatening. She’s a fighter.”

  Sadie. The name hit Martin like a physical blow. Sadie was there? His mind, still muzzy, rejected it. She couldn’t have been. She was at home, waiting with Loria.

  The doctor hadn’t moved. He was still there, his expression somber. Mr. Cologna seemed to sense it too, his own hope freezing into dread.

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  Loria, her voice trembling, gave voice to the unspoken question. “What else, Doctor?”

  The man took a slow breath. “She will survive. That is certain. But… the spinal trauma from the impact… it’s severe. It seems she might never be able to walk again.”

  Time stopped.

  Mr. Cologna went perfectly still, a statue of shock. Andella’s hands flew to her mouth, trembling violently. “No,” Loria breathed, the word a desperate plea. “You have to be lying.”

  Martin heard the words, but they didn’t connect. They floated in the air, meaningless. Sadie. Legs. Never walk. The images collided—Sadie on stage, a vision of poised grace; Sadie practicing in the living room, all determination and pointed toes. Ballet.

  That can’t be true, he thought, the logic slow and stubborn. She wasn’t even there.

  The only sound that escaped him was a soft, confused, “Huh?”

  He took a step back. Then another. His father called his name, but the voice was distant, muffled. Martin turned and walked away, down the long, white hallway, his bare feet soundless on the linoleum.

  The world began to blur and crowd around him. Nurses rushed past, their shoes squeaking, voices urgent. The noise built—a beeping monitor, a rolling cart, a sob from a nearby room. He tuned it all out, a ghost walking through someone else’s emergency.

  Then he looked up.

  He was in another wing. And there she was. Ava, sitting rigidly on a chair, a stark white bandage covering her left eye. A man, older, with Oliver’s same nervous posture, stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder.

  A doctor approached their door. The ambient noise seemed to hush in anticipation. Ava shot to her feet.

  The doctor looked from Ava to the man, his expression one of profound weariness and sorrow. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words simple and final. “We lost him.”

  Ava didn’t scream. She folded in on herself, sliding slowly down the wall to sit on the floor, a silent, shuddering collapse before the tears began to flow in a quiet, endless stream.

  The man—Oliver’s father—grabbed the doctor’s arm, his voice breaking. “He’s… he’s all I had left. My son…”

  The realization detonated in Martin’s chest with a force greater than the explosion.

  Oliver.

  The boy who had knelt. The boy who had begged. The boy who had tried to save him.

  He was gone.

  A woman rushed into the hallway, calling Ava’s name—her mother. Ava stumbled into her embrace, her cries now audible, raw and agonizing.

  Martin stood rooted, watching the devastating proof of his inaction. The secret he’d kept. The warning he’d almost withheld. The party he’d attended with a quiet, deadly hope.

  A single, clear, horrific thought rose above the noise in his head, colder and sharper than any other:

  This is all my fault.