The ceiling shatters.

Aaron and I fall to the floor, hard, and I hear something snap in my leg, the pain screaming through me.

I fight it back.

The lights pop and shriek, the polished concrete ceiling beginning to crack. Max spins around, horror seizing his face as I throw my hand forward.

Close my fist.

Emmaline’s tank fissures with a sudden, violent crack.

“NO!” he cries. Feverishly, he pulls the remote free from his lab coat, hitting its now useless buttons. “No! No, no—”

The glass groans open with an angry yawn, giving way with one final, shattering roar. Max goes comically still.

Stunned.

He dies, then, with exactly that expression on his face. And it’s not me who kills him. It’s Emmaline.

Emmaline, who pulls her webbed hands free of the broken glass and presses her fingers to her father’s head. She kills him with nothing more than the force of her own mind.

The mind he gave her.

When she is done, his skull has split open. Blood leaks from his dead eyes. His teeth have fallen out of his face, onto his shirt. His intestines spill out from a severe rupture in his torso.

I look away.

Emmaline collapses to the floor. She’s gasping through the regulator fused to her face. Her already weak limbs begin to tremble, violently, and she’s making sounds I can only assume are meant to be words she’s no longer able to speak.

She is more amphibian than human.

I realize this only now, only when faced with the proof of her incompatibility with our air, with the outside world. I crawl toward her, dragging my broken, bloodied leg behind me.

Aaron tries to help, but when we lock eyes, he falls back.

He understands that I need to do this myself.

I gather my sister’s small, withered body against my own, pulling her wet limbs into my lap, pressing her head against my chest. And I say to her, for the second time:

“Tell me what you want. Anything at all. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

Her slick fingers clutch at my neck, clinging for dear life. A vision fills my head, a vision of everything going up in flames. A vision of this compound, her prison, disintegrating. She wants it razed, returned to dust.

“Consider it done,” I say to her.

She has another request. Just one more.

And I say nothing for too long.

Please

Her voice is in my heart, begging. Desperate. Her agony is acute. Her terror palpable.

Tears spring to my eyes.

I press my cheek against her wet hair. I tell her how much I love her. How much she means to me. How much more I wish we could’ve had. I tell her that I will never forget her.

That I will miss her, every single day.

And then I ask her to let me take her body home with me when I am done.

A gentle warmth floods my mind, a heady feeling.

Happiness.

Yes, she says.

When it’s done, when I’ve ripped the tubes from her body, when I’ve gathered her wet, trembling bones against my own, when I’ve pressed my poisonous cheek to hers, when I’ve leeched out what little life was left in her body.

When it is done, I curl myself around her cold corpse and cry.

I clutch her hollow body against my heart and feel the injustice of it all roar through me. I feel it fracture me apart. I feel her take part of me with her as she goes.

And then I scream.

I scream until I feel the earth move beneath my feet, until I feel the wind change directions. I scream until the walls collapse, until I feel the electricity spark, until I feel the lights catch fire. I scream until the ground fissures, until all falls down.

And then we carry my sister home.

EPILOGUE

WARNER

one.

 

The wall is unusually white.

More white than is usual. Most people think white walls are true white, but the truth is, they only seem white, and are not actually white. Most shades of white are mixed in with a bit of yellow, which helps soften the harsh edges of a pure white, making it more of an ecru, or ivory. Various shades of cream. Egg white, even. True white is practically intolerable as a color, so white it’s nearly blue.

This wall, in particular, is not so white as to be offensive, but a sharp enough shade of white to pique my curiosity, which is nothing short of a miracle, really, because I’ve been staring at it for the greater part of an hour. Thirty-seven minutes, to be exact.

I am being held hostage by custom. Formality.

“Five more minutes,” she says. “I promise.”

I hear the rustle of fabric. Zippers. A shudder of—

“Is that tulle?”

“You’re not supposed to be listening!”

“You know, love, it occurs to me now that I’ve lived through actual hostage situations far less torturous than this.”

“Okay, okay, it’s off. Packed away. I just need a second to put on my cl—”

“That won’t be necessary,” I say, turning around. “Surely this part, I should be allowed to watch.”

I lean against the unusually white wall, studying her as she frowns at me, her lips still parted around the shape of a word she seems to have forgotten.

“Please continue,” I say, gesturing with a nod. “Whatever you were doing before.”

She holds on to her frown for a moment longer than is honest, her eyes narrowing in a show of frustration that is pure fraud. She compounds this farce by clutching an article of clothing to her chest, feigning modesty.

I do not mind, not one single bit.

I drink her in, her soft curves, her smooth skin. Her hair is beautiful at any length, but it’s been longer lately. Long and rich, silky against her skin, and when I’m lucky—against mine.

Slowly, she drops the shirt.

I suddenly stand up straighter.

“I’m supposed to wear this under the dress,” she says, her fake anger already forgotten. She fidgets with the boning of a cream-colored corset, her fingers lingering absently along the garter belt, the lace-trimmed stockings. She can’t meet my eyes. She’s gone suddenly shy, and this time, it’s real.

Do you like it?

The unspoken question.

I assumed, when she invited me into this dressing room, that it was for reasons beyond me staring at the color variations in an unusually white wall. I assumed she wanted me here to see something.

To see her.

I see now that I was correct.

“You are so beautiful,” I say, unable to shed the awe in my voice. I hear it, the childish wonder in my tone, and it embarrasses me more than it should. I know I shouldn’t be ashamed to feel deeply. To be moved.

Still, I feel awkward.

Young.

Quietly, she says, “I feel like I just spoiled the surprise. You’re not supposed to see any of this until the wedding night.”

My heart actually stops for a moment.

The wedding night.

She closes the distance between us and twines her arms around me, freeing me from my momentary paralysis. My heart beats faster with her here, so close. And though I don’t know how she knew that I suddenly required the reassurance of her touch, I’m grateful. I exhale, pulling her fully against me, our bodies relaxing, remembering each other.

I press my face into her hair, breathe in the sweet scent of her shampoo, her skin. It’s only been two weeks. Two weeks since the end of an old world. The beginning of a new one.