by Paula Stokes
Mr. Yun starts to turn toward the back exit. Jun still lies in a heap on the floor.
“You have made a wise decision, Ha Neul,” Kyung says. “Ki Hyun would be—”
“Please don’t speak his name to me,” I bark. “Just go before I change my mind.”
“Very well.” Kyung heads for the door.
From somewhere above my head, someone mutters, “Enough of this bullshit.”
I hear the pop of a gun with a silencer and Kyung grunts and stumbles forward, clutching his chest. A second shot rings out and Kyung slumps to his knees. Mr. Yun looks around in confusion.
I look up. Baz is leaning over the railing of the second floor. “Sebastian,” I say with a gasp. “I thought—”
Mr. Yun sees him and squeezes off a couple of shots. Baz grunts in pain and drops out of view for a second. Then he pops back up and takes aim again. Mr. Yun falls just inside the back door.
“Stop thinking and get out of here,” Baz shouts. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous point.”
Baz drops out of sight again and I hurry toward my brother. A police car pulls up outside the front of the building. Red and blue lights ricochet off the lobby walls.
“Winter!” Jesse looks back and forth from me to the doors.
“I can’t just leave him.” I’m bending down at Jun’s side now, my fingers probing his throat, searching desperately for a pulse.
“We have to go.” Jesse rushes over to me. “The cops will take care of him.”
“What about Baz?” I ask.
“Baz can take care of himself.” Jesse lifts me forcibly from the ground.
Two more cop cars pull up in front of the building. Doors slam. There are shouts. Jesse and I run toward the back exit. I pause just long enough to roll Kyung’s body onto his back and go through his pockets. I find the neural editor and the flash drive.
He groans softly and I realize he’s not dead yet.
I stare directly into his eyes. “I was young when you broke me,” I say. “In my head, I made you into a monster—a horrible, powerful monster. But now I see that I was wrong. You’re human, breakable, just like me. Except really, you’re nothing like me. You killed your brother and I risked everything to try to save mine. I would have died for him.”
Kyung’s response is just a hiss of air. The second shot hit him in the throat, and blood spurts from the hole in his neck with every heartbeat. His dark eyes are sharp with hate.
“I’m working on putting myself back together,” I tell him. “But you’re not going to get that chance.”
His jaw goes slack. Saliva trickles from the corner of his mouth as his life bleeds out of him. I might not have killed him, but he’s going to die now, and that’s good enough for me.
I tuck the flash drive and editor into my pockets and then lean low, low enough to smell the cigarette smoke clinging to his clothing. “I hope you remember me,” I whisper. “Wherever you’re going, I hope you remember me and my sister both.”
“Winter!” Jesse grabs my hand as I hop back to my feet. We slip out the back door of the building just as the cops are storming the front.
“Hands up!” a voice shouts. “Drop your weapon.”
Jesse and I turn in unison. A young Korean cop is approaching from around the corner of the building, a black baton raised.
Silver flashes in Jesse’s hand. Before I can even scream, he’s fired off two quick shots. The cop falls, as does a second officer just coming around the corner of the building.
“What did you—” I start. My words fall away as I see Jesse tuck the gun back into his waistband. A silver tranquilizer gun.
“They’ll be fine,” he says. “But you should probably give me that.” He gently removes the loaded gun from my hand. “And this.” Jesse pulls the headset from my head, collapses it, and slips it into his pocket. “Now let’s go.”
The two of us dart across a manicured back lawn, keeping tight to the shadow of the building next door. We make it to the street and duck low behind a parked car. Down the block is the minimetropolis of Gangnam Station, the crowd of people listening to the Valentine’s Day K-pop sing-off. Jesse looks in that direction, but I shake my head. “There are cameras.”
“There are cameras on the street corners,” he points out.
“True, but only the main streets. They’ll be expecting us to get as far away from here as possible.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
“I have a better one.” I point up into the hills, to where the big streets fade into cobblestones and narrow alleyways. “Up there.”
“Are you sure?”
The adrenaline pumping through me has dulled the pain in my ankle and cleared the haze of sedation from my brain. “I’m sure.”
Jesse and I turn away from the main street, pass by a small parking lot, and then duck into another alley that’s strewn with trash. Slowly, we work our way up into the backstreets. I limp as fast as I can, putting as much weight as possible on my good ankle.
“Do you need to rest?” Jesse asks.
I shake my head. “I can’t stop. If I do, I’ll think about things, and then I’ll lose it.” I try not to think of Jun lying on the floor of the lobby. We walk three more blocks and end up in an area that is mostly private residences with an occasional family-owned shop. Everything is closed at this hour. I pause in front of a glass window with a bunch of saws and drills displayed. Behind it are other power tools. The sign on the door says the shop is only open three days a week and tomorrow isn’t one of them. “Here,” I say. Beside the shop is an outdoor work area with a Dumpster. I crawl behind it and pat the ground next to me.
“You want to spend the night here?” Jesse asks dubiously.
“It’s perfect. No one will look for us. No one will be here early in the morning. We hide, we rest, and then, tomorrow, we run.”
“Assuming we don’t freeze to death tonight,” Jesse mumbles.
That’s right. I’m wearing his coat. I unzip it and pull it off, trying not to notice how my shirt is stiff with drying blood. Jesse and I sit hip to hip against the Dumpster and I wrap the coat around both of us. He slides an arm around me and I lean into his chest.
“You saved me back there, you know?” I tell him. “More than once.”
“Yeah? About time I did something useful on this trip, huh?”
I smile in spite of everything that’s happened. “I guess it makes up for your complete inability to cook rice.” I twine my fingers through his. “Seriously, Jesse. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“You’d be fine. You’re Winter. You always find a way,” he says softly. Then, when I don’t respond to that, he adds, “We’re never going to be able to fall asleep like this.”
“I don’t mind staying up all night with you,” I murmur. Even though the air is frigid, I feel surprisingly warm nestled next to Jesse.
“Me neither.” He squeezes my hand.
But the night has other plans for us, or for me at least. My eyelids grow heavier and heavier until eventually the starry sky fades away completely.
* * *
My sleep is fitful, my dreams bloody and frantic, but when I wake up, the sun is high in the sky. I’m lying on the pavement now, with Jesse’s coat wrapped completely around me like a sleeping bag. He’s sitting next to me, staring out into space.
“Hey,” he says, as I sit up. “Did you manage to get any sleep?”
“A little. Are you freezing to death?” I start to hand Jesse his coat.
He shakes his head. “I’ll be okay. You should keep it until we can find you something else to wear.”
Right. I forgot about what I look like. The concrete is damp with frost and I use some of it to wipe the dried blood from my hands. There’s not much that can be done about my shirt, though. I zip Jesse’s coat closed around me and we head to the bus station, where we get tickets to one of the southern port cities that runs a regular ferry to Jeju Island. While we wait for the bus, I clean myse
lf up as much as possible in the bathroom.
When we’re safely aboard the bus, Jesse pulls up the latest news on his phone. Officially, the media are reporting what happened at UsuMed as a break-in and robbery that left dead two executives and two security personnel unlucky enough to be working late. According to the article, the men were killed by an American corporate spy, former military, identity unclear at this point, but Korean officials are working with American officials to learn more. According to the article, this man also died in the attack. There’s no mention of my brother.
I know this doesn’t mean Baz is really dead. Still, reading that is like unlocking a door inside of me. A door holding a lot of blackness that I’m trying to keep contained, at least for now. Maybe when I get home, wherever that turns out to be, I can find one of those inpatient treatment centers, a safe place to finally let the blackness out. Do like Dr. Abrams said—embrace the dark parts of me instead of trying to suppress them.
“Thank you,” I blurt out suddenly.
“For what?” Jesse asks.
“For loving me, even though I’m so screwed up.”
“We’re all screwed up, Winter. At least you’re willing to confront your issues. That gives you a better chance than most people.”
“I guess you’re right.” I don’t know what happened to my phone, so all I can do is peer over Jesse’s shoulder as he repeatedly checks for any kind of message from Baz.
The bus drops us off in a town called Wando. We eat lunch at a little café and then board the ferry at two thirty. It takes about two hours to get to Jeju Island. Normally I would love this experience—the waves crashing against the boat, the sea air sharp against my skin. But today all I can think of is my brother and Baz. Are they all right? Are they even alive?
Jesse searches for new information, but it’s just a rehashing of the earlier articles. Then he searches specifically for information about Baz or Jun and comes up empty. “This is a good sign,” he tells me. “They might have caught Baz on security cameras, but apparently they haven’t been able to ID him.”
“And Jun?”
“Perhaps they haven’t been able to ID him yet either. Or it could just be that he’s a minor, so they can’t report on him in the newspapers without consent.”
“He looked dead, Jesse. I couldn’t feel his pulse.”
Jesse squeezes my hand. “Whatever the truth is, you’ll get through it. We’ll get through it, together.”
CHAPTER 52
We arrive at Jeju-do and check in at the Sunrise Hotel. Jesse asks if there have been any messages for us, but the desk clerk says no. I spend about two hours in the shower, washing every bit of Alec’s and Jun’s blood off of me, soaping and rinsing myself repeatedly.
“Are you hungry?” Jesse asks when I finally emerge from the bathroom, my skin bright pink.
I shake my head. “I just want to know what happened to the others, and if I can’t know that, then I just want to sleep.” I crawl into bed.
“I’ll wake you if there’s any news,” Jesse promises.
* * *
The next day, the sun cuts through the miniblinds like a handful of knives, carving sharp paths of light across my face.
I cover my eyes with one hand as I sit up, the soft sheets bunching at my lap. Jesse is sitting on the edge of the other bed. He tilts his head to the side, studies me for a moment. “How are you?” he asks finally.
“Stiff.” I inhale deeply as I stretch my arms up toward the ceiling. “Any word on Baz or Jun?”
Jesse shakes his head. “This is only the second day, though, remember? They might both be fine.”
“Or they both might be dead.”
Jesse winces but then recovers quickly. “There’s no point in thinking the worst.”
I run a hand through my hair. “Yes, there is. That way when it turns out to be true, it’ll hurt less.”
“It won’t hurt less,” he says. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
I mull these words over as Jesse rises from his bed. He grabs a tray of room-service food from the dresser and brings it to me.
We eat our breakfast in silence, the events from two nights ago weighing heavily on our minds. And now here we are. Waiting. I know we’re supposed to head back to the US on Monday morning if we haven’t heard from Baz by then, but I’m really hoping it won’t come to that. He survived military combat. He survived running covert ops for the government. He can survive a break-in at a pharmaceutical corporation.
I wish I were as sure about my brother. I can’t get the image of his crumpled body on the floor of the UsuMed lobby out of my head.
“I’m going to be there for you, no matter what, okay?” Jesse reaches out for my hand.
I let him twine his fingers through mine. “I love that you’re not filling my head with bullshit right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s one of the first things I really noticed about you. You don’t give people false reassurances. You’re not sitting here telling me I just have to have hope, that they’re probably okay, that none of this is my fault. You don’t say things that aren’t true just to make people feel better.”
“I want you to feel better,” Jesse says. “But not if it means I have to lie to you.”
“I love that,” I say. “I love you.”
Jesse blinks rapidly. He looks away for a moment, bites down on his lip. When his eyes return to mine, he says, “I love you too.”
My lashes grow heavy with tears. Jesse doesn’t brush them away or attempt to console me. He just lets me be me.
* * *
The swelling in my ankle has gone down a lot, so Jesse and I spend part of the day walking the beaches of Jeju. I marvel at the rock formations and the mountains off in the distance, wishing I had a phone so I could take some pictures. We could always go back to the hotel for my ViSE headset, I suppose, but the thought of ever putting that on again after what happened at UsuMed makes me feel slightly nauseated.
It’s warmer here than in Seoul, but still quite windy and cool—much too cold for venturing into the water. Jesse and I stand looking at the waves for a while, but I can’t keep from scanning the beach, hoping against hope to see Baz approaching. Unfortunately, he doesn’t appear.
The next day is Sunday. Jesse and I plan to buy our plane tickets today. We stick close to the hotel and keep Jesse’s phone charged. We are ready. We are hopeful. We pack up everything in our room so we’ll be ready to leave when it’s time.
“Can I stay with you for a few days when we get back?” I ask. “I’m going to make an appointment with Dr. Abrams, talk to her about getting me into a residential treatment facility.”
“Is that really what you want?”
“What I want is to be better,” I say. “And if I commit myself completely to that goal, maybe I can make some real progress, get to a point where I feel comfortable going to college. Moving on.”
“Well, then, of course you can stay with me.” Jesse grins. “Under one condition.”
My eyes narrow. “You’d better not say I have to cook for you.”
“Well…” he trails off, his eyes twinkling. “That would be awfully nice. But no, I was going to say that we have to pick up Moo from Natalie’s place. I miss that little cow cat.”
I smile, probably the first real smile since we made it to Jeju Island. “It’s a deal.”
“So you ready to book our flight, then?” Jesse asks softly.
“Yes,” I say. “But how about one more walk along the water first?”
“Okay.”
We head back outside, where the temperature is probably about forty degrees but feels warmer than that because of the sun. Cottony clouds float in the bright-blue sky above our heads. I think about what I’m going back to—the bitter cold of St. Louis, the unforgiving ice storms, the dark memories.
“Hey,” Jesse says excitedly. He points into the distance.
Two silhouettes come into view. One of them is tall and br
oad, with blond hair—Sebastian. The other is smaller, with dark hair. Could it be?
I quicken my stride a little, but pain knifes through my chest as I draw closer and realize the boy with Baz isn’t my brother. It’s Chung Hee. I try to plaster a smile on my face even though my insides are bleeding.
“I thought you were dead,” I say to Baz. “I saw you get shot.”
“Only once,” he scoffs. “Sorry to worry you. I laid low at Chung Hee’s place for a bit until things cooled down a little.”
“Hello.” Chung Hee smiles shyly at me from behind a pair of dark glasses. “Nice to see you again.”
“Do you know anything about Jun?” I ask hopefully.
“EMS took him to Samsung Medical Center. I didn’t want to go anywhere near there because there are cops waiting to talk to him when he’s feeling better, but Hacker Boy here might have taken a quick peek at his medical records.”
Chung pulls out his phone and skims through a file. “Stab wound to abdomen. Massive blood loss. Shock. After receiving emergency volume replacement and four units of packed cells, the patient’s vital signs recovered to within normal limits. Prophylactic IV antibiotics and Tdap ordered due to puncture wound. Current status: pediatric inpatient; stable.”
“So what does that mean exactly?” Relief courses through me at the word stable. Stable is good. It’s better than I’ve been able to manage lately.
“It means he’s going to be fine,” Baz says. “Thanks to his nuna.” He ruffles my hair.
“Is he safe in the hospital? What if someone from UsuMed comes after him?” I bite my lip. “I’m not sure how many people knew what Kyung and Alec were working on, but Jun now has information on classified projects.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Baz says smoothly.
“Why not?” I ask.
He pulls a small card out of his pocket. “It’s a recording of the standoff in the lobby, of Kyung basically admitting he ordered Rose’s and Gideon’s deaths and stole the technology. I even captured him threatening Jun’s life.”
“But a ViSE won’t be admissible evidence,” I say. “Just like back in the US.”
