Every Stolen Breath

by Kimberly Gabriel

  “I also have a little something for you.”

  “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work on your birthday.”

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t expect much from you tonight.”

  I’m not sure whether to be grateful or saddened by his perception. I cross my arms against my chest—the night is colder than I thought—and wait for Adam to hand over my fortune cookie. I must have left it. He knows I love those stupid stale desserts. But Adam keeps his hands in his jacket pocket, drawing out the anticipation in true Adam fashion, as we walk down the middle of the sidewalk.

  I grow jittery, being so exposed.

  He raises his eyebrows. “October twentieth.”

  Adam wears a mischievous smile I can’t quite place. I stop dead in my tracks. He turns to face me in front of the alley and smirks. “If you can’t be the city’s vigilante, someone has to be.”

  The date of the next attack. A month and a half after the last one. I try to remember the last time the attacks were so close together, like there’s something to it. My hands, hanging at my sides, sweat and tingle. Just as I’m about to ask how he found out, a voice calls out, “Adam?”

  Our heads turn toward the alley. Aside from two metal trash bins wrapped with chains, the alley looks empty.

  My body tenses.

  A guy in a heavy down coat steps out from behind the rusted blue bin. “Today’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

  I squint to make out the details of his face, concealed in shadows cast by the surrounding buildings. His eyes are large and dark. There’s something coaxing about the way he looks at Adam.

  Adam doesn’t move. He offers no sign of recognition.

  The air picks up, brushing against the back of my neck. This is wrong. Everything about it. This guy isn’t Lip Spikes or Spider Tattoo, but he’s one of them. I’m sure of it.

  I snatch Adam’s arm, to drag him past the alley, make a run for it.

  Someone grabs me from behind and picks me up. A greasy hand reeking of nicotine covers my mouth.

  A third guy dressed in heavy black clothes shoves Adam into the alleyway.

  Adam braces himself as he sprawls onto broken brick pavers.

  I’m carried deep into the darkness. Past trash bins. Around a bend. I thrash against my attacker, knocking my hat off my head. But his grip is tight.

  I hear a shove or a hit, I can’t tell. Adam grunts behind me. I’m whipped around, hair smacking my face. The alley spins as I try to make sense of it.

  Adam struggles to stand. He regains balance only to be pushed toward me. His head snaps back as his body heaves.

  I scream, but the noise is muffled under the greasy hand smothering half my face. I buck and kick, desperate to get away, to help Adam as they close in on him.

  The guy chuckles in my ear. “I like a girl with fight in her.” The words ooze out of his mouth, filling me with a horrific sense of dread.

  One attacker winds his arm back, punches Adam in the gut, lifting him off the ground. Adam collapses. He wraps his arms around his knees as the other guy kicks him in the side. Once. Twice. Adam groans and grunts. I imagine his internal organs bursting.

  Panic explodes in my chest. I scream and writhe, clawing at the wrist smothering my mouth.

  Adam crawls to his hands and knees. His back is curled as he tries to stand. One of them kicks Adam in the face. It pops, like bones shattering. Blood pours from his mouth.

  I thrash harder against the arms gripping me and shriek into the palm pinching my face. My lungs pump beyond their limits as I gasp for breath.

  “No, no. It’s not your turn yet.” He presses his cheek to mine and slides his oily skin against me as he turns his head. His nose. His chin.

  Adam slumps on the ground. Another kick lands on his chest. Bile climbs up my throat. He’s dying. And I’m helpless to do anything except watch it happen.

  Something metal scrapes my jaw. It’s pointed, like a pen or a nail. And then a second one. Two spikes drag upward to my ear, and everything inside of me liquefies.

  Lip Spikes.

  My lungs constrict and shrink. They refuse to expand, to take in air. My legs buckle, forcing Lip Spikes to loosen his grip as my body goes limp, a dead weight in his arms. He struggles to hold me upright. I jerk my shoulders, a sad attempt to break free, but darkness encircles my vision as my body shuts down.

  A thick, bulky shadow barrels into the alley—so fast, I’m sure it’s another hallucination. I hear a thud. A crack. Adam’s attacker is launched into the alley wall. His head smashes against the brick, and he collapses.

  Lip Spikes tenses. His grip tightens around my waist.

  I try to focus. Adam’s other attacker springs back to a defensive pose, lifting his fists to his chin.

  I blink. Squint. I can barely make out silhouettes except for Adam, who lies on the ground, lifeless.

  Adam’s attacker throws a punch into the night. A fist shoots out of nowhere and slams into his face. Two forms tangle with each other, wrestling in the alley. A resounding blow pierces the darkness. Another crack. Adam’s attacker rolls out of the shadows clutching his stomach.

  I can’t make my legs work. Can’t figure out what’s happening. I inhale through my nose, try to pump my diaphragm, but it’s not enough. The air squeezing into my chest is too shallow. Too slow.

  A hulking form emerges, stomping toward me. Tight fists ball at his sides.

  Lip Spikes shuffles backward, dragging me with him, jerking me back and forth as I fight to steady myself.

  Two gleaming gray eyes glare beneath a dark hood. Ryan. The look in his eyes is frightening. He wants to hurt Lip Spikes, who must see it too, because he shoves me.

  I pitch forward, stumbling into Ryan’s chest. He grabs me, steadies me, his body rigid, pulse racing. Ryan motions to leave, to chase Lip Spikes down, but I cling to his shirt and gasp. Choking turns to coughing. I can’t control it. Can’t get relief. I ball his shirt in my fists. My legs buckle, and once again my entire body fails me.

  Ryan snaps from the frenzy possessing him. He holds me up, while clawing at my purse slung around my body. My inhaler finds my lips. Mist shoots in, and I breathe. I gulp the oxygen, relieved to feel my chest expand. I inhale. Exhale. Over and over again, until my vision returns, and I’m able to lock my legs in place.

  Ryan wraps his arms around me. He presses his lips to the top of my head. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  Every muscle in my body burns. He searches my back, my head, my hair like he’s looking for bullet holes or knife wounds. “You’re okay,” he says again, and I’m not sure if it’s for my benefit or his.

  Scraping and shuffling fill the alley behind me.

  Ryan spins around, shielding me as Adam’s attackers scramble to stand and take off down the alley. Away from us. In the opposite direction Lip Spikes escaped.

  Ryan holds out my inhaler. “Another breath.”

  But I shake my head. Pull away. “Adam,” I whisper.

  Adam lies motionless on his back in the middle of the alley. His arms are outstretched, limp like they’ve been drained of energy and life.

  A sharp pain rips through my chest.

  He can’t be dead.

  I run to him. Collapse next to him.

  Don’t die.

  Adam’s eyes are closed. His face glistens with a mess of sweat and blood. It pools around his nose. Gushes from a cut on his chin where the skin’s busted open. His eyes and cheeks are swollen and tender. I trace my fingers along his neck, feeling anxiously for a pulse, but I have no idea where his pulse should be.

  Ryan kneels beside me. He brushes my shaking hand away and checks for Adam’s pulse while pulling his cell out to dial 911.

  “He’s still alive,” he whispers.

  I break. Tears pour down my cheeks. I want to hug Adam, hold him, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but he’s so broken. He looks dead.

  “There’s been an attack. One guy beaten unconscious,” Ryan says into his phone. “W
e’re in an alley one block north of Diversey and Sheffield. Behind Penny’s. There’s a girl with him. She has asthma. She’s breathing heavily.”

  I don’t notice the whistles and crackles in each breath, the deep pressure in my lungs until Ryan says it. He mutters off a series of yeah and no that only half register. I stare at Adam’s bloody, broken face and pray he’s going to be fine. He has to be fine. Adam is too charismatic, too genuine, too beautiful and smart for this world to exist without him.

  I can’t exist without him.

  At some point Ryan tells them to hurry and hangs up the phone.

  “They guarded the alley.” His voice is cold, detached, filled with torment.

  Eyeliner smears across Adam’s temples. I want to wipe it clean—Adam would want it wiped, but he looks too fragile to touch.

  “I ran after you as soon as I saw it, but . . .” Ryan shakes my inhaler, hands it to me. “I should’ve been faster.”

  I struggle to hold it steady as I inhale and release. Ryan’s words suggest that he’s been following me, that he didn’t completely abandon me. Beneath his hood, his eyes look weak and anguished. He rolls his hands and squeezes them together.

  I want to ask him where he’s been. Why didn’t he try to explain himself after my mom’s accusations? Did he have anything to do with my father’s death? Because his disappearance seemed to confirm that he did. But all of it seems futile with Adam clinging to life, bleeding in the middle of a dark, dingy alley. This can’t be the way Adam dies. Adam would be appalled by this alley. The way his hair is caked with red and matted to his head. On his birthday.

  “This is my fault.” I choke on the words. All the things Adam did to help me: the search aggregator, the pictures we found on his account, the digging around.

  Ryan grabs the inhaler dangling from my hand and puts it in my bag. “Don’t.”

  “If he dies . . .”

  “He won’t.” It’s an empty promise. There’s doubt in his voice. Both of us know Adam won’t survive.

  Sirens howl in the distance.

  “I’m sorry, Lia.” The apology is halting. I look at him, wondering what he’s apologizing for, exactly—Adam, my dad, leaving me, knowing me. Either way, he’s about to disappear again. And as much as I’ve wanted him around, right now, I don’t care.

  I brush away a chunk of hair stuck to Adam’s forehead. He doesn’t move. His stillness is terrifying.

  Red lights flash against the brick alleyway. Somewhere near the street, car doors open. Footsteps rush into the alley. A radio dispatch muffles something as two guys with a gurney hurry our way.

  One paramedic, the younger of the two, makes eye contact with Ryan as he steps back. The EMT pauses a fraction of a second before kneeling down next to Adam. His partner checks Adam’s vitals. I’m brushed aside while they strap a neck brace around him. They roll Adam’s limp body onto the gurney.

  “Are you hurt?” the younger EMT asks, shining a light into my eyes.

  I shake my head. “Just him. He . . .” My voice catches. I stare at Adam’s face. I don’t even recognize him.

  “She has asthma. She needs oxygen,” Ryan says, sounding cold, sterile. I swear I detect a trace of underlying desperation.

  The EMT glances at Ryan. They seem to have an exchange in the few seconds they look at each other before the EMT turns back to me. A muffled voice says something on the dispatch attached to the EMT’s shoulder.

  The EMT puts his hand on my arm. “We’re going to take you and your friend to a hospital.” He has a black circular tattoo on his forearm. “The police will be here in less than thirty seconds,” he adds.

  It’s an awkward thing for him to say. The EMT’s eyes once again flicker to Ryan.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Ryan says as the EMT grabs me by the elbow and leads me toward the ambulance. Another EMT joins the group. Two of them wheel Adam away.

  “I’m going with him.” Panic claws at my chest as Adam is pulled from me. I turn to find Ryan backing into the shadows.

  More lights—red and blue reflect off the brick. The police have arrived.

  “You’ll need to come in the ambulance with us,” says the EMT. “We’ll check you out. Get you oxygen. Then I’m sure the police will want to speak with you. You’re the only witness to what happened tonight.”

  The EMT must realize Ryan witnessed part of it too. I glance back at Ryan, who backpedals a few more steps. His eyes flash. My heart skips a beat. Then he turns and runs the other way.

  The EMT stops me, squeezes my elbow. I focus on the tattoo on his forearm—up close, it’s a thick black circle with angular bars and swirls patterned inside it like a kids’ maze. “My reports will state we found two people in the alley—you and your friend, who was unconscious.” The EMT’s expression is serious, concentrated, stressing the importance of what he’s saying. “That gives you about twenty minutes to get your story straight.”

  “He made the call,” I say about Ryan.

  “That’s part of what you need to figure out.” After a prolonged pause he asks, “You ready?”

  I nod my head. His message is clear. For whatever reason, I need to pretend Ryan wasn’t here tonight. With that in mind, I let the EMT lead me toward the ambulance and Adam. Right now, he’s the only person in the world who matters.

  CHAPTER 23

  Wasps. Hundreds of them. Millions. Their buzzing is deafening. They swarm my walls, cramming the corners, crawling over each other in angry hoards. They tear the drywall, hungry to destroy. Devour. Attack. I need to run. But my body is on fire. Flames scorch my throat. My chest. And I can’t escape. The fire. The insects.

  My jaw falls open. Someone pours dry ice into my mouth. It’s toxic and smells like plastic. My hands swing, punching, flailing, reaching for someone to help me. But instead of choking me, the vapor slows to a trickle, sliding down my insides and extinguishing the flames. My insides singe, turn to ash, and I sink back into my bed, where I hope to sleep forever.

  The noise cuts. The insects stop all at once, and someone is lifting my head. I wake with a gasp, my eyes wrenching open to pitch black except for the little blue orb around my clock. My room. My bed.

  A hand brushes my arm. “Lia.”

  Ryan. I struggle to make out the hard lines of his silhouette.

  “You’re okay.” His voice is thick, muffled.

  I blink, my eyes adjusting. There are no wasps. Just Ryan tucking my neb mask beside the machine. The clock reads 2:22 a.m. I don’t know what day it is. My head is heavy, muddled, and my eyes are crusted with a mucus-y discharge. I rub them with my palms.

  Adam.

  The memory impales me, and I shoot up in bed. “Where’s Adam?”

  Ryan presses my shoulders. “Adam’s at the hospital. He’s banged up, but the doctors are good. They’re . . .” Ryan pauses long enough for me to know he’s lying. “They’re going to help him.”

  I squeeze my eyes. Fall back on the stack of pillows. Pain wrings my insides with its giant fists and shreds me with its nails.

  In the ambulance, paramedics checked his vitals, decided whether his life was salvageable. My tears and pleas meant nothing.

  Adam’s blood was dried, caked on his skin like scales, a desert dryland. It worsened beneath the harsh emergency room lighting where they pulled us apart. I screamed and thrashed until they strapped me to a bed with Velcro and inserted plastic tubing to pump oxygen into my veins. A guy in scrubs, with cold hands and a baby face, pushed something into my IV. “To help you rest,” he said in a voice that was calm and irritating. My fingers stiffened into claws, but I was trapped, tied down like a lunatic and pulled away from the only good thing in my life.

  Ryan eases off my bed and sits in a chair in the corner of my room. He leans over his knees, clasps his hands together. The blue glow makes his skin look ghostly.

  “How did I get here?”

  “You came home a couple hours ago. Your mom carried you inside.”

  I glance at the door
, surprised she had the strength to bring me upstairs. Her thin arms. My dead weight. Especially after spending the last twenty-four hours with me at the hospital, where doctors insisted on near-constant monitoring. I slept through most of it, but she didn’t. My eyes flash to the door. If she heard us talking, my machine buzzing . . .

  Ryan picks up on what I’m thinking. “She took something to help her sleep. I don’t think she rested much in the ICU.”

  “How did you get here?” We speak in hushed, emotionless tones. Like we know we’ve been defeated.

  The corner of his mouth lifts. Not quite a smile. “Through the basement. I still have a key.” Ryan’s face bends in anguish. Guilt. He rubs his forehead. “I’m sorry I left. I couldn’t . . . with the ambulance and the cops . . .”

  Dark purple shadows fan out beneath his eyes like brushstrokes. His hands wring together. He shakes his head as part of some conversation he’s having with himself. “I’ll talk. I’ll share everything I know about the Swarm. What I told your dad. And everything I’ve learned since.” His jaw clenches. His eyes flash in the light.

  I should feel something. A tiny spark should ignite inside me, eager for this moment. What he’s offering to do is better than any lead I’ve tried to pursue. It beats any tangible evidence I could have conjured. At the very least I should be scared for what it means for him and his family. If he does this, he and his parents will wind up dead like my dad, framed like Morrell, or imprisoned, which is what he tried to prevent by joining the Swarm in the first place.

  But I feel nothing.

  “I should have done it earlier,” he whispers.

  “No.” No matter what I’ve tried, the Swarm has always been a step ahead. Whoever’s running it is smart, not likely to give up. “They silence people too easily. They’ll find a way to discredit you and sweep it under the rug.”

  Ryan peers up at me. His hands clench together, flexing every muscle in his arms.

  “We need others.” My voice is raspy. I fight to sound assertive. “You’re not the only one being forced into it. We need to get others to come forward. The more people we have, the harder it is to eliminate us.”