(EDITED)(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be in line with the new edits.)

Sometimes, few times, I see exactly how I die.

When I walk to a class I'm falsely enrolled in, I see the heavy front doors close in someone's wake and imagine my body catching in it, crushing the bones. When I see Kane or Diego cooking something on high heat, I see my face against the stovetop, the boiling oil spilling in my eyes. When I walk the Splinter and look up to see the precarious wires, the perched apartments, the cramped condos, piled so high in the sky you can't see the end, I see one losing its footing and coming down straight for me. When I meet Mercy, and she hands me a gun, I see her forgetting the safety and my finger brushing the trigger and a bullet catching my iris. When I step on the track, helmet in hand with the bike waiting for me, I see a racer smashing their front wheel into my exposed back, my skeleton caving in and slicing into my organs, until my whole body collapses in on its sinews on the cold, hard concrete. When I shake another lycan's hand, I see their teeth sprouting and sinking into my throat to tear out the tendons. When I shake a bloodsucker's hand, I see their fangs opening to devour my heart. When I shake a fae's hand, I see their words binding me like an anaconda, until I suffocate under the weight of secrets and sly truths. When I stand in front of a mirror, and see my mother's face staring back, I see my brother facing me instead, a knife through my gut, and a smile on his lips.

But all deaths I have ever known have been immediate, an abrupt thing, a done thing. Corpses. Ghosts. Rumors. Victims. All deaths I have seen in spans of minutes, maybe hours. All deaths I knew the beginning and end of. Death had always been a bullet train and a credit card and a butcher knife.

But there's another type of death you've got to live through to know. The gradual crumble, the eventual collapse, the slow consumption. Years. Decades. Millennia. I knew Death now like a ferry ride and a savings bond and a sewing needle.

And it was the worst one.

Because you never knew it was coming until you were already too close to stop it.

_________________________

When I awoke, it was to heat.

The room was a blurry, spotted thing, fuzzy as the sensation of my skin over my muscles. My body buzzed under the onslaught of light before the hum dissipated into a shivering ache. I opened my mouth, but my throat had been scorched useless. My lips were rough, and split when I tried to speak. Fever flooded into the surroundings, leaving a fiery fog and stinging embers in its wake.

"Echo?"

I blinked, shuddered, coughed. The cough took me out like a blow to the ribs, a sucker punch in my gut. I glanced down, looked out at my hands. Bandages wrapped around my reddened fingers and my bare torso. Whatever couldn't be covered was left for the air to feed off.

"Echo, don't move, it's all right." Hands were gentle on my shoulders, pushing me down into something soft. Brown curls and hazel eyes peered down at me before they arranged themselves into Ramos. Her smile was grim. "I know it hurts. I've got some medicine, stay still. We're going to transfer you to a hospital after this."

My heart halted and stuttered. I reached for her as best as I could. "No. No," I croaked. "No, you can't." I sucked in a painful breath. "Please. Don't take me."

"Echo, you have to—"

"You can't," I pleaded. Mercy would kill me if I ever went on a record that wasn't her own doing. I'd be announcing my status to an open line, a footprint on a path littered with bones. Mercy wouldn't have my head. She'd take me apart from the toe up until I was nothing but dust.

In a last ditch effort, I rasped, "The files, the records—they'll find me." I shook my head. "Don't."

Ramos blinked. She opened her mouth, closed it, tried to see the meaning of that in my eyes. When she found something she seemed alarmed by, she pursed her lips. "All right," she whispered. "All right, I won't. Stay still."

I thought I was. But the snake in my bones rattled and slithered, shaking my body against my will. I bit the inside of my cheek, but I bit into torn flesh. I hissed.

"Hey, hey, here." Ramos placed something past my lips, then something cold after. "Drink. Go slow."

I tried. The burn was immediate. I coughed, gagged on the acrid taste of water. I doubled over, but the wounds were too fierce, and I gasped, clawing at the cotton covering me as pain ricocheted through my body. Hands grabbed me but it only made the sensation worse, and I mustered enough strength to swat them away, only to succeed in sending fire down my arm.

"Breathe, Echo, you have to breathe," Ramos hurried. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's okay."

Nothing was a crueler lie than that.

It felt like eons before I could sit up again. Ramos sat at the bedside. Even through my fever, I saw the exhaustion dripping over her frame like a waning candle. "Rest, okay? Just rest. I'll come in to check on you. The medicine should kick in soon. Just sleep for now."

She gathered her things. She didn't leave, but rather sat somewhere out of my limited view in silence.

I closed my eyes. The heat devoured me.

Like a fool, I tried to walk.

I'd been in the same pants since the weeks had begun, and I knew in the small fraction of my rational mind that I desperately needed new ones. I figured the fever and shakes, the dizziness and numbness, would suddenly render themselves negligible in the face of enough vigor.

I pushed myself upright. It took two tries to get the sheets off of me. My bandages were fresh, but still wound me up like a dilapidated mummy. I reeked of stale sweat, filth, pure bloody iron, and acidic rot. I clamped my hand around the edge of the bed, the side of the table, and pushed.

I made it slightly upright before I was wobbling to the side, although the tilt looked relatively normal for my spotty vision. I didn't realize I was upright until I realized I was falling, and by that time, well, I was already halfway to the ground. I figured the ground was probably nice and warm, singed by the morning sunlight. If anything, maybe I'd stay there instead. Nothing but a rug for the empty room and the next sub to replace me to eventually replace Kane. As if I was never there. A breath, a gust, there and gone again.

A body prevented all such things. Then arms. Then hands. A chest with a solid heartbeat and a cotton shirt, the scent of it mingling with the faintest air of soap. The world spun where it remained. I watched it go around, and around, and around, and around.

Someone said, "If you fall into me one more time, I'm gonna get you some knee pads and a 'steer clear' sign, for Christ's sake."

I'd take it to my grave and further down, the ease that drenched me to my bones.

I curled my fingers into the cotton hem, my cheek to his chest. I could only manage a weak, "I'm sorry." I wanted to say more, but my energy had fled from me—whatever was left of it.

Hands came around my shoulders, but my skin was still too sensitive for it and I recoiled away from the stinging sensation. It only succeeded in my numbed feet twisting away in a form that didn't quite exist, and sent me reeling downwards like I'd been spun in an endless circle, a never-ending spiral with no way out.

Kane caught me by my waist. The touch was too much too fast, and I felt my entire stomach wrench left and right at the feeling. He said, "Echo—"

I groaned, "Don't."

The standing, the touch, the everything became too much for my frame to withstand. I clasped a shaking hand against my mouth. Kane grabbed me by the back of my head and turned my head into the nearest trash can.

I let my guts upheave themselves and prayed for nightfall.

Kane disappeared. Zoe came in his place.

I was awake only by God's will, and cognizant only by suspension of disbelief. Every part of me was in a constant ache bound by an invisible vise. I wondered if Ramos had bandaged me enough to cover the scars on my back. The taste of acid never left my tongue. The cold sweat racked my frame.

Zoe sat at the foot of my bed. She didn't look at me, either to give me the pitiful privacy of shivering in fever without embarrassment or just because she couldn't bear the sight of my face. Either one was fair.

"You should've told us," she whispered. "I'm sorry you couldn't tell us." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Echo."

I just shook my head. Sorry for what? My own selfishness had brought me to where I laid. Corvus had only ever tried to know.

A price to pay, knowing a ghost.

"It's okay, you know," she told me. "It'll be okay."

I swallowed the flames. "I'm sorry," was all I could think of. It felt like the only words I could give them.

Zoe reached for me, then hesitated. She placed her hand next to mine. She smiled like it hurt. "Go to sleep," she told me.

I found nightmares in the folds.

Ramos left the door open, either by accident or by convenience.

"Tell us something here," Diego said. "Make it make sense."

"He's in heat," she explained. "His body is in a fight for itself right now."

"The beryllium," Rosalie said.

"Omegas cannot handle it like you can't handle silver. It's not a deep wound, and we got it out within the hour, but we need to wait. For now, it's a matter of keeping an eye on him."

"We need to take him to a hospital."

"He's asked me not to."

"He's in heat, you can't listen to him."

"He's asked me not to," Ramos repeated, stronger.

"You said the same thing about King and look at him now," Rosalie snapped, but her voice frayed. "We cannot listen to him. If that beryllium stays in his system...."

"For confidential reasons, we're keeping him here."

"Confidential reasons," Zahir repeated, then, "Did you know?"

Ramos said, "Nothing of any of yours is mine to tell anyone else."

"You let King race as he's dying, you let Yun race as an Omega," Zahir said, an anger in his voice I'd never witnessed. "This is not a matter of pinkie promises and goddamn 'confidentiality'. Ramos."

"Enough," Coach said. "Ramos is doing what she has been instructed to do. You all need to cool down and get your heads on right, this is a shock for all of us and we need to be in our right minds. Go back to your rooms."

"Did you know?" Wynter asked.

The silence was deafening. Coach sighed. "What we need to focus on right now is Yun getting better, and everyone here keeping their cool so we can deal with the board about that match. Go to your rooms."

"We're staying here," Meredith said. "Please."

"Then keep quiet," Coach said. "You all need each other more than ever now." She sighed. "And for God's sake, close that damn door."

The door clicked shut. I shivered under the blankets, and felt the sweat drip down my nose.

Wynter and Zahir stopped by at lunch.

"Diego said he'll see you when you're better," Wynter explained. She sat on the right of the bed. "Guess he doesn't wanna see your fever-flushed butt."

I would've laughed. But I just sighed.

Zahir set a plate of food on the bedside table. He stared at it, then me. He said, "You should've told us."

I swallowed. I said, "I know."

Zahir said, "You need to go to a hospital."

I said, "I know."

Zahir turned away and took a breath. Wynter placed two pills beside the plate. "Ramos said you should try and eat, then take these. It'll help the pain. Go the hell to sleep, man. You look awful."

I said, "I'm sorry."

Wynter shook her head. "Don't." She got to her feet.

When she left, Zahir paused by the doorway. "Rest," he told me, then, "I can't afford another one of you."

If guilt was fever, I would've been burned to a crisp.

"You didn't eat."

Rosalie stood above me, her eyes anywhere but my face. For now, they focused on the plate of food on my bedside table. Picked at with a shaky hand, the pills gone but the toast and eggs still untouched.

I just shook my head. It must've looked strange, what with the lack of ability to keep any molecule of my body still for longer than fractions of a second. Still, Rosalie said nothing about it. She took the plate. She said, "You should try and eat."

I said, "Can't." Even the smell threatened to thwart my stomach out of my throat. It all smelled like iron and sourness and tasted worse. Maybe it was the beryllium. Maybe it was the guilt.

Rosalie pursed her lips. She turned her eyes away from me, holding the plate with a steel grip. "Jesus, Yun," she muttered. "You always get yourself into trouble somehow."

I swallowed. "Sorry," I croaked. "I'm sorry."

"Are you?" she sighed. "Sometimes I think you think you're expendable. Invincible, actually."

"I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that, for Christ's sake. That's not what I want—that's not what anyone wants from you." Rosalie shook her head. "Why is that the only thing you ever tell us? Can't you just not do this to yourself? Can't you just...hesitate?"

I didn't know what she meant. I only knew the look in her eyes was enough to kill me twice over. I held my bruised and aching hands to my chest, felt the numbness in my fingers spread to my knuckles. I shuddered. I wanted to sob.

"I'm sorry," I breathed.

I was.

Maybe not enough to make it count.

Rosalie brushed a hair out of my face, and turned around to leave. The door shut behind her. I was alone.

Would I ever be honest where it counted?

Meredith never talked to me, but rather, talked to someone about me.

I heard the clink of a mug, the rattle of pills. She said, "I think I knew, deep down, that something wasn't right. Maybe not his subspecies, but just that he wasn't being completely forthcoming about himself."

Whoever she was talking to didn't say anything. So she added, "I know you're angry. But he must've had a good reason."

"Not angry." Kenzo, then. "Confronted." The sound of something being set down. Two pairs of feet coming towards the bed. "Everyone is dying."

"Kenzo."

"UNLV called. No one saw."

"What do you mean no one saw?"

"Behind the bridge. No cameras under the ramp."

"There's cameras everywhere. "

"Not there."

"Someone knew. That team knew. Someone had to have known."

"Doesn't matter if they know. Matters who saw." A hand pushed my shoulder and sent a wave of pain shooting up my body. I spasmed, groaning. "Turn. Meds."

I shook my head. A shock ricocheted through my body in a hot flash. I felt the sweat on my forehead, the drops on my neck.

"Meds. C'mon."

I gasped, "Stop."

Silence. Meredith said, "Let him take them on his own time. Ramos said he has to work his way through it. We can't force anything, it'll stress his body out. Let's go."

I blinked through bleary eyes. Meredith said, "What will happen to the match then?"

Kenzo said, "It doesn't matter."

They shut the door. It took me another hour to muster up the strength to drink down the pills and not throw them up at the vile taste of water and medicine. I slumped on the sheets, and let my heart gasp for a beat.

I had the dream again.

This time, Elias did not grin back at me, but rather faced me eye to eye. The debris fell on us, the two of us side by side, stone turning us to dust.

When I awoke, my fever had ascended to deadly heights, my body shaking with a shiver from an unknown cold. I didn't know if the ache was from the wounds on my body or in my soul.

Ramos found me and said, "Sleep well?"

I said, "Where's Kane?"

She said, "Take your meds."

I let her push the pills past my lips. I let the dream eat me alive. I wondered if Elias was awake on the other end of the world.

I knew two weeks had passed because of the bandage on Zahir's cheek.

He set water down on my bedside table. I blinked away the spots in my vision. I said, "Why?"

Zahir frowned, then reached up and touched his cheek. He almost grinned, then faltered. "Ah, uh, Tigers match tonight. Only thirteen thousand, but hey, money is money, gotta buy the groceries."

I winced. "I'm—"

"It's all right. You should just focus on getting better."

"Zahir—"

"Get better, Yun." He pushed the water towards me. "We can hold our own in the meantime."

Like you're expendable.

But wasn't I?

At best, at most, I was just a sub at the end of the day.

I felt the beryllium slither into my blood and freeze it in place.

Zahir left me with a gruesome look, as if I'd already died right in front of him, and I just didn't know it yet.

I awoke to Kane's shadow. A rumor of him in the flesh.

July evening was a blue and black bruise over the room, the edges of the white walls stained by its wound and tender at its center where I lay in new sheets and pillowcases. I frowned, and it tugged a little too hard at my lips and I groaned.

Kane said, "You up?"

I angled my head towards the voice, saw the silhouette fall over my pale blue blankets. I pushed myself up, but my muscles shook too much and I really only succeeded in hoisting myself halfway up the pillows. I took a look at him, blinked away the spots of my vision. There were shadows on his face and a paleness to his skin, a glassiness to his expression.

I said, "What're you doing here?"

Kane didn't answer. He grabbed a small bowl of juk and a handful of foggy capsules. "Here. Try to eat something then take these."

I grimaced at the food. A wave of heat overtook my head and I held my temples.

Kane placed a hand on my forehead. The sensitivity had faded by now, but his hand was still too cold to be comfortable and I winced.

"Sorry," he said, snatching his hand away. "I'm sorry."

"No," I tried. "No, I just..."

Kane pursed his lips. He drew his hands back and placed the food and medicine on the table. "I'm gonna grab Ramos. Don't move."

It felt like tearing tissue when I reached for him, but I did it nonetheless. I swallowed the burn in my skin when I grabbed his wrist. "Wait," I tried. "Don't."

He paused. I scrambled to find the words, to choke it out past my guilt and grievance and heat. I only succeeded in a sigh. Kane made a move to leave again.

"Echo—"

"Wait."

"Echo, just—"

"Please."

"Echo."

"Hyung."

I wanted to collapse in on myself from the effort, from the sting of speaking. My grip shook, loosened to a pathetic excuse of a grip. Kane didn't move. I slumped against the pillow and took in a shuddering breath. I didn't know any truth, any at all, that I could give Kane in that moment other than Kane himself. None that I believed in, anyway.

Kane took my hands gently in his. His voice was cotton and blue dawn. "Calm down," he said in quiet Korean. "I'm coming back, I'm just bringing Ramos with me." When I gave him a distrustful look, he added with a soft sigh, "You know I also live here. I'm not going anywhere."

He let me examine that for a few more moments before I rolled over to my other side. He got to his feet, heading out the door. I pushed my shaking fingers against my chest, pushed the rushing blood out of my heart.

Ramos returned with her bag. She smiled. "You look a little better. Not as painful?" I hummed. She nodded. "Let's take your temperature."

I let her take the thermometer to my mouth. "104. That's much better." She scooted closer. "Let's change these bandages. You ought to take a bath, maybe? If you're up for it?"

I closed my eyes. "Later."

Ramos didn't argue. "Then sit up. We'll change them now. You can eat and take the meds, they'll kick in for the pain."

I said, "What about the beryllium?"

She paused for a long moment. "We have to wait to see on that," she said. "We can't test your body in the state it's in now."

I leaned my head back. The world was a mocking yellow behind my eyelids, the evening coming for me with cruel amber and unforgiving indigo.

It was another day and a half for me to take a bath. Rosalie made that a point.

"I love you, Yun, I really do, but you smell like a dead animal and then some," she told me as she took away the half-eaten oatmeal from the table. "A very dead animal. Like, weeks on weeks of being dead. As a very animalistic animal. A long dead, animalistic animal. You get me?"

I hauled myself up by the headboard. I rasped out, "I got you."

Rosalie let me struggle for another few seconds before helping me sit up properly. My skin had eased its sensitivity, the tenderness a dull thing by now, but my muscles were still on strike and my fever had not retreated from its stance at 104 for nearly forty eight hours. My body was a stale, withered thing from all the cold sweats and never-ending shaking. If my life depended on whether I could make a fist and keep it still, I'd be an even deader, animalistic animal.

I said, "I'll take a bath soon." Talking still managed to tear unhappily at my throat, but its sting was shorter lived than it had been. I'd take anything I could get at that point.

Rosalie pursed her lips. She said, "Well, when you can, you should. One of us will help you, if you want." She took the food away. "Ramos said stay upright when you can. Helps the nausea."

She headed for the doorway, but as she did, said to someone nearby, "Oh, good. You help him into that bath, or someone is going to label us a goddamn health hazard in another few days. Someone meaning me. I'll tape it off, too."

I let my head loll to the side, exhaustion a dense fluid inside the space between my cells. The bed dipped. Someone said, "Echo."

I opened my eyes. Kane tugged at me and tilted his head towards the bathroom door. He said, "Come on. Before Rosalie sets up a contamination warning outside your door."

I gaged the distance between my bed and the bath, and immediately concluded it an impossible walk. I slid further into the bed. "Let her," I mumbled.

"For all of our sakes'. Yours included."

"No thanks."

"Not asking."

I didn't understand that bit until there was no bed under me at all. I frowned, tried to register the floating feeling, then craned my head up. Kane was there, his sweatshirt's soft cotton against my face. I considered it for a long moment, then frowned.

"I can walk," I argued.

"Says who?" Kane scoffed.

"Put me down," I muttered, and pushed knuckles against his chest that did little to nothing in terms of any damage. "Put me down right now."

Kane put me down, but on the counter beside the sink. I still wore no shirt, leaving nothing but my pants to peel off. I groaned under the onslaught of light. I said, "It's not like that."

"No," he said, undoing the tie to pull them down. "No, it's not."

He turned on the water.

The rush of it buzzed in my ears and managed to drown out most of the ringing. I knew just getting down from the counter alone would take me out for good, and so I didn't even bother arguing when he folded my clothes on the counter and picked me up to head for the bathtub. I did make a point to say, "Your shoulder."

Kane shook his head. "I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that."

He checked the water with a quick hand, then helped me inside at an excruciatingly slow pace that required far more effort than I'd ever care to tell you outright. The water likely wasn't anything more than slightly warm, but it felt golden and hot on my skin. I shivered in it, the heat spreading over my body in a tidal wave. I hugged my legs to my chest and let the feeling eat me away.

Kane stood and watched me for a few minutes. After I'd succeeded in doing nothing but nearly falling asleep three times over, he shucked his sweatshirt off to leave himself in a simple tank top, and leaned over to grab the shampoo. His arm and shoulder, right down to his chest, was pasted in heat patches.

I shook my head, or tried to. "No," I murmured. "I can."

Kane pretended as though I hadn't spoken. He emptied a cup from the countertops, spilling its contents out carelessly on the granite, before bending down to dip it into the water. He poured it over my head and said, "Close your eyes."

I closed them, but said, "Not a child."

Kane poured shampoo into his hand and ran it into the strands of my hair. "All right."

I said, "I can do it."

"All right."

"I could."

"All right."

He did it.

We sat there in the quiet of the early evening, the quiet sound of sloshing water and faint, distant city sounds shuddering around us. I had no heart to do anything but what Kane told me, and my body was too weak anyway to do anything more than shift around and tilt my head from side to side. He pulled the soap through my hair, the smell of lavender wafting into my nose. I thought of my mother, running water over my skin, smiling with the bowl in her hands. At some point or another, he began humming to himself, the tune of a song that proved ever so faintly familiar lulling me to sleep in the midst of the foggy silence of the bathroom.

"Ya," Kane murmured. I felt a hand on my temple. "Don't get me wet."

I blinked, craned my head up to look. I frowned when I realized I'd let my head loll all the way onto his innocent shirt. "Sorry," I murmured, trying to straighten. "Which one's that one?"

Kane poured water over my head and I wrinkled my nose at the rush of it over my face. "Target," he said with a small laugh. "On sale, too."

"That's nice."

"It is. Lift your head."

Kane grabbed a different bottle and a stronger lavender filled the bathroom. He rubbed the soap into my sore skin, hands gentle over the sensitive bandages, his fingers pushing the suds into my aching bones with careful circles. I listened to his song, resting my chin on my bruised knees.

"What's that song?" I murmured.

Kane washed the bubbles away and glanced at me. "Some song my cousin used to fawn over all the time. She played it so much it ingrained itself in my head."

"What's it about?" I said, perhaps to keep myself awake, perhaps to keep myself alive.

Kane rubbed the soap into my other arm, washed it away. He helped me lean against the other side of the tub, and pulled my leg towards him to press tentative hands into my shin, the soap a sweeter smell than I'd experienced in a long two weeks.

"Two people come into each others' lives," he said as he worked, "And even if they part, his life stays reminiscent of when she was once with him. But, they can only hope it stays like that every moment thereafter."

I thought of that. Change. Moments. Forever.

I said, "Does it?"

Kane washed the last of the soap away and placed his hands on the edge of the tub. He rested his chin on his knuckles. He said, "I don't know. The song ends on that."

"On what?"

He shrugged. "The hoping."

I placed my chin on my hands in an imitation. "Do you like it?"

Kane's face was grim thing, a sorrowful sweetness you only found in those that knew something they shouldn't and had hearts they'd worn too often. He got to his feet, grabbed a towel, and returned at the side of the tub with a hand out. He was ringless, nothing but skin and veins and knuckles and scars. A startling truth. A menacing dream.

"I understand it," he said.

I took his hand, and let him haul me into the clutches of the fresh towel and his waiting arms. If my heart was a gun, I would've had bullets in my throat, and gunsmoke on my tongue.

"Sing it?" I asked.

He said, "Do you like it?"

I said, "I...just want to hear it aloud."

So he sang, barely a whisper, the melody sullen without an ending to comfort it.

Sometimes, I gaze at you, because I can't do anything else but that.

Every moment of you,

I hope it'll be me.

I put up a fit for medical purposes.

Kane said, "It's already too warm, your fever might just get worse. I'll check on you later."

I held onto his sleeve. I said, "Just for a little while."

Kane gave me a knowing look. He said, "Go to sleep, Echo."

I sighed. I patted the bad weakly. "People heal faster with company. It's a fact."

"From where?"

"Just a little while," I said. "Five minutes. Time me."

Kane had a small debate with himself for a few moments. He stared down at his damp shirt and shorts, then at me, then at the bedside table of medicine and uneaten dinner, then at the closed door, then back again. Eventually, he said, "Let me change, at least."

If I could, I would've smiled.

Kane found a shirt and a pair of shorts that fit him from my closet, considering I seldom bought clothes that were anything less than one or three sizes too big for sake of both pricing and convenience. It resulted in him donning a Cinnamaroll shirt to his irritation and a pair of shorts that had the matching bastard on the hem. He said, "You own anything that isn't HELLO KITTY?"

I said, "Nothing worth wearing."

Kane sighed.

He sat on the side of my bed and grabbed the plate of rice. I grimaced, and Kane didn't even bother looking at me before saying, "You gotta eat for the medicine to work faster."

"Says you," I murmured.

"My meds didn't depend on food," he argued. "Not the important ones, at least."

"Telling Ramos you said that."

Kane said, "Just eat."

I succeeded in eating about twelve bites of the concoction at a pace of one per minute before I decided that a thirteenth one would be my death for sure. Kane acquiesced, promising to try again later. He handed me the pills and a bottle of water.

We sat there in quiet for a long while, watching the dusk turn into an oil spill of night, flushing out the white of the room into a softhearted indigo, rendering the tops of the trees outside into deep phthalo green bodies swaying to the music-less wind. I watched Kane watch it. I wondered about everything that hid behind him in the folds of silver and black, what he'd left in Korea, what he'd lost to America, what he'd given and had been given to and from victory. I thought about all the things he likely wondered of me: what I'd ran away from in Korea, what I'd stolen from Korea, what I'd fought in America, what I'd scarred and been scarred from in victory. The bruises on his neck. The scars on my back. The wound in his side. The symbol on my hip. You didn't know someone by what they survived. You knew them by how they did it.

Kane said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

I pursed my lips. "I was scared."

Kane paused. He said, "Why?"

I shrugged. "You'd barely take a Class III, a Stirling. You would've never taken an Omega on top of it all," I said. "List off all the most successful Omega racers you know today." When Kane was quiet, I let out something like a dry laugh. "What I did wasn't right, I'll never say it was. I'm sorry that I lied. It was selfish. I was desperate to race, and when the opportunity for Corvus came up, I knew they'd never let a Stirling Omega take any place on it, so I said I was a Beta." I bit the inside of my cheek. "I'm sorry, about all of it."

Kane didn't look at me, rather stared off somewhere I couldn't go. His face was emotionless, a still thing, unreadable and half-hidden.

"You could have been killed," he said quietly.

"I wasn't," I tried.

"You could have been." Kane finally looked at me. "This is your life, Echo."

He said it like he didn't just mean the beryllium. Racing. Corvus. College. Me. My whole life ahead of me. But I only saw shadows.

"I understand if you don't trust me again," I said.

Kane said, "I shouldn't."

I winced. I knew it, but seeing a bullet never made its impact any weaker.

He got to his feet. He said, "Get some rest. Ramos will be here with you tomorrow, we've got the third Green Diamond match."

I said, "What about your shoulder?"

"I can handle a shoulder a lot more than you can handle a heat," he said. "Now go to sleep."

"Kane."

"Go to sleep, Echo."

"Kane."

Kane stopped at the door. He seemed miles from me, eons and acres and light years and kilometers. He said, "What?"

I felt it slip from my fingers like too-thin threads. It strangled my heart until its valves burst. In its corpse, I tried to find something worth saving.

"I liked that song you sang," I said, voice hoarse, lungs heavy. "The one about hoping."

Kane stared. His eyes held a solemn understanding, a childish sadness.

He turned for the door, and left without another word.

___________________

Edwards, surprisingly, saw me before Ramos did. She came with company.

I was far better than I'd been the days prior, the medicine finally kicking in as the beryllium's cruelty finally faded away. My fever hadn't broken, but it hadn't risen either. The heat had not fully passed, its dregs still leaving my limbs shaky and my heart a feeble thing, but compared to what it'd been prior, it was practically Heaven and then some.

"Corvus sends," Kenzo said in the doorway. He wore his undershirt and a pair of joggers, his bleach blond only lingering at the very tips of his now-too-grown hair. "You look alive."

The irony. I sat up. I shrugged. I didn't have much to say to him. For the one I knew the least, he knew far too much about me, and had been right too many times, for me to have anything to say anyway. What could a kid made of lies say to a guy that knew the truths at his skeleton?

Kenzo must've known something like that, because he continued towards me a few moments later until he reached the footboard of my bed. He said, "Inevitable, maybe."

I said, "If you're here to say 'I told you so', then say it now." I sighed, leaning my head back. "I won't even argue. Hell, I'll agree with you."

Kenzo leaned against the bed. He said, "Are you telling the rest?"

I scoffed. I had to. "No," I said. "Are you?"

Kenzo considered that. "Not mine to tell," he said. He raised a brow at me. "Would it kill you?"

I stared. "What?"

"The telling," he said. "It'd kill you, huh?"

When I didn't respond, Kenzo took it as a yes, and turned around to head back for the doorway. He opened the door to grab something, before tossing it at my face. I caught it, to the complaint of my bruised body. It smelled of soap and sheets.

"King said you left this in his room. He washed it. Put a shirt on," he said, and gestured at my back with an unimpressed hand. When I wormed my way into it, and saw him still standing in the doorway, I frowned. He said, "Could've just said you were a ghost."

I froze right to the flow of air in my lungs. Everything went deathly still.

I said, "What?"

Kenzo cocked his head at me. "Do Stirlings do that?" he asked. "Ghost children?" At my gaping look, Kenzo hummed like that was a yes. "Could've just said so."

I tried to find a word, a scrap of one, that would counter that, negate it. I clutched the shirt to my chest. I said, "How did you..." Because Kenzo would always be ten steps ahead of me, and denial was long past us both. It didn't make it easier, but perhaps, for once, it really wouldn't kill me to talk.

I. Own. You.

Kenzo narrowed his eyes. He turned on his heel. As he went, he said in steady Japanese, "You just remind me of my sister."

He left that in his wake. I felt it in my chest, in the vicinity of my gut, sinking all the way down into my metacarpals. Everything went numb.

Kenzo disappeared. Edwards appeared in his place a minute or so later.

If she'd heard the conversation, she didn't say anything about it. She was dressed for the match against Cal State Long Beach, complete in a pitch black suit and purple shirt, her Corvus cap pulled back to let her bright blonde ponytail sway from left to right behind her as she walked towards me.

She said, "You look better, kid."

I blinked. I said, "I'm sorry, about everything."

She sighed, sitting down at the very foot of the bed. "I gotta say, Yun, you've given me a hell of a lot of trouble for such a short time."

"I'm sorry about that, too."

"And to tell Ramos but not me, and let me just throw you out on the track?"

"Omegas can race, Coach," I said. "But, sorry about that."

Coach pinched the bridge of her nose. "Why'd you lie?"

I shrugged. "You would've never taken me."

"You don't know that."

"Couldn't take the chance."

"Why not?"

"I needed to race. This is racing." I gestured at her hat, at the Talon around me. At Corvus, the top team of Division I collegian square racing. At a chance I would only get once. "I know it was greedy. I never meant for anyone to find out like this."

Coach raised a brow. "Did you ever mean for us to find out at all?"

I hesitated. I said, "I thought I'd have the year."

Coach sighed. She drummed her fingers on the sheets, considering that with a nod of her head and a few unintelligible mutters. I braced myself for the yelling, the benching, maybe even the end of my chance that I'd coveted so badly only to lose over a stupid mistake.

Edwards tilted her head back with a heavy breath. She slid her gaze to me and said, "I've only recruited an Omega once, and it saved this team, you know."

I paused. "What?"

Edwards glanced at he high noon filtering through the window, spilling over the sheets, her face potent with a strange sorrow. "It's better among lycans than it is werewolves, the subspecies stereotypes. Omegas aren't nearly as discounted as they used to be. When my parents were younger, they were nobodies, weak links and expendable commodity."

I winced at that. "But nowadays, they're almost at similar treatment with Betas. Still, there's some prejudice you never get over, sports or big business or general physicality," she continued. "Being an Alpha, I had to recognize I'd get a lot more than most Omegas of the same skills. I never wanted to treat anyone any different, just because of something stupid like that.

"Corvus was different than it is now. A lot more disconnected. A lot more competitive amongst each other. More Alphas, too," she went on. "When Poppy tried out for us, felt like a no-brainer to put her on the team." My heart stopped, stumbled over its veins. "She and her file said she was a Beta. I didn't question it. Only Ramos knew, because of the physicals." I winced a little inside. "She told me the truth after we won our first Red Diamond, and when I asked her why, she said she knew no one would give her the chance if she was honest."

I felt dizzy. I said, "What'd you do?"

"I told her I was more mad that she lied than what she lied about," Coach replied. "But that was about it. She told the team afterwards, and it was a similar reaction. I think they cared more about the fact that, most of the time, Omegas don't bother racing because they just can't heal fast enough to do it as often as pros need to, so the only thing they told her was, 'Be careful, because you just never know how bad you're hurt until you're out of time to heal'."

I stiffened. Edwards ducked her head down, closed her eyes like just sitting there hurt her to her core. She swallowed. "When she passed, I heard a doctor say that maybe, just maybe, if she'd been an Alpha, or even a Beta, she would've healed fast enough to make it." Stab wound. I thought of Kane's file. "But we'd never know. I think it haunted us, never knowing if maybe..."

I said, "It was her choice."

"But I approved it." She turned to me. "I don't talk about Poppy, because I know Corvus doesn't like talking about her when the freshmen are around. They want to leave all that out of your sights, so you don't worry about it," she said. "But you should know, not a day goes by where I don't wonder, had I done something different, taken her out of that match, taken her out of those extra practices, taken her off the team, if she'd still be here today." She sighed. "With that, I have to think that Corvus might not be.

"I've seen this sport make and break people," she continued. "I've seen captains ruin and remake teams. I've seen a lot of victories and a lot of losses, a lot of firsts and a lot of lasts, a lot of teams that are families and teams that are enemies. I've seen what racing can do. And I know, for Poppy, if I had cut her, she would have never stopped trying to come back. And I know, for Kane, if I'd cut him, he would have raced to death somewhere else. And I know, for you, that for whatever you've done or been through or seen or heard or lied about or hid, this is it for you. You race like this is it," she said.

Edwards faced me, eye to eye. "I don't care who you've been, what you've been, Omega, Beta, Alpha, Stirling, Hawthorn, Drachmann, Class I, Class III, whatever other bullshit people come up with. I don't regret recruiting Poppy, because she did something she loved with people she loved. And I sure as hell don't regret recruiting you, because for as much as you put us through, you're doing something that makes you feel alive with people that make you feel alive. And that's racing. That's victory." Edwards got to her feet.

I watched her go. I said, "Am...I still Corvus?"

Edwards paused. She looked at me like I was joking. Then, she smiled, a soft, bright, real smile. "You're Corvus for as long as you can be, Echo," she said. "So start acting like it, yeah?"

With that, she turned on her heel, and went for the door.

I settled into the golden light, and watched the world tick away the year, July seeping into my muscles. My life dwindled onto something I could count on one hand, and I saw it flee from me with nothing but hope left for me to hold onto in its absence.

I clung with a fervor, a hope and a hunger, for life.

1:01 AM - kane

[Link - "Every Moment of You" by Sung Si Kyung at 1:05]
hey
former corvus sent me tickets for a match he's playing next fri w his team at 7
let's go see it.