Page 39 of Nemesis

He drags me into a hug, tucking my head under his chin. Of anyone in the world, my brother gives the best hugs. It doesn’t matter that we’re in the darkest place I’ve lived through, it doesn’t matter that he holds a gun, all that matters is the wash of safety that comes over me.

But…

It doesn’t.

The longer he holds me, the more I feel something terrible is going to happen.

Or maybe already happening.

I pull back and look up at him, and I open my mouth to put it into words… Except nothing comes out.

Hypnos threatened ruin.

Kade wants to uncover old, vicious memories.

Reese is supposedly in hiding, but I suspect he’s up to something, too. Why else would he come back?

Sterling Falls just got through one war… how will we possibly survive another?

After my mini existential crisis, Apollo and I split up to search the rest of this level. He seems hesitant, but I brush him off. I can do this.

More like, Ihaveto do this. If only to prove to myself that I’m fine.

Except every step invokes memory after memory—an onslaught of things I desperately shove out of my mind. Things I’ve spent the last ten years trying to forget. Officially a decade, now that I’m twenty-five.

When it gets to be too much, I allow myself to return to the floor above. There are areas still to be uncovered and relived.

I find Reese in the amphitheater.

I don’t want to go farther in. To stand on the stage, even as dimly lit as it is. The emergency lighting, the little strips along the stairs and around the platform that must’ve come on with the hall’s switch, don’t do much to beat back the shadows. All that’s missing is the spotlight. The people hidden in shadows. The cruel, cutting gazes and the voice that calls out numbers…

I touch the heavy curtain at my back. It’s one I’d stepped through a long time ago, countless times, with burning eyes and fear locking up my chest.

After a moment, I push forward and step onto the stage.

Reese sits halfway up, a few seats in from one of the aisles. The plush seats are faded either with disuse or dust. The air in here is stale, as well, but at least it’s more open than the hallway below.

There are no windows. The gridwork of lights overhead are untouched, and they might even work if I found a switch…

Definitely don’t want that.

“We were here under a very different set of circumstances,” he says sadly. His voice travels the distance, and the silence, easily.

He looks like he hasn’t slept since I last saw him, with dark circles under his piercing eyes. His light-brown hair is spiked, as if he keeps running his hands through it. What would cause that? Frustration?

He does it again, his nails scratching his scalp. “We were both forced into different roles.”

I don’t have a reply for him, if that’s what he wants.

I wet my lips and inch farther out onto the stage, turning in a slow circle. The audience chairs are arranged in pairs, with slim tables between them and dividers separating the pairs. Each table has a lamp and a button for silent bidding. Although some lamps have missing shades, or holes eaten through the fabric. Some have been knocked over, the bulbs broken.

Deja vu.

I’ve done this before. Spun. Gaze wide open, mouth dry, taking in the room. I can almost smell my old fear, feel how it used to choke me. I swallow sharply, almost to prove that it’s not the same.

I’m not the same.

“I found this,” Reese says, motioning to the table beside him. His voice simultaneously drags me deeper into this place and lifts me out of my memories. “I called… But I didn’t know what to tell them. Or how to explain.”

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