Chapter 2
It takes Lorna only a moment, as she and Marcos watch Caitlin walk up to her children, to confirm that John hasn't made it back to the junkyard. If he had, he would be here waiting for them.
Reed's death, the violence of his explosion of power taking the top floors of the Inner Circle's building, the fight in the parking lot, it's all been harrowing, traumatic. Lorna can still feel her hands trembling, Marcos almost veered off the road several times on the way back. And Caitlin...she's been stoical somehow, holding on tight, but she's now sobbing in her children's arms.
But none of it could make Lorna forget completely that they left John to die here, in front of the apartment complex. Because if one thing was obvious, it's that John didn't expect to make it out alive.
She grabs Marcos's hand. “We need to go look for John,” she says.
“Shouldn't we−” Marcos starts, nodding toward the Struckers.
“They're safe. They're together. John...”
“Let's go,” Marcos nods.
“Where do we start?”
“He could have gone back to the apartment, if the police haven't stormed it. And...we need to check where we left him.”
Where they left him, in front of the building. If there's anything still there, it will be police cars and dead bodies. John's dead body.
Lorna takes a deep breath, willing the panic away.
What if they never find him? What if he's lying in a dumpster somewhere, or taken to the morgue already?
No, John can't be dead. Lorna won't believe it, won't even think it, until she had irrefutable proof.
She nods and follows Marcos back outside. They don't need the car for this, the back of the apartment building is just on the other side of the road.
“Should we tell them, though?” Marcos waves toward the Struckers.
“Leave them be,” Lorna says. “They need this moment. And we can't waste anymore time.”
They could be too late already. John could be losing blood in an alley somewhere.
The panic is here again. Lorna struggles to breathe, even when she concentrates on it. She squeezes Marcos's hand tightly.
“We'll find him,” he murmurs. “We have to.”
They go up to the apartments first, since they get in though the back of the building. Everything is quiet both in and outside. The building wasn't even fully evacuated, and now all has gone back to normal. Through the windows of Marcos's empty apartment, Lorna can make out crime scene tape out in the street, but there's no more police cars.
John's apartment is just as empty. He has barely been in here since Clarice's death, and it's a mess. He clearly hasn't been taking care of himself. There are week-old dirty dishes in the sink, and the bedroom is littered with unfolded clothes−all John's. Clarice's side of the bed hasn't been touched.
There is no sign that John came back here. The war paint bowl he made before leaving is still on the table, like time stopped the moment he passed that door.
Zingo welcomes them into the Struckers' place, whining. She's been alone in here most of the day, and the gunshots and sirens must have frightened her. Marcos hugs her and calms her down as well as he can, when he himself is too strung up to even sit down.
“Should we take her with us?” Lorna asks. “She might find John better than we will.”
“Okay,” Marcos says, taking her leash. “We're not going to find anything here. Let's go down to the street.”
They're careful to keep Zingo quiet, down there. The police and the Purifiers might be gone, but there could always be somebody lurking around.
Lorna can feel dozens of shell casings and fallen bullets on the floor, though it's too dark to see them. She can't help reliving the last image she got of John, in the SUV's rearview mirror, his chest already bleeding, the holes in his shirt. She shivers.
“You cold?” Marcos murmurs.
Lorna looks at him and she can see they're having the same flashback, to the day everything went wrong. The day she was arrested. Marcos asked her the same thing then. So much of what happened since seems to stem from that night.
“No, just...scared,” Lorna admits. She doesn't want to relive that night. She doesn't want to think about what happened here today, in this street, but they have to. “What if they...took his body somewhere?”
“I really, really hope not,” Marcos says. There's a shine in his eyes, and edge in his voice. He's just as worried as Lorna.
What are the chances that John actually made it out?
Lorna kneels down and holds out the tee-shirt she picked up in John's room to Zingo. “Can you find him, Zingo?” she asks.
The dog sniffs the cloth and moans. “Yes, I know. That's why we need to find him.”
They walk down the street for a bit before Zingo picks up a trail. She perks up suddenly and pulls on her leash. Marcos picks up his pace behind her. She only slows down a few streets over, in an alley also slashed with police tape.
“He was here, uh?” Marcos asks Zingo. She sniffs around, but doesn't move.
Lorna looks around her. It's too dark to see properly, but there doesn't seem to be any damage in the alley, which means that whatever happened here was between people. John, probably. And Purifiers. Jace Turner, maybe, who seemed so bloodthirsty. There are few people Lorna hates as much as this man, in this moment.
“Eclipse,” a deep voice calls from the end of the alley. Marcos and Lorna both freeze. The man is still in the shadows, but Marcos relaxes minutely as soon as he steps closer.
“Erg,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
So this is the infamous Erg, Lorna thinks. He's tall and menacing, from where she stands. She spots the shadow of the eye patch Marcos described to her.
“I was looking for you,” Erg says. “You are Polaris, I assume?” he nods to Lorna.
Lorna just nods back curtly.
“What do you want?” Marcos asks.
“Your friend...John...he's alive. Down in the tunnels.”
Lorna's knees nearly give out under her. She steadies herself by holding on to Marcos, the relief flooding over her.
“How is he?”
“Injured, but alive. He asked me to find you.”
Lorna closes her eyes briefly. Trust John, even injured, to be worried about them. Though given how close they came to not making it out, that one of them didn't, he wasn't wrong to be.
It's just that Lorna almost forgot about John, while she fought alongside Marcos in the parking garage.
“Just promise me that you're gonna fight.”
She fought. She fought with everything she had, like they all did, but John and Reed are the one who walked into the danger fully expecting not to make it out. Who gave everything for their families, for their friends.
“I just need to last long enough to get them away from the gate.”
And now Reed is dead, and John…
“Take us to him,” she says, her voice shaking more than she would like.
“Come with me.”
They follow Erg down a manhole and into a network of tunnels, silently. Erg does not seem the talkative type to Lorna, and she has a lot on her mind. Images of John badly injured keep imposing themselves on her, but the look on his face earlier, the deep well of pain and the emptiness she could see there, was somehow even worse.
“Jace Turner took Clarice from me. He can't do anything worse.”
Lorna has been imagining her reunion with John since the day she chose to ask for the Underground's help. No, even earlier. The day she helped get John out of the Purifier's compound, when she pulled the pellets out of his skin and ran before he could say a word to her. Perhaps even, deep within her, since the night she turned her back on him in Nashville.
It was never like that in her dreams. John would shout at her, argue for hours, or just look at her in disappointment and give her a cold shoulder. He would refuse her excuses and her apologies and tell her all the hurtful things on his mind. He would hit her maybe−though Lorna knows too well that John would never forgive himself for that.
He would care. He would show feelings, of anger and disgust and hate perhaps, and love. And Lorna would hate it, but she would take it because she deserves everything he could throw at her.
But John just hugged her, swallowing hard, and then he looked away. The pain in his gaze had little to do with her.
Lorna wonders if it's selfish of her, to want something more, to want her best friend, her brother, to be angry because that means his pain is one that can heal. To want him to rage at her for what she's done, because it would mean he hasn't become a stranger in the months she's been gone.
The people she's coming back to aren't the ones she left behind. They're harder, rougher somehow. Marcos still looks at her like she's his whole world, but he flinches every time she moves away, like he's terrified she'll disappear again. And John is in a world of pain that allows no one else inside.
Clarice, the girl Lorna never got to know properly−but she wants to, now, because Clarice must have been someone truly amazing for John to love her this much−is dead by her fault. How will John rise again from losing a third partner, a third love, in as many years? Can he make it through this at all?
Lorna is deep in her thoughts when they come to an opening in the tunnel. She's taken aback by the large room around them, filled with tents and seemingly random pieces of makeshift furniture.
“This is where the Morlocks lived,” Marcos says at her questioning gaze. Erg only nods, dark and brooding. This was his home, Lorna realize. His home that was destroyed by Purifiers−and by Reeva. Lorna has her responsibility in this too.
“I'm sorry,” she murmurs. Erg probably lost friends here too. Lorna remembers mourning for the Atlanta station, her own home for years. For Sonya, and for all the friends she left behind. Marcos was not the only one she couldn't forget.
“They are...avenged, now,” Erg says.
“Did Turner−” Marcos hesitates.
“He did not die. John...chose not to end his life. It's a decision I can respect.”
“Reeva Page is dead,” Lorna says. “It was the only way to stop her.”
Erg nods. “Good,” is his only comment. “He's over here,” he indicates the center of the room.
John has started to sit up on the bed he's on before Lorna even spots him. He's probably heard them come closer. His blanket slips away as he sits up, and Lorna can see his torso and arms are covered in makeshift bandages. Even from here, she can indistinctly feel the bullets under his skin. Too many of them. She could carry him just by moving them.
John doesn't quite manage to make it to his feet before Marcos and Lorna reach him. He tries, one hand pressing on his side, but his legs clearly won't take his weight.
“Don't move,” Lorna whispers, kneeling at his side. “We're here.”
“You're alive,” John rasps. The relief in his voice is as painful as the one overtaking Lorna's throat.
Marcos crouches beside them and grabs John by the back of the neck, which seems to be the only part of his body that's not bandaged or bleeding. Their brows meet briefly, and Marcos closes his eyes.
“You're alive too,” he murmurs. “I was−” His voice breaks.
“I'm alright,” John says.
“You have more bullets in you than I can count,” Lorna frowns.
“It's okay,” John answers vaguely, never taking his eyes away from her face. It feels like he's trying to engrave her into his memory.
Lorna reaches out to put her arms around him gently, but John leans into her, tightening the hug despite his injuries. It almost hurts. John has always had trouble checking his strength when he's sick or injured.
That thought startles Lorna. She hasn't thought like that in a long time. She hasn't been around anyone she knows that well, enough to distinguish the tiny nuances of behavior, for a long time. She hasn't been around John. In that moment, she realizes how much she's missed him−and simultaneously, how much he's missed her, when he half-sobs in her shoulder. Her throat tightens even further.
“Let's get you home,” Marcos says. “Or do you want to−”
His hesitation is palpable, wanting to give John the ability to decide for himself, despite how tired they all are, how much they just want to drop on a bed and sleep for a century. John needs medical attention, but more than that he needs his friends to support him.
“Home,” John repeats. It doesn't sound like an answer exactly, more like a way of processing the question. “Yes,” he adds after a while. “Are the apartments−”
“Safe, as far as we could tell, but we should probably wait until the morning to be sure. I was thinking of the junkyard. Caitlin and...” Marcos trails off.
John doesn't know about Reed yet. He's in no state to process yet another loss, but he needs to be told.
“Reed. Reeva,” John begins to understand even before Lorna can formulate it in her head, but he doesn't seem to find more words than that.
“Reeva's dead,” Lorna says. “And the Frosts are neutralized. But...”
“Reed died too,” Marcos explains, hanging his head. “He used his power against Reeva. Took out most of the building.”
John stays silent for a moment, closing his eyes. “Caitlin?” he asks. “The kids?”
“They're all alive,” Lorna answers. “The Frosts made Andy and Lauren destroy the Sentinel Services building, we couldn't stop them in time.”
She can almost see John try to think of the consequences of that and give up, exhausted. It's too much to fathom tonight.
“We'll think about that in the morning,” Marcos echoes her thoughts.
There will be time, later, for reflection. For mourning, and for making new plans. Tonight they need rest. And they need each other.
“Let's go,” Lorna says.
John nods, though his eyes are far away.
Lorna and Marcos each take one of his arms to help him level up. John sways, but he grips onto them tightly and stays standing. They start walking, very slowly, toward the exit.
“I'm staying here,” Erg says. “I need to take care of them.” He points at the bodies lying on the floor between the crates and the overturned furniture.
Marcos opens his mouth to protest, but John nods. “When you're done−”
“I know where to find you.”
“Good,” John says. “We'll need...everyone.”
There is hesitation, pain in his voice, but Lorna's heart swells up at his words. He's talking of the future and including himself in it, in a way he hasn't since they reunited. He never expected to survive this day, she understands. He didn't want to. But now that he has, even though he's not out of the woods yet, he's thinking of what's to come.