Tessa waited behind the clinic’s folding screen while Eli searched for words. She had asked what the system offered him after her father died. He could tell her it had given him an ability, but that would not explain why he had called her Sparrow.
Beyond the screen, a volunteer called for help settling the evacuees. Leah was trying to stand while her husband supported her elbow. Tessa looked toward them, then back at Eli.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’m not finished.”
The temporary clinic occupied a canvas shelter beneath the awning of the closed pharmacy. Volunteers had arranged tables and folding screens inside, with chairs along the edge of the pavement. A line of people waited near the entrance while volunteers tried to decide who needed an ambulance and who could be treated there. A child cried beyond the canvas doorway. A man with a bloodstained towel around his hand argued that he had only come to find his sister.
Eli followed Tessa out from behind the screen. The wall he had warned the responders about had fallen after they cleared the area. He could still hear it: a short crack, a deeper grinding sound, then stone striking the pavement. No one had been beneath it.
The lines of strain had vanished as soon as he stopped looking for them. The memory had not. He had seen a small girl on a bicycle too large for her, a man holding the back of its seat. She had feared that he would let go; he had told her to look ahead, calling her Sparrow. Eli had known, in that instant, how much Darius loved her. It was not his knowledge to possess.
Tessa helped Leah to a chair. Her husband sat beside her, keeping her bandaged leg clear of the walkway.
“Stay here until someone checks your leg,” Tessa said.
“I can wait,” Leah replied. “There are people worse off.”
“You can wait here. That doesn’t mean you leave without being seen.”
Tessa found a volunteer and explained the injury. The volunteer wrote a name on a paper tag and tied it to Leah’s wrist. Only then did Tessa turn to Eli.
“My father called me that at home,” she said.
The noise of the clinic continued around them. A stretcher passed through the doorway. Someone asked for clean water. A volunteer was reading names from a sheet of paper, trying to locate family members among the evacuees.
Eli said, “I know.”
“How?”
He looked at the badge in her hand. It was marked with dried blood near the clip. Eli had given it to her upstairs, before the responders confirmed that Darius had died.
“I need to explain something that happened after we got out,” he said.
Tessa’s gaze moved briefly toward the collapsed building. “Did you talk to him about me?”
“He told me where to find you. He said you had a medical bag and a red jacket.”
“Did he call me Sparrow?”
“No.”
The word seemed to make her flinch. Eli wished he could take it back. He had said it because the affection in the memory had felt immediate, as if his own hand had been reaching for the bicycle seat. He could no more explain that in one sentence than he could tell her why he knew a future that no longer seemed certain.
A volunteer hurried toward them carrying a clipboard. “Are you Tessa Vale?”
“Yes.”
“The responder said you were helping people in the building. We have names, but some don’t match. Can you tell us who came out with you?”
Tessa looked at the clipboard. Then she looked back at Eli.
“I’ll listen,” she said. “When I can.”
The volunteer held out the list. Tessa took it, checked the first page, and handed it to Eli.
“Start with the people we saw at the cordon,” she said. “Ask them directly. Don’t mark anyone accounted for because you think you recognize them.”
Eli took the clipboard. “All right.”
Her voice softened only enough to be clear. “And don’t use that name again.”
She went to help a woman whose sleeve had burned into the skin beneath it. Eli watched her find gloves, ask the woman what had happened, and call for a second volunteer. Whatever she wanted to ask him would have to wait while other people needed her.
He found a pencil attached to the clipboard by a string. The first page listed the occupants of the damaged building. Some names had checks beside them; others had question marks or arrows pointing to another page. A note at the top said the list had been copied from the building’s management office. It was already out of date.
A man in a blue coat sat near the wall, his hair wet from the rain. The list named him as Daniel Rios. Eli asked whether that was correct.
“Danilo,” the man said. “My brother’s Daniel.”
“Is your brother here?”
“He wasn’t in the building. Why?”
The same name appeared twice, once with a check and once marked missing. Beside the missing entry, someone had written SIXTH FLOOR. A volunteer reached for the page.
“Recovery’s asking for the outstanding names.”
“Wait,” Eli said. He kept his hand on the clipboard. “This may be the same man twice.”
“May be isn’t enough to cancel a search.”
“No. Give me the person who took the report.”
Danilo stood, pushing his chair back into the walkway. “My brother works across town. Call him.”
Eli moved the chair aside and passed him the desk telephone. While Danilo found his brother’s number, the volunteer traced the missing entry to a neighbor’s call. The neighbor had seen Danilo leave and given the wrong name. Daniel answered from his workplace; Eli recorded the caller, number and explanation before returning the page. The recovery volunteer struck out the duplicate on her own copy and radioed the correction. One false name would no longer send people toward the damaged sixth floor. The next unconfirmed entry remained.
Danilo sat down again. “They put us together all the time,” he said. His hands were shaking now. “Even when he isn’t there.”
A woman listed as missing turned out to have gone home with relatives. Her daughter called the clinic from a borrowed phone and described the coat she had been wearing. Eli could not see the woman himself. He recorded the call, asked for a number where the family could be reached, and left the status marked as reported safe until someone could confirm it.
A volunteer reading over his shoulder frowned. “Why not just check her off?”
“Because we haven’t seen her.”
“Her daughter has.”
“Then we write that her daughter called. If the name is wrong, someone needs to know where it came from.”
The volunteer looked at the page again. “You’re making it harder to count.”
“I’m making it easier to fix.”
The answer sounded more certain than Eli felt. He had spent years looking at lists that treated a missing person as a blank space to be filled. A name could be recorded correctly and still conceal what had happened to the person. His ability had shown him that in the dungeon, when Mara Denn’s name appeared beside a body the guild’s records said had withdrawn.
He stopped himself. That had not happened yet. Not here.
The pencil slipped against the paper. For a moment he could see the collapsed shelter in the dungeon rather than the clinic. He gripped the edge of the clipboard until the image passed.
A voice beside him said, “Are you hurt?”
The volunteer with the list was watching him.
“Just tired.”
“Sit down if you need to.”
“I can finish this first.”
He moved to the next name. The list placed Mrs. Larkin in apartment six-fourteen. Leah stopped his pencil. That was her apartment; Mrs. Larkin lived across from her. Leah gave the corrected number and said Daniel had accompanied his mother to the ambulance. Eli corrected the address, noted the transfer and asked a volunteer to verify its destination. Owen, the middle-aged maintenance worker who had helped with the service route, sat near a folding screen with a bandage around his wrist.
Owen saw the clipboard and said, “Ben went to the hospital.”
“I have that.”
“Did someone tell his sister?”
“I don’t know.”
Owen held out a folded piece of paper. “She lives across town. His phone’s broken. I wrote the number down before the ambulance left.”
Eli took it to the volunteer desk and waited until someone dialed. The number rang twice before a woman answered. The volunteer introduced herself, explained that Ben had been taken to the hospital, and handed the phone to Owen when he asked for it. Eli didn’t listen to the conversation. He wrote the time of the call beside Ben’s name.
By the time he reached the end of the second page, the light beyond the pharmacy awning had begun to change. People had started arriving with blankets, bottled water, and bags of food. A man in a suit tried to distribute business cards to the newly awakened hunters waiting near the entrance. A volunteer told him to leave the medical area. He moved two steps back and continued handing them out.
Eli’s stomach tightened at the sight of the cards. He had abandoned the early gate opportunity. He still had no money, no permanent job, and a talent he couldn’t explain. The new power might open doors that had been closed to him for ten years, but the sight of a recruiter standing beside injured residents made him reluctant to announce it.
“Eli.”
Tessa stood at the end of the table. She had removed her gloves. A thin line of soot marked her jaw where she had wiped her face with the back of her wrist.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
“Almost.”
She looked at the pages. “Did you check with the families?”
“Where I could. One woman is reported safe by phone. I marked the source.”
Tessa took the clipboard and read the note. “Good.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t even reassurance. It was an acknowledgment that the list was more useful than it had been.
“There are two names I can’t confirm,” Eli said. “One might have gone to the hospital without being registered here.”
“I’ll ask the ambulance crew.”
She gave the list to another volunteer and led Eli behind the folding screen near the rear of the canvas shelter. Two plastic chairs stood there, partly shielded from the treatment rows. Tessa remained standing.
“Now explain the name.”
Eli sat because his legs had begun to shake. Tessa drew the screen closer without sealing them off from the treatment rows. Around its edge came the sounds of the clinic: voices, footsteps, the squeak of a cart wheel.
“After we got outside,” he said, “I received a system notice.”
Tessa’s expression did not change. “What kind of notice?”
“It said I’d fulfilled your father’s request.”
“He asked you to get me out.”
“And to tell you he tried to reach you.” Eli looked at the badge. “I did both. Then it offered me an ability.”
She stared at him. “My father’s ability?”
“The notice didn’t explain it in those words. It offered me Weak-Point Sight. I accepted.”
“The wall.”
“Yes.”
He told her about the lines of strain in the damaged stone, the warning to the responders, and the wall falling after they moved. He left nothing out about his decision. He had accepted the ability before asking her, before even knowing that she could be asked. The notice had appeared to him alone.
Tessa took one of the empty chairs and sat. She set the badge on her knee.
“Did accepting it hurt him?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out?”
“I’ll try.”
“That’s not the same answer.”
“No.”
She turned the badge over. The back was scratched where the clip had rubbed against it. “Can you see his memories?”
Eli thought of the bicycle. He could still feel Darius’s affection and the fear that she might fall, even as he encouraged her to look ahead. The feeling had arrived with no warning and belonged to a life he had never lived.
“One came with the ability,” he said. “I didn’t choose it. I don’t know whether there will be more.”
“What did you see?”
He hesitated. Telling her might prove he was not lying. It would also put a private moment between her and her father into words she had not asked him to keep.
“A moment from when you were young,” he said. “He called you Sparrow.”
Tessa’s fingers closed around the badge. “What moment?”
“If you want me to tell you, I will. I won’t repeat it to anyone else.”
She watched him for a long time. Then she shook her head.
“No. I don’t want to hear you describe it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“The notice appeared while the responders were working near the wall. I thought the ability might help.”
“And it did.” Her voice rose, then dropped again. “That doesn’t answer what it took from him.”
Eli had no answer. The system had called the ability a reward. It had offered no explanation of the memory, no statement about Darius’s condition, and no way to ask whether the dead man had intended any of this. Eli had accepted because a damaged wall threatened people and because a part of him wanted a power strong enough to change what came next. Both reasons were true.
“I can leave,” he said.
Tessa looked past the screen. The clinic was still crowded. The evacuee list was incomplete, and she had patients waiting for her. Leaving might relieve him of the conversation before she had received the answers she wanted.
“Finish the list,” she said. “The people outside need it.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up the badge. “You brought me out. You told me what happened to him. I’m grateful for that. I’m also angry that a stranger has something from him I didn’t know could be taken.”
Eli nodded. He didn’t try to make the gratitude cancel the anger.
Tessa stood and stepped around the screen. “If another memory comes, don’t tell anyone what you saw. Not the guilds, not the people at the registry. Not even me unless I ask.”
“I won’t.”
“And find out what accepting it means.”
“I’ll try.”
She gave him a tired look. “That answer again.”
“It’s the only one I can give honestly.”
She went back to the clinic. Eli remained in the chair for a moment, listening to the voices beyond the screen. The system had given him something he could use. It had also brought him behind a screen with questions he couldn’t solve by looking for a weak point.
When he returned to the table, the volunteer had added two names to the list. One of the missing residents had been found at another shelter. The other was still unconfirmed.
Eli picked up the pencil and began checking the sources.