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cracked open as they ran into room ten. Five minutes later, they came out with a body, not a patient. Sheer fury sparked inside me. I balled my hands into fists, turning on the Harbinger in the darkness.
    â€œWas that fun for you?”
    â€œA little.”
    â€œThanks for reminding me how awful you are. I’d almost forgotten.” Even if that woman’s life was miserable, it was worth saving. Death was the final answer to second chances … because as long as you were alive, you could always turn it around.
    â€œDoes that mean you won’t pet my hair and assure me I’m not a monster?” He danced out of reach when I swung. “My heart is breaking. Broken , even . I want your approval almost as much as I want to sow misery and discord.”
    On the verge of activating Aegis, I stilled … because his final statement carried the unmistakable ring of truth, a sort of hopeless longing. In my life, I’d often felt exactly that, watching people laughing with their friends, warm and effortless. It was like there was an invisible wall dividing me from the things I wanted most. Now I had cast everything off except for this one absurd, impossible mission. The worst part was, even if I succeeded, no one would ever know. At that moment, I understood the Harbinger well enough not to kill him.
    Again.
    â€œYou’re such a child,” I said.
    His tone sparkled with puzzlement and wonder. “Am I? Then … will you raise me?”
    â€œGet out.”
    I didn’t wait to see if he’d listen, slamming into the bathroom. The tub was awful and gross with dark stains on the grout, but I climbed into it anyway, fully clothed, and wrapped my arms around my knees. For some reason, it was hard to breathe, as if an iron band had wrapped around my chest, tightening with each desperate pull of my lungs. I didn’t even know that woman, but the fact that I didn’t save her felt like the promise of failure.
    You can’t do this. Everything will play out exactly as it did before.
    My sense of self receded until I might’ve been a speck of dust beneath the bed, a small and impotent mote. The tears didn’t come, but each gasp shivered through me in dry sobs. Closing my eyes didn’t help, either, because I only saw the slim outline of a body, being wheeled away by people who didn’t know her or care.
    But I should’ve known a simple door wouldn’t stop the Harbinger, though I didn’t register him until his hand rested on my hair. “You let me give you so much grief.”
    I slapped him away. “Leave me alone.”
    â€œWhat a wonder. Why do you care about such a miserable husk?”
    â€œShe was a person , and everyone matters. Don’t you get that? Even if she made bad choices, she mattered, and you made her a damn game or a test or—”
    â€œEdie.”
    I stopped talking because I couldn’t remember the Harbinger ever saying my name precisely like that. “What?”
    â€œI lied. She wasn’t dying before. When I arrived, she was already gone.”
    My breath went in a wheeze. Hadn’t I thought that the silence was worse than her incessant crying? I might have even noticed the moment of her death and counted it a relief— Thank God I don’t have to listen to that anymore. While the Harbinger did screw with me, I was the one who should’ve done better. There was no way I could sustain the rage at him, considering the weight of my own faults.
    I lifted my gaze to meet his star-shot eyes. “Is this what you wanted to teach me? That I’m awful too?”
    Something like regret flashed over his face; then he swept me up in a swirl of dark fabric and carried me back to the other room. “Come away; you’ll catch something.” Once we reached the bed, he set me down and drew back as if I was a pillar of flames. “You’re the only one who would seek meaning in my myriad