Mercy 6

reflection doubled on the metal doors.

“You need me. You need me when the doors open.” Covey pulled and flipped her hair into a soft knot. She applied lip gloss, looking at the smears of her reflection. “You need me for that guy on the roof. To help him with you.”

She gave Mendenhall the gloss, and Mendenhall gave her one purple syringe.

“Under the ribs is probably best. Otherwise the needle could snap. Press with your thumb. Then let them try whatever they want.

They’ll have less than a minute. Mine will go down right away.”

“Will they be all right? Afterward, I mean?”

“If found soon enough. And we leave the empties.”

“Did you call in the men Kae stuck?”

“He did.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s fifteen. He has a brother.” And then she knew she was right. “And he’s my patient.”

With the elevator’s lift her symptoms intensified. She tried to focus on her reflection, Covey’s, keep them distinguished. But Covey’s impression appeared to switch with Mendenhall’s. Her memory stopped, then jumped, lost temporal order but sharpened in other ways.

The door opened on an early floor. Someone came in. Or the elevator didn’t move at first. It was just she and Covey, needles ready. Or the door didn’t open. No one came in. Her mind went back down to Pathology, retraced the ascent: They stopped on Four; Ben-Curtis came in, and she knew what he was thinking. She heard what he was thinking. I’m going out. To watch.

She told him to go to a room in Pathology first. To see who was there. To talk to them, watch them for a little while. Then go out and find Thorpe.

The elevator didn’t move at first. She felt it begin to rise, focused on Covey’s reflection in the doors. Her own had folded into itself, vanished, appeared halfway, slunk again into invisibility. No one came in.

Then empty syringes were on the floor. Mendenhall and Covey were off the elevator and inside the entryway to the roof. The purple empties rolled, made hollow noises. Mendenhall’s right thumb was sore, sprained. Covey was trembling. Blood trickled down her forearm. Not her blood. She had no wound. She trembled and did not appear able to move.

Mendenhall’s left wrist was sore, also sprained.

“Follow me,” she told Covey. She used the hem of her t-shirt to wipe clean the blood. She offered her hand. “Take a deep breath and follow me.”

“I don’t care if no one finds them,” said Covey. She would not move. From the back Mendenhall wrapped her arms about Covey, gently cupping her elbows. They held still together, matched their breathing. Covey’s form relaxed against her. She lightened.

Mendenhall imagined her rising, slipping upward through her arms.

“Come.”

Mendenhall pushed open the roof door. She had forgotten it would be night. She was expecting day. Ashes fell from a black sky.

A red laser twirled in the whitefall. They could smell distant fire.

63

Mullich stood beside the relic, his silhouette tall against the orange night sky. Smoke veiled the stars. He was slicing the laser over the backlit hills, the beam made solid by the fine ash filling the air. Mendenhall held her arm across Covey’s shoulders, let her lean into their shuffle across the roof.

“Give that to Jude.” Mendenhall waited for Mullich to turn.

He seemed to understand as he faced the two women, offered the laser to Covey. She took it, rolled it between her palms as though warming it, then led them to the roof edge. Mendenhall kept her distance from Mullich, sensed him inching closer, avoiding eye contact but still trying to note things about her: her step, posture, hands. She tried to hide her self. Her fists were clenched as she worked out the tension from her last confrontation with security, the one she could not recall. She felt it, though, the quiver in her elbows, the tendons in her hips and ankles still jumpy, her wrist aching. Her blouse smelled of Demerol, Trapanal, adrenaline, and something else, something she couldn’t remember from the purple syringes. Covey must have sprayed her during the struggle.

Her vision cleared a bit as she scanned distant points of the city. Covey was testing the laser, arcing the red line through the ashy night. Mullich’s dark hair was speckled with ash. The scent of doused coals came heavy on the breeze, and feathers of water shot from the hilltops. The firefighters appeared tiny, without substance against the enormous fire sky.

Covey’s aim was adjacent, cutting across the cityscape from mountains to sea. Emergency lights pulsed blue near downtown and the university, where the five had fallen, where Julia had been struck, and where others had been struck in the Marriott. I am not with them, thought Mendenhall. She brushed her cheek.

Mullich saw this.

“We can be more exact for you,” he said to Covey. He motioned her over to Mendenhall, then stood between them. Using her shoulder, he centered Covey in the precise spot where Mendenhall had stood the night before. “Here,” he said. “At a 67-degree angle.”