Bell was released back to the regular world the next day. Sophia had left her the night before when she was still unconscious, without much hope of recovery—and she returned in the morning to find Bell sitting cross-legged on the medical bed, skin spotless, hair all grown back. Completely fixed.

Rumors state Sophia threw her hands in the air and kicked Bell out on the spot.

As someone more in line with Bell’s power level than Sophia’s, and as someone without a strict superior in the Radiant, and possibly in the entire country, I could only imagine the sheer jealousy Sophia held for Bell: the seething red boiling under her skin as she saw Bell, inches from death only a few days before, sitting bright and bold on the medical bed, waiting for Sophia only as a courtesy. Bell had removed all of the medical machinery from herself and put it all away. There was nothing to be done but sit and stare, and then release.

0 0 0

We were all sitting around the big table in the common room, sipping our coffee (or tea, for Ava). The coffee we had was much better than the coffee in the cafeteria, so we tended to have breakfast two times—once with just us, where we didn’t have to censor ourselves with quiet words in public—and then again in full view of everyone else.

The angry, hateful public.

I don’t know how I’d gone so long without fully internalizing just how stigmatized unit 6 was among the rest of the Radiant. I understood we’d be unpopular—kill-squads rarely are—but the pseudo-ambulance driver’s words from half a week ago still echoed like dull smacks in my brain: we were hated, we were shunned, and the rest of the Radiant waited with bated breath for Bell to die.

Well, too bad for them.

And as much as I wanted to apply that metaphorical shrug to myself, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get over that sickening hump—every time I saw someone in the hall that I didn’t recognize, I put words in their head—despicable words. Words about me. Words about my friends.

I wanted to grab the shoulders of anyone passing by and shake sense into them—beg them to realize that we were more than just soulless killers—but by that time around my fourteenth birthday, I wasn’t sure if I could really do that.

Maybe Ava was more than that. Yoru and Cygnus and Benji, too.

But Bell and I were defined by it. It was the extent of us.

I had nothing but it.

So I sipped my coffee in sullen silence. Nobody spoke to me. I didn’t speak to anyone.

It was only when the door opened and Bell walked in, fresh as the day she left, that I realized I’d forgotten to tell everyone that she woke up the night before. That she was alive.

I didn’t forget to hold what she said to me to myself, though.

Bell walked in amidst the stares of the rest of the assembled, made a beeline for the coffee pot and poured herself a mug. Took the open seat—the one between me and Ava.

She glanced around at everyone, meeting the eyes of everyone still staring—that is, Ava and Benji—and took a little innocent sip.

Like she’d never left.

Ava broke the silence.

“You’re alive,” she said. I don’t often describe sentences as “stupid”, but Ava said it “stupidly”—like she couldn’t fathom a world in which Bell walked out of that room as opposed to being wheeled out of it.

“I am,” Bell replied.

Despite myself, I smiled.

Despite myself again, I said, “I told you.”

Ava ignored me. “Heading out again, I assume?”

Bell shook her head. “Nah. I’m taking a break for a while. Got some TV to catch up on.”

She glanced at Cygnus, who was zoning out a little—as soon as he realized Bell was looking at him, he looked up and smiled. Said, “Believe it.”

“Not that one,” Bell replied, chuckling.

“Ever going to tell us where you’ve been for six months?” Ava said.

Bell’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been dead for four days and the first thing I get is an interrogation,” she said. “How about that.”

“I mean, this is probably the only chance I’ll get,” Ava said, shrugging. “Gotta make the most of it.”

“I just said I was going to be here for a while. At least a week, if not more. And I doubt I’ll be doing any more six-month undercover missions for a long time. Jesus,” she said. Bell rubbed an eye. “You know, it took me thirty minutes to remember what I looked like before so that the clean-up crew could find me.”

“That’s nice,” Ava said. “What the fuck were you doing?”

“If I could tell you, I already would have.”

"Can we not?” Yoru interjected. “Can we just—not fight over petty bullshit first thing in the morning? It’s not even noon yet.”

“I’m with Ava on this one,” Benji said. “I told you to go do this, and I thought it would take two weeks, tops, and you send me letters saying it’s gonna take longer than that over and over again. What the fuck were you doing out there?”

Cygnus said, “Guys, let her finish breakfast. At least. Jesus.”

Everyone fell quiet for a moment, and I realized that I was the only one who hadn’t offered their opinion yet. Both hands cupped around the mug and without looking up, I said, “Can’t we talk about this later?”

I could practically hear Ava’s eyes roll. “Of course.”

“I’m not going to be gone in two hours,” Bell said. “I’ll still be here. I was in the hospital for four days. Lay off.”

“You’re fucking invincible!” Ava shouted. “Like fuck you get to hide behind “oh, I was in the hospital” as an excuse. Like that actually matters. Maybe that was your break.”

Bell’s voice was flat. Nothing in it at all. “You seriously think I would choose to lay on a hospital bed, half-burned to death, with a feeding tube down my throat and an IV in my arm, to relax?”

“Who the hell knows with you?”

“Stop it!” Yoru snapped. “For fuck’s sake, now is not the goddamn time!”

Ava shot Yoru a glare I don’t think I’ve ever seen between them. Even Yoru looked caught off guard by it.

She looked back at Bell and said, “You’re barely even a part of the team. The absolute least you could do is tell us what you abandoned all of us to do for six whole fucking months. If we got attacked during that time, we’d all be dead. You’d have nothing to come back to.”

"Maybe it took me six months because I was trying to stop you all from getting attacked.”

“Maybe I’d know if you told us.”

“I was,” Bell said. Same flat tone. “There. I told you.”

“And we’re just supposed to believe you.”

“Not like you would’ve believed the truth anyway, would you?”

“You could at least try,” Ava said. A touch of pleading in her voice, scrambled by anger. “You could at least pretend like you give a shit about us. Never once have you told anyone what you get up to. Benji pays you double what he pays everyone else. For what? What the hell do you do besides walk around and pretend to be menacing all day? You are the reason we have a shitty rap with the rest of the Radiant. You are—”

“You wanted me dead,” Bell said, simply.

Ava shut up.

“You were hoping I wasn’t going to make it, and now you’re bitter about it,” Bell said.

Ava frowned. “That’s not—”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Bell replied. She looked Ava dead in the eyes, and she was trapped in Bell’s cold stare. “I’ve fought too many people who thought they were powerful to fall to just another one. When I go, it’ll take an army. A hundred keys against me—and even then…”

Bell sipped her coffee. Savored the flavor in silence while we all sat suspended. She finished: “I choose when I die. I’m not done yet.”

Abruptly, Ava stood up, shoved her chair in, and stormed out of the room, pausing for half a second to grab her coffee mug on her way out.

She slammed the door behind her, and we all turned and looked at each other, perplexed for a moment.

I looked at Yoru. A few others noticed I was doing that and joined me.

“What?” he said. “We’re not the same person. Fuck if I know.”

“You’re probably the only person who can talk to her about it,” Cygnus said.

“I—”

He grimaced. “Yeah, probably.”

Bell looked down for a half a second, examining how much coffee was left in the mug. “It’s kind of strange,” she said. “To still be alive after everything I’ve seen.”

“Can you at least say why you got burned?” Cygnus asked.

She shrugged. “Very powerful fire-key put his life on the line betting that he could burn me to death faster than I could regenerate myself. He was wrong.”

“Well, I’d love to hear the story sometime. But for now, welcome back.”

He punctuated it with a smile. I know, for a fact, that Cygnus and Bell were hardly close friends. Their experiences with each other extended barely beyond the TV. But I admired his ability to be civil in the face of it all. It was something Ava clearly lacked.

It was class. A real class act, Cygnus was. He always knew what to do.

I watched him smile and felt myself do the same.

“Thank you,” Bell said. She returned his expression, and I swear it was the warmest feeling Bell had ever shown.

Maybe, just this once, she was showing something she meant.

“It’s good to not be dead,” Bell added.

“So I’ve heard,” Cygnus replied.