The water lapped at my ankles.

I am a doctor of the dead.

Maybe that wasn't true. Maybe that was never true.

Maybe I was a reaper, a bringer of the dead. Maybe that's what a Z really was. A sea of bodies floated around me, some face down, some with dull eyes staring into nothing. Water continued to pump into the bottom, bright red clouds swirling intricate patterns.

A rope ladder lowered on the opposite side of the pit, and I lifted my eyes to the faces above, to open mouths and hungry eyes. They might have been silent or screaming—a dull ringing in my ears drowned out all noise. The guard who held the ladder, young with a round, freckled face, leaned over, beckoning with impatient sweeps.

I met his eyes and stepped forward.

One of the bodies blocked my way.

Dagger.

He lay in the water, face up, a look of peace on his face that hadn't been there in life. Eyes closed, lips parted— even in death, he was beautiful, like the woman in the Chute. Staring at him, it all hit me— the promise to Aliyah I would never keep, every person and patient I had failed to save, Xyla's disappearance, Yaneli's death... and now this.

I spun and stepped back up to the wall, where the panel gaped open. The guards at the ladder shouted now, but I ignored them. An ancient line from a medical textbook rose in my mind. On Old Earth doctors had once restarted a heart with a shock of electricity. I pulled myself up out of the water again, and then flicked the electricity on and off again.

Nothing.

I did it again, desperate.

Nothing.

Please, God. But I wasn't sure if God would listen to a lowly Z, especially after what I'd just done.

My fingers—my whole body—trembled. One last time. I flicked it on again, and this time someone surged upright, thrashing and choking, so suddenly I nearly fell into the water myself.

I flicked off the switch, and even before I turned, somehow I knew it was him.

Dagger thrashed in the water behind me, inhaling and choking like he'd just broken the surface after an eternity below. The whites of his eyes showed with a sort of wild panic, his head whipping one way and another.

The crowd gasped, and now I ran for the ladder, afraid of the unhinged look in his eyes.

You saved him. Don't think about anyone or anything else. You saved him.

With each progressive rung of the ladder I climbed, the roar of the crowd seemed to grow tenhold, until I reached the top of the railing and the noise hit me like a physical force.

Arms stretched down, birthing me from a world of blood and water into one of noise and chaos. The crowd pressed in, tearing at me as if determined to finish the job the pit hadn't. I might have let them, all energy suddenly drained from my body, but a guard wrapped thick arms around me while three other guards beat the crowd back before us.

Halfway through the crowd, I turned back, realizing I hadn't said good-bye to Yaneli. But the guards dragged me relentlessly forward. There was no going back now.

Goodbye, Yaneli.

I fought.

*