The church hall swallowed them in damp air and old polish.
Callum came in first, backwards, boots skidding on stone as he fought Elias’s weight through the doorway. Jack had Elias’s other side—shoulder under ribs, forearm locked tight across the man’s back—moving with grim, practiced efficiency — muscle memory edged with hate for his own competence.
Elias hung between them, heavy and wrong. His head lolled, jaw slack, lips bluish at the edges. His skin was hot enough that the heat bled through fabric when Callum’s grip shifted.
Behind them, Linda and Jolie followed into the nave, rain still running off their hair and coats. Linda’s face had gone pale in that way that wasn’t fear exactly—something colder. Jolie had one hand at Linda’s elbow, not holding her up, just there. Ready.
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Father Mallory appeared from the aisle like he’d been summoned by the sound of bodies hitting wood.
“What happened?” he demanded, already moving.
Jack didn’t slow. “Seizure. Outside. He’s unconscious.”
Mallory’s gaze flicked over Elias—rapid inventory—and then past them, to Callum’s kit. The CTSFO markings. The wrongness of it in this building.
“Vestry,” Mallory said, voice hard with the kind of calm that made people obey. “Now. Carefully. Keep his head supported.”
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Simon was there too—standing a few feet behind Mallory, jacket still on like he was afraid to take it off and admit this was real. The moment his eyes landed on Linda, something in him buckled with relief.
“Linda—” he started, and stepped forward.
Linda held up a hand.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t angry.
It was simply a boundary.
“Sorry,” she said, voice raw. “I can’t—” She swallowed, eyes fixed past him. “Where is she?”
Simon froze, the aborted hug hanging in his arms like a mistake.
“The vestry,” he managed, and pointed.
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Linda didn’t wait. She moved fast down the aisle, Jolie right beside her.
Callum and Jack reached the parish hall first—chairs shoved against walls, the remains of half-drunk tea, damp coats piled where people had dropped them. The storm boomed against the old windows. The place felt like a ship caught mid-turn.
At the far end, Katherine stood with Ben tucked tight against her side, eyes red, shoulders braced as if she was keeping herself upright by force.
Jack saw them and his face changed.
“Kat,” he said, breathless. “Ben— I won’t be long. Okay?”
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Katherine nodded hard, gripping Ben’s hand like it was the only thing she could control. Ben stared at Elias’s limp body with wide, wet eyes, and then looked away as if looking too long might make him guilty of something.
Jack didn’t let himself stop. He couldn’t. He pushed on.
They reached the vestry door.
Mallory got there just as they did, one hand already on the handle, listening—head tilted slightly, as if he could hear the fever through the wood.
He opened it.
Heat hit Callum like a wall — not warmth, not comfort, but fever-heat. Chemical. Too bright.
Inside, the room had been transformed into an emergency ward by sheer will. Skye lay on the borrowed camp bed, skin slick, mouth moving faintly. Two doctors were bent over her with the ruthless focus of people working in bad conditions. A medic hovered at the edge with a bag open, hands shaking just a fraction.
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Margaret sat beside Skye, small and rigid, one hand wrapped around Skye’s as if she could hold her here by contact alone. Her eyes lifted as the door opened.
And the moment she saw Elias—
Her face did something dangerous — not shock, not surprise.
Recognition. Stripped clean of performance.
“Elias,” she breathed.
Jack didn’t have time for the word to land. “He needs space. Where—”
“Floor,” one doctor snapped, already shifting position to make room. “There. Flat. Put him down.”
Callum and Jack lowered Elias in a controlled descent, As they eased him down, Elias’s coat twisted under his shoulder.
Something small slipped free.
It hit the stone with a soft, almost polite sound — lost under the storm and the doctors’ voices.
Jack felt it brush his boot.
He glanced down automatically.
A photograph.
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He scooped it up without thinking and shoved it into his coat pocket as the doctor snapped, “Pulse. Fast.”
There wasn’t time to look.
A flashlight flicked into Elias’s eyes, then away. “Temperature?”
“He’s burning up,” Callum said, voice hoarse. He hadn’t meant to speak. It came out anyway.
The doctor’s gaze cut to him. “How long has he been like this?”
Callum’s brain stuttered. He made himself answer. “Minutes. Seized outside. He… he went down and didn’t come back up.”
The doctor swore under their breath. “Same pattern,” they said, to the other doctor. “Same as her.”
Callum’s eyes snapped to Skye.
She looked wrong. Not dying exactly. Not safe either. Like her body was fighting a war under the skin and losing ground by inches.
A sound came from the doorway—soft, sharp.
Alice.
She’d been half-hidden behind Linda and Jolie, frozen in that posture of someone who’d spent too long in fear and didn’t know how to stand in anything else. The sight of Jack carrying a stranger in tactical gear into the room where Skye lay had scrambled her face into confusion—
And then she saw Linda properly.
Her whole body went slack, as if someone had cut a wire.
“Mum—”
Linda crossed the room in three steps and pulled Alice into her arms so hard it wasn’t careful. Alice collapsed into it, shoulders shaking, face pressed into Linda’s neck like she needed to smell proof of her.
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“I’m here,” Linda whispered, voice breaking. “I’m here.”
Alice’s hands clawed at the back of Linda’s coat. “She won’t stop saying no,” she choked. “She’s so hot and she— I don’t know what to do—”
Linda closed her eyes once, a flinch that might have been prayer. Then she opened them, and whatever she saw in Skye flipped a switch in her.
Jolie hovered, watching Linda’s face for the moment it might break.
Alice lifted her head and, through tears, reached out a shaking hand toward Jolie—invitation, need, family by choice and crisis.
Jolie didn’t hesitate. She stepped in and wrapped both of them up, arms around shoulders, cheek pressed briefly to Linda’s hair.
For a second, the storm and the sirens and the impossible narrowed into three bodies holding on.
Then Linda released them—gently, but firmly—like she was putting down something precious so she could pick up something heavier.
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She moved to Skye’s bedside and dropped to her knees.
Margaret’s eyes followed her.
“Hi, Linda,” Margaret said quietly, as if this were a normal visit and not the end of the world. “I imagine you’ve been through a lot today.”
Linda didn’t look up. Her hand hovered over Skye’s forehead and then—after a beat—settled, careful. She felt the heat and her face crumpled for half a second, a mother’s horror bleeding through before discipline clamped down.
“I have,” she said. “But first things first.” Her voice went steadier. Harder. “I need to help my daughter.”
Her gaze flicked, sharp, to Elias on the floor.
“And your…” She let the word hang. Didn’t finish it.
Margaret’s mouth twitched—not a smile. An acknowledgement. A shared lie, held between them like a blade turned sideways.
One of the doctors glanced up. “Are you medically trained?”
Linda swallowed once, eyes shining, and then the answer came out like muscle memory. “I… I used to be a nurse.”
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The doctor’s expression changed. Relief, brief and professional. “Good,” they said. “Because right now, with this storm, it’s just us.”
Linda nodded. Then she leaned in, voice low, direct. “What have you got?”
The doctors slid seamlessly into a rhythm with her—symptoms, vitals, what they’d tried, what was failing. Linda asked the right questions. The ones that didn’t waste time. She checked Skye’s pulse without being told. She adjusted the blanket, not for comfort but for thermoregulation. Her hands shook once and then stilled.
Mallory hovered at the door, reading the room like he read grief.
The lead doctor turned. “Father— we need privacy. Less bodies. Less noise.”
Mallory didn’t argue. He nodded and reached for Jack’s shoulder.
“Out,” he said softly, but it wasn’t a request. “All of you.”
Jack straightened, jaw tight, eyes flicking once to Skye’s face—seeing her properly for the first time—and something in him went blank with shock, as if his brain had to reboot around the sight of a child who hadn’t aged while the world had.
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He backed out anyway.
Callum hesitated, eyes snagging on Elias’s motionless body, then on Skye’s fevered one, and feeling—suddenly—like he’d stepped into a story he didn’t have the first chapter for.
Mallory’s gaze pinned him. “Now,” he said.
Callum moved.
The vestry door shut, muffling the urgency inside into a dull, terrifying silence.
In the hall, Jack exhaled shakily and raked a hand through wet hair.
Then his eyes landed fully on Callum.
Jack’s gaze travelled over the kit first.
The patches. The holster. The stance that didn’t relax even indoors.
“You CTSFO?” he asked, voice level but edged with recognition.
Callum opened his mouth—
The vestry door creaked.
Both men turned.
Alice stumbled out first, as if the air inside had become unbreathable. Jolie had an arm around her shoulders, steadying without restraining. Alice’s face was stripped bare—no composure left, just terror held together by muscle and will. Her eyes were red, glassy, fixed somewhere ahead that wasn’t this corridor.
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She didn’t look at the uniforms.
She didn’t look at the weapons.
She walked past them like they were furniture, like the only thing in the world was the fever behind that closed door.
Callum felt it physically—that look. It cut through training, through posture, through the careful compartments he’d built since the embassy.
For half a second he saw Anna in the photograph.
Then he saw his wife.
Then he saw a future he hadn’t earned yet.
Jolie murmured something low to Alice as they moved toward the hall, something steady and practical. Callum caught only fragments—“breathe… she’s strong… your mum’s with her”—the language of survival.
The door swung shut behind them again.
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Silence thickened.
Callum swallowed. “I used to be,” he said finally.
Jack nodded once, as if he’d expected that answer.
They began walking without quite agreeing to it, boots echoing along the stone. Not far. Just enough distance from the door to feel like they weren’t listening in.
After a moment, Jack spoke again.
“The embassy,” he said carefully. “I heard what CTSFO did. News made it sound clean. You got all the kids out.”
Callum let out a short, breathless laugh.
“Is that what they’re saying?”
Jack glanced at him.
Callum shook his head. “That’s not what happened.”
He dragged a hand down his face, rain-damp sleeve leaving a darker streak across his skin.
“That man we carried in? Elias?” He gestured vaguely toward the vestry. “He went in alone. While everyone argued jurisdiction and risk assessment and waiting for authorisation, he just… moved.”
Jack’s brow furrowed.
“I followed,” Callum continued. “Not because I was brave. Because I couldn’t stand there and listen to another minute of red tape while kids were locked in a room with gas seeping under the doors.”
His jaw tightened.
“That decision ended my career.”
Jack didn’t interrupt.
“I didn’t clear it. Didn’t wait. I cut power to the corridor so he could move without being silhouetted. That’s it. That’s my big heroic contribution.” His voice turned dry. “I turned the lights off and back on.”
“And the rest?” Jack asked quietly.
“Elias.”
The word carried weight now.
“He neutralised them. All of them. Containment held. He got to the little girl before the gas fully saturated the room. Put the mask on her.” Callum’s voice dipped. “He didn’t have one himself.”
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Jack stopped walking.
“Are you saying—”
“You probably saw the interview,” Callum cut in. “That little girl. The one who said the man who saved her went down and then… went back up.”
Jack’s expression shifted. Recognition clicked into place. He had seen it. The shaky clip. The child insisting. The adults exchanging looks behind her.
Callum nodded once.
“Well,” he said, voice thin, “he went back up.”
The corridor seemed narrower suddenly.
“And after?” Jack asked.
“After,” Callum said, “he offered me a job as part of Nightwatch.”
“Nightwatch?.”
“Yeah.”
Jack studied him. “Did he explain what that is?”
Callum hesitated. “He said it’s for when jurisdiction collapses. When the system freezes. They protect people first. No red tape. No waiting for signatures while children suffocate.” He exhaled slowly. “He hired me because I disobeyed orders.”
Jack made a quiet sound in his throat. Not approval. Not condemnation. Just thought.
“What?” Callum asked.
Jack looked toward the vestry door again.
“A man who hates rules,” he said, almost to himself, “is somehow suspected of bringing a child back to life.”
Callum blinked. “What?”
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Jack’s eyes flicked back to him. “I take it he briefed you about the girl?”
“Yes,” Callum said immediately. “He said we need to protect her. Her and her family. He… he was getting these headaches. Massive ones. Said he feels responsible. That he owes her an explanation.”
Jack’s gaze hardened.
“That’s probably because,” he said carefully, “he might be responsible.”
The words landed heavy.
Callum stared at him. “That’s… that’s impossible.”
“Indeed,” Jack said softly. “But then again, so is he.”
The storm thudded against the windows.
Jack’s voice lowered.
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“Records show Elias Adler, his original name before he became Elias Marlowe and his youngest sister, Anna Adler, were among those killed in 1942. Gas chambers. Confirmed. Documented.” His jaw tightened. “He should not be alive and that old woman in there…is his other sister:Margaret.”
He looked toward the vestry door again.
“And yet he’s lying on that floor next to a girl who was buried five years ago.”
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Callum’s breathing changed—shallower, faster. He pressed his palms against his thighs, grounding himself.
“I’m out of my depth,” he admitted. “I mean— I’m going to be a dad.” The words came out almost helpless. “I should be worrying about nappies. Cot bolts. Whether I’ve fitted the car seat properly. Whether my wife’s resting enough. Not… this.”
Jack’s expression softened in a way that hadn’t appeared all night.
“Congratulations,” he said quietly.
Callum huffed a breath that might have been a laugh.
“As a father,” Jack continued, glancing toward the hall where Katherine and Ben waited in the dim light, “those first years are chaos. You won’t sleep. You’ll question everything. You’ll feel like you’re failing every other day.”
His eyes rested on his son.
“But it’s worth it.”
Callum followed his gaze. Saw the way Ben leaned into Katherine. The way she kept her hand on his shoulder even when she wasn’t looking at him.
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“Thanks,” Callum said. “Officer…?”
“Hartley,” Jack replied. “Jack Hartley.”
Callum nodded.
Jack checked his watch and swore under his breath. “Time’s run off with us.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a card, pressing it into Callum’s palm.
The paper was thick, slightly worn at the edges.
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PC Jack Hartley
Stowmarket Police Station
Suffolk Constabulary
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Direct line. Mobile. An email that looked like it was checked too often.
“If you need help,” Jack said quietly, “call me. If things get strange. If they get dangerous. I’m taking my family home.”
His eyes held Callum’s.
“There’s someone out there who wants that girl dead. The world thinks she already is. That means she’s invisible. Which makes her vulnerable.”
He paused.
“She has her family. She has Elias.” A beat. “And right now, she has you.”
Callum felt the weight of that settle.
“I need you to make sure she stays safe,” Jack said. “Promise me.”
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Callum didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll keep her safe,” he said. “I’ll treat her like she’s my own.” A faint, strained smile flickered across his face. “Call it a trial run.”
Jack huffed a quiet laugh.
He turned, heading back toward Katherine and Ben—
Then stopped.
“Hold on.”
He reached into his coat again and pulled out the photograph.
The paper was slightly creased from the rain.
“He dropped this,” Jack said, handing it over. “He’ll want it back.”
Callum took it carefully.
The little girl stared up at him from another century.
“Anna,” he murmured.
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Jack gave him one last look—measured, steady—then turned and gathered his family. The church doors opened. Wind shoved rain inward in a cold rush.
Then they were gone.
Callum stood alone in the corridor for a moment, the storm pressing against old stone, the vestry door closed and silent.
He looked down at the photograph again.
Then he slid it into his pocket and walked back toward the hall.
————————
Alice
The church felt larger once the shouting stopped.
Not empty—just stretched.
Alice sat three rows back from the vestry door, hands locked in Jolie’s like she was afraid her fingers would drift away if she loosened her grip. The air still held damp from coats and rain, mixed with candle wax and something faintly metallic from the makeshift triage inside. The storm thudded against the stained glass in uneven waves.
Jolie sat close—closer than usual—one arm wrapped around Alice’s shoulders, her thumb moving slow circles against her skin. Not fidgeting. Grounding. Every now and then she pressed a kiss to Alice’s hairline, then her temple, then her forehead. Small, anchoring gestures.
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Alice’s tears had quieted into tremors. Her breathing came in shuddered pulls that she kept trying to smooth out.
“She’s burning up,” she whispered. Not to Jolie. To the space in front of her. “I’ve never felt skin like that.”
Jolie pressed her lips to Alice’s forehead again. “Your mum’s in there,” she said softly. “You saw her. She’s steady.”
Alice let out a brittle breath. “That’s what scares me.”
Jolie didn’t answer at first.
Because she understood.
Linda hadn’t looked like a mother walking into a room where her daughter might die.
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She’d looked like a clinician.
And that was worse.
After a long stretch of silence, Jolie cleared her throat. The sound felt too loud in the cavern of the church.
“Alice,” she said gently.
Alice didn’t look at her.
“Why did you say to your mum that we’re going to raise Skye?”
The question hung there.
Alice turned slowly.
“What?”
Jolie’s voice stayed even. Careful. “Why did you say that to her?”
Alice pulled away from her. Not violently—but enough.
“Are we really doing this now?” she demanded, pushing to her feet. “My sister is in there burning up and this is what you’re worried about?”
Jolie stood too, instinctively, hands open in front of her.
“Of course I’m worried about Skye,” she said, her voice lifting despite herself. “I’ve spent the whole day with your mum trying to piece together how a child comes back from the dead, Alice. I’m not detached from this. I just— I need to understand why you said that.”
Alice turned away, staring up at the painted ceiling. The figures in the artwork looked down in frozen reverence, gold leaf catching candlelight.
“Because someone has to,” she said, but it came out thin.
Jolie took a breath. “We can barely afford rent. You know that. If the world thinks she’s dead, there’s no paperwork. No benefits. No school records. No GP file. We’d be raising a child who officially doesn’t exist.”
Alice flinched.
“And education,” Jolie went on, more quietly now. “Either one of us quits work or we find someone discreet enough to teach her without asking questions. That’s not simple. That’s not romantic. That’s… complicated.”
Alice sighed sharply, the sound slicing through the nave.
Jolie stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “Alice, we can barely afford—”
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“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, JOLIE!” Alice’s voice cracked across the church, echoing up into the rafters. “My mum nearly hanged herself last night—”
The words landed between them like shattered glass.
Jolie’s face softened instantly. “I know.”
“No, you don’t,” Alice shot back, tears surging again. “You might have seen the marks on that cupboard but you didn’t see the chair or the rope we had to remove while Skye was asleep. If Skye had walked into that— if she’d come back to see Mum like that—” Her voice broke completely. “It would have destroyed her.”
Jolie’s jaw tightened. She did know. She’d just been trying not to push on that wound.
“We only just got her back,” Alice whispered. “I can’t lose her again. I can’t risk Mum collapsing and Skye being the one who finds her. I just—” She choked on the rest. “I can’t.”
Jolie stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her properly this time. No distance. No caution.
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“You won’t,” she murmured into her hair. “We won’t.”
Alice sagged into her, sobbing openly now. Jolie held her the way you hold someone who is both breaking and still trying to stand.
“I’m not scared of money,” Alice said into her shoulder. “I’m scared of burying her twice.”
Jolie’s throat tightened.
“We’ll figure the rest out,” she said. “We always do.”
They stayed like that for a while. The storm outside became background. The church creaked around them like an old ship holding steady against dark water.
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Footsteps approached from the corridor.
Alice pulled back first.
A man stood awkwardly near the entrance—tactical kit still strapped to him, posture too rigid for a church. He looked young in a way that didn’t match the weight in his eyes.
He hesitated, clearly unsure whether to interrupt or retreat.
Behind him, Jack reappeared, carrying two small suitcases.
“Sorry,” Jack said to Alice, nodding toward them. “Forgot to unpack these earlier. With everything going on.”
Alice blinked, then nodded. “Thank you.”
Jolie stepped forward. “Thank you for helping us tonight.”
“Anytime,” Jack said simply.
He glanced toward the vestry door, then back to the man in kit. “Speak to you tomorrow, Callum. Let’s hope she wakes up before then.”
Callum nodded once.
Jack squeezed Katherine’s hand as they passed, then gathered his family and disappeared into the storm.
The doors shut.
The church quieted again.
Callum stood there for a moment like he wasn’t sure where to put himself, then moved to the last row and sat down, elbows on knees.
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Alice watched him.
She glanced at Jolie.
“Hi,” she said carefully as she approached. “Um… I apologise if we overheard earlier. Callum, right?”
He looked up, surprised she’d come over. “Yeah.”
Jolie touched Alice’s arm lightly. “Let’s not bother the SWAT guy.”
Alice shot her a look. “Babe. He might have answers.”
Then back to Callum.
“My sister’s in there,” she said, her voice steadying with effort. “I don’t understand what’s happening. My girlfriend told me he might have something to do with her coming back. That he might be… nearly a century old.” She swallowed. “I just need something real. Something I can hold onto.”
Callum’s expression shifted—not defensive, not dismissive. Just honest.
“I can try,” he said. “But I only met him today. Most of what I know, I learned in the last few hours.”
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Alice sat beside him anyway. Jolie followed, sliding her hand back into Alice’s without thinking.
Callum glanced at the vestry door once before speaking.
“Well,” he began quietly, “it started a few hours ago. In a CTSFO van. On the way to the French embassy…”
The storm pressed against the windows.
And in the row behind the last candle still burning, three people leaned toward a story none of them were ready to believe.
————-
Linda
The doctors were already working when the vestry door shut.
One of them dropped to a knee beside Skye, fingers moving with practised certainty at her wrist, then along the line taped to her arm. The other stayed with Elias on the floor—tilting his chin, checking his airway, a torch briefly blooming in his pupil and disappearing again. Their movements were efficient, almost ugly in their focus, the kind of focus people put on when there isn’t room for fear.
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Skye’s lips parted.
“No…” she breathed.
Not loud enough to be called speech. Not soft enough to be dismissed.
On the flagstones, Elias’s brow pinched as if he’d heard her and disagreed with whatever was trying to take her. His mouth worked, cracked and stubborn.
“Anna,” he rasped.
The names crossed in the air and landed in Linda’s chest like something thrown.
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She stood between them with her sleeves rolled up, palms damp, hands steady only because she forced them to be. She passed gauze without being asked. Checked a pulse that didn’t need checking just so her fingers had something real to do. Shifted the cooling blanket over Skye’s torso with careful precision—no tugging, no panic-y flapping—because even now, even here, she could not bear to hurt her.
The room smelled of antiseptic and wet wool and the sour heat of fever. It was the kind of heat that didn’t belong in a child.
“He’s tachy again,” the older doctor muttered, watching Elias’s pulse like it might suddenly tell the truth. “And his temperature’s still climbing.”
“I’ve replaced the flannel twice,” Linda said quietly. Her voice stayed level, but her eyes didn’t. “It’s not holding.”
The younger doctor glanced up from Skye’s arm. “We’ve got dexamethasone and hypertonic saline in the ambulance. If this is inflammatory—if there’s cerebral involvement—we need to get ahead of it.”
Linda didn’t hesitate. “Go. Bring everything.”
The older doctor paused, assessing her for a beat that felt like being weighed. “You sure you’re alright to stay with them?”
Linda met his gaze. She didn’t give him the whole truth, because there wasn’t time and he wasn’t family. “I used to do this for a living,” she said. “I’m not… fine. But I can do this.”
He nodded once. No questions. No patronising kindness. Just professional recognition.
They gathered what they could carry—bag straps crossing shoulders, zip pulled, a clipped exchange in half-words—and slipped out, the door shutting with a muted click that sounded far too final for something so thin.
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The room shifted.
Not emptier. Just more exposed. As if, without the motion of medicine, the impossible had room to step closer.
Simon stood near the kitchenette counter at the back of the vestry, hands braced on the edge like the wood might keep him upright. Father Mallory hovered near him—close enough to catch him if he folded, far enough to respect that Simon might want to fall alone. Margaret sat in a straight-backed chair, her tea untouched on the little table beside her. The breathing apparatus hung loose at her neck, cord looped like a reminder that bodies had limits, no matter how much the night argued otherwise.
Skye made a small, broken sound, more whimper than word.
On the floor, Elias answered again, softer now, as if speaking through a door he didn’t fully open.
“Anna…”
Linda turned to the sink because if she stood still she would start shaking. She ran the tap until it went properly cold, soaked a clean cloth, wrung it out hard enough to make her wrists ache, and laid it across Skye’s forehead with the kind of reverence she hadn’t expected to feel for a flannel.
“Father,” she said without turning, holding the warm one out behind her. “Another. Please.”
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Mallory took it instantly. No fuss. No “are you sure”. He moved to the sink as if this was simply what you did when someone asked you to help keep a child alive.
Simon’s gaze hadn’t left Margaret.
“You’ve known,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even accusation. It was the exhausted voice of a man walking around a crater and trying not to look down.
Margaret lifted her eyes to him.
“Yes.”
The word landed gently. It did not soften anything.
Linda stayed by the bed, her back to them, because she couldn’t watch Simon’s face do whatever it was about to do. She could hear his breathing change anyway—shorter, edged, the way it had been at the graveside when he’d been trying to stay practical and failing.
“I imagine,” Margaret said, voice careful, “there’s one thing you want answered before your mind will let you ask anything else.”
No one rushed to fill the silence.
Linda could feel it in her own throat—the question sitting there like a stone. She could feel how badly Simon wanted to throw it at Margaret, how badly he didn’t want to hear the answer. She could feel Mallory’s stillness, the way he held himself when he was listening for grief the way other people listened for footsteps.
Skye whispered again.
“No.”
Linda’s hand tightened in the sheet. She looked down at her daughter’s face—too pale, too flushed, too young—and felt her own breath start to run away.
She turned. Slowly. Like if she moved too fast she might break the world.
“Did Elias…” Her voice faltered. She tried again. “Was he—” She swallowed, forcing the word past the dryness. “Was he the one who brought Skye back?”
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Simon’s hand found her shoulder, solid and warm. His thumb pressed once as if he could keep her from shattering through skin and bone alone.
Margaret didn’t look away.
“Yes,” she said.
Just that.
Linda’s knees went weak so quickly it scared her—like her body had been holding her upright on borrowed will and finally collected the debt. Simon caught her, arms closing around her before she hit the stone, and the sob that tore out of her was not tidy. It was the sound she hadn’t made at the cemetery because she’d had a living child in the house and grief didn’t get to be louder than breathing.
Simon made a sound too—half laugh, half broken cry—as if some part of him still couldn’t decide whether this was salvation or torture.
“You’re saying…” He stared at Margaret with raw disbelief, stripped of his usual restraint. “You’re saying that man saved our daughter.”
Margaret nodded once.
Linda clutched Simon’s coat, forehead pressed into his chest. “He saved her,” she whispered. “He brought her back.”
Simon’s eyes flicked past her shoulder to Elias on the floor. To the number on his arm. To the fever-sweat at his temples. To a face that looked thirty and somehow didn’t belong to time.
“The grave,” Simon said, voice rough, because it was the only anchor he trusted. “I stood there. It was untouched. No disturbance. No… anything. How does someone take a child from a coffin without breaking the earth?”
Margaret drew a careful breath and fitted the apparatus beneath her nose, the quiet hiss returning like the room’s heartbeat.
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“He didn’t take her,” she said. “He didn’t dig her up. He didn’t… move her.”
Simon’s jaw clenched. “Then what did he do?”
Margaret’s eyes went briefly to Skye, then to Elias, like she was lining up two pieces of a single picture.
“He restored her,” she said softly.
Simon stared as if she’d spoken another language.
Skye’s lips parted again. “No…”
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Elias answered in the same breath. “Anna…”
The overlap made Linda flinch. It wasn’t just the words. It was the way they sounded like they were coming from the same place.
Simon turned sharply, too much fear turning into anger because anger was easier to stand in.
“Why are they like this?” he demanded. “Why seizures? Why is she saying his name? Why is he calling someone else’s?”
Margaret watched Skye for a long moment before she spoke, and in that pause Linda realised Margaret was choosing words the way you chose where to step on ice.
“When Elias pulled her back,” Margaret said at last, “it wasn’t only her body that crossed that line.”
Linda’s fingers tightened on the sheet, knuckles whitening.
Margaret continued, voice steady but not cold. “He took the imprint. The last moments. The shock. The fear. The… shape of it.” Her gaze dropped to Elias. “It lodged in him.”
Simon frowned. “And his body’s rejecting it.”
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“Yes,” Margaret said. “He carries it like an intrusion. Something that doesn’t belong to him. His system fights it.”
Linda swallowed. Her mouth tasted metallic. “So he’s burning up because he’s holding her pain.”
Margaret looked at her with something that might have been gratitude, or apology. “Yes.”
Mallory finished wringing the cloth and moved back without a word, offering the cold flannel like a quiet sacrament. Linda took it with a nod she didn’t trust herself to make any larger.
Simon dragged a breath through his teeth. “And Skye is… doing the same thing? She’s carrying his?”
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Margaret hesitated. Not long. Just long enough to make Linda’s heart start to sprint.
“It isn’t equal,” Margaret said.
Linda’s throat tightened. “What does that mean?”
Margaret’s hands trembled faintly as she lifted them, then set them flat on her knees, forcing steadiness into them.
“It means he took something from her,” she said carefully, “but something went back the other way too.”
Simon’s stomach seemed to drop. “You’re saying she has his memories.”
Margaret nodded once.
Linda’s breath caught so hard it hurt. She looked at Skye—small face, damp lashes, mouth still forming that one refusing word—and tried to imagine a century pressed into that skull.
“No,” she whispered, the sound torn out of her. “No, no, no…”
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“Linda,” Mallory said softly, not commanding, just saying her name like a hand on the back of her neck.
Margaret’s voice gentled without losing weight. “A child’s mind can hold grief. It can hold fear. It can even hold trauma, sometimes, if people are careful with them. But it cannot hold a lifetime of… war. Loss. The kind of rage you have to become to survive what he survived.”
Linda stared at Skye, and for the first time the word echo made sense in her bones.
“It presses,” Margaret said. “It crowds. It fractures.”
Linda brushed Skye’s hair back with trembling fingers, as if she could smooth the pressure away with a mother’s touch. “Can we fix it?”
Margaret’s eyes shone. “Possibly.”
Simon’s voice turned sharp again. “He’s unconscious.”
Margaret’s gaze flicked to Elias—his jaw clenched, sweat bright at his brow, lips still moving around the name like it was a rope he refused to let go of.
“I should have told you sooner,” Margaret said, and her voice finally cracked at the edges. Not from drama—like someone who’d been holding it in for decades. “He isn’t my grandson.”
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Simon’s eyes narrowed, but the anger didn’t find its footing; it didn’t have anywhere to stand in a room like this.
“He’s my brother.”
This time it didn’t land as a twist. It landed as confirmation of what their bodies had already clocked. The century-old wrongness. The way Margaret looked at him.
Linda wiped her face with the back of her hand, exhausted. “That stopped mattering hours ago,” she said, and surprised herself with how true it was.
Simon let out a short, fractured exhale—no humour in it, just a man running out of places to put his disbelief.
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“What matters,” he said hoarsely, “is whether he can get her back to herself.”
Margaret nodded. “He can.”
Linda looked up, desperate. “How? How does he help her if he’s—” she gestured helplessly toward Elias on the floor, “—like that?”
Margaret leaned forward slightly in her chair, careful with her own breath. “Because what happened between them didn’t stop when he lost consciousness.” She searched for the simplest truth. “They’re… entangled.”
Simon’s mouth twisted. “Entangled.”
“Yes,” Margaret said. “Like two wires that touched when they shouldn’t have. Bodies can be stabilised. The doctors can cool them, medicate them, keep them breathing. But what’s hurting Skye isn’t just fever. It’s overload.”
Linda shook her head, trying to keep up. “So what do we do?”
Margaret’s gaze went to Skye, softened, then to Elias, and something in her expression shifted—love threaded with grief, as if she could see the boy he’d been and the man he’d become at the same time.
“He has to find her where she is,” she said quietly.
Linda’s hands clenched. “In her head.”
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“In the place between,” Margaret corrected gently. “Where the mind puts things it can’t file. Where dreams happen. Where a child goes when her body is too hot and her thoughts are too loud and she keeps saying no because no is the only word that feels like it belongs to her.”
Skye whispered it again, right on cue, the sound shredding Linda.
“No…”
Linda bent down, pressing her forehead briefly to Skye’s hairline. “Love,” she whispered, voice shaking, “you don’t have to fight alone. Please.”
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On the floor, Elias’s lips moved.
“Anna.”
Linda looked at him—really looked—and felt the strange ache of it. He didn’t look like a hero. He looked like a man being punished by his own goodness.
Simon raked a hand through his hair, voice rising, the panic finally breaking through. “How do you know all this? How did you know she’d come back? How did you know the cost?”
Margaret closed her eyes for a second, like she was bracing against something that had never truly stopped happening.
“Because when Elias restored your daughter,” she said quietly, “he tore something.”
Simon went still.
“Not just the night,” Margaret continued. “Not just the future. Time itself.” She glanced toward the small window where rain struck the glass in restless sheets. “It’s been bleeding ever since.”
The room felt smaller somehow.
“It left a wound,” she said. “And wounds don’t respect direction.”
Simon’s brow furrowed.
“What he did didn’t only move forward,” Margaret continued. “It reached back. It pressed against the years that came before it.” Her voice steadied, even as her hands trembled. “Whatever tore open that night… it affected me long before it happened.”
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Mallory’s gaze sharpened. “You mean—”
“I mean I’ve been living with the consequence of that choice since I was a child,” she said quietly. “Before he ever made it.”
Mallory’s voice came, low and steady. “You’ve seen all of this since you were a child?.”
Margaret opened her eyes. Tears clung to her lashes. “I have.” She swallowed. “I was eight when it started. Flashes at first. A feeling like—like déjà vu with teeth. And then… clearer. Elias in darkness. A child. His hands shaking. Holding out his hand to save her.His face…”
Her voice broke. She steadied it again. “I’ve lived with that moment my entire life.”
Linda’s hand flew to her mouth. “You watched it happen—over and over?”
Margaret nodded once, tears finally falling. “Yes.”
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“And Anna?” Linda asked, the name catching on her tongue like something sharp. “You said—”
Margaret’s composure faltered properly then.
“I saw her die,” she whispered. “Twelve years old. Locked in a room with no air.” Her voice thinned, but she forced it forward. “I saw him die with her, trying to hope for a miracle, to spare her from this.”
The vestry seemed to shrink.
“I saw what came after,” she continued, quieter now. “I saw him wake up on that floor. I saw the soldiers realise they had made a mistake, their hatred changed into terror when they met his hatred of them.” Her jaw trembled. “I saw what he became in that moment.”
Simon didn’t move.
“He was a boy when he went in,” Margaret said. “He wasn’t when he came out.”
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Tears slipped down her face unchecked.
“And none of it brought Anna back.”
The room held that.
“He saved people after that,” she said, almost to herself. “Children first. Always children. In cities that no longer exist. In wars that never made the papers. In rooms no one remembers.” Her gaze drifted to Skye. “Every life he saved traced back to that room.”
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Linda’s breath hitched.
“I understood very young,” Margaret said, voice fraying, “that if I pulled at the wrong thread — if I tried to stop that day — the man who would later kneel in the darkness for your daughter might never exist.”
Silence pressed in.
“And I have lived with that knowledge,” she finished, “every single day.”
Simon recoiled, something sharp flashing across his face — not cruelty, but panic looking for somewhere to land.
“You saw it,” he said hoarsely. “You saw them die. You saw what it would do to him.”
Margaret didn’t look away.
Simon’s voice faltered, anger thinning into something more fragile. “And you couldn’t stop it?”
Margaret flinched — not from the question, but from the memory rising behind it.
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“I was sixteen,” she said quietly. “In the same camp. Hungry. Afraid. A child pretending not to be.” Her breath caught, then steadied. “There was no stopping it. There was only surviving it.”
She pressed her fingers briefly to her sternum, as if her heart still beat inside barbed wire.
“When the visions began. I didn’t understand them then. By the time I did…” Her voice thinned. “The soldiers were already there.”
Her gaze sharpened, not defensive — resolute.
“I didn’t allow anything,” she said. “I endured it. I watched the world do what it was going to do, no matter how much I begged it not to.”
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Silence pressed in.
“Every time I tried to imagine changing it,” she added, softer now, “all I could see was everything collapsing. Not just us. Everything.”
Linda’s breathing had gone too fast, too shallow. Simon’s arm came around her again, not to steady an argument — but to steady her.
And this time, he didn’t look at Margaret with accusation.
He looked at her like a man realising the cost of surviving something that should have killed you.
Margaret’s gaze slid to Elias on the floor, and her face twisted with something like grief that had never had a proper place to go.
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“When someone has been alive that long,” she said softly, “and they’ve still managed to keep the part of them that cares… do you understand what that does to a person?”
Simon didn’t answer. His jaw worked. His eyes were wet.
Margaret’s voice dropped, almost to herself. “When you’ve buried everyone you loved, and there’s no future that feels like yours anymore… the kindness becomes heavier than the years.”
She stared at Elias as if he might hear her through fever.
“And if you are that old,” she said, tears slipping down, “and that alone… and you walk into darkness and you hear a child cry—” Her throat tightened. “What kind of person would you be if you could stand there and do nothing?”
Silence gathered, dense and holy and awful.
Linda wiped her face, voice shaking.
“He’s a man,” she said. “A broken one. But he’s a man.”
Margaret nodded once.
“Yes,” she said softly. “And he has spent a lifetime answering the same sound.”
Linda frowned faintly. “What sound?”
Margaret’s gaze drifted toward Skye.
“A child calling for help.”
Linda looked from Skye to Elias, her heart tearing itself into two directions. “So he can reach her.”
“Yes,” Margaret said, and this time it wasn’t an explanation. It was a certainty. “If there is a path, he will find it.”
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Simon’s voice cracked. “And if there isn’t?”
Margaret’s breath hitched. She swallowed, and the honesty in it hurt.
“Then we make one,” she said quietly. “With time. With cooling. With medicine. With you not leaving her side. With Linda doing what she’s doing. With prayer if you have it, and stubbornness if you don’t.”
Linda leaned over Skye again and pressed her lips to her temple, lingering there, breathing in the damp warmth of her child as if she could feed her steadiness through skin.
“You’re not alone,” she whispered. “I’m here. Dad’s here. Alice is here. Jolie’s here. You don’t have to—” Her voice broke. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”
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On the floor, Elias’s fingers twitched—small, involuntary, like a man reaching in a dream.
Skye’s breathing hitched once… then smoothed, just slightly, as if something inside her had listened.
Linda stayed bent over her daughter, eyes squeezed shut, holding the moment like it might vanish if she looked at it too hard.
And somewhere beneath the fever and the names and the storm pressing at the windows, the room felt—just for a breath—less like a trap, and more like a fight they might actually win.69Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpTMai5Z6Cp
and then Add to home screen.