Chapter 9: The Roof

Nora's POV

The night nurse woke me an hour before dawn with her hand over my mouth.

"Quiet," she breathed. "Get dressed. They're moving you to Ward C at six."

I sat up.

Ward C was at the back of the building, past a second locked door.

I had heard the others talk about it.

People who went in there did not walk back out to the garden.

"Who ordered it?"

"The Luna." She pressed grey scrubs and canvas shoes into my arms.

"Three men are in the lobby," she said. "They have a van. One of them's the Gamma."

Gideon.

I dressed so fast I put the shirt on inside out.

"I can't get you out the front," the nurse said.

"But the stairs at the end of this hall go up to the roof. The door has a keypad, and I know the code."

"There's a porch below the east edge, and a rose trellis."

"Joanna's rose bush."

"Is that what it is?" She almost smiled. "Go up. Wait for your friend."

"Why are you doing this?"

She looked at my stomach, and at the cold hand I'd laid on it without knowing.

"I had three of my own," she said. "Go."

I went.

The stairwell was dim and smelled of floor wax.

At the top of the stairs a steel door had a keypad beside it.

I pressed the numbers she'd given me and it opened with a pop.

The roof was flat tar, wet with frost.

East was the dark line of the pine forest. The sky above it had gone grey.

I crossed to the edge, leaned out, and saw the porch roof eight feet below and no sign of anyone on it.

"Joanna?" I whispered.

Nothing.

Behind me the steel door banged open.

"There," Gideon said.

He came out onto the roof with two enforcers behind him.

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