Gretchen McNeil - 3:59

He knelt down beside Nick. “Hold his head. Keep it steady and still, especially if he starts to wake up. I don’t have any anesthesia.”

Josie’s stomach did a backflip as she crouched at the top of the cot and took Nick’s head firmly in her hands. If he starts to wake up. Oh crap.

The stranger got to work right away. Josie could see his hands moving in the dusky light, dark flashes that swirled around Nick’s head. He worked quickly and confidently despite the dim conditions, as if he had absolutely no trouble seeing in the dark.

“They go for the brain stem first,” the stranger said casually. Just making conversation while he sewed Nick’s head back together. “Kill you or paralyze you. Doesn’t matter. They’ve learned it’s the fastest way to render us incapacitated.”

Josie wasn’t sure if she should respond, but the stranger rattled on, speaking ever more quickly.

“Most people don’t know that. The fact that they learned how to hunt us. That’s the part that should scare people the most. Not the claws.”

“Or the beaks.”

The shadow man tilted his head to the side. “You’ve seen them?”

Josie paused. She thought of the glimpses of wing and the flash of a beak that she’d seen in the darkness. Never distinct, never for longer than a split second, but . . .

“Yes. I’ve seen them.”

“I see.” He didn’t seem surprised. “They’re not quite beaks,” he continued. He drew his arm up, pulling the thread taut, then dove back down. “More like a pickax. They skewer prey, then feed on it.”

For a moment, Josie forgot her fear. “You can see them too?”

“Yes, I see them,” he said. Bitterness dripped from every word. “I see them every night.”

“Oh.” It made sense, in a way. They were both beings of darkness. Two inhabitants of a strange world. But that still didn’t explain why Josie could see them.

He pulled his arm up one last time, then with a flourish, tied a knot in the thread. A flash of metal scissors, a sharp snip, and Nick’s wound was closed.

Josie stroked Nick’s stiff, matted hair. “Will he be okay?”

“Yes,” the stranger said. “I think so.” He sat on the floor and watched the rhythmic heaves of Nick’s breath. “You’re in love with him.”

It was so direct. Not a question at all. “Yes.”

“What will happen when you go back?”

How the hell did he know so much about her? “Go back? I don’t know what you’re—”

“Save it,” he said. “I know. I know about the mirror and the portals.”

The portals. With an s . Plural. He knew it wasn’t Dr. Byrne in Old St. Mary’s. He knew that Josie wasn’t Jo. There was only one person Josie could think of who could have known both of those things.

“You’re Tony,” Josie gasped. “You’re Nick’s brother.”

He sighed. A slow intake followed by a sharp, almost painful exhale. “Yes.”

“You’ve been here all along, keeping an eye on Nick.” The missing food. It had been Tony.

“Yes.”

“But you’re supposed to be dead,” Josie blurted out. “How . . . I mean, why?” Crap, what did she mean?

Beneath her hands, Nick stirred on the bed. He twitched like a man jolted awake by a horrific nightmare, then moaned.

Josie stroked his hair, careful not to touch the recently stitched-up wound. “Easy,” she said softly.

“Josie?” He pushed himself up on his elbows and lifted his head to look at her. Even in the dim light, Josie could see the pinched look of pain wash over his face. His elbows slid out from under him, and he hung his head. “What happened?” he said, his voice muffled by the thin mattress.

“The Nox,” Josie said. “They attacked the warehouse.”

“Right.”

“We . . .” Josie glanced at the shadow that was Tony Fiorino. “We barely made it out alive.”

“My head.” Nick reached his hand around and tentatively tapped the back of his head. He took a sharp breath.

“We had to stitch you up,” Josie said. “After the attack.”

Nick grabbed Josie’s hand. “We?” His eyes darted back and forth. He squeezed Josie’s hand so tightly she thought her fingers might burst as he hauled himself into a sitting position. “Who’s here?”

“Um . . .” Josie looked at Tony. How was she supposed to break this news?

“Hey, Nicky,” Tony said, saving her the effort.

Nick stiffened. “That’s not possible.”

Tony tried to sound light and easy. “I’m afraid it’s true.”

Nick dropped Josie’s hand. “I don’t believe it.”

“He saved us,” Josie said. “He carried you out of the warehouse.”

“Tony’s dead. My brother is dead.”

“I wanted to tell you earlier but . . .” Tony paused. “It’s complicated.”

Nick turned his whole body to face Tony. Josie scooted around to the side of the cot and watched as the harsh, set lines of Nick’s jaw bulged and rippled. His eyes scanned the storage shed, looking for signs of his brother. They passed right over the shadow of Tony once, twice.

“I’m right here, Nicky.”

Nick started. He hadn’t expected the voice to be so close. Still, his eyes couldn’t focus on the outline of Tony’s body. “Tony?”

Against the dusky glow of the Bunsen burner, Josie watched as Tony reached out and touched Nick on the arm. Nick’s eyes flew to the spot, then grew wide as they distinguished the shadowy outline of Tony’s hand on his. Nick traced the shadow with his eyes: up the arm to the shoulder, then around the head and down the front of the body, encompassing his brother’s entire form. “Oh my God,” he whispered.

9:35 P.M.

“I KNOW,” TONY SAID. “BELIEVING I WAS DEAD might have been better than this.”

“How?”

“It’s a long story.”

Nick reached his hand behind his back, groping blindly for Josie’s hand. When his fingers found her own, he laced them together. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Tony walked to the far side of the table. He turned up the flame on the burner, which shifted hues from orange to bluish white, casting a brighter light across the room. For the first time, Josie really saw Tony. His outline was sharp and defined against the lit interior of the shed, and though there were no defined features to his form, there was depth to the shadow, an infinite void that was there but not there. To say that he was dark or black didn’t do justice to the intensity of what he was. His body was like the absence of light, the opposite of light. There wasn’t a surface for light to reflect off or illuminate, and judging by the fact that there was no shadow cast by his body on the floor or walls, it was as if the light was absorbed by his very being.

“Something happened that day in the lab,” Tony started. The voice sounded so real and normal, like a regular human body was in the room talking to them instead of a wraith.

“The explosion,” Nick said. He squeezed Josie’s hand.

“Project Raze had exhausted almost every possibility: vaccines with killed Nox cellular matter, toxoids, live viruses that were supposed to infect the Nox population, DNA and photon therapies, genetically engineered bacterial proteins. Nothing worked. The Nox themselves seemed immune to everything we threw at them.”

Tony leaned his arms against the table. It creaked in protest as it accepted his weight, which seemed so odd to Josie since his body appeared to have no depth.

“Then last year, we made a breakthrough. The reason we can’t affect the Nox? They don’t exist in this universe .”

Josie sat straight up. “What?”

Tony tilted his head to the side. “I thought you’d appreciate that. Just like you, they come from another place.”