A light clicked on, and movement by her bedside startled her awake. She turned at the sound of an electronic beeping coming from the machine next to her and discovered tubes running from her arm. An IV was attached to her hand, and bandages covered her arm. Her eyes fought the weight of fogginess in her mind.

“Where am I?” Wendy asked the doctor standing beside her.

“You’re at Timber Valley Hospital.” The doctor sat on the edge of her bed and gently took her hand. “Wendy . . .” The doctor took a deep breath. “I have some news. I’m so sorry, but the car accident . . .”

“No.” Wendy shook her head, her voice trembling. “Don’t say it.”

“They didn’t make it.”

“You’re wrong.” Wendy yanked her hand away from the woman and tried to sit up. Her mom and dad would walk through that hospital door any minute.

“My parents—” Wendy swallowed. “Are . . .”

“Are gone,” the doctor interrupted gently. “But we’re here to help you. We have counselors—a great staff—and you won’t be going through this alone.”

The room blurred into a mass of white and gray as her tears pooled. She fell back onto the pillow, and her chest began to heave with silent sobs. Her breathing hitched and her pulse raced.

“Shh, it’s okay.” The doctor took a syringe and put the tip into Wendy’s injector port. “I’m going to help you relax. Just rest, sweetheart. The future will look brighter in the morning.”

The drugs entering her system were cold, but she could feel heaviness permeate her limbs and eyelids. Wendy turned to look out the hospital window. The rain had stopped, and she could see two bright stars that seemed to outshine all the others in the night sky. Wendy took a leap of faith and imagined the stars to be her mom and dad watching over her.

The next hours were a rush of mixed memories and nightmares. Morphlings and death. She could feel someone sitting beside her through most of the night, but when she opened her eyes, she was alone. With the morning sun came the truth as she woke to find her brother sitting beside her, his own eyes red-rimmed from crying, his pale face marked with grief.

“John,” Wendy mumbled as she tried to reach for him, her limbs as heavy as her heart.

He turned, and his bottom lip trembled. He used his sleeve to wipe his eyes. Wendy couldn’t help it. Her heart broke all over again.

“I’m sorry,” she bawled.

His arms wrapped around her and his shoulders shook as they poured out their grief.

“I’m sorry,” Wendy whispered again.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“I feel like I could have done something.”

“The police said the car spun off the road.”

“It did,” she said, nodding. “But there was something else there.”

He sat back, his shoulders stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that it wasn’t an accident. There was something that ran us off the road.”

John looked around fearfully and then leaned in close to her. “Don’t mention anything to the doctors or the police, Wendy. It isn’t safe.”

“But John—”

He covered her mouth with his hand. “I mean it, Wendy. You weren’t there. While I was standing outside of the morgue, I overheard stuff. Stuff that I shouldn’t have heard.”

She leaned forward, gripping the hospital blanket in fear. “Like what?”

“Like how you made it out of the car.” His voice was firm, and she recoiled from his angry eyes.

“John, I didn’t. It wasn’t—”

“I don’t blame you, Wendy. Although I wanted to, I tried to. But I can’t.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth and sighed before leaning on his knees. “I just can’t wrap my brain around it. Why them? And then miraculously you escape with barely a scrape. It has the police asking questions, and then, there were others here in the hospital that weren’t police.”

“How can you tell?”

“I just can. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I would guess military, but they tried to hide it.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with me?”

“Maybe, it has everything to do with you. Peter warned us that the morphlings would keep coming. I wish that I could have been there. I could have stopped it.”

“John, how can you say that?”

He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “Argh, I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m being paranoid.”

She wanted to reach for his hand, to cradle it within her own and tell him that everything was going to be all right, but she couldn’t get the words out, knowing it would be a lie. Nothing was going to be all right. Nothing was ever going to be the same ever again.

“Actually, no . . . you’re not being paranoid,” she acquiesced.

“What?” His head snapped in her direction.

“A morphling forced the car over the cliff, and Peter was able to pull me from the car before it hit bottom. He saved me.”

John’s fingers dug into the armrest of his chair. “But he couldn’t do the same for my parents.”

My parents, not our parents. The word choice wasn’t lost on Wendy. He was slowly distancing himself from her in his mind. Given that their parents were gone, would he still consider her his sister?

“I wish he hadn’t,” she said, playing with a frayed string on the blanket. “I wish Peter had saved your parents too.”

John stayed silent, contemplating her words.

She leaned back onto her pillow and studied her brother. He had aged overnight somehow and looked older than his sixteen years. Grief and responsibility did that. But then, the worry of the world came down upon her shoulders even harder. They had nowhere to go. John didn’t have any extended family. Maybe a distant aunt in Maine, but Wendy had never met the woman. Wendy herself wasn’t eighteen and old enough to become John’s guardian. If that aunt didn’t take him in, then he’d be sent into the foster care system before they could file for emancipation.

It didn’t bode well at all.

“Have you heard anything from Aunt Mickey?”

“She passed away last summer.” His eyes started to glass over, and he reached for her hand. “I have no one. Now that they know who you are, a Blackburn, they will probably find some relative. You won’t be alone.”

“I’m not alone, John. I have you. You will always be my brother.”

His shoulders hitched forward, and he squeezed her hand. “I’m scared, Wendy.”

“Me too, John, but we’ll get through this. Together.”