Chapter 8

Noah Miller rolled his eyes and was about to leave.

Damien Sterling grabbed him, a bit worried deep down. "What's really wrong with her?"

Noah Miller didn't want to waste words on him. "She disappeared after P.E. class, and she wasn't feeling well!"

Then he slapped his own forehead, cursing himself for being stupid.

This time, it seemed it was her turn to tidy the equipment.

He rushed to the equipment room.

The door was ajar. Inside, the lights were off.

Emily was on the floor, curled into a ball between the volleyball cart and the wall. Her face was chalk white, and there was blood on her chin.

"Emily!"

She didn't respond.

Noah dropped to his knees beside her, hands shaking as he checked her pulse. Weak. Too weak.

"System..." I murmured inside my head. "Is this it?"

"Not yet. But you're close. The tumor is pressing on a blood vessel. You need emergency care."

"I don't want—"

"Host. If you lose consciousness now, you will not wake up."

Damien appeared in the doorway. Whatever biting remark he'd prepared died the moment he saw the blood.

"What—"

"Call an ambulance!" Noah shouted. "NOW!"

Damien had never heard Noah Miller sound scared before. That, more than anything, made him pull out his phone with trembling hands.

"Don't tell the family," I whispered. "Please."

"Emily, shut up," Noah said, pressing his jacket against the blood on my chin. "For once in your life, let someone help you."

The ambulance came in seven minutes.

Damien rode with us. He sat across from the stretcher, staring at the monitors, at the oxygen mask on my face, at the IV line the paramedics were scrambling to insert.

"She's severely anemic," one paramedic said to the other. "BP is 80/50. We need to move."

Damien looked at his biological sister—really looked—maybe for the first time since she'd come home.

She was so thin. The hospital gown the paramedics put on her hung loose, revealing collarbones that jutted out like wings. The burn on her cheek—the one from his curry—was still healing, raw and red.

She looked nothing like Sophia.

She looked like someone who had been disappearing for a long time, and no one had noticed.

At the hospital, Dr. Evans met them at the entrance.

"She's one of mine," she told the ER team. "Stage three gastric cancer. Untreated."

Damien felt the floor shift beneath his feet.

"Cancer?"

Dr. Evans glanced at him. "You're family?"

"I'm her brother."

The doctor's expression said everything her words didn't: Then where have you been?