Yuguo limped tiredly from the subway stop to their residential tower. It was past midnight now. His clothes were caked in mud. His face and lungs still burned from gas, as much as he’d tried to rinse it out with water. One eye was circled in an ugly black bruise from where a boot had met his head as he’d tried to make his way free. A cut above his brow throbbed. Tears still fell, from the remnants of the gas, from the utter failure.

He’d made it out, crawling, kicking, running, stumbling, in a press of near strangers. They’d run past the armored, mirror-faced riot police, run through campus, run and run and run until he’d fallen over coughing, gasping, unable to breathe.

Alone.

Where was Xiaobo? Wei? Lee? Lifen? Longwei? Had they escaped? There was no answer on their phones. No response on any service online. He had to just hope, as he trudged slowly towards home, past the accusing stares and the cold indifference of the strangers of Shanghai.

You didn’t come, he stared back at them. We did what we could. It wasn’t enough.

He scraped mud off his shoes outside their building and let himself in with their code. The lobby was empty. The lift took him straight up to their floor. At the door to the apartment he could hear turmoil coming from within. Shouts. Police? He tensed.

No.

Or rather yes. Police voices. Certainly.

Dozens of them. And protesters, by the hundreds.

Impossible.

Curiosity overcame fear.

Yuguo punched in his code. The door opened.

“Yuguo?” His mother’s voice carried from the living room. She ran out into the hallway in a dressing gown. The sound of yells and screams, ordered commands and clashes followed her.

“Mother…” he started.

Then she had her arms wrapped around him.

“Yuguo!” she cried. “I was so frightened. I saw the videos! I kept watching, looking for your face, to see if you’d been taken.”

“Mother,” he said, softly, his arms wrapping around her in response, soothing her, some amazement striking a calm deep into him, some tiny sliver of hope blossoming through the despair. “What videos?”

Yuguo watched them again and again. Dozens of minutes of video. Signs waving, denouncing the coup, calling for Sun Liu’s reinstatement, calling for democracy, calling for a Billion Flowers, calling for Bo Jintao’s arrest. Police charging, beating protesters, beating them after they were down and helpless, dragging them away.

Xiaobo, beaten bloody, kicked mercilessly, into unconsciousness, dragged by one foot, face down in the mud. Wei, shot at close range with what Yuguo hoped was a rubber bullet, then gone from the screen. Lifen, the woman who’d inspired him, who’d told him that they were weak apart or strong together, unconscious, being dragged off by an armored State Security thug, her shirt half ripped off her body, another mirror-helmeted riot police man following behind them.