It can’t be true. It can’t be him. I know this deep inside, and I understand the realization that this person in my flat is really a stranger will be one of the most painful I’ll have to endure.

But for just this moment I want to believe. I want to imagine that even while the City falls apart outside, something can still be hopeful.

“Elias,” I breathe.

His eyes grow wide and mine fill with tears. In an instant, I see all the ways he’s changed over the past three years, every feature hazily familiar. Where his hair used to be long enough to tuck behind his ears, now it’s short, as if his head’s been shaved recently. Three faint remnants of scratches run down his cheek, so light I’d probably not have seen them if I weren’t staring at him, examining him so closely.

My heart quickens as the reality of the situation washes over me.

Elias. This is my Elias. He’s here, right in front of me. I stare at him, at the curve of muscle over bone that protrudes too far. The way his cheeks seem a little sharp, and barely visible lines furrow between his eyes. He’s at once the boy who left me behind and yet someone else entirely. Someone new and almost scary.

Suddenly I wonder what changes he sees in me—if I’m the girl he remembers or if I’ve changed as he has. My stomach feels fluttery at the way he stares at me, taking me in.

In all my dreams of him coming home again, this is how it happens—me and him alone in the flat. Safe together.

He’s just moving toward me when Catcher stumbles into the room, placing his hand on my back to avoid knocking into me. I know the instant he senses someone else in the flat because he steps forward and in front of me, his fingers reaching for my arm to push me toward the window and safety.

Elias halts, taken aback. “Catcher?” Confusion spreads across his features and Catcher stiffens.

And then before anything else happens, before I can touch Elias and pull him into a hug to make sure that it’s really him and he’s really here safe and alive, he grabs Catcher. “Where’s Gabry?” he demands, looking out the window past both of us as if expecting her to follow.

It’s like I don’t exist, hidden behind Catcher’s back. I step around him and watch as Elias grips Catcher’s shoulders hard. Catcher winces, the wound on his upper arm fresh under the bandage. He eases out of Elias’s grasp.

“Where is she?” Elias asks again, his voice taking on an edge of hysteria. I’m stunned by the look on his face, the barely controlled panic.

I move forward, place my hand on his arm. “I have to find her,” he says to Catcher as if I’m not even there. “I promised her I’d find her.”