The silence between them stretched. It felt charged. Dorothy knew that, no matter what she said, she was making a choice.

She thought of black skies and burned cities and no sun.

“It’s not too late,” she said finally. “Let’s try again.”

They returned at twilight, three hours before Cassia was going to die. They snuck through the hospital’s gold-tinted halls while the sun dipped low in the horizon. They gathered the insulin in silence and then crept out the back door and through the shadow-darkened streets. They hid the medication in Roman’s tent while he and his sister were out. They couldn’t stay near the tent because that put them at risk of being seen, and so they hid in the trees and watched the clearing.

Dorothy felt her heartbeat thrum in her palms, her breath shallow and quick. She was sure it had worked. It had to have worked.

Three hours passed, and then the scene played out exactly as it had before: A younger Roman stumbled out of the tent, holding his sister. She looked like a broken bird in his arms, her head lolling back, her neck long and pale.

He collapsed in the clearing. Her eyes stared, unblinking, at the sky.

“Thieves,” the older Roman whispered, still crouching beside Dorothy. “I’d forgotten.”

“Forgotten what?”

“That day, thieves snuck into our tent and stole some of our food. I thought they’d only taken the canned goods I’d been planning for dinner. They must’ve taken the medicine, too.”

His face was stony as he stared ahead, watching his sister die. Dorothy touched his shoulder, her heart heavy.

“Come on,” she said softly.

They returned a half hour before his sister’s death. Any earlier, and they risked the thieves stealing the medication again. They crept through the halls. Stole the insulin. Made their way to the back staircase.

A burly security guard heading out for a cigarette break intercepted them mere feet from the heavy, double doors that led to the back parking lot. He detained them in a back room, and they only managed to escape when Dorothy found a stray bobby pin on the floor and used it to pick the lock. By the time they made it to the clearing in Tent City, they were too late.

Roman stumbled out of the tent. His sister’s head fell back against his arm. Her eyes stared.

“Let’s go,” Dorothy said again. But her throat felt thick.

She couldn’t admit it yet—she didn’t even want to think it—but, in some deep place, she felt that she was starting to understand.

They returned fifteen minutes before his sister’s death. This time, Roman remembered to bring a bottle of insulin from their last theft, so they were able to skip the hospital and fly straight to Tent City. They parked the Black Crow as close to the university grounds as they could manage, cutting the engine with nine minutes to spare.

At seven minutes, they were weaving through the black tents, rain beating on their shoulders.