JULIO COLLAPSED, sighing to himself. With his back propped against the wall, he closed his eyes as if he were at peace, but I knew that he completely wasn’t. When he looked at me, his eyes were full of grief. Nevertheless, he smiled.

“I’ve got some explaining to do, don’t I?” he asked.

The rain continued to pour even harder, and Julio looked increasingly terrible. The bleeding in his wounds wouldn’t seem to stop.

“Yeah, but…” I sighed. So Rachael was his girlfriend. As unfortunate as their reunion was, the mere fact they were a couple gave me a few disconcerting thoughts, but I decided to brush most of them away and ask my biggest question:

“Why did you point that knife at her?”

Julio hung his head lowand tooka deep breath. “I had no choice. She was attacking me.”

“But you knew that wasn’t her, didn’t you?” I hesitated, looking for the right words. “What would happen after? Would you take her to the Lethe?”

The Lethe was the river where monsters were taken to have their memory wiped. As of that moment, it was the only known way to bring a corrupted person back to the Metropolis. It was based on the river in Greek myths where souls were taken to be reborn.

Julio shook his head. “The Lethe is a long drive away. I didn’t have the strength and time to bring Rachael there. You can’t save everyone, Quinn, even those you care about…”

I let the rain drown out his words, not wanting to accept them. I would never be able to do what Julio had tried to do. I wouldn’t take it, even if it were a last resort.

Storm clouds rumbled, and lightning roared. Signs of a clear sky were nonexistent.

“You and Viv need to get out of this rain,” I finally said.

“We’ve gone through worse, trust me.” Julio smiled wryly, pulling out a soggy piece of red paper from the pocket of his hoodie. “Just fold this into an airplane, and my buddies will come and pick us up—like how you found Viv at the park.”

It sounded preposterous, but I did what he said. “How do these things even work?” I asked. “Don’t you guys have phones?”

You see, Julio and his sister were no longer part of the Metropolis. They were discarded characters of the Author, and there were a lot more just like them. As far as I knew, Cassandra had attacked them, and they were all adamant on catching her. That was the most normal part. What made them so peculiar was their form of communication: They sent long-distant paper planes to each other.

A white paper plane meant everything was fine, while a red one signaled danger.

“No phones,” Julio replied. “They short circuit when we touch them. Having them would make contact with the Metropolis easy. We aren’t supposed to exist, remember?”

I grimaced. It made sense, though, but it seemed too much. If Julio had a phone, he’d be able to call for help more easily, but of course, the Metropolis wouldn’t even let him do that.

I was getting dizzy again. Rachael had really hit me hard on the head, giving me a nasty case of double vision. Also, the paper Julio had given me was far too soaked to be folded, so it just crumbled ungracefully in my hand.

I sighed. “You guys need to find a more efficient communication system.”

Julio simply winced. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Should I bring you to the hospital?”

“Can’t afford it.”

I pursed my lips. “What now?”

“Hold on.” Julio staggered to his feet. It looked like an ordeal to him, but he managed to do it. “Let me try something.”

He took one stride. Then another. He leaped, and before my eyes, he shape-shifted into a dove—just like what Rachael had done—but this dove was injured, its wings covered in blood. It failed to fly, so it crashed on the asphalt.

I stood there in shock, and it wasn’t just because of how miserable he looked, but because he could shape-shift . Into a dove. And fly away.

After dropping me off at St. John’s the other day, he and Viv just seemed to disappear, and that was when I saw two doves flying in the distance. It was Julio and Viv all along.

I ran into the street, gently taking Julio (in dove form) into my hands. He was shaking, but he was breathing steadily.

“So, if I could time travel,” I said to him. “You could shape-shift?”

Oh, look at me. I was talking to a bird. What do I do now?

And then it hit me.

Doves symbolized all types of pleasant things: love, peace, hope, all that stuff, but most of all, they also expressed purity.

Julio and Viv weren’t part of the Metropolis, but they also weren’t corrupted. It made sense that they’d be associated with doves. They had accepted their fate and moved on, giving their new lives purpose.

Rachael fled this place as a dove, so did Julio actually heal her? Was that even possible to begin with?

I was babbling all these things to Julio, and he seemed to be purposely trying to ignore me. He didn’t revert back to human form like I thought he immediately would, but instead, he cozied up on the palm of my hand and closed his eyes.

Great.

“No, Julio,” I hissed. “Don’t you dare sleep on me. Tell me what to do first.”

But saying that was just useless. I think I even heard him snore. Could doves even snore?

I sighed. I glanced at the trash can where Rachael kicked Viv into, but Viv wasn’t there. Was Rachael’s impact that hard that she ended up buried in the trash? That was highly unlikely. The pile wasn’t big enough to cover up a human, even a small one like Viv. Nevertheless, I placed Julio down on the ground beside me as I dug through the trash—ugh, never, ever, ever doing that again. I didn’t find Viv under the heap, though, but another sleeping injured dove.

What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t just leave them here, could I? Even though I barely knew them, I couldn’t bring myself to do that. This world was already harsh on them. So that was when I decided to do something silly: I took them under my wing —Get it? Haha—and brought them to my dorm at St. John’s.