The Silent Unseen by Amanda McCrina

Author:Amanda McCrina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

* * *

The knock made me jump.

I wasn’t asleep—I hadn’t slept much at all since Tomek had left on his absurd secret mission to Lwów three weeks ago—but it was late. Julian made his last rounds at ten o’clock every night, ordering lights out to conserve lamp oil, and I’d had time to get through all my prayers plus an extra one for Tomek. The bunker was silent as a tomb. Nobody was supposed to be creeping around after lights-out, which meant—

I slid off my bunk, crossed the floor in one bound, and yanked the door open.

“Tomek!”

“Quiet,” Lew breathed, leaning close.

I swallowed my disappointment, embarrassed and a little cross. “Aren’t you supposed to be on duty? What on earth are you doing?”

A flurry of motion in the darkness—he reached a quick, cautioning hand to my arm. He tapped the door softly with his fingertips. I stepped aside a little stiffly, and he slid quietly in, pushing the door shut behind him.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Thanks.”

“What’s the matter?” Lew wasn’t a rule breaker. He was the furthest anybody could possibly be from a rule breaker. If he was here in my room after lights-out, something was very, very wrong.

The possibilities jumped out at me, each worse than the last: Somebody was sick, somebody had been shot, somebody had gone missing.

Oh God—he had found out Tomek was dead.

I started babbling nonsense, trying to cover up the panic.

“Is somebody hurt? I’ll get Julian.” I dropped onto the bunk, fumbling numbly in the dark for my boots.

“Don’t,” Lew said.

The tightness in his voice made my stomach flop. Please, God, no. “Lew, tell me what’s wrong.”

He let out a long breath. “No, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

He was a worse liar than I was. He couldn’t tell a convincing lie if his life depended on it. “You don’t sound fine.”

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

“After curfew, without Julian knowing?” I was glad for the dark. He couldn’t see my hands shaking. “What are we doing, plotting a revolution?”

He didn’t say anything. I could practically feel him stiffen.

My stomach flopped again. “Come on—I’m kidding. You’re scaring me.”

“I don’t even know how to start this.”

“You could sit down.”

He sat obediently on the very edge of my bunk, careful to keep a polite distance from me.

“It’s Tomek, isn’t it?” I was digging my fingernails into my palms until the skin broke. “And Julian told you not to tell me.”

“We still haven’t heard anything.” He paused, considering. “But that’s part of it. He told you ten days, right? Two weeks at the very latest. That’s what he told Julian.”

“Yes.”

“Today was three weeks.”

“I know,” I whispered. Oh God, I knew.

“It could mean anything. It could be anything.” Lew’s voice was soft, patient, reassuring. It was his professional voice, his medic voice, the one he used when he sewed people up and jabbed them with needles. “It doesn’t have to mean—”

“I know,” I snapped.

Lew hesitated.

“Did he—tell you anything? Give you any orders? Just in case.”

I had spent the past three weeks

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