He closed mental fingers around that soul and pressed down on it. It was as if a spark jumped through him, through his veins, and into Aaron. Aaron’s body jerked, his hands spasming, his feet drumming against the metal table.

Call was drenched in sweat, his body shaking. The spark was inside Aaron; he could feel it. He could even see it: Aaron had begun to glow from the inside, as if a lamp had been turned on within him. His mouth opened and he dragged in a long, slow breath.

Terror gripped Call, thinking of how he’d once pushed chaos into another body, thinking of the way that Jennifer Matsui’s eyes had opened and swirled endlessly with chaos.

“Please,” he said to Aaron. “Let it be you. Fight to be you. Please.”

If Aaron came back as one of the Chaos-ridden, Call would never forgive himself.

I shouldn’t have done this, he thought. It was arrogant; it was too risky. After the diary, he’d been so sure he wasn’t like Constantine. And maybe he wasn’t, because even Constantine hadn’t actually experimented on Jericho. Even Constantine had possessed more sense.

Aaron’s chest rose and fell, as though in sleep, but he still didn’t open his eyes.

“Aaron,” Call said, under his breath. “Aaron, please be you.”

Then Aaron moved, hand swiping at nothing, body rolling over. He turned onto his side, pushed himself into a sitting position, and with a shudder opened his eyes.

They weren’t coruscating.

They weren’t anything but a clear and steady green.

“Aaron?” Call felt as though he could barely get his throat to make a sound.

“Call,” Aaron said. He didn’t sound quite like himself — not yet. Maybe it was because his throat hadn’t been used in so long, but there was a weird hollowness in the way he spoke, an odd lack of inflection.

Call didn’t care. Aaron was alive. Whatever was wrong with him now could be fixed. Call threw his arms around his friend, felt the way his skin was growing warmer as his blood moved less sluggishly. He hugged him hard.

Aaron smelled strange, not like dead things or rot, but like ozone, like the air after a lightning strike.

“You’re okay!” Call said, as though by saying the words he was making it so. “You’re okay! You’re alive and okay!”

Aaron’s arm came around his back, patting him on the shoulder. But when Call pulled away, Aaron’s face was blank and tense. He looked around the room without recognition.

“Call,” he said hoarsely. “What have you done?”

IT’S OKAY,” CALL said. He grabbed Aaron’s hands. They were cold, but not cold. Definitely living hands. Call knew you were supposed to rub people’s hands to warm them up, so he set to it.

Aaron looked around. He was moving very slowly, as if all his muscles were stiff. “Where are we?”

“You should just concentrate on getting better,” Call said.

“Better?” Aaron definitely sounded like someone who was waking up after a long time asleep, but that made sense. “When did I get sick?”

Call didn’t know how to answer that. Instead, he said, “Tell me what you remember last.”

“We were in the woods,” Aaron said. Some color was starting to come back to his face. His eyes were still plain green, the way they always had been, no hint of spinning color. And no Chaos-ridden could talk, Call reminded himself. Not like this, in full, normal sentences. “We were looking for Tamara….”

Aaron crinkled up his nose in thought. Call let his hands go, and Aaron flexed his fingers. Normal hands, normally flushed skin, normal pulse in his throat … Call’s heart was banging wildly. He’d done it, he’d brought Aaron back, he’d accomplished the impossible …

“And then Alex turned on us,” Aaron went on. He was frowning more deeply now. “He was the traitor, all the time. He had the Alkahest. He made us kneel down …”

Wait, Call realized. This was about to get bad. “Aaron, it’s all right. You don’t have to —”

But Aaron had begun to shiver. Not small shivers as if he were cold, but shivers that made his whole body flinch. He clutched at the edge of the gurney. “We knelt down,” he said. “There was a blast. You were knocked away from me. I saw the white light of the Alkahest. It filled the sky. Call …” He raised haunted, green eyes. “What happened? Please tell me it wasn’t what I think.”

Call could only shake his head. Aaron was staring at his own hands. They were pale and looked ordinary to Call. But Aaron seemed to recoil from them.

Call realized what Aaron was looking at, then: His nails had grown long and ragged. Nails and hair grow after death, Call remembered. Aaron’s hair was too long, too, curling past his ears.

“Call,” Aaron said. “Was I — was I — ?”

Call cut him off desperately. “There’s no time. We have to get out of here. We have to move before someone finds us. Aaron, please.”

Aaron hesitated — then nodded. The desperation in Call’s voice seemed to have broken through his suspicions. He slid off the metal table, landing on his bare feet.

His legs gave way instantly. He crumpled to the ground and rolled over, groaning. Call leaned over him, as Aaron curled into an agonized ball. His hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat. “My legs — they’re burning —”

A laugh cut through the room. A loud, incredulous, harsh laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Call straightened up. It was Alex, in another one of his black outfits, standing in the doorway. Call’s heart sank.

Aaron pushed himself up onto his hands, kneeling. He’d gone a sort of waxy white color. “Not you,” he said. “You can’t be here. No.”

“I never thought you’d do it.” Alex swaggered into the room. “I never thought you’d have the nerve, Constantine Junior.”

Call flung himself between Aaron and Alex. “Stay away from him — from us,” Call said.

“Sure,” Alex drawled. “I’ll just wander off and pretend you didn’t just raise someone from the dead, which literally no one has ever successfully done before —”

Aaron screamed.

It was an awful noise. Both Call and Alex flinched back as the inhuman howl tore out of Aaron’s throat. He clawed at the ground, shoulders shaking, but there were no tears on his face. He wasn’t crying.

“Aaron!” Call knelt down. “You have to calm down. Please calm down.”

Aaron went limp. “I’m dead,” he whispered. “I died. That’s why everything looks gray and — and awful —”

The doors flew open. Master Joseph burst into the room, followed by Jasper and Tamara. His hand was raised, a core of fire burning in his palm. He’d come in response to Aaron’s scream, but now he went still, staring at Aaron in shock. He suddenly looked much older, his skin too tight, his mouth pinched into a line.

“My God,” he said.

Alex gave a bitter laugh. “Nothing to do with God here.”

“Get him up,” said Master Joseph hoarsely. “Get him on his feet. I need to see he’s alive.”

Call swung around to protect Aaron, but Alex was already there, hauling Aaron into a standing position. Aaron raised his face, looking past Master Joseph, seeing Tamara and Jasper there in the doorway. Jasper’s face was a mask of surprise, but Tamara — Tamara looked as if she’d fallen a long way and knocked all the air out of her body. Like she couldn’t breathe.