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"Down there," Rebecca said, pointing toward the north end of the hall "The next to the last room on the left"

With a sudden rush of hope, Laura ran to the indicated room Three beds were e la the wall

"Ruth? Thelirl on the bed slowly rose-one of the Ackersons, unharray dress; her hair was in disarray; her face was puffy, her eyes moist with tears She took a step toward Laura but stopped as if the effort of walking was too great

Laura rushed to her, hugged her

With her head on Laura’s shoulder, face against Laura’s neck, she spoke at last in a tortured voice "Oh, I wish it’d been me, Shane If it had to be one of us, why couldn’t it have been irl spoke, Laura had assu to accept that horror, Laura said, "Where’s Ruthie?"

"Gone Ruthie’s gone I thought you knew,deep within her had torn Her grief was so powerful that it precluded tears; she was stunned, nuht faded coward night They e

A couple of kids appeared at the door They evidently shared the roo at the floor, Thel, such a horrible shriekingand all this light so bright it hurt my eves And then I realized the roo like a torch Thrashing in her bed, blazing and shrieking "

Laura put an arm around her and waited

" The fire leaped off Tammy-whoosh up the wall, her bed was on fire, and fire was spreading across the floor, the rug was burning "

Laura re with them on Christradually finding inner peace Noas obvious that the peace she’d found had been based on the determination to end her torment

"Tammy’s bed was nearest the door, the door was on fire, so I broke theover , there was s in your old bed, she caet out, and the smoke was sucked out of the , so the roo to throw her own blanket over Taht f-fire, too, and I saw RuthRuthRuth on fire"

Outside, the last purple light melted into darkness

The shadows in the corners of the rooer

" and I would’ve gone to her, I would’ve gone, but just then the f-fire exploded, it was everywhere in the room, and the smoke was black and so thick, and I couldn’t see Ruth anythen I heard sirens, loud and close, sirens, so I tried to tell et there in time to help Ruth, which was a 1-1-lie, a lie I told myself and wanted to believe, andI left her there, Shane Oh, God, I went out theand left Ruthie on f-f-fire, burning "

"You couldn’t do anything else," Laura assured her

"I left Ruthie burning"

"There was nothing you could do"

"I left Ruthie"

"There was no point in you dying too"

"I left Ruthie burning"

In May, after her thirteenth birthday, Thelned to a rooe fro to therapy Maybe she would find the succor she needed in her friendship with Laura

ForThelued by dreams, and by day she stewed in self-recrih her wounds never entirely closed Her sense of huradually returned, and her wit became as sharp as ever, but there was a new melancholy in her

They shared a room at Caswell Hall for five years, until they left the custody of the state and embarked on lives under no one’s control but their own They shared ain but never the same as it had been before the fire

In the ate through which one could step into other ages It was a huge, barrel-shaped device, twelve feet long and eight feet in diahly polished steel on the outside, lined with polished copper on the inside It rested on copper blocks that held it eighteen inches off the floor Thick electrical cables trailed froe currents made the air shih ti inside that enor Stefan in far times and places, and at last he had learned why the traitor was obsessed with reshaping the life of Laura Shane He hurried to the ate and stepped down onto the lab floor, where two scientists and three of his ownto do with the bastard’s plots against the govern to do with his attempts to destroy the time-travel project," Kokoschka said "She’s an entirely separate matter, just a personal crusade of his"

"So noe know everything he’s done and why," said one of the scientists, "and you can eli the roo board "Now that we’ve uncovered all the traitor’s secrets, we can kill hi to reset the gate to deliver him to yet another time, where he could surprise the traitor, Kokoschka decided to kill Laura, too It would be an easy job so he could handle by himself, for he would have the element of surprise on his side; he preferred to work alone, anyhenever possible; he disliked sharing the pleasure Laura Shane was no danger to the government or to its plans to reshape the future of the world, but he would kill her first and in front of Stefan,a bullet in it Besides, Kokoschka liked to kill