I can’t let this one die.
Pain shatters through my fist, but I can hardly feel it. I’m breathing like my lungs are failing. My head is pounding, my hearing muted. My fingers shake as I rip the mask off the guy, revealing a pale, bloodied face. Freshly broken nose. Dark eyes. Dark hair. Roughly my age. I experience a tepid moment of relief.
I’ve never seen him before in my life.
And then I flip open my bloody knife and drive the blade into his shoulder, twisting it as he screams.
“Rosabelle,” I call out, my chest heaving. I’m afraid to look away from this guy. I can’t let him kill himself. I need to take one of these monsters in for questioning. “Rosabelle, where are you?”
“I’m here,” she says, her voice faint.
“Are you shot?” I ask.
She takes too long to answer.
“Fuck,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “Can you come over here so I can help you? I’m sorry—I’m so sorry to make you walk, but I can’t leave him alone—”
The guy groans, the guttural sound coming from his throat, and I twist the knife a little deeper. An agonized sound rips from his chest.
“Where’s the vial, asshole?” I ask. I don’t even recognize the sound of my voice. I pat down his pockets with my free hand, searching him blindly. “Where are the rest of your friends, you piece of shit?”
He makes a sound—a choked gasp—and I realize he’s trying to speak.
I ease my knee off his chest, releasing some of the pressure, and look into his eyes.
“Where’s the vial?” I bark at him.
“You,” he gasps.
“Excuse me?”
He struggles to swallow. His voice is hoarse. “I was hoping I’d see you again.”
My shoulders tighten. A feeling of unease moves up my spine. “Who the hell are you?”
Kenji charges into view at that exact moment, then skids to a stop in front of us, looking more like himself. “Warner’s on his way—”
“Where is he? Is he okay?”
“James.”
I turn at the desperate sound of Rosabelle’s voice. She’s managed to drag herself over, but she’s trembling; unable to straighten one leg. Only now do I see the extent of the blood running down her body. It’s in her hair. Dripping down her face. Splattered across her hands.
She’s clutching the vial in one fist.
And she’s staring, immobilized, at the man I’ve got pinned to the ground with my knife. The recognition in her eyes is unmistakable. But it’s the complete and shattering horror on her face that sends serrated blades of fear through my body.
“What is it?” I say, looking between them. “Rosabelle, who is this guy?”
“Sebastian,” she whispers.
I go rigid with disbelief, assaulted by a flash of memory: his name on a wedding invitation.
Thiswas the guy she was going to marry? The guy responsible for the blood painted down her body? The guy she’s staring at with a look of pure, abject terror?
What the fuck did they do to her on that island?
I’m remembering the hundreds of identical bruises wefound all over her when she first got here. I’m remembering Rosabelle on her knees in front of that shitty cottage on the Ark, a man with dark hair looming over her. I’m remembering the way she spit in his face. The way he cracked a rifle into her eye.
