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Ezra speaks first, breaking the deathly silence. “What’s so funny?”

I push myself to my feet and wipe the mud off my ass, keeping my gaze down until the last possible second. I finally peer up at him, avoiding Nigel’s death glare, wondering if Ezra really knows the kind of monster he’s aligned himself with. “You believing you’re going to win over Micah is comical to me.”

“Stop talking, or I’ll gag you,” Ezra spits.

A smile hits my lips at how seasoned I’ve become at being gagged and tortured. His threats don’t scare me, and I shall embrace death if it comes to that.

Ezra reaches to pick me up, but I slap his hands away. “Save your energy since I’m so heavy for you to carry,” I snap at him. “I can walk by myself.” Ezra hesitates and twists toward Nigel as if needing permission. I merely roll my eyes and stomp ahead before he can stop me. It wasn’t that long ago when Ezra was one of our esteemed leaders on this island, and his deference to Nigel now is unsettling. “I won’t run away. I promise.” The words float over my shoulder. As if I have enough strength to run away from them, as if my body isn’t giving out. I can sense the heat in my hand spreading to my wrist. I have a headache, and the chills of a fever are starting to spread over every limb and muscle of my body.

Ezra forges ahead, and I raise my brows at him as we make eye contact, his face unreadable. Nigel strategically positions himself at my back, and Ezra visibly exhales, grateful to be free from the weight of carrying me. I follow Ezra through the wet snow and into the darkening night. We walk for at least an hour, away from the safety of the thick trees. We continue past the death holes with melted patches of snow, rock gleaming underneath it, and toward the one place on this island that truly makes me squirm.

The place where thirty-two of our fallen classmates were put to rest above ground and where their corpses are still frozen in time. The place that started it all.

Every one of those tortured souls still haunts these charred trees—it’s in my bones, in the fibers of the air. Sometimes, I can still hear them scream, and it chills my soul.

Breathing in this place is difficult.

We arrive at the airplane site right as the darkest part of the night descends upon us. Hopefully, this is the first place Micah will look when he finds me missing. Unless he’s dead already. Because that is the only reason I will accept for him not coming back when he said he would.

Distracted or otherwise.

As we approach the break in the trees where the plane’s wings seem to have been swallowed by branches and debris, the eerie whispers of my classmates who didn’t survive start to fill the site. The pungent smell of acid fills the air, a haunting reminder of the nearby corpses that have yet to be cleared away.

The whispers are so clear that I wonder if the others hear it, too. The sound binds my feet to the ground and has me searching the woods to keep the corpses in my line of sight as if to convince myself I’m not imagining it.

Nigel kicks me forward. “What on earth are you staring at? Keep moving. Micah’s not going to save you right now, London. He isn’t hiding in those woods, I assure you.”

I groan as I stumble toward the plane, and Ezra turns around to see what the commotion is about.

Perhaps it’s because my condition is worsening by the second, but I’m only moving right now out of pure desperation and with the hope that I can rest my head on a seat when we get there—if Nigel even allows me that level of comfort. I’m not so sure what their endgame is with me.

Ezra opens the back door first, and Nigel nudges me inside. I immediately crawl to my regular spot and curl up in the seat, leaning my head down, hoping they are just as tired as I am and will leave me alone.

That seems to be the case as Ezra takes a seat nearby, one that wasn’t destroyed in the fire or torn apart by the crash but across from where I sit so he can watch me.

Nigel, however, hovers over me as some of his argyle shirt pokes out from under his hoodie. His eyes look tired and tight, and they flicker as he tilts his head. “How much food do you and Micah have left?”

My eyes narrow into slits. “I’m not telling you that.” Food. Of course, that’s what this is about; they probably don’t have much left. They found me, another food source for them.

A new lifeline.

“Oh, you will tell us, London. Eventually, you will tell me everything I want to know. You might feel like, somehow, you’re in control of this situation, but you’re not. You’re ours now, sweetheart. So if you want to eat, you need to tell us where you’ve been hiding and where your food is.”

I fold my arms, refusing to engage. A simmering pit of fire is steadily forming in my stomach, spreading over my skin. I’m always hungry; I can’t manage the hunger the way Micah can.

It makes me deranged.

Nigel’s barely hanging on by a thread. I can tell by his eyes and the subtle dragging of his feet. He barely survived winter; I’m surprised he even survived himself.

To my extreme relief, he turns and finds a place to settle in for the night. “Don’t think about running away while I’m asleep because I will follow you and kill you,” he says flippantly.

I blow out a breath when he stumbles to the front of the plane to take a cushy seat. Even he’s too tired to torment me right now, and Ezra’s already snoring somewhere beside me.

It’s only a matter of time before Nigel does decide to hurt me, though, and by then, I truly might be fucked.

Two sunsets have now passed since Micah left me, and I’m numb about it.

“You’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’ll only be gone for a few hours. I’ll be back before dusk. Try to sleep.”