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“I’m okay,” I said, though with the adrenaline coursing through me I couldn’t feel my body enough to be sure if it was true.

“Let’s get—” Dr. Kapoor began, but she didn’t finish.

“Help me.” Lily’s voice. Lily’s shadow, off to the left.

“Please.” Lily again—but this one was off to the right, this form tall, like it had been seized and stretched by some great hand.

“Help,” she called, her voice garbled with the clamoring of birds, her figure a swarm of shadows approaching from straight ahead—a woman at the center with demented creatures flapping crookedly around her.

And there were more. They were everywhere.

“Get back to the bunker,” Dr. Kapoor said calmly. “Run and don’t look back.”

“You’re not coming?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. But you’re not going to wait for me. Clear?” Dr. Kapoor said in the same even tone she used to instruct me in how to fill a spreadsheet properly.

The Lily to the left lurched forward. The blast of the shotgun made my ears ring. The figure dropped with a wet thud. But there were more shadows, more voices, pleading and whimpering and calling.

“Now,” Dr. Kapoor commanded, and I obeyed.

I ran through the mist, through the trees, following the thread that ran between my heart and Sophie’s. I didn’t need to know the way to the bunker, because I knew the way to her. I’d always known the way back to her, but I hadn’t understood.

I burst from the mist to find Sophie and Liam waiting at the bunker door. The shotgun roared behind me; the mist lit up. Then again. “Where’s my mum?” Liam demanded.

“She said not to wait,” I told him, shaking my head helplessly. He leaned forward, as if to run out after her.

“Sophia,” someone called. Not Lily this time. Some other voice, some other throat—the voice was a stranger’s, but they knew my name. It came from behind us, from up over the hill.

“Sophie, Sophia,” another voice sang.

“We have to go,” Sophie whispered.

“My mum’s still out there,” Liam said.

“We can’t wait,” I said. I had always been good at making people do what I wanted them to, what I needed them to.

Liam nodded. He stepped inside the bunker.

The echoes were coming. I looked again toward the trees, in the direction of the shotgun blasts. Rocks skittered down from the hill up above.

I tore myself away, plunged back into the mouth of the bunker, and slammed the door shut behind me. On the inside, the door was the more familiar steel, and I threw the lock, fighting with the rusted mechanism. Bodies slammed against the outside, gibbering and cackling.

Distantly, a muffled shotgun blast rang out.

Liam slid down into a crouch, fingers digging into his scalp. I knelt next to him, but I wasn’t sure what I should do. Touch him? Tell him it was okay? I’d never really been close enough to someone to offer comfort. I didn’t know how it was supposed to go.

“A few hours ago I thought she was the enemy,” he said. “Now she’s gone before I—”

“She’s not gone,” I said fiercely. “You’ll see.”

“I thought you were done lying to me,” he said. I flinched away, the hand I had raised, almost touching him, curling against my belly instead. And then, aware of the process in a way I had rarely been before, I felt myself step away from what I felt—notfear or distress this time, but what I felt for Liam. Because it was too strange and too immense. Because I didn’t know what to do with caring for someone so intensely and suddenly, and I couldn’t help his pain if I was lost in it with him.

Sophie took in a sharp breath, but she caught my eye. She could carry that awhile for me.

“Listen,” I said, without the weight of grief to dull the words. “If anyone can survive out there, it’s your mom. And she’s got the guns. She’ll make it, and she’ll find a way out. She’s done it before. But we can’t let worrying slow us down. Do you understand?”

He looked at me with hatred in his eyes. But the part of me that cared was safely guarded, safely tucked away in Sophie’s heart. And then the hatred softened back into sorrow as he cast away his misplaced anger. I took his hand and helped him to his feet, and if he didn’t quite meet my eyes, he at least wasn’t glaring poison at me anymore.