Page 56 of Worshiping Faith

The lock clicks into place, loud in the quiet. The sound makes my skin crawl.

He doesn’t deserve to be locked away like an animal.

Not again.

Not from me.

I want to say something.I’m sorry.

It won’t matter.

“I’ll head back, see what else I can find to put in your belly,” I say instead, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Antibiotics are a bitch without food.”

Jinx swallows the pill dry. No flinch, no grimace, like it’s nothing.

His eyes close. For a second, he looks like he might sleep.

Like he’s not even here at all, just a body, limp and beaten by the world.

I want to make it better.

But I can’t.

I turn toward the guard room, my legs moving on autopilot, but the weight of everything presses down on me like a slab of concrete.

Tears burn behind my eyes, hot and stinging.

For Jinx.

For Dax, Zachs, Trip and Wilkes.

For all of us trapped in this fucking nightmare with no way out.

This island is poison. It infects everything, seeps into the bones, rots you from the inside.

As I pass Quince’s cell, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

He’s standing by the bars, watching me. Hands wrapped around the metal, white-knuckled. His forehead presses against the steel, but his eyes are locked on me, sharp, gleaming with something ugly.

Then he speaks.

His voice is like gravel grinding into my skin, a rasp, a taunt, every syllable dragging through my ears like rusted barbed wire.

I freeze.

The words don’t matter.

I feel them before they hit my ears, crawling over my skin like something diseased.

Quince. That piece of shit.

The moment I hear his voice, something inside me fractures.

I can’t hear it anymore.

I won’t.

This fucker, this filth, he was part of it. Part of why this hell exists. Maybe not from the beginning. Maybe not before the outbreak.