“I’m fine,” I lie. “You?”

“I’ll be all right.”

I pull back to try to look at him. His voice is getting clearer, but also rougher. I can hear him better now and what I hear is pain.

“What did he do to you?”

Vin clears his throat. “He got ahold of me. Nearly choked me out. That boy was strong.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? I’m counting myself lucky he didn’t take a bite out of me.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“What the hell are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. I never should have let him get his hands on you.”

Vin chuckles, his voice sounding strained. “I was thinking the same thing about you, Kitten. Don’t be sorry, you did plenty. How did you manage to take him down?”

“I cut his Achilles heel.”

“Damn,” he coughs.

“Yeah.”

“Wait, he and I were wrestling blind. How did you know you weren’t cutting my leg?”

I step away from him slowly.

He grabs my hand. “Kitten.”

“I was pretty sure I had his leg,” I admit.

“Pretty sure?”

I shake my hand free of his grasp. “Are you still standing? Did I cut your leg?”

“No. But—”

“Then calm down! We have to get out of here. He’s not the only wolf in these woods.”

I hear Vin’s feet splashing away from me in the water.

“Where are you going?” I cry, anxious and annoyed that he’s leaving me behind.

“I’m looking for the torch he had.”

“He tossed it in the water. It’s useless.”

“I doubt it.” I can hear him sloshing around, his hands probably dragging through the water. “These tunnels are full of moisture. They have to be burning something that can stand up to that.”

“What are you going to light it with if you find it?”

“I just found it. And we’re going to use whatever he has on him.”

“I’m not searching him,” I say immediately. “What if he isn’t dead?”

Vin chuckles again. “Oh, he’s dead. Here’s your ASP back, by the way. You might want to clean it while it’s still dark.”

I reach out, my fingers immediately connecting with his arm. I trace it down to my ASP which I snap out to length and swish around in the water at my feet.

“I’m not going anywhere near him.”

“One of us has to.”

“Be my guest,” I mutter, stowing my weapon.

“I just did all the work,” he snaps at me.

“Did you? Really? All of it?”

“Search him.”

“I have flint,” I snap back, reaching into my back pocket.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. Who goes anywhere these days without it?”

“It’s everywhere you want to be,” Vin grumbles, pulling the flint from my hand.

“What?”

“Nothing. Before your time.”

“You’re not that much older than I am.”

The flint sparks, the torch instantly catching fire in a sputtering blaze between us. The light ignites Vin’s face, casting shadows over his skin, under his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. He looks it then—older than me. His skin has seen more sun, his mouth has formed more frowns. But it’s his eyes that show it the most. They’re hard like glass.

It makes me wonder what mine look like.

“I’ve got ten years and a lot of lives on you,” Vin tells me quietly, his voice still gruff from his fight with Bryan. “Even if we were the same age, I’d still be older than you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

He smiles wryly. “Just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. Now come on. I want to get out of these tunnels.”

I follow closely behind him as he takes us back the way Bryan came. I hope it’s the way out. For all we know it could be leading us deeper inside this underground maze, maybe guiding us into Bryan’s secret lair where he kept snacks locked up just in case. I’m worried every time we round a bend that we’ll run smack into another cannibal or a cave of horrors, but I’m equally anxious to run into Ryan. I know he told me to run to Crenshaw, to leave him behind, but I don’t know if I can. He has to be down here. I refuse to believe he was taken by Marlow’s men. The explosion went off, he and Andy got the job done. But did they do it in time or was it a last resort—an effort made to save the rest of us that cost them both their lives?

It’s exactly the kind of self-sacrificial, heroic bullshit Ryan would pull.

“We’re out,” Vin says.

Up ahead there’s light shining down from a manhole. It’s faint—just a few pinpoints coming through the holes in the steel disc—but it means the outside world.

“Hopefully we can open it.”

Vin nods in the growing light. “They seal some of them.”

“It’s to keep people like you out.”

“You mean people like us.”

“No, I mean you,” I correct him. “People like you and everyone in The Hive.”

“Sounding kind of judgmental there, Kitten. You got something you want to say?”

“Babies.”

Vin stops, taking my arm to stop me as well. When I meet his stare, it’s angry but controlled. “Do you know what it’s like for a kid to grow up in The Hive? Any clue?”

“No. But I know what it’s like to grow up without a mom,” I reply hotly.

He releases my arm, his face disgusted. “Oh boo hoo. We all know what that’s like. Trust me, it’s better to grow up without a mom in a Colony than it is to grow up with one in The Hive. If it’s a girl, she’ll end up right where her mom is. If it’s a boy, he’ll probably end up dead by the time he’s nine and either one of them could end up hooked on Honey, tweekin’ and itching for a fix all day every day. It’s an ugly place to live if you don’t know how to do it right so, yeah, I think those kids are better off getting out.”

“But no one is given a choice. You can’t take that from people like you own them.”

“Marlow does own them,” he replies coldly. “Or he did. Whoever takes his place will own them now and they like it that way. You know what comes with being given choices? You make bad ones. You make ones that get you killed. A lot of people can’t handle that pressure anymore. The stakes are too high. It used to be you made a bad choice and you ended up driving a Honda for six years wondering why you didn’t grow a pair and go for the Camaro. Screw the gas mileage, it made you feel alive! But now making bad choices gets you killed or worse—it could get your kid killed right in front of your eyes. People can’t handle that. They gladly hand over their rights and their choices so nothing is ever their fault.” He laughs harshly before it turns into a cough. “I wish you could be in the room when those babies are taken from their mothers.”

“I’d rather not,” I mumble, feeling sick.

“No, if you’re going to judge it you need to see it. Those women, they cry and they moan for a day or two but then they never talk about it again.”

“Maybe it’s too painful. Maybe they know it wouldn’t do any good.”

Vin nods grimly in agreement. “Because they know how to survive. Hold the torch. I’m going up to see if I can open this thing and get us out of here.”

I take the torch silently. Vin climbs the metal ladder to the top before pressing his neck and shoulder up into it. I hear him grunt, curse, then grunt again.

“Are any of them yours?” I blurt out.

I expect him to ignore me. Maybe even yell at me. He surprises me when he laughs.

“No,” he replies, taking a step down to look at me. “I can guarantee you that none of them are mine.”

“How can you know for sure?”

“Because I don’t dip my pen in the company ink.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not dumb. Look, can we talk about my sex life another time? I need help with this.”

“How am I supposed to help you?”

“Climb up here with me and help push.”

I look around for a dry spot on the ground. Of course, there is none. “What about the torch?”

“Drop it. We don’t need it.”

I don’t like the idea of going into the dark again, but he’s right—if we can get out through this hole, we don’t need the torch anymore. I take hold of the ladder before dropping our only light source. We’re instantly plunged into darkness and even the light from the holes in the cover seems faint for a minute. When I climb up the ladder I’m careful not to take hold of anything but steel. I don’t want to go grabbing anything and give Vin the wrong idea.