“No,” Elijah says firmly. “Children are not allowed to participate in the burial ceremony until they’re eighteen, and then it’s their choice. No one is required or forced to do it.”

“Burial ceremony,” I chuckle to myself. I feel like I’m losing my mind in this place.

“Joss,” Trent begins.

“No, uh-uh. Don’t tell me to shut up again. I listened. I heard their side and you know what I’m taking away from all of this? They bury their dead in their bowels.” I stand abruptly, unable to sit in this room with them anymore. “School is over. I’m done. I’d like to leave now.”

“And where will you go?” Elijah asks, his voice hard. “Who will you look for help from now? Will you try to save your friends in the northern Colony or will you give up and try to forget about them? If that’s your plan, you should be asking yourself who the real monster is in this room.”

I stare at the floor. I stare at the floor and I try to remember to breathe, but I feel trapped. Trapped by the truth, by these walls, by the cage I’ve built for myself with my promises and high hopes for a world we all gave up on years ago. That filthy word that lights the way and draws me like a moth to a flame, to my doom, but I can’t look away and I can’t ignore it. I can’t ignore him.

I look at Ryan to find him already watching me and I feel it swell in my chest—hope. The rest of the men in the room are watching us and I feel the weight of the world on my body, crushing me down into powder on the floor. I could stay there. I could become part of the dust and the earth under their feet to never be bothered again. Never be burdened. Never be expected to be something I’m not.

Or I could finish what I started. I could try. I could become something more than the sum of my broken, fragmented parts, and maybe it will never be perfect or beautiful, but it will be me. And it will be strong, because I don’t know any other way to be.

I swallow hard as I take a reluctant step forward. “What’s the plan?”

Trent slips past me, going to stand next to Andy as though the guy had not just told us that he eats his cousins for Easter dinner.

“We haven’t decided yet how exactly we’re going to go in,” Andy tells us.

“By water?” Ryan suggests.

“It’s too obvious,” Trent disagrees. “They’ll be watching the water for sure. We have to go for something less conspicuous.”

“We can’t go in on the roads,” I tell him. “They have that zombie swarm trapped around their front gates. We’d never get through without being noticed. Or being eaten.”

Trent raises his eyebrows. “You made it through.”

“Barely,” I remind him, holding up my injured arm.

“So if we can’t go in by land or sea…” Ryan says suggestively, looking to Elijah.

He nods. “Underground. We don’t know that area, but if the tunnels aren’t caved in we should be able to make it. We can come in from under the building.”

I scowl at the map they’re all looking at. It means nothing to me. “What are we going to do? Pop up in a toilet?”

“I know I said you were too skinny,” Trent tells me, “but you’re not that skinny.”

“Why is it that it sounded like an insult when you said I was skinny but it still sounds like an insult when you say I’m not?”

“I’m gifted.”

“You’re insulting.”

“I told you, if you want compliments go to Ryan. I’m no good at them.”

“You’re not even trying.”

Trent shrugs. “It’s probably why I’m not good at them.”

“You don’t want to see him try,” Ryan warns me. “It’s unnerving.”

“When have you seen it?” I ask, surprised.

“Market day.”

“A whore, Trent? Really? First of all, gross. Second, you don’t have to flirt with them. You just hand them money.”

Trent shrugs. “I was shopping for a discount. If you don’t haggle you may as well stay home.”

“How will we get in from underground?” Ryan asks Elijah.

“A building like that will have a basement. We’ll find a way in there. We may have to dig our way in, or we may get lucky and find a large drainage tunnel. We won’t know until we get there.”

“Then what? Once we’re in, where do we go from there?”

All eyes shift to me. I hate the spotlight but I sigh deeply and try to remember the layout. “From the utility room in the basement we have to go upstairs. It opens up into a back hallway full of storage and a mass shower room that they use for cleaning the newbies.”

“That’s where they took you when you first got there?” Ryan asks, his voice unusually hushed. Controlled.

“Yeah. I was showered, stripped of my weapons, and given very basic, very thin clothing to wear. They used the threat of the cold and the zombies outside to stop us from running.”

“But you did anyway,” Elijah says. I can’t be sure because I don’t know him, but I think there’s a small amount of respect in his tone.

I avoid his eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Why not?”

“How did you manage to escape?” Andy asks harshly.

Him I have no problem looking at. Glaring at. “What does it matter?”

“However you got out, maybe that’s a way we can get in.”

“It’s not. You can’t reverse engineer what I did to get out.”

“And why not?”

“Because you’re not a necromancer,” Trent tells him coolly.

Andy smirks slightly. He knows I killed to get out. Psycho thinks we’re even now.

“Who’d you kill?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Was it someone who trusted you?”

“No, she never liked me.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Andy sings dryly.

I feel my blood boil. “Why are you asking me this anyway? You know how I got out. You were there in that room when I told Marlow all about it.”

“I heard what you told Marlow, but who knows if that’s the truth. I’m still having a hard time believing Vin willingly handed over that ring to you, or that he had any plans of coming out of that place and going for help. My thinking is, Vin would have gotten out and went home. He would have forgotten about all of you by lunch time.”

“That was my thinking too. And his.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

“I didn’t kill him,” I say emphatically. My palms are sweating. I’m itching to come at him with my fists to explain to his face what he obviously doesn’t understand.

“And we all believe you,” Andy tells me calmly, obviously not believing anything about me.

The feeling is mutual.

“I’ll send a scout team out immediately,” Elijah says, taking control of the room again. “They’ll check the tunnels, see what we can do about getting in through the basement. Once they report back we’ll have a better idea of when we can make our move. Until then, I recommend we all rest. Andy, you need to return to The Hive before sunrise. Joss, Ryan, Trent, we’ll put you up for the night. I don’t think it wise you go above ground.”

“Is that a suggestion,” Ryan asks cautiously, “or a demand?”

“You’re not prisoners here,” Elijah assures him.

“In that case, I’d like to leave,” I say. “I won’t sleep here.”

“Joss, I think he’s right,” Ryan warns.

“No.”

“I’ll walk her there,” Trent offers.

“We should stick together.”

“Then come home,” I beg Ryan. My tone surprises us both.

I can feel my face flushing and my heart racing even though I’m not really sure why. But when Ryan steps forward and takes my hand, I know it’s about him.

“All right. We’ll go home.”

“It’s your choice,” Elijah says reluctantly. He turns to Andy. “Lead them out through the tunnels. Get them past the stadiums.” He eyes us warily. “Will you come back tomorrow night?”

“When?”

“At sunset.”

“We’ll be here,” Ryan promises, stepping forward and offering Elijah the hand that had just held mine.

Elijah shakes it firmly, a small smile on his lips. “Excellent.”

Chapter Five