After dragging us through a long labyrinth of tunnels, some I’m pretty sure we doubled back on to confuse us, Andy brings us above ground just outside the stadiums. He did what Elijah told him to do, he got us past them, but he didn’t give us much of a buffer. I don’t really care. The farther he is from my home, the better. I don’t need this guy or anyone from the cannibals or The Hive knowing where I live. Trent and Ryan knowing is enough. Probably more than.

“Well, good luck,” Andy tells us, already moving to leave us behind.

Then he stops mid-step, listening. It only takes a second before I hear what stopped him. The shuffling. The groaning.

Ryan and I wordlessly whip around to face the crowd moving in behind us. Happy to have my ASP back (I made a point of getting it from the same guy who took it), I whip it out to its full, deadly length. They’re coming from up the street, emerging from the shadows by degrees. Writhing black rising from nothing.

“How many?” I ask Trent and his eerie eyes.

“No more than seven.”

I nod confidently. “We can handle this.”

“Are you leaving or staying?” Trent asks Andy.

He looks down the street, maybe to confirm Trent’s count or to buy time, but for what I don’t know. It’s an easy question.

“I can’t be seen with you,” he says tightly.

“Then go.”

“I never run from a fight.”

“We don’t need you,” I tell him sharply.

I flex my hand on my weak arm. It hurts less than it did before. I’m starting to wonder if I can use it.

“I should go.”

“Then go!” I snap, casting an angry glance over my shoulder.

My eyes meet his and I can see the frustration in them. If he leaves I’ll count him a coward even though I understand why he can’t stay. He’s right—he can’t be seen working with us. Especially since Marlow has it out for us right now. I still judge him when he turns to go, though.

“You should lay off him,” Ryan tells me.

“Are you serious?”

“We need to work with him.”

“It doesn’t mean I have to like him.”

The first of the zombies is on us. Ryan steps up. I see a flash in the moonlight across his knuckles, lightning quick. The zombie goes down.

Ryan has his Death Punch on.

“You don’t have to hate him every second either,” he says, shaking his hand out.

I lash out with my ASP, swinging wide and connecting with the skull of what looks like a woman. She drops to the ground but continues to moan: I didn’t hit her hard enough.

“I’m not,” I grunt out as I smash down on the woman’s head, “good—at hiding—my feelings!”

Ryan smoothly sidesteps a zombie before driving home his spiked fist into the base of its skull. I’m green with envy when it drops instantly. I’m sweating from killing one and he’s managed two with barely any effort. I love my ASP, but I’m wondering if I don’t maybe need a Death Punch too.

“She doesn’t like him because he’s a liar,” Trent says. His voice is coming from the dark farther down the street. I see a blur of movement, a flash of metal, hear a distinct thump. I don’t know when he moved into the thick of the fight, but he’s thinning it quickly. “She doesn’t trust him.”

“Okay, I get that,” Ryan agrees. “But she should take it easy. We don’t know who he’s lying to.”

“That’s my point!” I cry. “Is he a spy for the cannibals or The Hive? Or both? Is he playing everybody? I don’t like liars.”

“It’s because you’re not good at doing it,” Trent says.

He’s emerging from the darkness where the zombies had been hiding, only he’s alone. I glance around anxiously, looking for the rest of the Risen, but there are none. When I do the math, I’m a little nervous.

“Did you just take down four by yourself in the time it took me to finish one?” I ask him incredulously.

His shadow shrugs at me. “You’re injured.”

“I’m almost healed.”

“You were talking. You were distracted.”

“Stop making excuses for me. You’re a killing machine, you freak.”

“This is why he can’t fight in the Arena anymore,” Ryan says.

“He’s not allowed to?”

“It’s not financially beneficial to Marlow, so no,” Trent explains. “I’m not invited to.”

“Why? Because you’re too crazy good?”

“Too efficient,” Ryan corrects. “The fight’s over before it starts. People go there to see a show. Trent doesn’t give it to them.”

Trent comes to stand in front of us. Whatever weapon he used is stowed now. Maybe it was just his fists, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised.

“They tell me to kill zombies, I kill zombies. I don’t know how else to do it.”

“People want to be afraid you’ll die.”

“I’m not going to die.”

“Someday,” I tell him. “We all will someday.”

Trent grins down at me. “Sometimes I forget.”

“We should get moving,” Ryan reminds us.

We make our way through the dark streets that are growing lighter every minute. Even though it hasn’t been the longest night of my life, not by far, it has been one of the strangest. The closer we get to my building, the more anxious I am to get inside. I want to lie down on my bed and fall asleep in the familiar smells, sounds, and feels of my own home. I try to figure out how long it’s been since I slept there, but the best I can remember is that it’s been days. Too many days with too much time spent surrounded by people I can’t stand. In the last month I’ve been exposed to almost the entire wild, to every person I spent the last six years hiding from and a few I didn’t even know about, and my little reclusive heart can’t take it. Ryan promised we’d go back to the cannibals’ tomorrow night and I know we have to, but a big part of me wants to tell them to suck it. We’ll find another way. Only there is no other way and I know that.

When my building looms gray in the distance against the lightening sky, I run to it. I can’t help it. Without a word I break into a sprint, leaving the boys behind. They’ll be fine. They don’t need me. No one ever has.

I’m surprised when I hear their footsteps pounding close behind me.

We burst through the doors, up the stairs, and they’re on my heels now. I can both hear them and feel them. Ryan laughs loudly, his voice bouncing around the walls and against my face until I’m smiling as I run, breathless and crazy, bounding up the stairs two at a time. I hear them scuffle behind me. They’re fighting. Racing. And I’m winning.

When I stumble through the door to my loft, panting for breath and nearly giggling, I don’t know myself anymore. I don’t know this girl with the breathy laugh and the Lost Boys behind her. I don’t know her at all, but I think I like her.

“Trent, you can—”

“I’m sleeping on the roof,” he interrupts. He’s barely out of breath. Robot freak! “Do you have a spare blanket?”

I point to my pile of cloth on the floor, the one I pretend is a bed. Since sleeping on a real mattress, I’m a little ashamed of the lie I tell myself every night. I wonder if I’m spoiled now. Maybe I’m the princess Taylor accused me of being, but if I am it’s his fault. Real mattresses with real clean sheets? It’s just mean.

“So no,” Trent says. “That’s fine. I’ll be all right. Goodnight.”

“Wait, you can take one! I have a couple sleeping bags!” I call after him.

He’s already heading toward the roof hatch.

I turn to Ryan for help. “He doesn’t have to sleep up there.”

“He likes it.”

“No.”

“I do,” Trent’s disembodied voice calls from the hatch.

It snaps sharply shut behind him.

“He does it all the time in the Hyperion,” Ryan explains. “He seriously does like it. He doesn’t like walls. He gets cagey. He also doesn’t get cold much, so don’t sweat the blanket for him—but I’ll take one.”

“You get cold easily?”

“I’m a dainty flower. Also, it’s drafty by the door.”

I watch him walk to my ‘bed’ and pick up a thin, threadbare blanket. It’s yellow. I don’t know why that makes it sadder to me, but it does.