Chapter 3

I waited three days.

I ate meals, made my bed, chatted with Marcus Kieller, and thanked Diane for the soup.

Between Jake and me, there was nothing but a shared look — no words.

Seven survivors. One confirmed insider. As for the other four, Jake and I couldn't risk assuming there wasn't a second pair of eyes among them.

On the third night, the lights went out, and everyone lay down to sleep.

A faint blue glow bled out from the direction of the incubation unit.

A hand closed around my arm.

Jake pulled me over to it. His hands were shaking, his palms slick with cold sweat.

"I got the access panel open."

His voice came out like it was being forced through his teeth.

"What did you see?"

"See for yourself." He dragged over the broken stepladder.

I climbed up and reached for the metal panel he'd pried loose from the ceiling.

My fingertips brushed a wire.

"There's something here."

I rubbed the insulation between my fingers. "New. No dust on it."

I reached further in and found a second wire, then a third.

They branched out in every direction, dense and taut, every one of them pulled tight.

"There's more than one — they're everywhere."

Jake handed the flashlight up to me.

I stuck my head into the access opening.

The wire channel in the crawlspace was packed with fresh cable.

Every strand ran into a small square junction box.

Each one was tucked into the gap, aimed downward through an unremarkable little hole.

Pinhole cameras. Every single one.

Stamped into the plastic casing of every junction box was the same mark — a snake, coiled into a ring, biting its own tail. Identical to the mark on the cardboard boxes.

My grip on the flashlight tightened until my knuckles creaked against the barrel.

The boxes belonged to it. The water belonged to it. The cameras belonged to it.

We'd been under its watch the entire time. I moved from hole to hole.

"The kitchen. The bunks. The hallway. The dinner table. That corner where we argued—"

My voice caught.

The flashlight beam had landed on one particular hole.

It was aimed straight at the corner where we'd huddled together for warmth three years ago.

Gerald had cried there for his wife.

Marcus had stuffed a dead coworker into a sack there.

I pointed the flashlight down.

Jake stood at the foot of the ladder, the incubation unit's dim ultraviolet glow washing his face a sickly gray-blue.

"Every single place we thought no one could see."

It felt like a hammer had come down on my skull.

The three years we thought we'd spent surviving the end of the world — what had they actually been, to whoever was watching? A stream of data. Entertainment. A show.

I climbed down, my foot missing a rung.

My knee cracked against the floor. I didn't feel a thing.

Jake stood beside me, his face gray-blue in the ultraviolet light, his lips trembling.

"What do we do?"

"That door." I stared at the concrete wall at the end of the hallway. "It's been sealed for three years."

Jake followed my gaze, and the gray-blue in his face deepened another shade.

"You want to break it open? What if it's still a hundred and twenty-two degrees out there—"

"Whatever's out there, I don't care."

I shoved the flashlight back into his hands. "It's better than three years of squatting in a cage while someone watches."

His lips moved, but nothing came out.

I turned and walked toward the tool bench.

Marcus's sledgehammer sat on the iron anvil, its handle polished smooth from use.

I gripped the handle and hefted it. The cold of the iron ran up through my palm and collided with the heat building in my skull.

I walked toward the door.

This was the bunker's only way out.

Three years ago, we'd sealed it shut with concrete and rubble, nearly two feet thick.

I pressed my hand against it. It was hot to the touch.

Three years, and this wall was still an oven that had never been switched off — the heat outside had been baking through it the whole time.

Back then, it had been for survival, out of fear that the heat outside would pour in.

Now, I didn't know what I was afraid of anymore. I only knew I'd been afraid for three years, and that was enough.

Footsteps sounded behind me.

Jake hurried after me in short, quick steps.

Then came a heavier tread of footsteps.

"Have you lost your mind!" Diane sprang up from her bunk, hair loose, bare feet hitting the concrete floor.

She threw a hand up in the air, and her sleeve slid down her forearm.

On the inside of her wrist was a branded snake.

Coiled into a ring, biting its own tail. Identical to the mark on the boxes.

"That door cannot be opened!"

"Why not?" I didn't turn around.

She had no answer. The look on her face was one I'd never seen there before. Not worry. Fear. The kind of fear that only shows up when someone's reaching to flip over your last card.

Marcus rushed forward and grabbed my right wrist.

"Let go."

"Listen to me—" His grip tightened. "Out there might not be what you think it is."

"Then tell me what it is."

He said nothing.

The two technicians ran to the door.

"It's a hundred and twenty-two degrees out there! Break through that concrete, and we all die!"

"We sealed this door together — do you want to kill everyone?"

These two were genuinely terrified. Their voices cracked, their faces flushed red.

Same as the rest of us, they hadn't had a drop of clean water in three years. They'd been drinking Diane's sludge right alongside us.

Gerald didn't shout. He stood by his bunk, arms limp at his sides, eyes fixed on me.

His lips trembled for a long moment before he spoke, barely above a whisper. "Denielle... my wife already died out there. Are you going to make me die out there too?"

His eyes had gone red-rimmed.

With my free hand, I pried Marcus's fingers off my wrist, one at a time. His knuckles cracked.

He froze for an instant.

That instant was enough.

The hammer swung down.

First strike — the concrete surface burst into a web of cracks, chips of rubble stinging my face.

Second strike — the cracks split into a hole, and the hammer sank in.

When I pulled it back out, the concrete groaned in the gash like bone grinding under pressure.

Third strike — a slab the size of a palm broke free in one piece.

The door split open.

A beam of light cut through the gap.

White. Blinding. It seized my pupils and shrank them tight.

Light I hadn't seen in three years. Not the murky yellow light of superheated, warped air. This was clean. Crisp. Like an autumn afternoon.

The light poured in, washing over my chest, over Jake's face, over Diane's bloodless lips.

Every face in that room lit up at once.