“No,” I finally managed to choke out. “No. That’s not right. You shouldn’t fight with each other. You all belong here. You belong together. Not fighting, not because of me.”
I pulled Jamie’s arms from around my waist, holding his wrists when he tried to stop me.
“I just need a minute to myself,” I told him, ignoring all the stares I could feel on my face. “I need to be alone.” I turned my head to find Jeb. “And you should have a chance to discuss this without me listening. It’s not fair—having to discuss strategy in front of the enemy.”
“Now, don’t be like that,” Jeb said.
“Let me have some time to think, Jeb.”
I stepped away from Jamie, dropping his hands. A hand fell on my shoulder, and I cringed.
It was just Ian. “It’s not a good idea for you to be wandering around by yourself.”
I leaned toward him and tried to pitch my voice so low that Jamie wouldn’t hear me clearly. “Why prolong the inevitable? Will it get easier or harder for him?”
I thought I knew the answer to my last question. I ducked under Ian’s hand and broke into a run, sprinting for the exit.
“Wanda!” Jamie called after me.
Someone quickly shushed him. There were no footsteps behind me. They must have seen the wisdom of letting me go.
The hall was dark and deserted. If I was lucky, I’d be able to cut around the edge of the big garden plaza in the dark with no one the wiser.
In all my time here, the one thing I’d never found was the way out. It seemed as if I’d been down every tunnel time and again, and I’d never seen an opening I hadn’t eventually explored in search of one thing or another. I thought about it now as I crept through the deepest shadowed corners of the big cave. Where could the exit be? And I thought about this: if I could figure that puzzle out, would I be able to leave?
I couldn’t think of anything worth leaving for—certainly not the desert waiting outside, but also not the Seeker, not the Healer, not my Comforter, not my life before, which had left such a shallow impression on me. Everything that really mattered was with me here. Jamie. Though he would kill me, Jared. I couldn’t imagine walking away from either of them.
And Jeb. Ian. I had friends now. Doc, Trudy, Lily, Wes, Walter, Heath. Strange humans who could overlook what I was and see something they didn’t have to kill. Maybe it was just curiosity, but regardless of that, they were willing to side with me against the rest of their tight-knit family of survivors. I shook my head in wonder as I traced the rough rock with my hands.
I could hear others in the cavern, on the far side from me. I didn’t pause; they could not see me here, and I’d just found the crevice I was looking for.
After all, there was really only one place for me to go. Even if I could somehow have guessed the way to escape, I would still have gone this way. I crept into the blackest darkness imaginable and hurried along my way.
CHAPTER 27
Undecided
I felt my way back to my prison hole.
It had been weeks and weeks since I’d been down this particular corridor; I hadn’t been back since the morning after Jared had left and Jeb had set me free. It seemed to me that while I lived and Jared was in the caves, this must be where I belonged.
There was no dim light to greet me now. I was fairly sure I was in the last leg—the turns and twists were still vaguely familiar. I let my left hand drag against the wall as low as I could reach, feeling for the opening as I crept forward. I wasn’t decided on crawling back inside the cramped hole, but at least it would give me a reference point, letting me know that I was where I meant to be.
As it happened, I didn’t have the option of inhabiting my cell again.
In the same moment that my fingers brushed the rough edge at the top of the hole, my foot hit an obstacle and I stumbled, falling to my knees. I threw my hands out to catch myself, and they landed with a crunch and a crackle, breaking through something that wasn’t rock and didn’t belong here.
The sound startled me; the unexpected object frightened me. Perhaps I’d made a wrong turn and wasn’t anywhere near my hole. Perhaps I was in someone’s living space. I ran through the memory of my recent journey in my head, wondering how I could have gotten so turned about. Meanwhile, I listened for some reaction to my crashing fall, holding absolutely still in the darkness.
There was nothing—no reaction, no sound. It was only dark and stuffy and humid, as it always was, and so silent that I knew I must be alone.
Carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible, I took stock of my surroundings.
My hands were stuck in something. I pulled them free, tracing the contours of what felt like a cardboard box—a cardboard box with a sheet of thin, crackly plastic on top that my hands had fallen through. I felt around inside the box and found a layer of more crackly plastic—small rectangles that made a lot of noise when I handled them. I retreated quickly, afraid of drawing attention to myself.