It’s his fault we were kept away in that cell for so long. Not mine! Is that why Breakfast Lady was so friendly? Did they all know he was really on their side? Was that the plan the entire time? Gain my trust? Use me?

But why?! My eyes sting, dwelling on pointless questions. Stupid. I’m so stupid.

“What’s on your mind?” Julius asks. He wasn’t around when I took the potion. No one was.

“Nothing.”

“So you don’t wanna talk about it yet. Got it.”

I nod. I don’t want to even think about it, but my mind is doing what it wants. Julius tries to lighten the mood by reciting his favorite action scenes from Bond movies. He also is apparently not a part of the Connery-Is-the-Best-Bond Fan Club. He’s a Craig fan, hands down. But after a while even that convo peters out and we just walk silently, out of respect for what we’re about to do. Real talk, we could go in there to get this hair from Shaun and not come out alive.

As we round the familiar barbed wire near the access point to the Ghizoni underground lair, I turn to Julius. “We find Shaun. In and out. Just watch my back, lie low.”

“F’sho,” he says.

“I’m foreal, don’t get caught up. I don’t have you here to throw hands.”

“I’ma do what I gotta do, mane, but I hear you. I gotchu.”

I side-eye.

He rolls his eyes. “I got you in the way you need me to have you. The brains. I get it.”

“Aight.” Why doesn’t Shaun have anyone on watch? I feel for the pothole-looking door in the ground. A coppery rot smell curls in my nostrils. “Wait.”

“Yo, what’s that—?” He smells it too.

I know that smell.

Death.

“There.” He points and I can faintly make out something dark on the ground. I step closer, the stickiness brushes my kicks, staining them. Red.

No. No. No.

I follow the line of blood past the barb-covered door. It leads to a ripped robe and what could be gallons of blood. Our eyes meet.