I take a step back. “Are you ill? You’re bleeding.”

She blows out a breath and shakes her head. She reaches for me.

I take another step back. I would slam the door in her face if I could. Does it matter if we keep our distance? Have we all been infected already?

“She needs help.” Casey takes a step closer to me, and his comforting presence does nothing to waylay the anxiety creeping up on me. It presents like it always does: in the desperate need to destroy before I’m destroyed.

“If you’re not sick, is someone else?” he asks.

Logan’s shoulders drop, and she nods.

“Your sister?”

Another nod. Logan swallows. She reaches out a hand again and gestures.

Casey walks past me, and I grab his shirt. I suddenly understand the soldiers so well right now, and I hate it. I hate it. “If this is it…if this is that disease, we can’t help. We’ll have to stay away.” I refuse to look at Logan when I say that, but it’s true. “It’s not like we have medical care. The kindest thing we can do is keep our distance and make sure no one else gets infected.” The words taste sour in my mouth.

It’s here already, my treacherous brain says. It doesn’t matter.

“Grace.” Casey takes my hand and slowly pries open my fingers. He looks at me with mind-numbing sadness in his eyes. “If that plague is as terrifying as you said it was, then the kindest thing we can do is take care of each other.”

He nods in Logan’s direction and follows her out the door, leaving me standing there, staring at the hallway. And it’s all I can do not to shout after them.

That first night, when he waited for me after my initiation, he held me when I cried, and he told me all of us here only have one job. “We survive. Whatever we do, we survive.”

I wanted to tell him I didn’t know how, but something of the truth slipped out. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to believe it.” His intense desperation took my breath away. He held on to my arms so hard, I thought they’d bruise. Bruise upon bruise. “You have to,” he said. “Repeat what I told you.”

“We survive. Whatever we do, we survive.”

I’m only trying to survive now, Case, like I promised you.

I take a step back and swipe at the plastic cup with my toothbrush that stands on the edge of the metal sink. It goes clattering across the floor. It doesn’t make me feel better at all.

With the lights on and the doors open, it’s clear I’m not the only one awake. Several girls are mulling about, walking through the hallway aimlessly. We have no movement line. No set hour for breakfast. No one to prepare us breakfast either.

I hate the lot of them—Warden Davis, the guards, the soldiers. Hunter, for telling me I’m responsible for everyone. That’s what gets me going. I want to be better than them.