“Case, wait!” I call out.

“In case you missed it, I’ve spent the better part of three weeks trying to keep as many people alive as possible. So I’m going to check on my patients,” he snaps, without looking back. “I want no part of this.”

“Case…”

He slams the door closed behind him without another word, and it is irrational, it isn’t about me, but it feels like it is. We used to be able to talk without talking. We used to be able to find comfort with each other. And now there aren’t just doors but walls between us.

Alone is not worth living, Josie said, but I don’t know how to keep all of us together. Maybe with all my anger stripped away, I still don’t know how to make the right decisions.

“Protecting ourselves from intruders is a way of keeping ourselves alive too,” Riley mutters.

Mackenzi smiles, her teeth bared, and it makes her look dangerous. “Imprison her. Leave her to rot.”

“Throw her out. Let her figure out her own way,” someone else says.

Sofia gets up and stalks past me too. Before she reaches the door, she turns around to all of us—but she looks straight at me. “Is this what has happened to us? Is this who we are now? Helping you find Josie seemed like the right thing to do. Now I’m not so sure.”

Heat rises to my cheeks.

Logan demonstratively folds her arms, and she needs no interpreter to make it clear where she stands. She agrees with Sofia. Her words rattle my brain. No murderers. No judges.

Nia twiddles her fingers, then raises an eyebrow. “What Josie did wasn’t right,” she says softly, “but she did it to survive. She did it to help Saoirse survive. Doesn’t that count for something? Are we going to punish her for trying to do good?”

Mackenzi audibly draws breath to speak, to interrupt, but Nia pushes on. “If we do, are we any better than the people who put us here? I’m not saying we all did…good…but I would venture a guess that we all feel mistreated. If only someone had listened to us, right? If only someone had given us a chance…”

Riley raises her hands. “Don’t look at me, kid, I know why I’m here.”

“Okay, fine.” Nia rolls her eyes. “So you’re the shining exception. But don’t tell me you wouldn’t’ve wanted someone in your life to see or hear you. Don’t tell me that wouldn’t have made a difference.”

Riley shrugs, the very picture of a girl who’s seen a world that doesn’t care for her, so she doesn’t care for it. I can’t imagine how she feels. We may be both here, but our experiences are different because of the color of our skin. The hurdles we faced are different. We both may have had our own understanding of what difficult means, but our difficulties are impossible to compare.

“What if I don’t care?” Mackenzi drawls. “I’m not here to find a moral high ground. I’m here to try to survive too. And she endangered all of us with her deathly ill girlfriend or whatever, so forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for her. She chose her own path, she has to deal with the consequences. Right now, she’s a waste of our resources.”