He hooks his hands on the straps of his backpack. “You have to think of them as everything that’s in between. They can walk in the shadows of day, they thirst for blood, but don’t frenzy for it.”

Blood. Blood everywhere. My mind flashes back to the red door, where the broken child sits in the corner feeding off his own arm.

“Do they ever eat themselves?” I ask, sidestepping a pothole.

He shoots me a disgusted look. “Eat themselves?”

“Yeah, like the vampires do.”

“No, they’re more human than that.” He pauses, gaze finding mine. “Why?”

I bite at my lip, my eyes seeing red everywhere I look. “Do you remember a red door in The Colony?” As soon as I say it, I want to take it back—it feels forbidden somehow.

He gradually slows, like all the energy is draining from his body. “That’s what you saw when you took the minte? You saw what was behind the door?”

Slowly, I nod. “I saw a child. He was all torn up, like he was part vampire or something.”

Aiden faces me and all the color has drained from his skin. “And what else?”

“Monarch caught me snooping,” I say. “And so he erased it from my mind.”

“And that’s all you remember?”

“So far, yes.”

He scratches at his wrist, tugging the sleeve of his shirt down. “That place,” he says, “is something you might not want to remember.”

“Did Monarch …” I swallow hard, thinking of how Dominic and Gabrielle spoke of experiments. “Did Monarch do that to that child?”

He turns his back on me and makes a right onto a wider road, packed with more cars. The buildings also stretch higher to the sky, obstructing more light.

“Don’t start judging things,” he says, “until you remember everything. Some of the things might be bad, but some are good.”

I don’t say anything, worried about what could be locked up inside my head.

“Did you hear that?” Aiden suddenly stops, his eyebrows dipping together. He glances up at a tall, skinny building with a rounded top that looks like a bubble.

I’m so distracted by my thoughts it takes me a second to understand what he said. “What did you hear?”

“I thought…” His body tenses. “Shit.” He grabs my hand and races for the bubble building. I vaguely remember seeing it from time to time while raiding the streets as Bellator, but I’ve never been inside—I’ve never been inside most buildings.

He stops in front of the doors, cupping his hands around his eyes and peeking through the glass. “There’s enough light in there, right?”

I press my nose to the glass. “Enough light for what?”

“To keep things out.” He glances anxiously over his shoulder, terrified someone’s coming.

“It’ll keep the vampires away,” I say. “But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”