“I can’t,” I shook my head. “It’s enough, Jared. I can’t stay here, anymore. We need to find somewhere else.”

“There is nowhere else.”

I bent my knees and awkwardly bent over to pick up a few of my things lying around the bed. “Well, we can’t stay here. I can’t...I can’t have my baby here.”

Jared sighed. “Nina, stop. You’re being irrational.”

“Okay, so I’m irrational. But I’m going to be irrational outside, where I can breathe.”

Jared tried to touch my hand, but I pulled away. “You know you can’t,” he said. “I can, and I’m going.”

Ryan crossed his arms. “Then go.”

“What?” Jared seethed.

“She’s stronger than all of us. If she doesn’t want to stay, we can’t make her.”

“See?” I said to Jared, pointing to Ryan. “He listens to me. You’re not listening!”

“Sweetheart,” Jared said, holding his hands in front of him. “You know what’s waiting up there for us. We’ll be attacked the second we breach the stairs.”

“Just for a minute,” I said, trying to nonchalantly slide by him. I grabbed my stomach and hunched over a bit, trying to casually weather another contraction.

Ryan touched Jared’s arm. “Jared, we got through an entire city of shells. If she wants to breathe some fresh air after nearly sixty days in a cave, I say let her.”

“You don’t have a say, so shut up,” Jared said through his teeth.

“I don’t either?” I said. I hobbled toward the entrance slowly, but Jared matched every step.

“Of course you do,” he said. “Just...just let me think for a minute.”

I closed my eyes tight. They twitched every time the drops of water slid from the rock wall to the ground. “That’s the problem. I can’t think in here. I can’t breathe. I can’t sleep. I feel like I’m dying!”

“Jared,” Ryan began.

“Shut the hell up!”

“Maybe we all need some fresh air,” Bex said.

With wide eyes, both Jared and Claire craned their necks at their little brother.

Jared’s jaws worked under his skin, and he struggled to relax enough to speak to me in a calm voice. “Nina, for all we know the devil is up there. They will stop at nothing now.”

Ryan shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta dance with the devil to get out of Hell.”

The further we got to the entrance, the darker it became. Bex had set up twin-head industrial light stands around the perimeter, so bright that at first, when they were all lit, it felt like day. Now the shadows they cast were just another reminder of our prison.

I moved quickly to the doorway, and Claire grabbed my wrist. “Maybe we should sedate her?”