A flash of a smile escaped Mathias. Diego was still there, even though he was trapped in a morass of confusion and fear. He was Mathias’s best friend and his biggest rival—though in that moment Mathias wanted to tell him he didn’t care about being the head of their group, Diego could take his place if he wanted; he had all the qualities of a leader anyway. But he said nothing; leadership had to be earned, not gifted. For now they would continue to challenge each other—though never at the expense of the fraternal bond that united them.

Mathias was on the verge of saying all this to Diego, but a sudden thought made him focus on something else entirely.

“Where’s Oliver?” he asked.

On hearing the name, Diego seemed to fall back to earth. Oliver was only a year younger than them, but they all regarded him as the baby of the group.

They looked at each other, sharing the same urgent thought. They had to find him. They had to protect him—especially here, within these walls.

The hallway that led to the students’ bathroom was a dim passageway with no visible end. The lights had been switched off already, and the classrooms on either side of the corridor were black holes emitting a faint odor of chalk and paper.

Oliver swallowed and heard his saliva moving down his throat, an unnervingly clear sound in the stillness of the hallway. He looked for the light switch, but he couldn’t recall where it was since he’d never had to use it before. He glanced back at the faint, reassuring glow behind him. The doors of the assembly room opened out halfway down a corridor around the corner.

I’m not alone, he reminded himself.

He turned his head once more to the stretch of corridor ahead, that abyss he’d stubbornly wanted to cross on his own, without asking anyone for help.

Oliver knew: he was lurking somewhere in the dark—tidying up the equipment in the gym room, or making sure all the windows were shut in the canteen. He never made any noise when he moved and glared sternly at everyone he passed. But only with Oliver did he reveal his true nature: as cruel as a fairy tale ogre, beyond reason or measure. Oliver’s stomach cramped at the thought.

He blinked several times in quick succession. It was as if the gloom were a physical mass stuck to his eyelashes, his skin, his clothes, determined to engulf him. He took a step, and then another. In his imagination he’d entered that bubble of darkness now, edging too close to its core and too far from the light.