“You…” she says. She thinks of the voice at the back of the train. Two men, right? One spoke to another? One spoke, one pushed? She shudders. No stopping that. Not right now. And never again. Not when she thinks of Rick at the school for the blind and the people there who, before Malorie arrived, gouged their eyes out to guarantee a lifetime of safety.

A lifetime of darkness, too, she thinks. Where memories overlap. Where one begins to forget where the old world ended and the new one began.

She presses against the wall. No space for these thoughts right now. Not in this room, not in her head. How high is the ledge?

“I’m not going to look,” she says, her voice betraying every ounce of fear she feels. “I’m never going to look.”

Then, an insane thought: the temptation to look.

She steps from the wall. She holds her arms out, as if telling the thing to take her. Tear off her sleeves. Touch her. Try to make her look.

She stands this way long enough to lose her nerve. She lowers her arms. She backs up to the dirt.

Did it take a step forward as well?

Malorie breathes in. She holds it. She breathes out.

She feels like she’s losing her mind. The old way.

She opens her eyes. Not her actual eyes, but the eyes she’s closed behind those eyes, and the eyes behind those, and those, and more. She feels a fluttering, a fanning of doors opening, in rhythm with her heart.

This, she knows, is how Tom thinks, always. Because she can’t hide down here. Because there’s no other choice but to do something.

She needs to push back.