The H8E virus, I thought, wrenching myself away from his grasp. I wondered how many of the other Doomsday kids on the battlefield were infected. My mom had said bird kids and mutants were immune, but if the Remedy was now poisoning his own, it couldn’t be a good sign.

As I ran from the sick boy, I realized how vulnerable I was here, alone, limping through an underground, closed space that we knew contained nuclear weapons. I crept more carefully, sticking to what I thought was the main passage, but I had no map, and all these dark, damp passageways looked exactly the same.

I thought I heard a squeak behind me—maybe a Horseman, or another infected kid—but when I listened, I only heard my heart thundering in my ears.

“Max!” Dylan whispered directly behind me in the dark, and I almost screamed bloody murder. “Shh!” he said, clamping a hand over my mouth.

Naturally, I bit his hand.

“Are you serious?” I demanded. “Who does that to a person?” Then I noticed he was alone. “Where’s Gunther-Hagen?” I demanded. “You said you knew exactly where his lair was.”

“It’s been evacuated. I tore the place apart, but the guards—” He eyed my puffy eyes and wobbly legs and stopped mid-sentence. “What happened to you?”

That question was completely overwhelming.

Well, Jeb was creating a master race using Fang’s DNA, I got Tased and nearly Horsemanized, the Deceitful Duo showed up to save the day, and now it feels wrong to hate them, even though I still do. Kind of.

“Jeb is dead,” I said, drastically simplifying things, and Dylan looked shocked. “What were you saying about guards?”

Dylan shook his head, then said, “The Remedy’s Russian guards…”

He turned, and the RAT-A-TAT-TAT of machine-gun fire exploded inside the tunnel.

“They followed me!” Dylan yelled, dragging me down a side passageway.

I followed him down winding tunnel after winding tunnel, deeper and deeper into the maze. We passed more sick kids and the smell of death grew stronger, but the echo of military boots thundered after us.

Then Dylan stopped abruptly in front of a black door that looked exactly like all the other black doors. He traced his hand along the front of it.

“What are you doing?” I said, a little hysterically. I heard the thick-tongued shouts of the guards just behind us, and I flat-out refused to die before I found the Remedy.

There was a beep as the door “read” Dylan, and then the door swung open. “Come on!” he said, yanking me inside just as we started to see the flash-fire of bullets ricocheting off the walls. “We’ll be safe in here.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, but he had already punched a button on the wall, and I realized we were in a rickety elevator.

“Somewhere safe. Just promise not to judge me, okay?”