But for the rest of them. They all felt it. They all felt bad. And they would make this ruin their lives. They would constantly be haunted by the woman’s bent form, lying there on the road. They didn’t feel any excitement over it—they felt regret. And regret was like a wave eroding a cliff—it was only a matter of time before it collapsed. In saving their own lives, they had also condemned themselves. He needed a fix. He needed some way of convincing the group that they would be absolved of this crime altogether, so they could continue to cover it all up—dot the i’s, cross the t’s—and then they had to go on living without this shadow over them.

He had to find a way for them to see that they could have a life beyond this. That they could still be together. And together was all that mattered. Tim looked around. Everyone was staring at the table. This wasn’t right—they should be alive, more than alive. They had just overstepped a line the majority of humans never would. They, collectively, had killed someone. And that was awful. But also kind of beautiful. They always said their friendship was strong. But now they were bound in ways they could have never hoped. So he stood up, and Amber stood up next to him. “I know what we need to do.”

The rest of them looked at him, expectantly, hopefully. Hoping that he would be able to fix it all. And maybe he could.

Tim smiled, a warm hearty smile that he truly meant, looking into the faces of the people he loved.

“We have to die.”

Chapter Sixty-Four

The present...

“Robin. Robin...” A girl’s voice. Familiar.

Someone splashed water over his face.

He opened his eyes. He was resting against the wall of the tunnel. His head ached, and something was dripping down his forehead. Back to Marsden and back to frequently getting knocked unconscious. In spite of everything, he almost laughed.

The abandoned tunnel looked a little different from before. The tunnel was lit—lit by a small battery-powered light. The same one he had seen in the Monster’s hideaway all those months ago. Now he could see the tracks running through the center of the tunnel clearly, and see that the floor was dusty, cluttered with rock debris and pockets of pooled water. The light did not reach to the other side of the width of the tunnel, so he could not see the other wall, but he knew it was there. He wondered where exactly in the tunnel they were, and if the wall he was resting on had the canal on the other side of it, or his freedom.