The muttering in the crowd gets louder. Their restlessness grows. I realize, with a distant sort of surprise, that they’re upset. All of them. They don’t want Elliott exiled. If he’s a shadowseeker, then he’s a hero—one of the special-ops legends they’ve all admired for months.

Something like hope stirs painfully in my gut. I will Elliott to resist. To yell, to stir them up, to start a riot. Anything.

Elliott finally registers the shift in the crowd’s energy. He looks up, scans them. Then he glances at the guard next to him. There’s only one. It would be so easy for him to fight back. To at least try to escape his fate. And maybe I could escape too, in the commotion.

But Elliott just bows his head again and does nothing.

A sour taste floods my mouth. I realize now why he only has one guard: because they already knew he wouldn’t fight. They knew it the second he dropped the gun because his mom told him to.

My handcuffs are replaced with zip ties. I’m shoved toward the helicopter. There’s a brief argument about who’s going to pilot, punctuated by nervous glances at me and Elliott. I try to bolt, but one of the guards kicks my legs out from under me and hauls me on board. I get in a good shot with an elbow, break his nose. After that they tie my hands to one of the loops that hang down from the helicopter’s ceiling just inside the door. I can sit, barely, but my arms are numb and bloodless in minutes.

By the time we take off, rain has cracked the clouds open.

We cross the sound. We’re over the mainland in minutes. We keep going. Lightning flashes, illuminating the side of our guard’s glaring, still-bloody face, casting millisecond-long shadows across the cabin.

Wind batters the helicopter. Rain lashes angrily across the windows. We dip and weave through the onset of what’s probably a hurricane—a weak one, but still no joke to fly through. Our guard gets up and walks to the front to talk to the pilot. They debate whether they should dump us and turn back, search for supplies another day when there’s no storm.

The helicopter’s noise is deafening. I wish it were louder. Maybe then it would fill up my brain, dissolve the memories, drown out the fear of what’s next. Maybe it could make me forget that it was my mirror the cops looked into beneath the boardwalk, my ambition that ended with the blood that’s still on my clothes.

I know the mirrors I’ve sold have gotten people killed before. But I’ve never been a part of it—not like tonight. I didn’t think it would matter. I don’t want it to matter.