“Yes!” I exult quietly, pumping a fist. Finally, a win.

“Callahan,” Elliott says from behind me, his voice slow and strange, “do you notice anything weird about those cars?”

I crack my knuckles, mentally going through the list of tools I’ll need to scavenge. “That there’s a lot of ’em,” I answer. It’s good news. I’ve actually only ever hot-wired one car successfully—Ty’s ‘92 Camaro—so the wider selection means a better chance at finding one that I’ll know how to steal.

“Yeah,” Elliott says. “About a hundred of them on this level alone. A hundred cars—and no bodies.”

I go still as the words sink in. Then, slowly, I turn. I look around. The front desk area is wide open and clean. There’s a bank of dead elevators to my left, a dark glassed-in gift shop and a waiting area to my right, and antiseptic white tile beneath my feet. It was the same in all the hallways and patient rooms we’ve passed through: empty gurneys, vacant nurses’ stations. And not a single corpse.

“It’s only been a year since the Fracture,” Elliott says. “There should be bodies everywhere. We shouldn’t be able to breathe for the smell, shouldn’t be able to take a step without running into a body. All those cars out there. Where are their owners?”

Unease crawls over my skin. I try to shake it off. “The Beings ate them, probably,” I reason. It’s the supposition that’s been in the back of my mind ever since we first stepped onto the empty ground floor, but now it doesn’t quite feel right. Beings have never eaten people—or at least, not completely—on the island. But maybe that’s just because they dissipate too fast. The Beings and fog on the mainland are permanent.

“Then where’s the blood?” Elliott persists. “The signs of struggle?”

I look around again. He’s right. There should be bones and blood all over this foyer, personal belongings scattered across the floor, claw marks on the walls. Even if everyone had enough of a warning to evacuate safely, there should be signs of distress, of people leaving in a rush. But there’s nothing. No half-finished paperwork on the desk. No toys left behind in the waiting area. The floor is sparkling, as if it were mopped yesterday.

Elliott points at the sign above the desk. MADRIGAL SOUTH HOSPITAL, it reads at the top. “I’ve been here before,” he says, his voice dark and far away. “With Mom. She was the city treasurer here when I was fourteen. This hospital had just been built; she attended the opening ceremony. It’s been in use for three years since then, but it still looks exactly like it did the day she cut the ribbon. Except,” he says, sweeping a hand at the parking garage, “for all those cars.”