Except I know what—Drew.

With an aching throb in my chest, I soften for Briggs. I can’t imagine what he’s going through, and the sounds he made when he found Drew at the end of a rope are tattooed onto my frontal lobe. But Briggs remains an enemy, and I have people to save. I point my spear forward like a javelin and shout, “BRIGGS. It’s Connor and Marcos. We’re armed! We came for Darcy, that’s it, so stay right where you are!”

No response comes from Briggs except continued inconsolable nonsense. Marcos covers me, aiming his spear toward the door with the dying flowers as I advance to Briggs. The vice tightening my stomach turns another crank.

“Get me the hell out of here,” Darcy moans somewhere around the corner. “I thought y’all were dead or something.”

“Everyone’s safe, as soon as we have you,” I say, but it’s a struggle to hold on to the confidence booming through my chest. I can’t make out Darcy’s cage, there are shadows everywhere, and where the hell is the Reverend? The worst omen of all, however, is being unable to see Briggs’s face. “We’re coming up behind you, Briggs. Don’t move.”

“I did everything—” Briggs says, his throat strangled with crying: the messy, mucus-filled kind. “I DID EVERYTHING FOR YOU! MY WHOLE LIFE!”

Marcos rejoins me, and we steady our spears side by side as we reach the end of the hallway, which winds left into another narrow path. “Cover Briggs,” I order Marcos, pivoting my spear down the next blind alley. Where the last corridor was stacked with life preservers and fishing nets, this one is lined with prison cells—row after row of iron bars, rising no taller than Marcos.

Like circus animal cages.

At the end of the row, Darcy rattles the prison gate trapping her. All things considered, she doesn’t look too rough. She’s bleary-eyed from Bill’s taser (and probably from such prolonged uncertainty), but otherwise, she still has her game face on. “Does Marcos have the keys?” she asks, sweat beading off her shorn hair. “We don’t have time.”

“Yeah, he’s got them,” I say. “Marcos?”

“Get ’em off my belt,” he says, retreating from Briggs but never once dropping his spear. My heartbeat thudding between my ears, I turn—but as I go, my spear clangs against the cage bars. The reverberations slice through my brain, and in one devastating blink, a hairline fracture splits the head of my spear. The pieces don’t fully separate, but a thin, ugly tear is visible even through the dim light.

“No,” I groan.

“What happened?” Marcos asks, panicking.

“Never mind that,” Darcy says. “They were all here a few minutes ago—Reverend, Bill, everybody. Just get the keys.”