The icy ground seeps through my pants and I use snow to wipe my mouth clean. I’m still reeling from everything I just saw and I don’t hear the footsteps behind me until someone’s fingers curl over my shoulder.

I scream, strike out with my arms, knuckles slamming into flesh. I push the body into a clump of snow-crusted bushes but he grabs me as he falls, pulling me on top of him, and it isn’t until I feel the heat that I realize it’s Catcher.

Words tumble from my mouth about the Recruiters and the cages and the Unconsecrated Soulers and the bodies, and Catcher holds me tight, whispering into my ears that I’m safe, that he has me, that I’m okay.

“You don’t understand,” I tell him, jumping to my feet. “The Recruiters are sacrificing people. They’re throwing them into cages with Unconsecrated. We can’t stay here. We’re not safe—we can’t be. We have to leave. We have to get Elias and my sister and find a way off this island.”

He just sits there in the snow staring at me, a red welt rising along his jaw where I struck him. I don’t know why he isn’t moving. Why he doesn’t understand the urgency. I spin away, so frustrated I can’t even look at him anymore.

I hear him stand slowly, feel the brush of his fingers against my arm. “We can’t, Annah,” he says.

I jerk from his touch. “You didn’t see it, Catcher. You didn’t see how much fun they were having—the sick pleasure they took in what they were doing. How bored they were that the poor guy wasn’t dying fast enough. They’re horrible human beings who don’t deserve to live.” I’m shaking uncontrollably from the memories and the frozen night air.

His grip on my arm is strong, his fingers biting into me. “We can’t go back because it’s too late,” he tells me. “There’s barely anything left in the City. Pockets of people fighting. But no place as safe as this.”

He looks almost like a ghost when he adds, “There’s nowhere else to go, and even if there were, we’re trapped. No way off the island.”

In the distance I see lanterns burning on top of the wall ringing the Sanctuary. Watch the shadows of Recruiters as they stand guard, ready to shoot at anyone who attempts to land. I don’t want to believe what he’s saying. The City’s always survived—it’s been so permanent in my life that I’d never imagined it could disappear just like that.

“We can’t stay here,” I whisper.