I try to scramble away from him on my hands and knees, but he hauls me up by my clothes, my feet barely even touching the ground. A seam on my shirt pulls and rips and I feel a gust of cold air along my ribs. One of the Recruiters cups his hand around his mouth and hoots at me, causing my skin to blaze.

I’m punching and screaming and kicking and twisting and fighting as Conall carries me the short distance to the cage. “You can’t do this to me!” I yell. But this only encourages the men to chant and cheer, reveling in my panic-fueled struggles.

For a moment Conall fumbles with the lock and I’m able to break his grip slightly. I claw my fingernails down his arm and he flinches. A tiny burst of hope catches in my mind, but just as I’m trying to run he swings the cage gate open and throws me inside.

The door closes with a bang and even though I beat on it, he’s able to turn the lock.

That’s it, then. I’m trapped in this cage with an infected woman who could Return at any moment.

“Should we bring out another plague rat?” Conall asks the small crowd, rolling his sleeve over the scratches along his forearm.

“Nah,” one of them responds. “Let’s see what she does. Wait for the others before we up the ante.” And then they go back to their meal and their gossip, flitting their glances up at me only occasionally.

I press my back against the cage door, threading my fingers through the links of the gate. Only a few feet away Dove lies spooned with her dead husband. My eyes blur with tears of frustration and fear and I wipe them away angrily as I study her chest.

Several heartbeats go by and she’s so motionless I’m convinced she’s Returned. I start to taste panic crawling up my throat, my mind reeling with too many thoughts at once—to run, to stay put, to shout, to cry, to do anything to make this stop. I’m practically clawing at the cage gate trying to find a weakness that someone before did not. Trying to escape where no one has before.

And then I see Dove’s chest rise and fall, just slightly, and I know she’s not gone yet. There’s still time.

Tentatively, I walk over to her and kneel so that I’m blocking her face from view of the Recruiters.

“Dove?” I say. “It’s Annah.” I slip my hand into hers; she barely grasps mine back.