There’s admiration in his tone but also an underlying current of melancholy.

“Were you good friends with her?” My voice trembles through my chattering teeth.

He stumbles and because I’m following so close behind I press my hands against his lower back to keep from careening into him. His heated skin blazes through his clothes—so delicious in this freezing darkness. Before I can stop myself I press my palms harder against him, curling my fingertips into the warmth and smiling.

“You okay?” I ask when he doesn’t resume walking. There’s an odd expression on his face and he looks away from me before I can figure out what it is.

“There’s something you need to know,” he says.

I realize I’ve pushed tighter against him. It’s like leaning toward a fire on a frozen day—the way it eases through you, unwinding muscles and loosening joints.

I’m surprised at how comfortable I am with him already, how he doesn’t quite feel like a stranger anymore. “What?”

And then he twists away from me, taking his heat and the glowing ember of the torch with him. The meager light glistens from rivulets of water wandering along the old tracks on the ground.

“You need to know that I’m broken,” he says.

It’s not at all what I’m expecting. I frown, showing him I don’t understand what he’s saying.

“I just …” He seems to struggle with the words. “I need you to know that I’ll help you find Gabry. I’ll make sure you’re both fine and safe but that’s all. After that I’m gone. I can’t …” He runs his hand through his hair, making it spike up like a halo. “I can’t be or do anything more.”

His pronouncement makes me feel cold and ugly. Unwanted. And this infuriates me because I promised myself that I’d never put myself in this position again—a place where I could hurt because of someone else’s decision.

Not after Elias joined the Recruiters and abandoned me.

I stare at him, to the point where he seems to become uncomfortable. I want to ask him why he thinks that would matter to me. I want to tell him that we’re all broken, that I’m broken. But instead I shrug like I don’t care and say, “Okay.”

I realize as the word falls from my lips that it’s a lie, which only fuels my irritation at both him and myself. I stomp past him, brushing his shoulder with mine as I take off down the tunnel. His steps echo behind me when he follows, the feeble light from the torch he carries just barely tempering the black emptiness in front of me.

I’ve always liked the darkness anyway.

The longer we’re underground, the more heightened my senses become. When we near an abandoned platform at a station the pressure of air whispering over my exposed face changes, lightens. In the depths of the tunnels the air is a searing cold, the forgotten warmth of fall leaching from the walls, heating everything just enough to keep water trickling around us, not yet frozen solid into ice.