“Why didn’t you come home?” I ask. “After your time was up with the Recruiters, why didn’t you come home? It was only supposed to be two years and I waited for you and you never came home.”

He lets me go and turns to the wall, staring at one of the maps for so long that I wonder if he even heard my question. “Elias?” I say, stepping toward him. Discarded pins crunch under my feet, scattering across the floor.

He shakes his head, keeping me at bay. “I didn’t come home because I never stopped working for the Recruiters.” He reaches out, tugging on a series of black pins and letting them fall to the floor. “I still haven’t.”

I exhale like a laugh, fully understanding. “That Recruiter—Conall—he was right, wasn’t he? When we were on the cable car and he said something about you getting Catcher to the island—he was right.”

“It’s not like that, Annah,” he says, holding up a hand, but I shake my head.

“You betrayed him. Us,” I spit at him angrily. “You said it was the only way—you made us think we had to come here in order to survive—”

“It is the only way for us to survive!” he shouts. A vein bulges along his forehead, his face red. “I had to find a way to keep all of you safe and this was it!”

I grimace, startled at his outburst, wondering who this person in front of me really is. Wondering if there’s anything left of the boy I grew up with and once thought I might love.

“Please, Annah,” he says. “You have to understand. I fought for the Recruiters against one of the hordes and we weren’t making a difference.” His voice is strained, desperate. “They say there were over eight billion people in the world when the Return hit—eight billion—and how many do you think died? Half? More? And now most of them are out there somewhere wandering around or downed, just waiting to infect us, and we were useless trying to kill them.”

“But we’ve been fighting for generations—”

“You weren’t there, Annah,” he says. “This horde hitting the Dark City? It’s tiny compared to some of the others.”

I cross my arms and cup my elbows in my hands, not wanting to imagine it, not wanting it to be true.

Elias comes around the desk. “Ox made me a proposition,” he says. “He offered me a chance off the fighting lines. They knew the Soulers worshiped the Unconsecrated, and they’d heard rumors of them having some Immunes that they treated like gods. He said that if I infiltrated the Soulers and figured out where the Immunes were, you and I could live in the Sanctuary.