I had to admit, part of me was relieved to see him smile. Patrick wasn’t exactly jokey to begin with, but ever since the Dusting he’d been like a pallbearer. Maybe he thought that smiling showed a lapse in discipline. Like the rest of us, he had plenty to be serious about. Right now he had even more to worry about than we did.

Before we’d left the gym, he and Alex had taken some time together on the bleachers, trying to adjust to his new life with the mask. Everyone—me included—gave them distance as they sat together, her hands cupped in his, murmuring privately to each other. As I passed, I made out only a snatch of their conversation, Alex’s whisper carrying over as she told my brother, “We will make this work.” It was hard watching them try to adjust, their expressions holding so many different emotions at the same time. Barring a miracle, that mask was now a permanent part of him. My plan had saved Patrick for the moment, but at a pretty steep price.

As I’d gathered my gear and walked over to get him, I’d heard them playing their old game, her words quiet in the crowded gym.

“—cross raging rivers for me?”

His smile, locked behind the mask, looked as sad as it did happy. “I would.”

Her eyes glimmered. “Would you climb mountains?”

I could barely make out his voice beneath the mask. “If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.”

She’d blinked, and her tears had fallen. “How ’bout that mud, Big Rain? We still on for the mud?”

He nodded.

She’d put her forehead to his, their faces close, his breath fogging the mask from the inside, hers from the outside. You could see the aching in their eyes, how badly they wanted to kiss. But they couldn’t.

They’d never be able to again.

I shook off the image of them on the bleachers, training my gaze back on the hospital. Hosts still milled around the ground floor. What were they doing in there? I’d assumed that they’d have to leave soon—to patrol the streets, to help in the church, to search out other kids to grab—but it struck me how little we really knew about them. Maybe they’d stay holed up there the whole night.

In which case we’d be in all kinds of trouble.

I risked a quick click of the flashlight so I could read the dial on the oxygen tank. An hour and a half of air left.

We’d gone from one countdown to another.