I had a hard time drawing breath. It felt as though I had a rock lodged in my throat. Everyone was still staring at us—from the cots, the bleachers, all around the basketball court. It was like getting tossed in the middle of a rodeo arena, expected to perform some feat I’d never trained for.

I shook my head.

“Ben’s right,” Patrick said. “I can’t go after her. Not with this.” He grabbed the tube from the mask. “And this.” He tugged up his stretched shirtsleeve to show the line embedded in the pit of his elbow. His eyes glimmered, and for one terrible instant I thought he might cry.

I pressed my lips together to firm them. “I can’t do it, Patrick,” I said.

“You can.”

“I can’t do it without you.”

“You can. You always could.” He lifted his fist. Dangling from the bottom, Alex’s jigsaw pendant.

I stared at it. Then I held out my hand.

He dropped it into my palm.

“Please don’t ask this of him, Patrick,” Chatterjee said. He’d approached, standing a few cots away. “If you do, you know he’ll try, and then we’ll lose him, too. He’s just a kid.”

Patrick’s eyes never left mine. “Not anymore he’s not.”

“No one could pull that off,” Ben called over. “How’s he supposed to do it? Battle all the Hosts and bring her back?”

Patrick and I still didn’t break our eye contact. Though there were nearly a hundred bodies in the gym, this was between brother and brother. My heart thumped in my chest, strong and true. What he’d said and how he’d said it had shown me a strength I hadn’t known I had.

I said, “I’ll think of something.”

Patrick’s lips pressed together behind the mask. “He always does,” he said, his eyes still locked on mine.

I swept a gaze across all those faces. They’d stay here together, sleeping on cots behind the safety of the perimeter fence. For a moment I envied them.

But something in their gazes caught me by surprise.

They envied me.

“Bring her back, Chance,” Patrick said.

He gestured for me to lean close. Condensation from his breath fogged the mask, and I could see that he was struggling not to cry. He took off his black cowboy hat.

And put it on my head.