“GET DOWN.”

Arms wrapped around him from behind, wrenching him away from the breathing tree, and tackled him to the ground. Daniel jammed his elbow back, directly into Liam’s sternum, and Liam wheezed. But when Daniel tried to push himself to his knees, Liam wrestled him down.

“Damn you!” Daniel scrabbled for purchase in the ashen earth as Liam pinned him. “You almost ruined everything—”

“Quiet!” Liam hissed. “Shut up and listen for a goddamn minute. The rules are different here.”

That flustered Daniel enough to stop his squirming. He spat out a mouthful of bitter dirt. “What do you mean, here—”

“Stay still!”

The earth rumbled around them, like tanks rolling by. But those slow, ponderous footsteps were no Panzer.

Heart lurching into his throat, Daniel went still.

The buzzing sound was back, thickening the air into something noxious. Daniel stifled a cough. Closer now, footsteps ricocheted through the woods. Then the trees parted with a fierce snap as something massive pushed through them.

Daniel turned his head toward the noise, but Liam, still on top of him, moved his lips toward Daniel’s ear, his breath heated. “Whatever you do, don’t look.”

Daniel looked.

The creature must have been the size of an elephant herd, with about as many limbs. In the dull light, its skin glistened like a raw wound. Insects swarmed around it with a buzzing as sharp as radio static, like there were fragments of words trying to break free. And then the creature’s face—

As soon as he saw it, the awful images sprang up in his mind, reflected at him from that blankness. Every nightmare that had dogged him across the forests of Poland and Germany. Dr. Kreutzer, pacing the muddy ghetto streets as he eyed the prisoners, measuring, assessing, the ones he studied sure to disappear overnight. Rebeka’s hand in Daniel’s as they snuck underneath the fence, guards shouting, lights sweeping through Łódź’s alleyways. An idling van, hundreds of bodies pressed inside. The smell of corpses burning as the train Daniel and Rebeka had hidden aboard rolled safely past.

Other images seeped in as well, and it felt like claws were digging into his mind. A circular hall, the same sandstone as the ruins he’d stumbled through, filled with shadowy figures. An elongated, eyeless face speaking to him inside his mind. He was being judged, considered. His sins, his value weighed. Every failure ripped out of him, his secrets pulled out, inch by inch, like his insides were unspooling, but still the torture dragged on—

“Let go of your fear. Push it away.” Liam’s voice, low and steady, cut through the nightmares. “The worst thing you can do is be afraid.”