“How big a horde are we talking about?” I clutched the strap of my satchel. A strange itch had developed in my legs, way too deep to scratch. My muscles ached with it, as if I’d been in one position for too long and now my body wanted to stretch. To move.

“Grayson said it was small, so ten or twelve, I’d guess, unless Devi and the others have made a decent dent.”

That itch in my legs swelled, extending through my arms and down into my feet—a physical sense of urgency, as if my muscles knew we should have been running but my brain didn’t yet know why. I dropped into a squat and bounced on the balls of my feet, then set my satchel down and bent to touch my toes, hoping stretches would alleviate some of that itch to move. To run.

“What’s wrong?” Finn set his duffel on the floor and ducked to catch my gaze. “You feel something?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure what, though. I just…I feel like we should be moving. Fast. Now.” I could sense something strong and dark racing toward us and felt compelled to run in the opposite direction.

“It’s the horde. While you’re transitioning, they can feel you and you can feel them.”

“Yeah, well, I feel like they’re getting closer. Really close.” I picked my bag up and tugged on his arm. “Let’s go.”

He pulled his hand from mine, and I would have been disappointed if I weren’t too scared to focus on anything but the burning in my muscles, urging me to run. “Devi and Reese are on their way, and we’ll be stronger in a larger group. Especially considering you’ve never really fought a degenerate.”

But my instincts weren’t telling me to fight. They were telling me to flee. Right then. As fast as I could. “I have to go.” I settled my satchel higher on my shoulder, and he let go of me with obvious reluctance. “Come with me, Finn. We’ll go to your safe house and meet the others there.” My legs felt like tightened coils about to explode from the tension. My feet ached to run. My head was alive with thoughts that had no form or meaning, like the fuzz on the TV during a rare news outage.

“Nina, look at me.” He put one hand around each of my arms, and his green-eyed gaze searched mine. Only it felt more like an assessment of my mental state. “Calm down. Ride it out. You want to run because your body knows you can’t fight them all on your own. But you’re not on your own, and if we’re not here when Devi gets here, she’ll kill me.” Shadows hid most of his face, but the determination in his voice was very clear.