The white-streaked one who threw the body parts to the prisoners looks at me, interest lighting its face. It walks over to me.

Up close, its shoulders and thighs are massive. It grabs me out of the first scorpion’s grasp and drags me behind it, holding both my wrists in one hand.

It’s headed for the torture container with its desperate victims.

Skeletal arms reach through the metal mesh with their unnaturally long fingers.

I can’t get enough air into my lungs and what I do manage to breathe in makes me gag. The stench up close is ferocious.

I skid on something lumpy and slippery, but the monster’s grip is so tight that I stay upright.

My heart has practically stopped with the realization that I won’t be going up to the stone building, but instead, will be joining the tortured victims.

I drag my feet and resist. I struggle, trying to loosen one of the monster’s hands. But I’m no match for its strength.

A couple of steps before the opening, the scorpion throws me up against the metal mesh.

I slam into it, grabbing the chains to keep myself upright.

The second I hit, the darker shadows in the back of the box scuffle toward me.

Hunched with sharp angles accentuating arms and legs, rags dragging on the floor, they shove each other out of the way to reach me as fast as they can.

A scream tears from my mouth as I frantically push myself back.

Arms reach out like a forest of bones sprouting through the chain mesh.

They grab my hair, my face, my clothes.

I thrash and scream, trying not to see their skeletal faces, their mangy hair, their bloodied nails.

I twist and yank, desperate to get out of their grasp. There are a lot of them, but they’re weak, barely standing on their feet as I pull away.

White Streak makes a series of screechy noises that sound suspiciously like a laugh. It thinks this is funny.

It grabs me and drags me toward the stream of people coming from the ferry.

It never intended to dump me into the torture bin. It just wanted to tease the prisoners and, I guess, me.

I’ve never looked forward to killing anything before. But I’m certainly looking forward to killing this one.

WE WALK UP the paved path toward the main building, which sits at the top of the island. Above us, swarms of scorpions fly in what looks like massive chaos. There are so many of them, they actually create wind that blows in unnaturally changing directions. I know from what I saw earlier that there’s a practice pattern to their flight, but from here, it looks and feels as if we’re in the middle of a giant insect’s nest.