There was the sound of hurried footsteps beyond the door. I wasn’t impressed by how long it took before the door slammed open. Two of the faceless nightmares were first—one with a knife the size of my arm, serrated and curved along its edge, with a strange blue sheen to it that looked to be some kind of poison. The other had a heavy gun and a bandolier of ammunition slung across his shoulder. They were followed by Fletcher, who carried no weapon and had deep, sunken bags beneath her eyes. Maybe I hadn’t been the only one having a rough go of it.

“Is she dead?” she demanded. “How the hell did this happen?”

I waved to her, spattering a few drops of blood on the floor and on her white jacket. “Still here,” I said. “No thanks to you. Was I actually supposed to figure anything out, or was I just bait for the damned-”

She kicked the bed, hard enough that the dead man lying in it seemed almost to jerk to life. “Then where is it? How can it have been here, too? These walls are reinforced ten times over. There are no other ways in or out. You were bait for the cage to snap closed upon it, Hexel, so how is it that you’re still here and it isn’t? What a mess this is…” She seethed silently for another minute, before she shot out a hand and grabbed my shoulder. I hissed in pain as she dug her fingers in—even without Arcadia’s claws, it hurt like a set of needles as she twisted her fingers.

With a grimace, I reached over and removed her hand. “Ow.”

“Damn you,” she hissed.

“You gonna finish what the monster started?”

“This is all your fault,” she hissed.

I sighed. “But it was yours first, wasn’t it?”

It was admirable, the way she gave no reaction at all—only a small deadening of the eyes to tell me I was correct. Nothing she would say in the face of no-name nightmares who seemed confused that there was nothing to fill with lead and steel. She reached over and snatched the knife from the first one, gesturing sharply with it. “You’re useless to me,” she said. “Find somewhere else to be, and do it now. I’ll see what little we can gain.”

They left in lockstep. Fletcher inched the door closed, leaving only a small gap so that she could get out again. I eyed it…but first there was the matter of the knife, nearly a machete, that she spun between her fingers. Besides. Maybe these injuries were a lie, one she’d discover if she looked too close, but the monster was still prowling the Outscape, and I still didn’t fancy my chances against it. “If I’m gonna be bait,” I said, “I think I deserve to know why the damn monster’s out for my blood. Where it came from. Hell knows it’s got enough of a taste.”

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“Why aren’t you dead?”

“I scared it away. Talk to me, Fletcher. Petra. That monster got its start here, didn’t it? Maybe I’m just a bonus along the way if it’s stalking its own home. Its own nest where you kicked it out to spread its wings.”

Her eye twitched. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“But don’t you want to? Jabberwock can’t hear you in here. Arcadia can’t hear you.” I wondered where she was, before dismissing it. The farther away from me Arcadia stayed, the better my life was going. It’d been practically utopia before I met her. “I’m the only one you can tell, too. Neither you nor I trust each other more than a rat, but you’ve stuck me in a difficult position to betray you from.”

She smirked at that, but it didn’t last. “We lost it,” she said. “It was ours, they were proud of it—a creation that would change everything. Give them the permanent edge that meant the city could never topple them from their roost. It was ours, and then one day it wasn’t. I have never seen it besides its claw marks and the bodies it leaves behind-” Her gaze flicked to the dead man- “but all that was supposed to change. Tell me what you saw, Starling. Tell me everything from the moment you saw it, from the moment it appeared, or-”

“Or what?”

“This isn’t a nice poison,” she said. “And you’ll serve just as well comatose as awake.”

It certainly looked dangerous enough. I hadn’t perfected a story, but I knew more than she did. “I was asleep,” I said. “I don’t know how it entered, I expected there to be a gaping hole in the wall and then there wasn’t. But it was…lizard-like,” I said, quoting Robin. “Like a dragon, except its head was smooth and the eyes are set far enough back that they look pitch-dark. And its teeth…it has rows and rows of teeth all brushing up against each other, and if one of them had caught me then it’d be like my arm went through a damn shredder.”

“Then how did it leave?”

I moved to push past her, laying one hand against the wall. Fletcher lowered the knife to follow me “It was here, maybe? I couldn’t see much through the blood, but it must have torn its way free somewhere…” I turned, as if surveying the room—and then I tackled Fletcher, grabbing her wrist and forcing the knife’s blade away from me. She hit the ground hard, but even dazed she nearly threw me off in one motion. We scrapped on the cold hospital floor like fighting dogs. She fought with anger, but I fought with the desperation that this was my one chance to escape.

She kicked me in the knee. Once, then twice. I pried her fingers open, forcing the blade back towards her arm. The serrated points pressed against her skin, and I forced my weight against it. Compared to my makeshift tooth-knife, this was child’s play. She gasped when it drew blood, and the poisoned coating seemed to swirl with its own kind of hunger. “What have you done?” she choked out.

“What I have to,” I said. “Comatose, right?”

“You b—you—you—y-” Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she sagged. I let her fall. If I had the strength, or the time, I would have lifted her onto the bed. I had neither. I picked up the knife, taking care not to touch the blade, and staggered to my feet. The door was still cracked open, and I pushed it carefully open. The faceless nightmares had obeyed her orders and gotten lost.

I ran for it.