“It’s Greek.”

Stranna places a hand on his arm. “Let it go, Erik.”

The anger has begun to pulse beneath my skin, and I know what’s happened the last few times it escalated out of my control.

Stranna turns to me. “I think you should go now.”

“Go?”

She doesn’t say it again. Instead, she makes her way back toward her comrades, eyes on the bed of the wounded Spore. Adelphoi. Whatever.

Erik gives me an apologetic glance, then follows her. Another Spore trembles and buries their face in Stranna’s shoulder. I’m an invader here. I don’t belong.

I backtrack into one of the catacombs, though I don’t know how to get out. Stranna knows I’ll get lost, but she told me to go. I stalk down a tunnel, not really caring where it leads. I don’t get far before footsteps catch up to me. It’s the oldest of the kids, the one who got to the basketball first. The one who followed us when we first arrived.

“You’re trying to get back to the coliseum, right?”

“I guess.” I don’t really feel like going back. I can’t stay here, though. I’m not welcome.

More than ever I feel homeless.

“Thanks for the basketball,” the boy says. “Follow me.” He doesn’t blindfold me. Doesn’t ask for secrecy. He just leads me through the maze toward the exit of the catacombs.

Neither of us says anything for a while, but then I see the opportunity for answers.

“Thanks for leading me out. I’m Cain.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Everett.” He ducks under a broken bit of arch. Who designed these catacombs to be in such disrepair? Any decent Draftsman would want the dreamscape to sustain itself. Once places start falling apart the rest of the dreamscape unravels too. But Tenebra seems outside of all the rules I learned at university.

“How did you get here, Everett? To the catacombs?” I try to ask the question delicately so I’m not accusing him of being kidnapped. If the Spores are so good at poisoning and tricking the mind, then Everett likely sees them as allies.

“I woke up in Tenebra like anyone else after I got infected, but I wasn’t with Mom and Dad. They told me they woke up in a dark Tunnel, but I woke up in a wheat field. There were other kids there too.”

“Any nightbeasts?”

“Yeah, but they couldn’t enter the field. Angry dogs and things without faces. It seemed like the more scared we got the more there were. So we stayed in the field and didn’t get near the edges, but the longer we waited the more kids came, and we started running out of room.”

From what Everett says, it sounds like kids have their own entry point in the Nightmare. They didn’t have to escape a Tunnel, but they were still trapped in a field somewhere.

“No adults woke up in the field?”

“Nope. We didn’t see any grown-ups until Stranna and the others came to harvest.”

Harvest kids? Or harvest grain?

“What did the Spores do?”

He looks at me quizzically. “Spores?”

“Uh, Adelphoi. Stranna and the others.” His ignorance of terms tells me he’s never been to the coliseum—at least not for long.

“You call them Spores?”

“What do you call them?” I want to make sure I’m saying that Greek word Adelphoi correctly.

“Friends.” He seems bothered by this turn of conversation. I’m not sure what to say. They’re not my friends, though I wouldn’t mind that with Stranna.

“They don’t stink, you know,” he adds.

“What?”

“Olivia, Stranna’s sister, told me what citizens say about them. That they stink and that they kidnapped me. It’s not true.”

“You’re young.”

He stops in the open doorway that leads outside. “You think I’m stupid.”

I should have bit my tongue. “Of course not. But where are your parents? What happened to them? They could be out there”—I gesture outside—“waiting and looking for you.”

“They’re dead.”

“Oh.”

“A lot of our parents died in the Tunnels, but Stranna and Jeremy fought the nightbeasts and got us out from the wheat field. They gave us a home until the Emperor and his tirones attacked us. Every time he attacks, they protect us, and they make us a new home later.”

“How many times has he attacked?”

“Four.”

“But he doesn’t kill anyone, right?”

“Sometimes his soldiers kill the older ones. Like me. Sometimes they turn us into noxiors like they did to Olivia. They take the littlest ones away, and we never see them again.”

Because Luc reunites them with their families. I’ve seen it. But that doesn’t explain why he’d let his tirones kill the older kids.

“Olivia came back. So I hope that means we’ll be able to rescue more. I’m finally old enough to fight.” He puffs out his chest, and something inside me dies. This kid fights? “Erik and Jeremy have been teaching me.”

“Why do the Emperor’s men want to kill you?”

“I can’t wake up anymore.” We exit the catacombs, and the gray gloom seems brighter compared to the dark tunnels. Everett points. “The phoenix’s nest is up that hill.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, well, bye.” He disappears back into the catacombs before I can ask any more questions. Not that I need more answers. There is plenty to ponder right now. Luc’s tirones rescue only the young kids who can wake and sleep at will. I saw Olivia in the Arena. I knew she’d been turned into a noxior, yet I never asked Luc why.