52

52

It’s The Catch That Will Kill Us

I fight to be free like a wild thing, but I can’t get out of the vines. It’s like the more I struggle, the more they cling. The pain is blooming all over, even under my clothes.

Vaguely, I’m aware that whoever is screaming ahead of us cuts off. Now only my cries as I struggle fill the cavern.

It feels like forever. Minutes before someone grabs me by the ankles and drags me away using more haste than care, rocks scraping up my back. The vines still grab at me even as we go, and I think I hear Zai swear. But finally we come to a stop. No more vines. I almost don’t care because I’m too busy going fetal. My throat is closing over, my breath coming in painful wheezes.

Not enough air.

I’m not getting enough air down my throat. Like it’s suddenly ten sizes too small.

Panic sets in, and I look frantically around my team, my gaze landing on Zai and holding.

“Oh my gods,” Trinica mumbles. “It’s killing her.”

I sound like I’m barking with every attempted breath, my head starting to swim.

Meike’s beside me in a flash, dumping vodka over me, and the pain eases…but not enough. I was in the vines too long, I think.

I shake my head, turning frantic.

Zai lunges forward, and I see the glint of a cylinder in his hand. He expertly tugs a tab off one end, and my eyes go wide as my mind catches up. His EpiPen. He rams the tapered, orange end against my leg, then holds it in place for what feels like forever.

But then…it’s like the muscles of my throat start to relax, more air making it to my lungs.

I feel a bit dizzy as the effects take hold, but the longer it goes, the more I can breathe. The pain recedes, too. With a hand behind my head, Zai sits me up, his face in mine, warm brown eyes worried.

“Look at that,” Amir says.

I pull my gaze from Zai to look down and gasp. The blisters are shrinking. Slowly, but the pain is going with them.

It worked.

But then it hits me, and I jerk my gaze back to his. “Was that your only EpiPen?”

The length of his pause tells me all I need to know before he shrugs.

Fuck.

He did that for me.

No one does things like that for me. He could die out here without that medicine.

“Zai,” I whisper, shaking my head. Then wince, because that still hurts.

His lips tilt. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Ouch!” Meike yelps.

Amir swings his light around just in time to see vines of ivy wrapping themselves up her legs. Like they’re…alive.

“Oh gods,” she whispers. And has just enough time to look up at us with horror-filled eyes before the ivy yanks her off her feet and drags her away.

Zai takes off after Meike, his Talaria making a frantic sound like hummingbird wings. But the darkness quickly swallows them.

We can hear her cries, hear him call out, but we stand there staring into dark nothingness, twitching at every rustle and checking the ground for more ivy coming at us.

This is what happens at night.

The vines.

A flash of movement, and suddenly Zai is flying a foot above the ground back toward us, Meike in his arms. Amir’s light shifts above Zai for a second, and my stomach clenches hard. Vines are reaching for him from the ceiling, thrashing and lowering. He makes it to where we’re waiting.

He lands beside us, laying her down on the ground. Zai has more blisters on his hands and face, but Meike…

“Watch for the vines,” he says.

I grab my axe and spin to face the darkness barely illuminated by Amir’s tiny light and keep checking over my shoulder. Meike’s out cold, covered in masses of blisters that go under her clothes, but she’s still breathing.

Those vines go for skin. Hells.

“What do we do?” Amir asks.

“We sacrifice more vodka,” Trinica says grimly.

And none of us argue. Wasting no time, Amir and I keep watch as Trinica and Zai grab two bottles and start working on Meike.

Suddenly, screams rise and echo through the cavern. Not just one person—several, and coming from behind us.

“That’s Dex’s team,” Zai says.

I nod. “The vines must’ve gotten them.”

The screaming keeps going and going. Have they not learned about the vodka cure?

I exchange a bleak look with Zai.

Is he thinking what I’m thinking? That we now know what makes this Labor about Heart. We could abandon our fellow champions to anaphylactic shock, or we could go back and tell them the solution.

“I could fly to them,” Zai says.

“No,” Trinica replies. “Meike might need you to fly her out of here.”

Amir can’t move fast with his booted foot and broken ribs and needs to keep hacking a path with my axe. Trinica was already struggling more physically than I was. But I have the epinephrine in my system now, which, I tell myself, will keep me protected.

“I’ll go,” I say.

Zai gives me a single nod.

“Here.” Amir shoves his phone at me. I take it and run into the darkness alone.

It doesn’t take me long to get to Dex’s group. I have to duck and jump several times to avoid the vines, which are like whips reaching for me over and over. Luckily, the group wasn’t that far behind, and the screaming leads me straight to them.

I find the champions at the edge of a pit full of poison ivy. Dex is on his stomach at the lip, pulling a teeth-gritted Dae out as the vines try to drag him back down. Meanwhile, Rima, Neve, and Samuel, even with his strength, are writhing on the ground.

I run to them first and help yank Dae the rest of the way out. Then I rip open a case of their vodka.

“You’re seriously stealing from us?” Samuel demands on a groan, wide-set eyes accusing in the beam of the flashlight.

“Bitch,” Neve mutters and tries to push to her knees, maybe to come at me.

A vine slithers out of the darkness, reaching for her.

I ignore her and twist the top off the bottle, then splash it on Dex’s head.

“What the fu—” The instant the healing effect hits, he bites off the words. Then, “Shit.”

I shoot him a grim smile as I kneel over a wary Samuel next. “That’s right. I’m your savior today.”

It takes almost half their bottles to get them to a point where they can function, especially because vines keep coming at us, leaving behind more blisters to treat. But at least none of them passes out like Meike.

“Can you run?” Rima asks her team.

Samuel lifts the crate above his head, Superman-style. “Go.”

We take off through the cavern.

Not having to drag a pallet helps, but the vines are getting more aggressive. I can hear them in the cave now, rustling and moving…to get to us. Like a den of snakes coming at us from the walls and ceiling.

We manage not to stop until we stumble over my allies, and I trip over my feet at the sight of Meike still unconscious on the ground. Some of the welts are healed, but some still look rough. Empty bottles of vodka litter the ground.

Trinica looks up at me with pained eyes. “She’s not getting better,” she says. “We used it all.”