Marcus's room was two doors down from mine, and by the time we reached it half the compound had gathered in the hallway, a tense knot of bodies that parted the moment Ronan pushed through them with me close behind, my heart hammering with a dread I could not fully name yet.
Ronan kicked the door open rather than wait for someone to find a key, and what waited inside stopped every conversation in the hallway dead.
Marcus was alive, barely, curled on the floor beside his bed in a position that looked less like collapse and more like something had folded him there deliberately, skin gone gray in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss, veins visible beneath the surface tracing dark, wrong patterns up his arms and throat. He was breathing, shallow and labored, eyes open but unfocused, f
