Ollie doesn’t know how long he stays at the bottom of the ledge, lying face up under the stars. He should get up and check the carnage for survivors. He should face the fact that their trap completely failed. Something happened to Devin, he gave up Aidan as bait, Sheridan faced the mimics alone. They lost Hannah.
Or not-Hannah.
It feels like losing her twice.
She meant it when she said she would protect them. Ollie doesn’t know what to do with that. She might’ve killed Hannah, might’ve lied to them for weeks, might’ve only used them for a ticket out, but she died saving him. Maybe it’s because she still needed his help, or maybe it’s because she really was becoming more like the real Hannah.
Whatever the reason, she’s gone now.
Eventually, a face peers over the ledge. Aidan’s tattered glasses are just distinguishable in the smoky moonlight. Ollie sighs; at least Aidan is alive.
“Are you breathing?” Aidan asks.
“Yeah.” Ollie groans. “Unfortunately.”
“Thank god,” Aidan says. He leans back over the ledge and calls out, “He’s alive, too. He’s over here.”
Sheridan appears at Aidan’s side. She clambers down the ledge, crouching beside Ollie to help him up. Pain sears through his head, so hot and fast it momentarily blinds him. He leans into Sheridan’s torso, breathing through his teeth.
“Is it your head?” Sheridan asks.
Ollie nods.
Sheridan turns him over in her arms more tenderly than he expects, tucking his forehead to her shoulder. He inhales the smoky scent of her shirt and closes his eyes. They need to get out of here, but it’s too much. He’s battered, aching, confused. He’s tired.
Sheridan pats his back. “Did you see where Devin went?”
Ollie shakes his head.
Sheridan is quiet. Ollie’s sure she’s battling her instinct to abandon him and go look for Devin. She doesn’t leave him, though. She hooks her arm under Ollie, easing him up to a seat. She brushes the dust from his brow and he sees her clearly for the first time since the trap fell apart. Soot coats her hairline and jaw, and there’s a deep burn on her wrist. Her fingers, which were already mangled, are swollen and purple. Her eyes are watery, pupils like pinpricks in the blue.
“God.” Ollie laughs. “Not our best work.”
Reluctantly, Sheridan laughs, too.
“Good news is that, once the fire started really picking up, all the mimics ran away,” Aidan says, resting his chin against the ledge. “Bad news is that the mimic got out of her ties. I think she got away.”
Any humor Ollie found in their situation dies. “No, she uh … she tried to help us.”
“What?” Aidan asks.
“Wait…” Sheridan breathes. “When?”
Ollie points to Aidan. “I asked her to get you out of the fire. And she did. Then she…”
Over and over, he pictures it. Only a few seconds, but it lasts hours in his mind. A tug, a flame, and then she was gone. Everything left of Hannah, gone. He shouldn’t feel like this about it—only a day ago, he was threatening to do it himself—but there’s a rotten, fetid feeling collecting in him. He lost Hannah and didn’t realize it. Now he lost her for real and it’s like the grief doubles.
“Here,” Sheridan says quietly. “Let’s get to camp. You need water.”
Sheridan helps Ollie to his feet, guiding him back to their campsite. Ollie sees the wreckage for the first time. Blackened strands of scorched rope lie in the grass like limp spider legs, smoke still coiling in the dark. Their gear lays in tatters, tarps singed and melted, fused with the earth. The fire is out, but its carnage remains. It’s incredible that any of them survived. Ollie should feel grateful to be here, but he looks to the last place he saw Hannah before she was gone and he has to suck in a breath to keep from vomiting.
He points to the spot. “That’s where she was.”
Aidan hops to the spot and sticks one of their spears in the dirt. He tears away a thin piece of his T-shirt and wraps it around the stick before lighting it. It burns silent and slow, the flame bowing and rising in the breeze. It casts Aidan’s face orange with flickering light. His eyes are closed. In his own way, he’s saying goodbye.
Ollie closes his eyes, too.
In a way, he supposes the flame is for both the Hannah that entered these woods with them and the Hannah that took her place.
The campsite is quiet and smoky and cool with dew when Sheridan finally speaks. “We need to look for Devin.”
He hasn’t thought about Devin because, if the Devin that sabotaged him last night was a mimic, he doesn’t know what happened to the real one. If there’s no trace of her, there’s a chance a mimic got her the same way they got Hannah. If they haven’t already replaced her, they will soon. After last night, they can’t face a horde of them again.
“Sheridan,” Ollie says carefully. “You think you can get us to the river?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Sheridan glowers. “After we find Devin.”
“Sheridan—”
“What if she’s already gone?” Aidan asks.
It takes them both by surprise. Aidan holds his glasses in his lap, twisting and turning them into a shape he can keep on his face. He’s miles different from the boy who entered the woods with them, all covered in soot and scrapes and bruises now, face hard and cold like he’s come straight from the battlefields. In a way, Ollie supposes he has.
“Then we need to find proof,” Sheridan argues. “We can’t leave without her.”
“We can get help,” Ollie says. “They can come back and find her.”
“What if it takes days?” Sheridan asks. “Or weeks? What if, by the time we find someone, she’s gone?”
Ollie’s chest aches. He doesn’t want to be on the other side of this argument. Devin is his best friend in these woods and he wouldn’t leave her if he had a choice. But if they look for her now, they’ll lose their chance to get out. They’ll die in these woods and all of it will be for nothing.
“They won’t get her,” Aidan says. “She’s the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.”
“Being stubborn doesn’t save you,” Sheridan snaps. “You both know that.”
It strikes Ollie how different Sheridan is, too. It’s the opposite of Aidan in a way. She hasn’t hardened, hasn’t become colder. If anything, it’s the first time he’s seen her truly care about something. She doesn’t crack any jokes, doesn’t play her anger off as anything but anger. Her breath is short, fists clenched, glare sharp enough to cut.
She reminds him of Devin.
“Sheridan…” Ollie says.
“We can’t leave without her,” she says again. Voice heavy, she adds, “I can’t leave without her.”
Ollie and Aidan are quiet.
“I won’t go back without her.” Sheridan’s voice shakes. “If you need to cross and get help, that’s fine. I’ll look for her.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Ollie says.
“But you’ll leave her?”
“Because I don’t know if she’s alive,” Ollie snaps. “We already lost Hannah. I don’t want anyone else to die.”
“She saved me,” Sheridan hisses. “She’s saved all of us, like, a million times since we got here. She saved me in a way I can’t even … I won’t leave without her. I won’t. And I think you should both think about all the times Devin could’ve left you behind and didn’t.”
When he looks back at their time in the woods, he sees it all. Devin handing him berries when he’d forgotten to collect his own, Devin telling him stories about Portland to remind him they’d make it out, Devin pulling him from the river, Devin tackling Liv to save him. It’s been Devin saving them—saving him—the whole time. Apparently, she’s saved Sheridan in ways Ollie can’t begin to understand.
He presses his face into his hands. “She won’t forgive us if we die looking for her.”
“If any of us went missing, she would look,” Sheridan says. “You know she would.”
He does. In his bones, he knows.
And so, even with the river looming nearby and a clear escape laid out in front of them, they gear up for the last time and wade into the sea of trees and smoke. Ollie tries not to think about what happened the last time someone disappeared from camp, tries not to think about what they’ll be forced to do if Devin’s been replaced. He walks and he calls her name and, for the first time in years, he prays.
Devin wakes to the sound of water dripping. Her eyes are crusted shut, and though she’s sure the air in front of her is velvety and dark, she doesn’t open them. She breathes in and the inch of expansion stabs. When she yelps at the pain, the sound echoes back to her. The ground under her spine is stone, the air cold and wet, the scent so musky and dank she can taste it.
It occurs to her slowly that she isn’t supposed to be here. She was at the clearing, setting the trap. She was talking to Sheridan and realizing it wasn’t Sheridan. She was moving through the woods in a blur as night set in, the passing trees a smudge in her hazy vision. After that, she can’t remember.
“Are you awake?”
The voice echoes from everywhere at once, sending a chill down Devin’s spine. This time, the recognition is immediate. It’s Mr. Atwood’s voice again and god Devin wishes the mimics would pick another face. Any other face. The mimic moves somewhere in the dark. Its footsteps slap, growing closer.
Devin manages to open her eyes.
It’s even darker than she expects, a cave full to the brim with shadow except for a small mouth of light far to her right. She touches her temple and it stings. Her pants and sleeves are torn to shreds, crusted blood gluing the ribbons of fabric to her skin.
“What did you do to me?” Devin asks, and her voice comes out hoarse. “Where am I?”
“You’re in my home, Devin,” Mr. Atwood’s voice coos. “I’m sorry. You must be in a lot of pain. I wish I’d been able to carry you.”
She was dragged here, then. Wherever here is. Her heart races because a mimic would only drag her here, away from all the others, for one reason. They’ve been safe these last few days because they haven’t spent any time alone. If the mimic thinks it can get her like they got Hannah, though, it’s dead wrong. She trains her eyes on the light and tries to measure how far she’ll have to crawl to get there.
“What happened to the others?” Devin asks.
“I wish I knew.”
Devin shifts, finally managing to sit up. Gravel on the cave floor juts into an open wound at the back of her leg and she winces, but she doesn’t cry out. She just needs to get moving. The others will already be looking for her.
“I can taste your determination, Devin,” Mr. Atwood says. It’s impossible to tell how close he is. Devin tries not to squirm away from the timbre of his voice, but her skin crawls. The mimic takes a slow, labored breath. “You want out of here very badly, don’t you?”
Devin bites back a groan as she finally gets her legs under her.
The mimic chuckles, and just like not-Hannah’s crying, it’s unnatural. Almost infantile. Devin holds her breath to keep from vomiting. Somewhere to her left, it moves again. The light at the mouth of the cave disappears and Devin’s eyes widen. The mimic is somewhere between her and the exit. It’s like she’s back in the Pattons’ bedroom all over again: an unseen attacker somewhere in the dark and a narrow slot for escape.
She’s stronger now. Tired, but stronger.
“Devin, please listen when I’m speaking to you,” the mimic says. “I think we should talk about what leaving this cave looks like for you.”
“If you think looking like him is gonna get to me, it doesn’t,” Devin hisses through clenched teeth. “It just makes me want to kill you even more.”
Devin feels along the dank cave floor, but it’s smooth and flat. Slowly, she begins crawling. As long as she can fend off the mimic’s words, it can’t get her. As long as she stays strong enough to keep it out of her head, she’ll live. The others might’ve been sucked in by the mimic’s honeyed, hypnotic words, but Devin is different. She’s stronger, she won’t—
“Devin.” The mimic sighs, its voice sliding down to an unsettling rumble.
Something begins to crackle and slip in the cave. The mimic is changing, but she doesn’t know what it might change into. As far as she’s seen, the mimics only ever have one face for each person, but not-Hannah said they’re capable of much more.
“Do you think you’ll be able to just crawl out of here, Devin?” the mimic says, voice so deep it rattles the earth under Devin’s blistered hands. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you.”
“I don’t want to talk,” Devin says, crawling another foot before stopping to catch her breath. “I don’t think you guys can actually kill me if I don’t say you can. So, I don’t know how you plan to—”
There’s a clicking on the stone, like talons scuttling toward her. When the mimic speaks, its voice is so close Devin feels its breath fan over her face.
“You think I can’t hurt you?”
And then something collides with Devin’s chest, pulling her up from the cave floor until she hits the wall behind her. The pain jolts through her like a bolt of lightning. When her hands and knees meet the ground again, she gags. She tastes iron on her tongue. A foul, sickly smell burns in her nose.
“I’m sorry,” the mimic rumbles. “I’m trying to be gentler with you than I was with him.”
Devin’s hands shake. She feels along the cave floor again, but this time, she immediately brushes her knuckles over fabric. Cotton. A T-shirt, just like hers.
Her stomach sinks.
“You’re right. I can’t leave this forest in your body unless you let me.” The clicking continues, light and quick like a beetle. “But I may have pushed your friend a bit too hard. No matter how many things I told him I could do with his life, he wouldn’t budge. Did you find him particularly hardheaded when you knew him?”
Devin presses her mouth to her shoulder to keep from being sick. When her palm meets the fabric, it’s soft. Skin. A stomach, she thinks. She slides up and finds a taut-muscled shoulder. A scraggly bit of hair is limp at his neck. His flesh is colder than the cave floor.
“Some people don’t have the self-awareness to be miserable,” the mimic continues. “Your parents think you’re a failure because you couldn’t get into medical school, I told him. Your girlfriend hates the way you speak to her. Your roommates have been planning to kick you out for weeks. None of it mattered to him.”
Devin doesn’t need light to know whose body is slumped against the cave wall next to her. She’s spent weeks shutting off the part of her mind that wondered why only Liv came back. Why only Liv targeted their camp. Her stomach roils with the sudden, crushing answer.
She never liked Ethan, but she didn’t want this, either.
“You know, I even told him I’d have to go for one of the children if he didn’t give it up? I told him how I’d kill each and every one of you. He was a stubborn, thick-skulled man. In the end, I suppose I’m glad things didn’t work out.”
Devin holds her breath and reaches for Ethan’s body again, this time checking him for something she can use. The scent of his rot pulls tears fast and hard from her eyes. His abdomen is narrow and stiff from starvation, his limbs set with rigor mortis. Finally, Devin’s hand closes around something metal. She pricks her finger on a bit of broken glass and realizes what she’s touching. Lantern.
“All this to say, Devin, I think it’s a good idea for you to listen to me,” the mimic continues, voice as smooth as silk. “I knew you would understand better, anyway. Ethan couldn’t fathom just how painful life can be. He never understood you children, the things you’d been through, how hard it would be for you to come back from what you’ve seen. Not like I do.”
Devin doesn’t miss the threat nested in it. If you don’t listen, I can kill you. Whether or not you comply, you won’t leave this cave. She clutches the collar of her T-shirt and even that much movement sends a stab of pain through her. She whimpers, biting the inside of her cheek to bury the noise.
Before Devin can wedge the lantern to freedom, something touches her. It’s smooth and warm, sliding along her elbow before slowly wrapping around her waist. Like an inner tube circling her, its grasp quickly tightens. This mimic isn’t shaped like the others she’s seen. It’s strong enough to lift her from the ground.
For the first time, Devin is acutely aware she might die in this cave.
“I hope you don’t mind if I hide in the dark,” the mimic says. “I’m shy about my appearance.”
As it speaks, its voice changes again, softening until it’s familiar. This voice feels worlds different from the times the mimic turned into Mr. Atwood, like stepping into a warm tub after a long, cold day. The mimic dresses itself in Ollie’s voice this time, all mumbled and coarse like chalk. She isn’t going to fall for it, though.
“Why do you…” Devin gasps, wrestling against the mimic’s tightening grip. “Why do you do this to us?”
The mimic is quiet. In Ollie’s voice, it mutters, “I don’t know.”
“You want to be me?” Devin asks. “Wait until you get out there. I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Ah.” The mimic sighs. “It’s so hard being you, Devin Green. Foster families don’t want you, schools don’t want you, girls don’t want you, and now you think none of the mimics want you, either. Even lost in the woods, you’re the bottom of the food chain. You just can’t catch a break.”
Devin struggles against the mimic’s grasp, but it’s no use. When she moves her leg, she just feels the corner of the lantern. “Saying mean things when you’re pretending to be him is ruining it. He’d never talk to me like that.”
The mimic quiets, but its grip doesn’t slacken. The slithering sound begins again, echoing from the wet cave walls. It’s changing again. Devin braces herself for the worst.
“Should I try someone a little more disgusting?” the mimic asks.
Its voice slides up this time, sharpening to a point, and Devin knows who it’s becoming long before it settles. A few weeks ago, it was her least favorite sound on the planet. Now, Sheridan’s voice means something else. When the mimic speaks again, it’s only inches in front of her.
“It makes more sense to say cruel things in this voice, doesn’t it?” the mimic asks. “Speaking of people who want you, you’ve really figured it out now, haven’t you? Finally, someone cares about you. You just had to hit her first.”
Devin grits her teeth, pulling the lantern until it’s between her ankles.
“I’m just trying to be helpful.” The mimic shifts, tightening its grip until Devin can hardly breathe. “She’s either afraid of you or she’s making a joke out of you. You just can’t figure out which it is. But you think, when you two get back to the world outside, she won’t see how many more options she has? Ones that aren’t so … feral.”
She wants to believe it isn’t true. But she feels the first traces of the mimic’s magnetism on her mind, the tremor of doubt, the whisper at the very back of her skull saying the mimic is right. She and Sheridan might fit together now because they’re alone out here, but back home, worlds apart, it’ll all fade. Sheridan will have her life to return to.
And Devin will have nothing.
With a final thrust, Devin brings her boot down on the front of the lantern. It sputters to life, flooding the cave with orange light. It’s like someone’s punched her in the eyes, momentarily blinding. She was hit harder than she thought.
Then, she sees the mimic.
Only inches in front of her, its face is half-transformed into Sheridan’s. The other half is sallow and gray as dishwater, its dark eyes sunken and its mouth drooping to expose a sliver of its teeth. Shaking, Devin looks down at what’s holding her in place. The mimic’s torso, stretched long like the twisting barrel of a snake’s body, wraps around her arms. Devin’s eyes widen.
Under her feet is Ethan. Wounds smeared with old, blackened blood cover his pale skin. His glassy eyes are open wide, fixed on the ceiling of the cave. His lips, now gray-blue with death, are parted in a final word he never said. He died alone here.
Devin can’t die the same way.
The mimic’s expression sours at the sudden light. It constricts, choking the words from her. With a small shiver, the mimic keeps changing. Its skin bubbles and droops until, finally, it looks like a near-perfect recreation of Sheridan. And for a brief, humiliating moment, Devin goes weak at the sight of her. The mimic reaches out hard and fast, gripping Devin’s jaw in its hand.
“I don’t think you understand, Devin,” the mimic hisses. “You think I’m out to take your life from you, but it’s more than that. I’ve been watching you since you crossed into my home. When you first washed up on that riverbank, I was there. When you slept beneath towering oaks, I watched from the branches. I followed you the whole way and, while all the others thought your friends would be easier, I only wanted to understand you. Ethan was only ever going to be a consolation prize for me. I was fascinated by you. What makes her life so bad no one else wants to touch it?”
The mimic’s hold on Devin’s jaw softens, but looking into its eyes, all she sees is Sheridan. All she hears is Sheridan, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. Mocking her. The cave begins to close in on her, rock walls flickering in the dim lantern light. She’s dizzy, and she isn’t sure if it’s the mimic’s grip on her abdomen or its grip on her mind. She bites down hard on the inside of her cheek, focusing on the pain and the tang of blood on her tongue. She can’t slip under.
“You know what I think, Devin? I think you’re exhausted.” Not-Sheridan brushes her fingers down Devin’s jaw, leaning forward to look her hard in the eyes. “When I looked through you, all I saw was people who left you in the dirt. Families you couldn’t keep, schools you couldn’t impress, girls you couldn’t connect with. People who hurt you and tried to hide it, people you hurt in a desperate attempt to leave a mark. And I saw you pushing through all of that because you really think that, one day, you’ll pull yourself out of this and show them all they were wrong.”
When Devin sucks in a breath, it’s ragged. “Why would you want to be me?”
“Your life ended years ago, Devin. Maybe before you were even born,” not-Sheridan says, a genuinely sympathetic tilt to her brow. “All those people you want to prove wrong? You can’t. You don’t have it in you. You’ll keep trying, but every time you take a real step out of those shadows, you’ll fall again. You’ll get so tired of it, at some point you’ll give up on hoping. You won’t live to be a weathered elder, looking back at your dark years as a distant memory. This shadow will follow you until it takes you.”
She should keep struggling against the mimic’s grip, but she can’t look away from its face. She begins to understand Josiah Templeton’s final journal entry. She begins to understand inviting her beast inside. She wants to tear herself away, crawl out of this cave, find the real Sheridan and get out of here. But she also wants to close her eyes and ease into the cruel words that somehow feel as smooth and magnetic as a kiss. When she focuses, she’s certain she sees long, pointed teeth emerging from between not-Sheridan’s lips.
“I don’t think that should be how your story goes, Devin. If I go back in your place, I’ll show them all. Mr. Atwood, the teachers that wrote you up, the fosters that tossed you out … I can show them all how wrong they were to hurt you. I’ll lead your friends out of the woods and I’ll make Devin Green a name nobody will ever forget.”
It isn’t real. But no matter how hard she searches for the alternative—the real truth—she can’t think of it. She tries to picture her life outside these woods and she comes up empty-handed. Fighting is only delaying the inevitable. Maybe it always was.
“What do you think, Devin?” the mimic says, its voice morphing back into the deep, rumbling tone from before. “Do you want to become something new?”
Blinking tears from her eyes, Devin nods.
Solemnly, the mimic sighs. “It will be painless, Devin. I promise to do something good with your life.”
Devin’s eyes flutter shut, the smooth quiet of night coming over her like she’s falling asleep. She feels the mimic’s mouth open wide, feels the heat of its breath on her skin, and she pretends it’s the warmth of the first summer sun after a long winter. Echoing faintly from outside the cave, she hears a voice.
Devin. Devin. Devin, where are you?
She blinks.
She didn’t imagine it. She’s sure she heard Sheridan somewhere outside the cave, calling her name. Not the false Sheridan, the real one. The voice comes again, closer this time, and it’s like the fog burns away. The silky warmth of the cave dies and the cold runs her through. Her muscles ache from being gripped, her head throbs from hitting the cave wall.
The mimic’s mouth is open in front of her.
Instinct kicks in and, arms restrained, Devin lunges forward and bites down on the mimic’s fleshy shoulder. She doesn’t let go, even as the mimic recoils, wailing so loud Devin thinks her skull might split. She doesn’t let go when something hot and wet floods her mouth with the taste of wet soil. She spits out the mimic’s blood on the cave floor. It’s grip eases as it shrieks and Devin hoists herself to freedom.
“Devin—” the mimic cries, a harmony half its own voice and half Sheridan’s.
Devin grabs the lantern from her feet and shoves the mimic to the cave floor. She slams it against the mimic’s chest, its throat, its face. All at once, the exhaustion burns away, replaced by the burning, searing need to survive. She swings the lantern again and the light goes out, glass fracturing and sticking to the mimic’s skin. It slices her hands, too, but she doesn’t stop. In the pure darkness, she pictures the mimic as Mr. Atwood again, taunting her with the worst moment of her life, goading her into the void.
With a shuddered breath, she crushes the lantern to the mimic’s face even harder. Something splits, the wet sound of it echoing from the cave walls.
“I want to be alive,” Devin cries into the dark, her voice hoarse and heavy with tears. She doesn’t stop. The mimic might believe there’s nothing good waiting for her outside this cave, but it isn’t true. She pictures moving the first boxes into her apartment with Ollie, lying down in a bed she won’t have to give up in a few months, drawing the real Sheridan’s face to hers knowing they aren’t running out of time. “It’s my life. You. Can’t. Have it.”
Devin brings the lantern down again with each word until it comes apart in her hands. The fire in her veins isn’t sated, though. She gasps for breath, wiping the blood from her face with the back of her wrist. She won’t let this mimic slither into the real world in her body, won’t let it reap the good she suffered for.
When the mimic makes a noise, it only comes out in a gurgle. Devin discards the lantern and begins feeling along the cave floor. Her brain might be fuzzy and her heart might be racing, but she remembers one thing: fire is the only thing that will kill them.
Finally, she touches her own pocket. The lighter from their last test is still there, round against her fingertips. Behind her, she hears the first shuffling of the mimic healing, reassembling itself bone by bone, preparing to come for her again.
Devin pushes herself to her feet. She clicks the lighter on.
The mimic lays at her feet, bloodied and bruised and, predictably, turned back into Mr. Atwood. His receding hairline, his lopsided glasses, his big, blank eyes.
When he speaks, he spits up blood. “There’s nothing for you to go back to.”
And for a moment, Devin is back in the house by the blackberry bushes. She’s standing on the back porch, looking at the expanse of grass. She’s wondering what it will take to get out. She’s dreading the night, the silence, the suffocating touch she can’t escape. Under all the wounds, he’s still got her in the palm of his hands. He still follows her like a shadow. Maybe he always will.
Devin’s hand on the lighter quivers. Then quietly, like a prayer, she stoops and presses the little flame to the mimic’s neck, watching unflinching as the fire eats the mimic—and Mr. Atwood—alive.