"Carson!" I rush over to him and fall to my knees beside him. He's flat on his back, his face clear of emotion and his chest still.

No. He can't be dead.

"Idiot," Marcus mutters. "Serves him right for eating something in this place."

His lack of regard burns me. I'm about to reach out and feel for Carson's pulse when his lips twitch.

"Did he just—?"

A laugh erupts from Carson's mouth, cutting off Willow's question. He opens his eyes, sees us looking down with dumbfounded expressions, and begins to laugh uproariously.

"What's wrong with you?" Alec says grumpily.

Carson sits up and grins around at us. "Just wanted to give y'all a break from the testosterone party before someone got hurt."

"You almost gave us heart attacks instead," Willow says.

"It was worth the risk."

I give Carson a hand up. Even with the fear gone, my legs are still limp. "Did you really eat the bread?"

"No way. I've taken food from some questionable people before, but I draw the line at trusting kidnappers." He points at the white clump on the floor next to a box of beans and peas. "I broke off that piece and chucked it over there while y'all were distracted."

"You think this is funny?" Marcus asks in a quiet, frightening voice.

The grin falls from Carson's lips. "S-sorry. Just wanted to loosen up the tension a bit, that's all. Won't happen again."

Marcus flashes him a glare and marches out of the room. Buzzcut follows him like the good lapdog he's turning into.

"You okay?" I ask Carson.

He scratches his collarbone, laughing a little. "I'll be fine. I've run into his type before. Pushing kids like me around. It's nothing new."

"Why did you get involved?" Alec asks.

"Saved you the hassle, didn't it?"

There's a gleam of respect in Alec's eyes. "Guess I owe you one."

I'm impressed with Carson for putting himself on the line to help a stranger out. That takes a lot of courage. The kind of courage I don't have. "We'll have to test our food supply sooner or later. We're going to need it if we'll be in here for more than a day."

"Anyone brave enough to eat what could very well be poisoned food?" Alec asks.

"When you put it like that . . ." Willow says dryly. "Sorry, I'll pass. Carson?"

He lifts his hands and backs away. "Not me. I've reached my danger limit for the day."

"I think I'll pass, too," Alec says.

That leaves me. I decide to turn down the offer without compromising my need to put on a strong front. "Why should we do all the work? Let's give someone else the chance to save the day."

Alec takes one of the bread bags. We return to the cafeteria and find a quarter of the people we left earlier. When Alec asks a nearby girl where everyone went, she says, "Captain found a locked door in the gym. He's still trying to open it."

"Captain?" I ask.

She shrugs. "That's what he told us to call him."

Marcus. Of course.

Willow rolls her eyes. "Let's go see if Captain has had any luck breaking us out of here."

We reach a wide doorway labeled GYMNASIUM. The interior is spacious, with a half-court and bleachers on one side. In one corner is some gym equipment: weights, a dangling heavy bag, and a couple of treadmills. The overhead lights bounce off the gleaming hardwood floor, accentuating the newness of this place.

The rest of the kids are on the other side of the gym. Marcus is next to Buzzcut and another guy, all three of them drenched in sweat. The door in front of them is still locked. "Maybe we can find something to open it," a girl is saying.

"Then go look around," Marcus barks. Beads of moisture cling to his olive skin. He looks restless, like he's trapped in a hole and he'll do anything to claw his way out. I'm sure being helpless is a new experience for him.

"Hang on," Alec says, offering up the bread. "Anyone feeling hungry?"

"Which poor sucker are you trying to trick now?" Marcus scoffs.

"Not a trick. Just an opportunity."

A boy steps up next to Alec. He's scrawny, shorter even than Carson. Acne scars pockmark his skin. His thin upper lip is half-hidden behind a mustache of whiskers. Slick black hair drapes over his gray eyes, which dart everywhere before they settle on Alec. "I'll do it."

Marcus grins. "Weasel-face to the rescue."

"What's your name?" Alec asks as he opens the bag and holds out a slice of bread.

The corner of the guy's mouth lifts in a quick sneer. "Call me Weasel."

"Sure, why not?" Alec says. "Let the record show that Weasel, being of sound mind and under no duress, has agreed to ingest what could very well be poisoned bread. We're counting on you, buddy."

Weasel takes the bread. As worried as I am that he might die from poisoning, I'm selfishly more worried about what will happen to the rest of us. Something tells me we're not getting anything else to eat down here.

He takes a huge bite with a degree of cockiness that tells me he's milking our attention for all it's worth. We hold our collective breath as he chews and gazes into the distance. His Adam's apple bops when he swallows. Then he takes off another chunk.

He begins to cough. My stomach sinks when he bends forward and hacks out pieces of the bread, spewing them all over the shiny gymnasium floor.

"You okay, man?" Alec asks.

He straightens up and wipes his mouth. "Yeah, it just went down the wrong pipe. It tastes like normal bread—a little stale, but okay otherwise."

"Thank God," one girl says. "I feel like I haven't eaten in days."

"Technically you haven't," someone else points out.

Marcus steps in and assigns one of his buddies to create a kitchen duty schedule for the rest of us. As he instructs him, I look around at the gathered teens, wondering if it really is this easy. There's still so much unaccounted for. "Anyone here with diabetes?" I ask. "Food allergies? Anything that would affect your ability to eat the food they've given us?"

A few kids mumble no's. The rest stare back at me.

"Aren't you all the picture of health?" Marcus says.

Almost a hundred kids and no one has an allergy? "Is anyone sick right now?"

More negatives. I'm not either. I've never gotten sick a day in my entire life. Even before Sam came into our lives, my mom never took me to the doctor—partly because she didn't want to waste money on me when she could spend it on mascara, but also because there was never a need for it. On some level, I always wondered why I didn't catch whatever bug was floating around school. I just never thought it meant something.

Could this be another thing we have in common?

"Raise your hand if you've ever gotten sick," I say.

"That's a weird thing to ask." Alec says.

What's weirder is that no hands go up.

"Whoa," a guy says, shuffling on his feet. "Is this nuts or am I overreacting?"

"What does this mean?" Marcus asks. He lifts a hand and waves it lazily in my direction. "You're the brains here. Why don't you tell us why they'd pick dozens of healthy kids for whatever game they're playing?"

I shrug. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" There's a snide tone in his voice. "Well, that's a shame. And here I thought you had all the answers."

I tighten my hands into fists. Willow jumps in before I can answer him. "We're all on the same side here. Let's not forget that."

"Are we?" Marcus moves away from the wall. "If there's some big reason why we're in here, maybe we're not supposed to work together. You think of that?"

"What's your point?" Willow asks.

"I'm saying maybe this is about survival of the fittest. And all you have to do is look around to know who'll be the predator and who will end up as prey."

His dark gaze is on me as he says this last part. The others turn to catch my reaction. Dozens of eyeballs staring me down isn't the best experience in the world, and despite our circumstances, the threat hovering over us like gathering storm clouds and the hunger and general disorientation caused by waking up in this peculiar place, my skin flushes with heat.

What I feel isn't high-school-level embarrassment. This is nothing like that time in tenth grade when I was about to give a display-board presentation to a disillusioned balding teacher and a classroom full of peers who couldn't care less about the migration habits of barnacle geese.

It's worse than that. It's more primal, this fear. It leaks out from some part of me I fight to contain every day, because the only other choice is to lose myself to it.

Don't cry now, April. You know what will happen if you do.

"You okay?" Alec says, looking concerned.

I turn and race out of the gym.