She doesn’t go back to the study group, after she learns that Jack is dead. She doesn’t go back to Cara, either; she almost tries, but her memories of their time together are too precious to ruin, memories of a brash girl with a loud laugh who her friends called Captain. The Captain killed a mal for Niki, Niki remembers that.

She thinks if she tried to talk to her now, she wouldn’t see the Captain, just a girl with a power-sharer. A corpse that doesn’t realize she’s dead. Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? They are all dead in here, everything that he touched is dead.

Maybe it is a curse, or— no, it isn’t a curse, she thinks, it is a haunting, Wilbur is haunting them and he’s angry, he wants them to die like he died, slow and cruel like everyone does in this wretched place, and whenever she goes too close to a spot in the library that used to be hers and isn’t anymore she can hear their voices, Jack’s and Wilbur’s. Either she’s going insane or she’s haunted and it doesn’t matter, either way she’s doomed here, she was doomed from the beginning, before she even set foot in the scholomance, they all were. Wilbur was her friend and Wilbur abandoned her and the study group was a beautiful idea and the study group killed Jack and she is going to die here too, here with Wilbur and Jack and the study group, and no one will know what killed her but she will, she’ll know. She hates them, she hates all of them, she hates the study group for dying and she hates the enclavers for being alive and she hates everyone in the study group who’s still alive and she hates all the enclavers who died and she hates this place, this soulless awful place that she is supposed to be grateful for because it is safer than outside. She hates Wilbur. Did Wilbur kill Jack? No, Niki killed Jack. Wilbur killed Niki. Round and round and nothing ever changes in here, nothing will ever happen, nothing except rot and death and Wilbur, Wilbur is gone, he’s dead and gone and he is not happening anymore because he is gone, their spot looks the same as it did before and he is wearing the shirt she is wearing and it’s wrong because he is gone, he is dead, and she throws all of her heaviest objects towards where she hears his voice but there aren’t very many and they aren’t very heavy so instead she— runs— and nothing matters except the rhythm of her feet, reminding her, Wil-bur-is-gone, Wil-bur-is-dead, over and over. Back at her room she is holding the scrap metal he gave her and she is bleeding from it. The study group is Wilbur and the scrap metal is Wilbur and she is Wilbur and Wilbur is dead. Jack Manifold was kind and Jack Manifold is dead, he is gone, gone with Wilbur, his ghost killed him, she saw it, and she does not believe in Heaven but she thinks she might be in Hell, and she is not in her room anymore but she is still bleeding. She is running again. Jack is gone. Jack is dead. There is no scrap metal, not Wilbur’s and not Cara’s, because they are gone and they are dead, and so she cannot be bleeding, and yet she is. There is only Niki. There is no scrap metal but there are mals, chasing her, and she is going to die here with Jack, and nobody will notice, nobody will see or remember or care, because she is only Niki. She has been running long enough that she is hungry. Hours? Days? Years? She could find and eat Jack, descend on his corpse like a vulture, like they did to Schlatt, except for how the idea makes her sick, makes her want to offer herself up instead. It doesn’t matter. The mals will eat her either way, have already gotten to Jack if the other kids haven’t. If there is a difference in here. Maybe the mals are the ghosts, all twisted up and eaten. She would believe that. She would believe anything. She can hear Jack’s footsteps behind her. Jack is gone, she tells herself. Jack is dead. She can feel Wilbur’s breath hot on her neck, on her ears. She is going to die with them, with these people she hates, who left her and then did not even stay gone. Her right leg hurts and she can’t breathe and it is cold or maybe hot, and Wilbur is gone. Wilbur is dead. The study group is dead and the study group is her leg and she is falling and she is