After The First Death

Back on the bus, Miro goes about his duties, sealing the windows and covering them with masking tape. One of the children tries to get his attention, but Miro brushes the boy away. He doesn’t want to get involved, and he feels uneasy about the entire situation. He realizes Artkin didn’t go over the entirety of the hijacking details. After a certain point, all he said was that they needed to wait and be patient and that their “patience will be rewarded” (60). He wonders if Artkin has been lying to him with the same ease he lied to Kate earlier.

Meanwhile, Kate waits, sick with fear. She spends some time tending to the kids, but she can’t stand to look at them anymore. She knows she won’t make it out alive because the hijackers let her see them without their masks, and they won’t let her live to identify them. She waits in the driver’s seat, thinking about the different parts of her personality and the disguises she wears. Sometime later, she hears a helicopter approach. She tries to escape the bus so she can let whoever’s coming know she’s in trouble, but Artkin pushes her back, telling her things are only beginning.