- In the now: Nikki starts to walk toward Cole before she realizes what she's doing. She spent one hundred years curled up next to the dude, after all.
- But Nikki stops herself, and forces herself to sit down again. She knows she can't trust Cole.
- She met Cole through Meredith, a senior at her school who was dating Maxwell, a guy in the band Cole plays with.
- Cole looks over Nikki's shoulder at the mythology book she has open. He says that Osiris was the first Everliving—the first mortal to achieve immortality—and Isis breathed life back into him when he was almost dead.
- Nikki gets upset and slams her book shut, since the Feed was nothing like breathing. Cole says that if the Feed was bad, the Tunnels are worse, and they're coming for her.
- Cole puts his hands on Nikki's head, and suddenly she's buried alive underground, totally trapped.
- Then Cole brings Nikki back to the real world, and says that he came here to offer Nikki eternal life. She can choose to be with him instead of going to the Tunnels.
- Cole says he wants Nikki to be his queen, to have what Hades and Persephone had, so they can rule the Everneath.
- Nikki asks if she would have to Feed off others the way Cole Fed off her. The answer is yes. Nikki says she'd rather be a battery in the Tunnels, the way all Forfeits are, than make someone go through what Cole did to her.
- Cole says that she was supposed to forget her life—she wasn't supposed to remember anything worth Returning for. He asks again: What helped her survive?
- Nikki stops talking to him, and Cole wonders out loud what it's like to Feed off a child… like her brother, Tommy. Nikki tells Cole to leave her brother alone, and she'll answer his question.
- Nikki says she came back to see her family again, and to say goodbye properly. Last time she left without a note, so they had no idea what happened when she vanished.
- Cole tells her that the next six months will be so painful that she'll be begging him to take her away. Further, the mark on her shoulder is the mark of a Shade. The Shades will always be able to find her, no matter where she hides, in order to take her to the Tunnels in six months' time. It'll get bigger over time, too. Scary.