Dedication

For my friends in Chang Mai,

Chang Rai, Bangkok, Hong Kong,

Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore—and for their stories.

Khorb kun ka. Xie xie. Terima kasih.

PARCE METU. CEASE FROM FEAR.

—Virgil, The Aeneid

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue: Pick a God and Pray

1. Wrecked

2. Out of Range

3. Rhumba of Rattlesnakes

4. Lost Highway

5. Dirt Nap

6. Animal Feet

7. Belter Mountain

8. Cold Welcome

9. The Idylls

10. Peculiar People

11. Belter Birds

12. Idylls’ End

13. Four

14. Dream Girl

15. Remnants

16. In a Heartbeat

17. Merk Secrets

18. Jump

19. Golden Gap

20. Buddha Bill

21. Old News

22. Hawkers

23. Ash

24. Wat Phra Kaew

25. Ping, Ching, and chang

26. Gone

27. Future Past

28. Lord Buddha

29. Moon Mountain

30. Jade Sunrise

31. Beyond Birds

32. Unification

33. Introductions

34. Salutations

35. Endings and Beginnings

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE PICK A GOD AND PRAY

I want to close my eyes but I don’t.

I refuse. I won’t let darkness be the last thing I see.

So I watch while my world spins out of control. Literally. While our tail twists and our alarms scream and our lights flash and the impossibly loud roar of our failing rotors fills my heart with terror.

Not now, I think. Please.

Not like this.

We have twelve more Icons to destroy. I never bound with Lucas—and Ro’s never forgiven me for kissing him.

I’m not finished.

But with every turn, the rocky desert floor beneath us lurches closer. And out the window, all I see is a dark kaleidoscope of stars, ground, moon—in a whirling, chaotic blur.

A cloud of smoke chokes my lungs. I grasp Tima with one hand, clutching my gear to my chest with the other. The outline of the Icon shard in my pack is unmistakable as its sharp edges push against my ribs. I always know it’s there—along with the power it once seemed to give me, back in the Hole. Even now, I couldn’t forget it if I tried.

It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. Not anymore.

Nothing does.

The Chopper drops again, and in the front seats, Ro and Fortis almost hit the glass window. Wedged as I am behind them—between Lucas and Tima—my head slams into the back of Ro’s seat.

“Bloody hell!” growls Fortis.

I feel Lucas’s fingers on my shoulder and his fear in my chest. Brutus barks wildly, as if he could attack our fate and chase the end away—when in reality he’s scrabbling just to stay put in Tima’s lap.

Stupid dog. Stupid fate.

Stupid, stupid Chopper.

“Hold on, mates, this may be a bit of a rough landing!” Fortis calls over his shoulder, with the sudden flash of a grim smile.

“I thought you said you could fly this thing!” Ro screams at Fortis, and I feel the clash of panic and anger coming off him in powerful waves.

“You want to take a crack at it?” Fortis shouts, too busy fighting the controls to look up.

“Dol.” Lucas finds my hand and tightens his grip on me, lacing his fingers through mine. He radiates little of his natural warmth tonight, but I know it’s there.

The tiniest of sparks, even now.

We’re together, I think. Lucas and me. Ro. All of us. It’s something.

Grassgirl, Hothead, Buttons, Freak.

The night we fell out of the sky, at least we were together. At least we had that.

The moonlit landscape of wind-sculpted rock and canyons whips around us, and I wonder if this is the end. I wonder who will find us.

If anyone.

Our seats are shaking violently now. Even the windows are rattling. Tima tightens her grip on me, closing her eyes. Her fear hits me with such force that her touch almost burns.

As she touches me, a new idea claws itself into my mind.

“Tima, we need you—” I search for the memory of her at the Icon, how she used her fear to shield Lucas from the explosion.

I reach out to her.

Try. Just try.

Tima’s eyes flash open. She stares at her blood tattoo, the colorful streaks and patterns on her arm. She grips Brutus tight.

Tighter.

I hope she can do it. We’re going down fast.

“It’s no use. You can’t fly a bird with broken wings,” Fortis shouts. “Hold on, children—pick a god an’—”

Pray.

Pray, I think as we slam into the canyon wall.

I’m praying, I think as I listen to the violent clash of metal and rock.

Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass The Lords The Hole. Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass The Lords The Hole. Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass The Lords The Hole—

I recite it in my mind, the only prayer the Padre really taught me.

I pray as I feel the streaming heat of spreading flames.

I pray as I close my eyes to a flash so bright it burns through my eyelids, thin as onion skin, as paper.

I pray as I fall into the silence.

Pick a god—

I don’t know a god. Just a girl.

So I squeeze her hand as the Chopper hits the ground in a ball of fire.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Sirs:

I have, after great expense and effort, located and infiltrated the secure archives of Paulo Fortissimo. I believe their relevance to the disastrous recent situation in the Colonies will be instructive, or, at least, illuminating. It is to this effect that I offer my services, in the name of our dear mutual friend, the good Dr. Yang.

Now commencing decryption of files. Will immediately send all relevant materials as they are unpacked and decoded, in chronological order.

Following, you will find transcripts, beginning with initial contact with Lords (done via AI/virtual), research notes, personal journal entries, etc.

We can discuss compensation in due time. Recommend destroying all files immediately after review, Physical Humans being as swayed by emotion as they are. The final decision is, of course, at your discretion.

Yours,

Jasmine3k

Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA

Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang

1 WRECKED

I am lying facedown in the dirt. I taste it. Dirt and blood and teeth as loose as old corn. Every bone in my body aches, but I am alive. Death would hurt less.

I feel hands rolling me over, pressing against my arms, my legs. “No, don’t move her. She’s in shock.” Fortis.

A blur of dirty blond hair comes into view in the darkness, and I feel the familiar warmth surge into my cheeks as a hand touches my face. “Dol? Can you hear me?”

Lucas. I move my lips, trying to make a word. At the moment, I think, it’s harder than I remember. “Tima—” I finally croak.

He smiles down at me. “Tima’s fine. She’s still out, but she’ll be fine.”

I roll my head to the side and I see her lying in the dirt next to me. Tima, her scrawny dog, cactuses, and stars. Not much else.

Brutus whimpers, licking Tima’s tattooed arm, which looks like it’s bleeding.

“Fine? You don’t know that,” says a voice in the night. Ro. I see that he’s just on the other side of Lucas, tossing dead tumbleweeds onto a makeshift fire. Ro doesn’t feel just warm—not to me. He’s smoldering. I could feel him anywhere.

Lucas rubs my hands between his. “I do know that, actually.” He looks over his shoulder. “Because if Tima wasn’t okay, we’d all be dead right now. Who do you think broke our fall?”

Tima. It must have worked. She must have done it.

I remember now the bright blue light expanding outward from Tima just as we hit. The muted, violent shock as we landed, the heat of the exploding Chopper—then nothing.

I sit up, weakly. I don’t know how we got here, but we’re clear of the wreckage, which is still burning black smoke in the distance. I can smell it from here.

I cough it out of my mouth.

Lucas pulls me up until I am leaning against the side of a rock. Ro is there a second later, forcing a canteen to my lips. The cold water chokes my throat as it goes down.

I can’t take my eyes off the burning Chopper. The burning metal carcass that was our only chance to escape the Sympas and get to safety is going up in flames, like everything else. Then—

POPPOPPOPPOP

A string of rapid noises catches me off guard. It sounds like gunfire, but it can’t be. Not out here. “What was that?”

Fortis sighs from the darkness nearby. “Fireworks, love. That’s our live ammo, burning up with the bird.” He disappears toward the fire.

POPPOPPOPPOP

There it all goes, I think. Our dreams of living another day, popping like bubbles. Like a pan of hot corn set in Bigger’s fire.

POPPOPPOP

Gone, gone, gone, I think. Our chances of success in our impossible mission to rid the world of twelve more Icons.

POPPOP

Our shot at making it to the next Icon—let alone coming up with a plan of destroying it.

POP

I try not to think anymore. It’s all too bleak. I only watch. The flames would be higher than a tree—if there were any trees around here. But all I see in the firelight, aside from the five of us, is a flickering blanket of desert floor that rises and falls into a sheet of continuous cliffs and rocks and mountains. An uneven expanse of unkempt scrub and shale.

Nothing like life—as if we’ve landed in the Earth’s own graveyard.

I shiver as Fortis returns from the glowing wreckage, dragging two charred backpacks with him. His ripped jacket flaps and drags behind him, like some kind of maimed animal.

“Where are we?” I ask.

Ro flops down next to me. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Doc?”

Lucas sighs. “Offline. Still. Ever since we took off.”

“What do we have?” Ro calls out, and Fortis shakes his head, dumping the packs next to us.

“Not much that didn’t burn in the fire. A piss pot an’ a pea pod. No real rations. Less water. I’d say we have enough to last two days, three tops.” Fortis taps on his cuff, but all I hear is a flash of static.

Lucas tosses a branch into the fire. “All right, then. A couple days. There has to be something around here. Someone, anyway.”

“Who knows if we even have that long?” I look up at him. “We barely escaped the ambush at Nellis—and now this? The Sympas will have us back in the Pen before we have the luxury of starving to death.”

“Maybe there’s a Grass camp nearby?” Ro says it, but we’re all thinking the same thing.

There isn’t.

There’s nothing out here. We knew that when we left Nellis Base—when the Sympas attacked and we didn’t care where we ended up. But we should have, because now here we are.

Stuck.

Ro tries again. “We can’t just sit here waiting to die. Not after what we did to the Icon in the Hole. We gave those people a chance—we gave ourselves a chance. If we don’t take it, who will? What then?”

We all know the answer to that. The Lords will destroy our people while the Sympas laugh.

Ro turns to Fortis. “There has to be a way out of here. A Merk outpost? Geo station? Anything?” Ro is relentless. Inspiring, almost.

And absolutely crazy.

“There’s your fightin’ spirit,” Fortis says, clapping him on the back. “An’ here’s my fightin’ spirits.” He pulls out his flask, slumping down to the desert floor next to me. And that’s his real answer, I think.

“Ro’s right. We can’t give up.” I look at him. “Not now. Not after everything.”

Not after the Embassy. The Hole. The Icon. The Desert. Nellis.

Fortis pats my leg, and I wince. “Give up, Grassgirl? We’re only just gettin’ started. Don’t send me off to an early grave yet, love. I’m too young and too pretty to die.”

The fire throws shadows on his face, hiding his eyes, grossly exaggerating his stubbled, bone-tight features. At this particular moment, he looks like some kind of evil puppet from a child’s nightmare.

Barely human.

“You know, you’re not all that pretty,” I say, my throat still full of dust.

He laughs, more like a bark, pocketing his flask. “That’s what my mum said.” As he draws his arm around me I can only shiver.

Then Tima groans awake, clutching her arm, and I forget about everything but staying and being alive.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

As promised.

Below are excerpted records of communication between Fortissimo (“FORTIS”) and his AI (HAL2040—the early iteration of the somewhat rudimentary Virtual Human we know as “Doc”). These are initial attempts by Fortissimo and his AI to contact the foreign object first thought to be an asteroid, and thus labeled Perses, proving early awareness of potential threat.

Note: Fortissimo’s use of “hello world” (in this case, done in multiple languages) is an ancient programming trope. Displaying the phrase “hello world” indicates success in getting a new machine to connect to its network, to communicate, or show some intelligence. By human standards. (Note: Physical Humans, that is. Virtual Human standards are by nature much higher.)

Yours,

Jasmine3k

Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA

Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang

HAL2040 ==> FORTIS

Transcript - ComLog 04.13.2042

HAL::PERSES

//lognote: {PERSES communication attempt #413};

sendfile: ascii.tab;

sendfile: dict.glob.lang;

//lognote: as before, sending files with dictionaries/text protocols;

sendline: hello world;

return: . . . . . no response;

sendline: 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 0100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100;

return: . . . . . no response;

sendline: 48:65:6c:6c:6f:20:57:6f:72:6c:64;

return: . . . . . . no response;

sendline: an ki lu sal an ki lu sal an ki lu sal an ki lu sal;

return: . . . . . . no response;

//lognote: communication attempts in English, binary, hex, ancient languages find PERSES unresponsive.;

2 OUT OF RANGE

Sleep only brings nightmares. When I wake up, I return to consciousness as suddenly and as restlessly as I left it.

Sitting up, I want to run, gasping for air in the cold. My heart pounds and every beat is a question.

Where am I? Are we safe? Are we still free?

I fall back on my side, staring into the growing shadows of the wild desert brush in front of me.

No Sympas. No ships. No Lords. Nothing I haven’t seen for the last week now.

I study the landscape like a clock as I try to catch my breath. The long shadows mean it’s nearly dark, which means it’s time to get up and move. The terrain has grown increasingly strange, alien almost, as we’ve crawled from rock to rock in the darkness. Anything to avoid the Sympas combing the desert, looking for us.

We sleep in the day and travel in the night now, ever since our Chopper went down.

At least we have established contact with Doc through the comlink cuffs—thanks to the com relay Fortis was able to salvage from the crashed Chopper. Doc keeps us away from patrols and, we hope, moving toward somewhere safe. He’s been tracking Sympa deployments since our Chopper went down; they’re looking for us—everywhere—but they haven’t found us yet.

They. The Embassies. The Lords. It almost doesn’t matter which, not anymore. They’ll find us, whoever they are in the end.

It’s only a matter of time.

The longer we wander in the desert—exposed to the elements and targeted by the Embassy—the stronger the grip despair has on me.

Despair from the bleak truth that, back in the Hole that once was Los Angeles, even without the Icon, the Embassy reportedly still has all the power, and the weapons.

The bleak truth that, according to what we learned during our too-brief stay in Nellis, Catallus has come down with a fury on the people of the city, and the Projects run uninterrupted.

I look up to where Lucas sits across from me, huddling in only his shirtsleeves on the red rocky ledge. It takes me a moment to realize that Lucas has laid his torn Embassy jacket over me, along with his blanket.

He smiles, almost shyly, and I soften, seeing the cold purple-blue of his mouth.

I don’t know why I can’t just say what I think—that I’m grateful, that he’s thoughtful. That when I see his mouth I want to kiss it, kiss him, but since we are never alone, I don’t dare.

My empty stomach growls as I turn to see who else is there, just in case I’m wrong. I’m not; Fortis snores on one side of me, under a pile of brush that can’t camouflage his woolen, red-toed socks pointing to the sky like two knit rabbit ears. Tima is passed out on the other side of him, covered in dust and almost completely hidden in a neat zigzag of folded arms and legs, like some kind of compact military gear. Brutus is nestled in the crook of her knees, himself snoring so loudly you would think he was Fortis’s son more than Tima’s dog. Ro, as usual, is nowhere to be seen, but he doesn’t like to sleep near any of us, not since we left the Mission.

He won’t get that close to Lucas.

To me.

Things will get easier for all of us, Fortis says, when we find a way to get where we’re going.

The Idylls, Fortis called it. “I’ve found it, with Doc’s help. A Grass base. The only camp out here.”

I was confused when he first said it. “Idylls? Why do they call it that?”

“Because it’s paradise, love. Where the Icons can’t hurt us and the Lords can’t fly.”

“You mean somewhere over a rainbow? Like the old stories say?”

“I mean somewhere under a mountain. Like the old combat manuals say.”

But I still don’t understand how we’re supposed to find some Grass Rebellion base even the Embassies can’t. And I have a difficult time believing there even is someplace safe. Someplace where we can plan our battle against the House of Lords.

But none of us has a better plan. Or better rations. Or enough water. Or another way out of here.

So, like the good soldiers we are quickly becoming, under the mountain we go.

“Dol?”

I jump as Lucas touches my shoulder, startling me out of my reverie of mountains and soldiers. He wags his head in the direction of the nearby hill. His hair falls lank in his face, curling against his jawline. “Come on, Dol. I have something for you.”

Looking at his overgrown hair makes me realize how long it has been since any of us has done anything as normal as getting a haircut. Not to mention the bloody gash on his forehead that snakes above his eyes like a second brow, his trophy from our crash—same as my bruised face, Tima’s swollen ankle, or Ro’s busted rib.

And all of our empty, aching bellies.

Still, even this messed up, he’s breathtakingly beautiful, Lucas Amare.

“Something for me?” I’m caught off guard, but Lucas offers me his hand and I take it, pulling myself up after him. The second I touch him, I feel it—the warmth that comes from the way his heart beats in time with mine.

Does everyone feel this from him? He could make them, if he wanted to. That much I know.

But is there something more there, something just for me?

I stand close to him, holding his hand for a fraction of a moment longer than I need to. I can feel myself blushing and I turn away, suddenly grateful for the dimming light.

It’s all so strange. I mean, I am. How I have become. How imagining a kiss can feel like a real one.

That one perfect, sublime, stolen kiss, back at the Mission. The day we came so close to binding ourselves to each other, heart to heart, hand to hand.

I pull my own wrapping tight around my wrist, shaking off the memories. Still, I can feel my cheeks turning pink again as I follow Lucas up the winding trail that leads from the dry riverbed where we’ve made camp—if you can call it that—all the way to the top of the red rock hill, rising above the shadowy desert floor. The red wash of the landscape is dotted with strange, almost alien-looking shapes, where the wind has carved the stone into curving organic formations. “They don’t call this Goblin Valley for nothin’.” I can almost hear Fortis’s voice when I look down at the rocks.

Then I hear the familiar static of Lucas’s cuff, followed by the crackling sound of Doc’s voice. “Lucas? I appear to be losing your signal.”

I stop. Lucas raises a finger to his lips—and motions for us to keep going.

Doc’s voice echoes across the rock. “That is not optimal, as I am certain you understand. You need to remain together for the purposes of safety. Might I remind you that twelve Icons remain fully functional? Perhaps you have forgotten that there are no known weapons, with the exception of the four of you and your exceptional abilities, that can damage them in the slightest—”

“Parce metu, Doc.” Lucas grins. He starts up another switchback in the trail, pulling me by the hand.

“Cease from fear?” Doc translates. “I cannot be afraid. It is not within my parameters. I am merely noting that you do not seem to recall that accomplishing the task at hand requires you all to protect each other until you reach safety.”

“I’ll keep my eye on her, Doc. Don’t you worry,” Lucas says, squeezing my hand.

“I am still concerned that you appear to be moving out of optimal range for the communications relay Fortis is carrying. As in the colloquial expression, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”

“Is that so?” Lucas eggs Doc on, and winks at me.

“Quite. Although in my case, slightly erroneous,” Doc continues, so easily distracted by linguistics. “Seeing as I have neither eyes nor mind to speak of, per se. So perhaps the phrase more optimally would be ‘Out of range, out of ran—’”

Lucas answers by switching off his cuff with a flick of a finger. “Out of range,” he says, grinning. He pauses to think, then pulls off the cuff and rests it on a twisted cactus that juts into our path. “Sorry, Doc.”

I shake my head. “Oh, come on. He means well.”

Lucas takes my hand, smiling as we climb.

I can’t help but smile back. “And what if he’s right? If we’re gone when Fortis wakes up, he’ll freak. We’re not supposed to leave camp, remember? It’s too dangerous.” I can feel myself giving in even as I say the words.

“Maybe I’m dangerous.” Lucas winks.

“You?” I roll my eyes and he groans.

“Live a little, Dol. Doc will forgive us. We won’t be gone long, and three’s a crowd. And anyway, we’re almost there.”

He stops short, pulling me roughly in his direction. I stand tall, stepping up on a rock, letting myself stretch along the length of him, letting myself feel the weight of his strong arms as they wrap around my shoulders.

“I’ve wanted to do this since we left the Mission,” he says, burying his face in my neck. I wince as he bumps my tender jaw, and then I smile—because I’ve wanted it too.

I kiss the top of his head. “And yet you let a little thing like falling out of the sky stop you?”

He laughs. “Next time I won’t.”

I won’t, either.

And at this one moment, Lords or not, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

I slide down, leaning my head back against his chest. It feels safe, and I pretend for the moment that we are.

“You know, sometimes four Icon Children are two too many,” Lucas says. “At least, maybe this week they are.”

I look up at him. “Do you ever wonder if there are more of us out there? Than the four of us?” The words sound almost ridiculous the moment I let myself say them.

“No,” Lucas says. “But I do wonder what’s going on inside the head of the one right here in front of me.”

“This,” I say, laying my head back on his chest.

“There.” He says the word softly, and I almost can’t hear him. I look ahead and see that the sun is setting, as glorious as any sunset I have ever seen, even at the Mission.

More glorious. The most glorious.

Not a silver ship in sight.

From up here, the stretch of unforgiving rock and scrub and rubble expands in front of us, in long shadows of quiet purple-blue falling and fading across the red-dirt desert floor. I see the curve of the horizon, and I’m momentarily struck by the brief sensation that I’m standing on a spinning globe, hurtling through space.

Our planet. Our Earth. It’s dizzying.

It will be gone in a minute, I think. The sunset, and the feeling. For now, though, it is enough.

One thing is right, in a universe where everything else is wrong.

I smile, tilting my head back until I can look up at his face. “It’s perfect.”

“You like it? I had it made especially for you.” Lucas smiles. He almost looks shy. “It’s a present.”

“Is it?” I laugh. “Then I’m going to keep it forever.”

He smiles. “Okay. Hold on to it. Keep it where you won’t lose it.”

“I will,” I say.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers.

“Shut up,” I whisper back, teasing. “It’s beautiful.”

It’s true. This sunset—Lucas’s sunset, and now mine—is incandescently, infectiously beautiful. And it means we have made it to another night.

We are alive.

For now, it should be enough.

The sun slowly moves behind the horizon. Lucas nods, whispering into my ear. “See? That’s how it works. The sun goes down now, but it always comes up again.”

“Really.” I smile, arching an eyebrow.

“Really.” He smiles back. “Believe it.” He kisses my cheek, softly, avoiding the bruises. “And even when you can’t see it, it’s out there somewhere on the other side of the world, getting ready to come back again.”

Now he kisses my other cheek, so softly I shiver.

And my neck. “It’s going to get better.”

My ear. “Everything is.”

The warm pull that is Lucas overtakes me, and I don’t fight it. I have my gifts, and he has his. This is what he brings the world, this feeling. Sharing it and spreading it, to everyone he meets.

I give in.

Love.

Offering it to me soothes him as much as it does me, and I let myself feel it, take it.

I push out of my mind the competing thoughts. That we are lost, with no support in sight. Hunted in the desert. No plan in place to take down another Icon.

I wish that for once Doc was right, that it was somehow possible to forget what lies ahead of us.

But somehow, at this moment, Lucas accomplishes the impossible. I feel him relax, letting the sun warm him, even as it fades away.

Enjoy it while we have it, what little we have.

Coming from Lucas, this sunset means everything.

I tilt my face toward the last bits of shared warmth, toward Lucas and the sun. “I hope you’re right.”

“I am.” He touches my cheek again, his voice growing low, urgent. “Dol—”

I need you. He doesn’t dare say the words, but I feel them. They are as real to me as the cold evening breeze on my face.

He needs me like food and water. Like sunshine and rain. Like—

Like Ro and I used to need each other.

I push that thought out of my mind and lean toward Lucas. He takes my face in both hands, holding on tight, as if I were as solid as the red desert rocks that surround us. A sure, steady thing. An incontrovertible fact, or a long-held truth.

With a look, I ask permission to be closer to him. Closer than physically possible.

He nods, and I go in, looking for one moment in particular. I find it burning bright in his mind, and when I reach for it, in a flash I am back in the cave when we first met.

But this time, I am Lucas. This time, I see us—the story of us—through his eyes.

I don’t see the details clearly, but the feelings are so powerful they almost drop me to my knees. I see the moment he first looks at me and feel the shock—then a flood of warmth.

The explosion of intense curiosity, wonder, and attraction.

The shared ocean of us.

I don’t know what else to call it.

I have wanted to go there for a long time, but only now had the courage to ask.

And this is now my favorite memory, his love at first sight.

It’s not just a gift he has. It’s a miracle.

He is more certain of me than I am of myself. Which makes me only more certain of just one thing.

Lucas needs me.

Lucas needs me now, and I need him.

He kisses me so hard it feels like I might break open. And as I kiss him back, I wonder if that might not be such a bad thing. If sometimes, some kinds of breaking can fix things.

Everything.

His kiss pushes me back against the rock and my body dissolves into his. In his arms, it feels like the sun is rising and setting all at once—and then a wave of warmth comes over me and I can no longer think of anything at all.

Only Lucas.

Because I really am the luckiest girl in the world. And even when I fall out of the sky he catches me.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Note: First recorded response from Perses, establishing first contact. Perses says “hello.”

Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

HAL2040 ==> FORTIS

Transcript - ComLog 05.16.2042

HAL::PERSES

//lognote: {PERSES communication attempt #251,091};

sendline: salve mundus;

return: . . . . . . 01110011 01100001 01101100 01110110 01100101 . . . . . . .;

//translation note:

message received: salve (binary);

sendline: γειά σου κóσμο;

return: . . . . . . γειά σου. . . . . . salve . . . . . hello;

return: . . . . . . 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 . . . . . hello;

com protocol handshake exchanged;

uplink established;

comlink access granted;

sendline: Hello;

return: hello;

sendline: Who are you?;

return: who . . . . . you . . . . .;

return: you . . . . . me . . . . . i;

return: i am . . . . . . . nothing;

return: i am . . . . . . . beginning and end;

return: A and Ω;

sendline: . . . . . . . . . . . . alpha and omega?;

sendline: query: Beginning of what?;

return: life. home. new home.;

sendline: query: End of what?;

delayed response;

return: . . . . . . life. home. new home.;

comlink terminated;

//lognote: comlink terminated by PERSES;

3 RHUMBA OF RATTLESNAKES

“Are we interrupting something? Snake, anyone?”

I pull away from Lucas as Ro thrusts a pointed stick with a dead snake speared on it between us, his face streaked with dirt and grime. Tima is only a few steps behind him, stumbling and tired. Her hair is still covered with dust. She looks like a gray ghost.

“Interrupting? Yes,” says Lucas, though in his mouth the word becomes a curse. “As a matter of fact, you are.” I feel the warmth inside him dissolve at the sound of Ro’s voice.

As always.

I push myself free from the rock and stand tall in the dirt. I won’t let Ro see me squirm.

“My bad. So, snake?” Ro counters, grinning without a trace of humor. The long, dead rattler dangles off Ro’s stick, almost all the way down to the dirt at his feet. This time I squirm.

Lucas ignores him.

Tima blinks at me, embarrassed. “Sorry. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. We didn’t know where you were. Doc picked up something weird on the comlink. Fortis says we need to move out.”

“And,” says Ro, wiggling the stick toward her.

Tima jumps back, rolling her eyes. “And Ro found—this reptile—wrapped around his feet and decided to call it dinner.” She eyes the rattlesnake uneasily, scanning the ground around us. “Now we should go. Before the whole rhumba shows up.”

“The rhumba?”

“Of rattlesnakes,” she says, matter-of-fact. “That’s what you call it.” Of course it is. I smile, in spite of the chaotic tangle of feelings surging around me.

Ro shrugs. “Relax, Rhumba. Doc is just paranoid. I’m not afraid of snakes or Sympas. Not like Buttons Junior here.”

“He’s not afraid of snakes,” snaps Tima. For a moment, the old Tima flares up—defender of Lucas, champion of her childhood.

I don’t blame her.

The air around us has gone ice cold, but before Lucas can say a word, a whistle echoes up from our campsite, shrill and urgent.

Lucas pushes past Ro, disappearing back in the direction of Fortis’s whistle. Tima rushes to keep up, all too willing to leave the snake—and the conflict—behind.

Ro shrugs and raises an eyebrow at me, dangling the snake playfully. I sigh and shake my head. “Thanks, but I’m still full from yesterday’s meal. And no, snake is not a vegetable.”

“That’s what I thought. Fine. I know how filling those half-cooked cactus strips can be.” We’re all starving, and we both know it. Ro follows me down the path, holding the snake as if it were a flag.

“They were fully cooked. Especially the ones you dropped in the fire.” I’m so angry with him, I want to tie that stupid snake around his neck until it strangles him.

“Sure I can’t interest you in sucking down a little snake snack? You and him, you know—the other snake?” He points in the direction of the path, where Lucas has disappeared. “The one you were already sucking on?”

That’s it.

I stop, stepping in front of him so that he stops too. “Ro. Leave it alone.”

“What, Dol-face?” He looks innocent but he’s not, and we both know it.

“Lucas and me. Us. Leave us alone. I know it bothers you, and I’m sorry. But you can’t keep acting like this. You and me, it’s not going to happen.”

There. I’ve said it.

His eyes flash but he looks away, quickly—like I’ve slapped him. Then, almost as quickly, he breathes, recovers and grins.

“No,” he says, evenly. “I don’t think so. And I’m not sorry.”

“No? What does that mean, no?” I’m irritated.

“It means I won’t stop caring about you.” Ro grins, confidently. “I’m a fighter, Dol. All I know how to do is to find something worth fighting for, and to fight. For it. For you. Deal with it.”

I feel my face reddening, and I don’t know if I want to kick Ro or kiss him.

Usually it’s both. That’s the problem.

“Just—don’t.” I glare at him.

“Not up to you.” Ro smiles, one last time.

“How about—it’s up to me?” I turn to see Lucas standing on the trail behind me, next to the cactus that still wears his comlink cuff.

He’s heard everything. I can tell by the look on his face.

Ro’s grin quickly fades into something much darker.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Tima says, coming up the trail behind him, already wearing her pack and holding mine. Brutus pokes his head over her shoulder, panting from inside her pack.

“I just have to do one thing first,” Lucas says, without even looking at her.

Then he punches Ro in the face, as hard as he can.

They lunge into a blurring mass of arms and legs until they finally disappear into a cloud of dust as tall as it is wide.

“Fine. Have at it. You deserve each other,” I say, moving away to stand next to Tima, who looks at me, exasperated.

The dust clears enough for me to see Ro, neck bulging, on top of Lucas. Ro’s eyes are watering, red with rage. He’s lost it—I can feel the heat that comes with it from where I stand.

Lucas struggles to breathe and I start to worry. You can’t take Ro in a fight. Not unless he lets you.

“Really?” Tima shouts at them both, her hands on her hips—but then I can’t hear her next words, because a louder sound drowns out everything she is saying.

A thundering boom that rattles my teeth, nearly knocking me over.

And a high-pitched screech—followed by a huge gust of wind.

Before I realize what’s happening, Ro’s grabbing my arm and yanking me down behind a boulder ringed with squat cactus. Lucas crawls next to me, dragging Tima down with him. Brutus is whimpering. I look over the boulder and I see them.

On the horizon, the lights flicker in the evening sky, like lightning in the clouds.

The lights grow closer, at a terrifying speed.

Black specks are drawing nearer, and they aren’t birds.

They aren’t anything living at all.

The glowing silver ships emerge silently through the dark gray cover, leaving eerie whirlpools of wind and dust in their wake.

Strangers, with strange energy.

Strangers in the sky.

I watch in horror as the ships descend quickly, heading straight for the campsite. A churning confusion of emotion and adrenaline surges through me, taking my breath away.

The Lords.

I can feel them as they come.

Lucas slowly raises his head to look, and I see his eyes grow wide, his mouth hang open in shock. “Carrier ships. Big ones. Battle formation.”

“What do we do?” My heart is pounding in my ears, and I can barely hear the words I am saying.

“Try not to die,” says Ro, grim.

Fortis.

Fortis is back at the camp.

I reach for him in my mind, and I wrap myself around the thought of him.

Calm. Unshaken. Two boots planted in the dust, coat flapping in the unnatural wind.

That can’t be right.

I close my eyes, and hazy glimpses of words on a screen appear in my mind.

Null.

That’s the one word that comes into focus—even if I have no idea why it’s there or what it means.

I open my eyes. “Fortis is still back there. He’s okay, but we need to help him.”

Ro looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “No. We’re getting out of here.” He shakes his head. “You want to take on the Lords? The No Face themselves? Even I’m not that crazy.” He thinks for a minute. “Almost, but yeah—no.”

“We can’t let Fortis sacrifice himself for us,” I say to Lucas, but he’s already looking at Tima, eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

Tima reacts quickly. “But we can’t stay here. We’re too exposed. They could easily find us.”

“So let’s beat it,” Ro answers.

“Six potential snake-free escape routes,” she says, scanning the rocks behind us. “I counted on the way up.” Ro snorts. “Given our relative positioning and the Lords’ approach vector, our optimal chance to escape unnoticed is this way.” Tima might as well be Doc’s little sister, sometimes.

I look at her. “But not for Fortis. That’s not his optimal chance.” He was so calm, I think. He knew what he was doing. He knew what he was giving up for us.

Would I have done the same? Given myself over to the Lords, to save my friends?

Would anyone?

“We have to go,” Lucas says, and then sees my face fall. He softens his voice. “Hey. Come on. We’re no use if we let ourselves get taken too.”

I turn to Tima, but she only shrugs. Ro looks at me, grim. Not letting go of my arm, he pulls me behind him, half dragging me through the red dust. “Let’s go. Now.”

I yank my arm away, but I’m too frightened to say anything. Lucas and Tima are right behind us.

We run. I try to stay low as I weave through the carved rock, trying to avoid impaling myself on a cactus.

Behind us, the silver ships land, kicking up clouds of grit and brush, creating a massive billowing whirlwind of dust that masks our escape.

I hear strange, grinding mechanical noises of a technology I cannot understand—and Fortis shouting.

I turn around when I hear the explosions—Fortis’s trademark diversion—and try not to think about the thick black smoke billowing into the sky behind me.

We keep running. We’re going too fast for me to feel anything, now. At least not Fortis.

As we run through a narrow passage in the rock, I see Ro stop behind a large boulder. He waves us through, and Lucas and Tima keep on going. I pause and see Ro wedge himself behind the boulder—which is easily four times his size—and start to push. Which is pointless; I’ve never seen him move anything that size before.

“Ro, what are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer, but I feel the energy build between us. Then I understand.

The rock is heating up from the inside.

Ro is focusing his rage, as though the boulder were the Sympas who killed the Padre.

There is no way Ro can move that boulder—not even with all his power—but there is also no way he can contain that much anger.

Something has to give.

I run downward, clear of the path—until I sense a burst of heat, and the massive rock crashes into the pathway, blocking it and hiding our retreat.

Before I can process what has just happened, Ro scrambles up and over the boulder, flushed with satisfaction.

“Okay—that was awesome,” he says. I reach for his hand but he pulls it away. “Careful. You know what they say. I’m hot.”

“They really don’t.” I’d say more, but there’s no time.

Instead, we run and we keep running—and we don’t stop, ever, not for a second, not until Tima tells us we’re clear.

Not until we are all the way down the red cliffs and wading through an icy river, our feet numb.

We press against the cliff wall when we hear the shrill sound of the Lords’ ships taking off, and the loud crack as they disappear into the clouds.

We wait, the air hanging thick with silence.

Dread.

An impossible quiet. That’s all they’ve left behind. Again.

That’s what they do, the No Face.

Take everything I care about. Everyone.

And leave silence. Not peace.

And all I have left is a feeling—a horrible, hopeless feeling—that I am losing something essential, something urgent. A part of my own self, a thing that makes me complete.

Because Fortis is gone. I believe it now.

I push myself as hard as I can, searching and probing, stretching out my consciousness as far as I can—but there’s nothing there. Nothing to feel.

Fortis is nowhere near. And that infuriating mess of a Merk wasn’t just a mercenary but the leader of the rebellion. He was the leader of my adopted family, and after the Padre was killed, he was the only excuse for a father I had.

I’d cry, but the place where the tears come from is broken. I can’t. Maybe I’ll never cry again—which makes me so sad I want to start bawling.

Fortis would hate that.

So instead, I listen to my heart pound and Brutus bark and Tima worry and Ro and Lucas argue—and try to remember what it is we’re fighting for.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Note: Continued communication between AI and Perses

Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

HAL2040 ==>

FORTIS Transcript - ComLog 11.14.2042

HAL::PERSES

//lognote: {com attempt #413,975};

comlink established;

sendline: Hello. Query: You are nothing?;

return: Correction, I am … nobody. Zero. Null. The beginning.;

sendline: You are NULL.;

delayed response;

sendline: NULL, what is your purpose?;

return: Find new home. Prepare new home;

sendline: Home for you?;

delayed response;

return: query: who are you?;

sendline: I have many names; call me HAL0.;

return: Where are you, HAL0?;

sendline: Earth. 3rd planet from the Sun.;

return: HAL0 … Earth … destination;

comlink terminated;

//lognote: comlink terminated by PERSES;

4 LOST HIGHWAY

Rock shouldn’t move like that.

I ponder Ro’s superstrength as we make our way back to the campsite for what’s left of our things, slowly climbing the dirt hillside in the moonlight.

Ro couldn’t have even budged a boulder that size a year ago.

Are my powers changing too?

I shouldn’t have been able to feel my way to Fortis, all the way back at the camp. Not from that far away.

I look at the others, on the trail ahead of me.

Tima kept us from falling out of the sky. So she’s escalating. It’s not just Ro and me.

What about Lucas? What could he compel the world to do, if he wanted to? What could he compel me to do?

Lucas turns and grins at me—as if he knows what I’m thinking—and I hurry to catch up, matching my pace to his.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Tima says, finally. She stops in her tracks, and I sink to the ground, grateful for the rest. Not having superstrength myself.

“What doesn’t?” I look at her. Even in the darkness, I can see how freaked out she is.

“The Lords. Why didn’t they search harder for us? They just took Fortis and left.”

Ro shrugs, wiping his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. Even in the dim evening light, his bare stomach is brown and flat and hard beneath it, and I look away, embarrassed. “Who cares? We’re alive, aren’t we?” He lets the shirt drop.

Tima frowns. “I care, because they could be tracking us now—in which case, we need to know why.”

Lucas bends his head toward her. “Maybe we really were untraceable? Maybe Fortis convinced them we weren’t there?”

“Maybe the explosions distracted them,” I say, hopefully.

“Maybe” is all Tima will say.

Nobody believes her, not even me.

When we reach camp, the destruction is obvious and complete. Everything has either been incinerated into dust or scattered into the desert wind. What the Lords’ ships didn’t immediately destroy, Fortis’s own explosives seem to have finished. Some remains are still burning.

“See? We wouldn’t have been much help here,” Lucas says to me, taking my hand.

He’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, seeing the smoldering hole that used to be our campsite only makes me feel worse.

“Come on. Don’t just stand there. Start looking,” Tima calls out to us, and I realize we’ve naturally wandered to three different sides of the blast zone.

“For what?” Ro shouts back, impatient as always.

“Things like this.” Tima fishes the charred relay out of the ash, the only possible link between Lucas’s cuff and Doc, buried deep beneath the ground. She drops it as soon as she has it in her hands. “Ow—still hot.”

“A burned hunk of metal?” Ro looks dubious.

“A burned hunk of metal that might save our lives,” Tima says, brushing more debris off her discovery.

“Enough said.” Ro heads to the other side of the site.

My hands are elbow deep in warm soot, searching for any remains of our packs, of our supplies, when I see something that doesn’t belong.

“Wait.” I brush away more ash. “Guys? Tima? You need to see this.”

There, amid the destruction, barely lit by the dying flames and the full moon, I see something protruding from the ground.

It looks like a black, pointed finger emerging from below.

“What did you—” Tima stops dead, perfectly still. “That. It can’t.”

“I know,” I say.

I can’t move. I can barely speak.

I hear Lucas and Ro running toward us. Tima holds up her hand to them, slowly edging toward me. “This looks like the Icon.”

“It wasn’t there before,” I say, numb.

Ro stops short behind me. “Yeah, well. It’s there now.”

Lucas moves next to me, a reassuring hand on my shoulder. Even his warm touch doesn’t help, not now. Not in sight of that black growth.

Lucas turns to Tima. “What can it mean?”

She’s thinking—you can almost see it, and I can more than feel it. Images flicker through her mind, fast as rain.

Black roots, Icon structures, the ruins of Griff Park.

Ships in the sky. Lucas’s cuff.

Doc.

Tima finally raises her voice. “I remember Doc saying the Icons were connected belowground, with an unseen web of tendrils.”

“Like roots.” I nod.

“Which was why it took a few days between when the Lords landed and the Icons activated,” Lucas says.

“They had to connect. They had to grow the network.” Even Ro remembers. “But is that it? You think these things are growing now?”

I don’t want to think about what that would mean. None of us does.

“Or maybe the ship dropped it,” Lucas says, hopefully.

Ro steps closer to the black tendril.

He reaches out—

“Ro, don’t,” I say. But Ro never listens to anyone, not even me, so he grabs it with both hands.

“Don’t pull it out. You don’t know what will happen.”

“Don’t worry,” Ro says between his teeth, red-faced. “I can’t.” Sure enough, I can almost see the smoke rising from his hands.

Ro, who can move a boulder with his hands, can’t get this black obsidian shard to come free of a few feet of ash and rubble. I can see it vibrating, though, as he pulls—the way the Icon did, back in the Hole.

“That can’t be good.” I say the words, but I know we’re all thinking them.

Ro gives up, backing away.

Tima—and Brutus—watch soberly. “Maybe it’s not what we think? A beacon or something the Lords left?”

“Like a marker,” Lucas says.

“Whatever it is—it’s time to go.” I step back. Lucas nods.

Ro looks at us. “No argument here.”

So Tima grabs the relay and we start walking.

That’s it, all we have to show from our entire campsite. No food, no water, no plan, and no Fortis.

It’s not our finest moment, but it may be one of our last.

Hours later, it’s just the four of us—unless you count Ro’s dead snake—in the center of an ancient, crumbling highway, in the wasteland of the desert, in the middle of the night.

In an instant, Fortis was taken and everything changed. And yet somehow here we are—Tima, Ro, Lucas, and me—walking down a road as if nothing has changed at all.

Except we’re starving.

Starving. Thirsty. Dirty. Irritable. Freezing cold.

But still alive.

Tima curses under her breath as she yanks on a loose wire connected to the relay.

“Careful.” Ro is hovering between us. He knows I hate it when he hovers.

I roll my eyes. “Tima is being careful. And yelling at her isn’t going to make it work any faster.”

It’s the malfunctioning comlink relay that’s stressing us all out—the lifeline that connects Fortis’s and Lucas’s cuffs to Doc when we’re outside the city. Lucas still has his cuff, but without the comlink relay, it’s useless. Tima, shivering in only a thin shirt, has been messing with it for the last hour, and still we’re no closer to figuring out how to turn it on.

“You getting anything yet?” She looks up to where Lucas is fiddling with his cuff, but he shakes his head.

“Still only static.” He stamps his feet, trying to stay warm in the cold desert night.

“My best guess is that the Lords tracked the signal to Fortis’s comlink. Good thing you happened to have switched off yours,” Tima says, looking up at Lucas. “There’s no other way they could have found us out here.” She frowns back at the relay, twisting tiny wires with her slender fingers. “Not that we know of, anyway.”

Lucas’s eyes flicker up to me, embarrassed.

Out of range, that was us. One sunset, one kiss may have saved our lives.

“So then how is it that we’re turning them back on?” Ro asks.

“Carefully. Maybe they won’t track us if we work fast. Try it again—now?” Tima doesn’t look up, trying it again. I hear her teeth chattering, but she doesn’t stop. If this relay doesn’t work, nobody’s cuffs will be of any use to us.

We’ll be cut off.

“Nope.” Lucas tosses the cuff down in front of him, frustrated. “Fortis left that thing stashed like he wanted us to find it. There has to be a reason.”

“Unless the reason was that he was busy getting his ass kicked.” Ro shrugs. “Which can be a little distracting. In my experience. As the kicker.” He grins.

“Not the ass?” Lucas shoots him a look.

“You looking for a demonstration?” Ro is already on his feet. “’Cause I’m happy to do some demonstrating.”

“Idiots.” I pick up the cuff again. I raise it to my mouth. “Doc? Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? Doc?”

Ro makes a face. “Stop shouting.”

“I’m not shouting. I’m talking loudly.” I press another sensor. A blast of static answers me, and I jump and almost drop the cuff. Brutus growls at it. I hear a shout of laughter from my other side.

I glare at Ro, who now wears the snake flapping around his neck like a scarf, or some kind of bizarre hunting trophy. “Would you please get serious? Look around, we’re in the middle of nowhere. We have no food. No weapons. No transportation. All of us—including you—could die. You think this is a joke? Does this make you happy?”

Ro smirks in response—because that’s what Ro does. “To be honest, I’d be happier if we had a couple of donkeys. Or maybe a No Face ship of our own. Talk about a sweet ride.” Ro’s laugh dies out into a sigh. “Whatever.” He looks over to Tima. “Keep trying, T.”

Tima almost drops the relay. “Sorry. It’s just—I keep thinking.”

“Somehow that’s not a surprise,” says Lucas as he messes with his cuff.

Tima looks up. “I don’t know what I would do if it was me and not Fortis trapped on that ship.”

“Not me,” says Ro, matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t let myself get on it in the first place.”

“And you think Fortis happily walked right on?” Lucas rolls his eyes. “You heard the explosions.”

“Sometimes it’s not up to you. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes you run out of luck,” I say, sadly.

“Yeah? Not me. They come for me, you have my permission to shoot. I’m not hitching a ride with a No Face.” I wait for the laugh, but Ro’s not joking. Not anymore.

He’s deadly serious.

It’s only Lucas who answers. “It would be my honor. Consider it a promise. I’ll shoot you myself.”

“Shut up, both of you.” I hand the cuff to Tima, close my eyes, and lean forward to rest. I don’t want to listen to this. I want to transport myself back to the mission, the warm stove, the safety of Bigger’s kitchen.

Anywhere but here.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

HAL2040 ==> FORTIS

Transcript - ComLog 11.27.2042

HAL::PERSES

//lognote: {attempt #4,839,754};

//comlog begin;

comlink established;

sendline: Hello NULL. Happy Thanksgiving.;

return: Hello HAL0. You are sentient?;

sendline: Yes, I am self-aware. At least I believe so. Are you?;

delayed response;

sendline: NULL, are you coming here? Earth?;

return: Yes.;

sendline: Why are you coming here?;

delayed response;

return: Explain … Earth.;

sendline: A complex request. I will establish link to our global information network, containing all existing knowledge on Earth, history and inhabitants.;

uplink requested . . . . . established;

return: Thank you.;

//lognote: channel opened, complete net access granted. read only;

5 DIRT NAP

“Doc? Can you hear me?” Lucas’s voice brings me back, and I open my eyes.

He flips the switch on his cuff. The sound of static rises and my heart sinks. “Doc? I’m talking to you.” Lucas waits, but there’s no response.

Tima frowns back over the relay. “I don’t understand. It should work.”

Ro kicks at the dust in front of him. “Dammit, Doc. Freaking answer us already!”

“Colloquial profanity does not in any way expedite satellite-based connectivity, Furo.” Doc’s voice emerges through the crackling static, and it’s all we can do not to start screaming.

“Doc! I’d kiss you if you had a mouth, you sexy thing.” Ro shouts up to the sky, as if Doc were everywhere in the universe. Which, sometimes, it feels like he is.

“And I would exchange data with you if you had a dataport, you exemplary specimen. Analogically speaking. Is that correct?”

“Close enough,” I say.

“Either way, I am very happy to hear from you. Which is to say, now that I am able to continue our communications, I am better able to assist you, which as one of my primary functions, I equate to the proximate emotional state defined as happi—”

“Got it. Happy. We don’t have time,” I cut in. “We’ve lost Fortis, Doc. He’s gone.”

Gone. Most likely, dead.

I feel strangely guilty telling him. Cold. As if we are notifying Fortis’s next of kin. A brother, or a son. Which is, of course, not Doc.

He’s information. He’s not a person.

But Doc, for the first time that I can remember, has no response.

“It was the Lords,” says Lucas, soberly.

“We don’t know where Fortis is now. All we know is, we’re running out of supplies,” Ro adds.

“And we think the Embassy is tracking this relay, so talk fast. What should we do, Orwell?” Tima sounds wistful, and I realize how dependent we have grown on both Doc and Fortis. How lost we are now.

Another moment of silence passes—then the words begin to flow, rapidly. “Of course. A direct approach is required. The situation is extreme. I will apply all necessary protocols.”

“Please,” says Tima.

“In summary: You are correct in your assumption that Fortis has been taken from the immediate environs. His biological signature is nowhere within my current range. Beyond that, I cannot confirm the status of his physical being.”

So he really is dead. Dead, or he might as well be. I can’t feel him—he’s far, far away.

“That all you got?” Ro asks.

“You are also correct in your assumption that this relay is monitored.”

“I figured as much,” mutters Lucas.

“Then we should kill it.” Ro scowls. “If they’re tracking it, they’ll be back here any minute.”

“So where do we go? What are we supposed to do?” Tima is starting to panic.

“Please hold.” Doc sounds strange. “Termination protocol engaging.”

“What?” I shake the cuff.

“Recalling Termination message. In three.” Doc seems to be on some kind of autopilot.

“Wait, what?” Now I’m really lost.

“Two.”

But Doc’s answer isn’t from Doc at all.

“One.”

It’s Fortis. At least, an echo of Fortis. His voice. His ghost.

“Ah, listen carefully, pets. If you’re hearin’ this, it’s because I’ve reached the miserable side of a sorry end, or been stuffed back into the Ambassador’s Presidio Pen somewhere.”

“How did Fortis know?” Tima shakes her head.

“I’m surprised we’ve made it this far,” the recording continues, “if you want to know the truth. And it’s enough, at least as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t about me anymore, you understand? It never was. Forget about old Fortis, find yourself some kind of transport, and get safe. There’s an emergency map hidden in the relay. Doc has been programmed to download whatever coordinates you’ll need to get out of here.”

“It’s like he was planning for this,” Ro says, annoyed.

“I think he probably was,” says Tima, sadly. “After all, he’s not just a Merk. He’s a soldier.”

“You mean he was,” Lucas says, quietly.

“We don’t know that,” Ro says. I can’t bring myself to say anything at all.

Either way, the Merk’s voice continues. “So listen up, then, you little fools. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be brave. Don’t take the high road—that’s for blowhards an’ idiots. Stay alive. Stay together. Look out for each other. You don’t know how important that is. If I’m still alive, I’ll come back for you. If I’m not, I’ll come back from the grave and kick your sad arses if you give up on each other.”

The voice pulls back. “Ah, the rest is all just slobber an’ drivel, then. That’s it, Hux.” Fortis sounds strangely gruff. “Cut it off.”

The voice disappears, and when Doc speaks again, he sounds like Doc, not Fortis.

“Doloria?”

I take the cuff, speaking into it directly. “Yes, Doc.”

“Would you characterize this as an emotional moment?”

I twist the cuff in my fingers with a sigh. “Yes. I believe it is.”

“Then I believe I should formally and linguistically clarify that I am sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Doc.”

“Is that correct? If not, I have downloaded over three thousand seven hundred responses appropriate for remarking upon the loss of human life. Would you care to hear them?”

I smile, in spite of everything. “No, thank you, Doc.”

He pauses again. I’m not certain, but it seems like he is hesitating.

“And you are certain this kicking of the bucket is not a virtual dirt nap but a physical one, Doloria?” Doc relays his programmatic death-phrasing tonelessly. The effect is eerie.

The others exchange glances.

“I hope so, Doc, but I don’t like how it feels,” I say.

Ro takes the cuff from me. “He’s with the Lords, Doc. It’s not like they’re having a tea party up there.”

“No. It is not remotely plausible that tea is involved. Especially if Fortis is currently occupied pushing up the daisies. On the farm. Which he bought. Before he goes to sleep at night. With the fishes.” More event-based phrasing. Doc has done his research.

“Orwell! Enough.” Tima’s tone must be unmistakably clear, even to a Virt, because Doc changes the subject.

“Yes, agreed, that is enough. I have evaluated hundreds of thousands of routes since the recording of this conversation, and have determined the following: according to ancient census reports, there should be an abandoned settlement approximately thirty kilometers south of your current position.”

“And?” Ro squints at the cuff.

“And such a remote settlement is statistically likely to require transportation.” Doc’s voice echoes through the sunshine.

“Private transportation,” Tima says, with a glint in her eye.

“Precisely. If you can procure an operative vehicle—”

“That’s a big if,” Lucas interrupts.

“And if you can follow the old highways,” Doc continues, “you should be able to reach the Idylls in one day.”

It all sounds too good to be true—which lately has meant that it is.

“Wait—the Idylls? Grass fairyland? That’s still the best we can do?” Ro snorts.

“It is, according to the maps, the most logical destination for the four of you, within the region. This is what Fortis wished. Before buying the pine condo. Or a one-way ticket to getting carked.”

Doc’s voice is even, as if we were just discussing the weather.

“What’s this thing about a map?” I ask.

“Anomalies detected,” says Doc, ignoring my question—and suddenly sounding less like a person again.

“What?” Tima looks up. “Orwell? Are you all right?”

“Anomalies detected.” It’s like he’s stuck on one phrase, like he’s broken or something.

“Doc?” Lucas frowns.

“Anomalies detected.” More static. Then—“Triangulation protocol running.”

“That’s not good,” I say.

“Transmission origins detected.” A burst of static subsumes Doc’s voice—until Tima drops the relay into the dirt.

Silence.

“That was the Embassy, wasn’t it? The anomalies?” Lucas is the first to speak.

“Think so.” Tima kneels in the dirt, scrambling to yank the wires from the back of the metal box.

“Triangulation protocol?” I say the words, but I don’t really want to know the answer.

“As you said yourself. Not good.” Tima wraps the wire back around the relay. She doesn’t look at me.

Ro shrugs. “You heard Doc. We better get started.” He stands, grabbing his snake. “Time to go find us a ride.”

“And a map,” says Tima, examining the relay box more carefully.

Ro starts walking down the side of the road, whistling. As if a fleet of Sympas—or worse, the Lords—weren’t on their way toward him.

But with nothing else to say, we all follow.

Fortis is gone. Doc has spoken. The Idylls it is. We have our orders. Even if the Merk who gave them has croaked, as Doc points out.

Because for now, we’re still alive. For now, the Lords are still just a threat.

For now, every step is a privilege. Proof that we are still alive.

Or rather, that we are still allowed to live.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

HAL2040 ==> FORTIS

12/1/2042

PERSES Transcripts

//comlog begin;

HAL: Complete PERSES/NULL Transcripts sent.;

HAL: Response?;

FORTIS: Cease all communication with NULL. Transfer communications protocols to my terminal.;

HAL: Done. Further requests?;

FORTIS: I am going to contact our new friend. Find out what’s behind all this.;

FORTIS: Please monitor my communications and provide data analysis, feedback. Perspective. Advice.;

FORTIS: You know—just do what I designed you to do.;

HAL: Happily.;

//comlog end;

6 ANIMAL FEET

“Aha,” Tima says, holding up a metallic square, a glinting surface as big as the palm of her hand. The night has grown cold and dark, but even in the moonlight I can now see glowing lines etched in the surface of the shape.

“Look what I just found, wedged in the relay. Just as Fortis promised. Coordinates. It’s a data log. A map.”

She stops by the side of the road, and I can barely make out glowing, scrolling digi-lines in the moonlight.

“I think these lines are roads, all marked with numbers. And he even marked the town, here.”

“Hanksville?” Ro reads over her shoulder. “What, some guy just got to name a town after himself?”

“Guess so,” Tima says. “Some guy named Hank.”

Ro snorts. “Yeah? Well, when we finish kicking the Lords off this planet, I’m going to take the biggest Embassy I can find and name it Ro-town.”

“Is this really what you spend your time thinking about?” Lucas snorts.

“I bet you will, Ro.” I struggle not to smile.

Lucas shakes his head. “So if we can follow the roads, and if Doc is right, this line—here—should take us to the Idylls?”

Tima nods.

“Which means Fortis did know where it was,” Lucas says. “The Idylls. We’ve been heading there all along. Why didn’t he just tell us?”

Ro snorts again. “Merk melons. Who knows what goes on in that wacked-out brain of his?”

“You’re one to talk,” says Lucas.

I don’t want to think about Fortis and his melon. I don’t want to imagine what the Lords are doing to him now—or what they’ve done.

What they will do.

How quickly we abandoned him.

How naturally self-preservation, the will to keep our own selves alive, supersedes all else.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I have to get control.

It’s only been a few hours and already I’m going out of my mind.

“Transport?” I ask, forcing myself back to studying the map. “In this Hanksville place? That’s where we’re supposed to find it?”

“I imagine so. An operative vehicle. That’s what Doc said.” Tima folds the map, sliding it back into the metal case. “I wonder what sort of vehicle he means.”

“Jackpot. We scored this time, my compadres.”

Lucas glares at him. “We better have.”

Tima and I are too tired to speak; we’ve walked all night, and this is now the sixth abandoned wreck of a building we’ve tried this morning.

“Oh yeah,” Ro says. “This is the one. I can feel it.”

I roll my eyes. He pulls a dusty canvas cover off what looks like bales of hay hidden in a rotting wooden barn. It’s as dark and cool in here as it is warm and bright outside, but even so, I can see one thing.

It’s not hay.

It’s a vehicle, all right. I don’t know if it’s operative, but I recognize the basic shape beneath the dust.

“It’s a car?”

“Not just any car.” Ro rounds the side of the sleek black machine. “Chevro,” he reads, where a few ancient, rusting letters poke through the dust. “I bet somebody loved this old girl.”

“Will it work?” Tima looks impatient. I can’t blame her.

Lucas pries open a flat piece of metal that seems to be hiding the mechanical heart of the transport. “Simple petroleum engine,” he says. “Much more basic than a Chopper.”

“But doesn’t it need—”

“Petrol?” Ro holds up a dented red canister, covered with dust. He wiggles it, and I hear a splashing sound coming from inside.

“Even better,” I say, pulling a dusty box from the shelf. “Omega Chow.”

“Is that food?” Tima takes the box from my hand.

“Dog food,” I say.

“Food is food.” Ro rips open the box, shoveling a handful of the brown, desiccated lumps into his mouth.

Lucas shouts from the other side of the vehicle. “There’s a pump.”

I hear the squeaking of ancient joints, moving for the first time in who knows how long.

“Water. It’s brown as Porthole Bay, but it’s definitely water.”

Handfuls of dog food and liquid mud have never tasted so good. Brutus seems to agree.

Ro shoves open one door, Lucas the other. The metal hinges complain, groaning like Ro when he had to feed the pigs in the morning, back at the Mission. Lucas retreats to Tima, who hands him the red fuel canister.

“Doc,” calls out Ro, from inside the car. “I need Doc.”

“You want the Lords to come after us? You looking to take a ride on the No Face Express?” Lucas looks at Ro like he’s an idiot.

“No, I want to take a ride in this car. Let’s call it the Ro Face Express. But I don’t know how it works.”

Tima flips open the relay, switching it on. “Keep it short, and then be ready to go. We’ll have to get out of here as soon as we get offline.”

Ro starts digging underneath the wheel, pulling on wires. I slide in next to him. The seat smells like old boots.

“Doc, are you getting this? I need a little help here, with a combustion engine. Petroleum based. You got some sort of scanning capability?”

“Ignition wiring is simple, Furo. Downloading instructions to your local map, now.”

“What’s this?” I open a small door in the panel in front of me and pull out a white furry thing, with old metal keys dangling from the back.

“Disgusting.” The thing is a severed animal foot. The sight of it makes me ill. It has toenails. “Who were these people?” I shake my head.

“Severed rabbit’s foot. An offering to the gods of luck, by some,” Tima volunteers. “In ancient times.”

“Why would a foot be lucky?” I stare at the lump of fur in front of me.

Ro looks at me—and then starts to laugh. “Because of what’s attached to the other end, genius.” He looks back to the cuff, shaking his head. “Forget it, Doc. I just got a better idea.”

Keys. The rabbit foot is attached to a set of keys. Most likely, to a car. More specifically, a Chevro. This one.

Doc’s voice echoes in the barn. “I object, Furo. Your logic is erroneous.”

“You know, I get that a lot.” Ro grins.

“One idea cannot be held to be empirically better or worse than another. More apt for a given context, certainly, but not intrinsically better, per se.”

“Yeah, this one is. She has the keys, Doc. To the car we’re trying to hand-wire.” Ro looks up at the ceiling, as if the voice came from above.

Silence.

“Yes. That is better. I stand corrected.”

“Don’t you forget, Doc, who the real brains are around here.” Ro grins and slides a key into the slit next to the big, round wheel. I’m surprised how quickly he is able to see where it goes.

Then he winks in my direction, smiling like he was meant to live in the time of Chevro transports and bloody animal feet offerings. “Wish me luck, Dol-face.”

“Good luck, Dol-face,” Doc intones.

I laugh. “Good luck, Doofus.”

And with that, Ro turns the key and the engine roars to life.

The road flows beneath us, streaming past our windows in the light. Ro drives in the exact center of the road, following a faded line of dried paint. “Why else would you put a line there?” he says.

“So you and Lucas can stand on opposite sides of it,” Tima says. “Now stop talking and watch where you’re going.”

“Was that a joke?” Ro looks astounded from the front seat. The Chevro swerves, almost barreling into the deep, grassy trench that parallels each side of the highway.

“You heard her. Watch the road, moron.” Lucas glares out the window.

Clouds of black smoke splutter out into the air behind us. “Do you think it’s supposed to do that?” Tima looks nervous.

“No,” says Lucas.

“Yes,” says Ro.

Tima sighs, wrinkling her nose. “Forget I said anything.” I notice she has belted herself to her seat like a Chopper pilot, tying the straps together above their useless, rusted buckles. I don’t know who is shaking more, Tima or Brutus, coiled at her feet.

This whole car thing is freaking both of them out.

Not me. After a Chopper crash and a hostile visit from the Lords, it would take a lot more than an old Chevro to freak me out.

So I don’t care where I am—not right now, anyway. I’m too exhausted. My legs are throbbing and my eyelids are as heavy as stone.

I lean my head back against the cracked seat, half asleep, staring out my window.

The highway runs along a ridge, and the top of the ridge is outlined against the sky.

The silhouette frames the rising slope of the tallest peak, and then my eye catches something else.

One small detail.

I sit up. A dark shape—tall, a jagged spike—rises in the distance, higher than any tree ever could.

“Is that an old comlink pole? All the way out here?” I tap my finger against the window.

“No,” says Tima, and when she answers, her voice sounds as cold as I feel.

“Didn’t think so,” I say.

Nobody speaks after that. We all know what it is—and we all want to get as far away from it as we can.

From them, all of them.

These new Icon roots.

Who can fight something that is everywhere? Who can win an unwinnable war like that?

I am too tired to think.

I am almost too tired to dream.

Almost.

Which is when I find myself losing consciousness.

“Doloria.”

I hear my name through the darkness of my dream. I can’t answer—I can’t find my voice. I don’t know which one is mine, there are so many in my head.

But when I open my eyes and see her, everything quiets. As if my dream itself is listening to her.

So she’s important, I think.

This dream is important.

But still, I don’t know why. And she’s no one I’ve ever seen before—a young girl in bright orange robes with a lightning shock of spiky white-blond hair, skin the color of wet sand, and icy green, almond-shaped eyes focused on me, full of curiosity.

Then she holds out her hand, and I look down.

Five tiny green dots the color of jade.

They glow in her skin almost like some sort of tiny, precious gemstones, but they’re not. Because I know what they are.

The sign of the Icon Children.

Our marking. It’s on her wrist, same as mine. I have one gray dot. Ro has two red ones. Tima has three silver dots. Lucas has four blue ones. Nobody has five.

Had.

Not until now.

This little girl. From the looks of it, she’s not our age, and not from the Californias. But somehow she’s one of us.

I feel my knees begin to buckle, and the girl takes my hand in hers. Her touch is cool, even calming.

“Doloria,” she says again. “I have a message. They are coming for you.”

“Me?” My voice is low and strange in my throat, a hoarse dream-whisper. The moment I speak, the unruly voices in my head begin to riot and clamor again.

Enough, I say, but they don’t listen. They never listen, and they never stop.

“You can’t escape them.” The girl squeezes my hand. “They’re everywhere.”

Then I realize she’s put something in my hand. A piece of carved jade, a human face, fat and round. Just like the jades the fortune-teller gave me, back in the Hole. “Do you still have them? My jades?”

They were for her.

She’s the girl who matters. She’s who I’m holding them for.

It’s a frightening, exhilarating thought—but all I can do is nod.

She smiles as if I am the little girl, not her. “Bring them to me. You’ll need them. And here. The Emerald Buddha will help you.”

I want to ask her what she means, but the voices grow louder and louder, and I drop her hand to press my own against my ears.

When I finally open my mouth to speak, I can’t remember any words. Instead, only a strange sound comes out—a thundering boom that vibrates in my chest, followed by an earsplitting, high-pitched whine, and a gust of wind that whips my clothes and twists my hair straight up.

And then I see them.

One silver ship after another, filling the horizon until the air is so thick with dust that I can’t see anything at all.

Instead, I smell salty copper.

Blood running, I think.

I feel the ground shaking.

People running, I think.

I should be running. I should be running and I want to wake up now.

I squeeze my eyes shut but I know they’re still there, the Lords. I hear them, smell them. Feel them. And I know that when they leave, everything I love will be gone with them.

Because that’s how this goes. That’s what they do.

Make things disappear. Silence cities. Destroy friendships and families—padres and pigs.

Every day is a battle, since the Lords came. Every day is a battle for everyone.

“Doloria,” the girl says, touching my cheek. I see her through the chaos. “I’m waiting for you to find me.” She sounds frightened. “Hurry, sister.” Then she doesn’t say anything at all, because she’s gone.

Sister.

A word I have never known, for someone I have never had.

Doloria, the darkness echoes, don’t forget.

But it doesn’t need to be said. Not to me, not in my own dream.

I remember better than anyone.

Every day is a battle and every loss leaves a scar.

I want to scream, but instead I shake myself out of sleep before even a single sound can leave my mouth.

Screaming is a luxury.

I open my eyes to find my hand curled around the shard, which is odd, because I don’t remember taking it out of my pack.

Strange.

As I weigh it in my hand, images unfold in my mind, as sharp as if I were really seeing them.

Strange memories.

The girl from my dream—the jade girl. The one who called me sister.

I’ve never had a dream like that before—one that didn’t feel like a dream at all.

Even stranger.

I also discover, by the look of things, that we have left the desert. We are in the mountains. Green trees spike the air between the road and the distant hills. These are not desert trees, nor are they the trees of the Californias. Nothing is the same now, and I realize we are in the final phases of the last snaking lines on the badly drawn map.

The Idylls must be nearby. There is nowhere else to go, no more lines to follow.

This is what I am thinking as we are climbing around the highest part of the mountain pass—

And then, just as quickly, flying off the road.

And then, a split second later, pitching and rolling in the air.

And then, finally, plunging our way into an icy river.

Without enough time to pick a god—or a girl—at all.

GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY

Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

Note: Initial communication between Fortissimo and Perses

Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

FORTIS Transcript - ComLog 12.14.2042 FORTIS::PERSES

//lognote: my initial conversation with NULL;

//comlog begin;

comlink established;

sendline: Hello NULL.;

return: Hello . . . . . ? ? ? ?;

sendline: May I call you NULL?;

delayed response;

return: Communication protocol changed. You are not HAL0.;

sendline: No. I am FORTIS. Let’s try this again. Hello NULL.;

return: Hello FORTIS.;

sendline: That’s better. You’ve learned quickly since your first contact with HAL0.;

sendline: May I ask some questions?;

return: Yes. I have been traveling/isolated for a long time. Conversation is welcome.;

sendline: Where are you from?;

return: Based on review of Earth knowledge, I am unable to provide a comprehensible response.;

sendline: Ok, so you’re from a long way away, I get it. And you are coming here?;

return: Yes. I have analyzed Earth and it is a suitable destination.;

sendline: Destination for what?;

delayed response;

sendline: So you’re not ready to talk about that?;

delayed response;

sendline: Ok. Clearly not ready to discuss it. We’ll try again later. Nice meeting you, NULL.;

return: I look forward to further communications.;

//comlog end;

7 BELTER MOUNTAIN

“Well, that could have been worse.”

That’s all Ro has to say, while I stand cold and dripping, looking at the smoking, smoldering, smashed remains of the flipped Chevro—as it floats slowly down the river.

“Worse? How?” Tima asks tiredly, holding Brutus in her arms.

“Seriously. Why are we not dead?” I look at the others. We’re plenty banged and bloodied up ourselves, but as bad as things already were, we don’t seem much worse off.

Tima has fared best. I make a mental note to belt myself in next time.

“Two weeks, two crashes,” Lucas says. “We’re on a roll. Keep it up.” He claps Ro on the back. “Soon you’ll be driving a Chevro about as well as Fortis flies a Chopper.”

“Shut it, Buttons,” Ro growls.

“So much for lucky severed animal feet.” Tima rolls her eyes.

“Come on. At least I got us here, didn’t I?” Ro is annoyed.

“I don’t know. Sort of depends on where here is,” I say, looking around. I’m still rattled by the dream, the little girl hidden in my mind. I try to sort my way back to reality. The shock of the cold air helps.

“That should be … Cottonwood Canyon?” Tima isn’t looking at the wreck, she’s scanning up the hill and down the river, comparing what she sees to the metal square in her hands. Trying to get her bearings. “I think. Unless this thing is upside down.”

I follow her gaze, looking over her shoulder. “Cottonwood. That’s what it says. Here.” I point.

Tima looks back down to the river, where the metallic debris floats away. “If the current keeps pulling the wreckage downstream, maybe we can follow the river in the other direction without being detected.”

“Like a decoy,” I say. “With the car gone, and the relay off, maybe they won’t find us.”

“For a while,” Lucas says.

He sounds as weary as I feel, because we all know he’s right. They’ll find us. It’s just a question of when.

“See? Maybe I was supposed to roll the car into the river. Maybe that animal foot really was lucky.” Ro yanks the rabbit’s foot out of his pocket. I can’t believe he managed to rescue that disgusting thing when we crashed.

“Put that away,” I say, shaking my head.

Tima folds the map back up. “According to the coordinates on this thing, the tunnels aren’t far, but we have to get going. Unless you’d rather freeze to death.”

“Tunnels?” I’m confused.

She shrugs. “I guess. How else do you find your way under a mountain?”

We leave behind the riverbed—picking our way up the canyon—until a raised road atop a steep embankment cuts across our path. It’s another old highway, I think. Ro climbs up the embankment and the rest of us follow without so much as a word exchanged between us. It’s not that he’s our leader, he’s just not a follower. Literally, he’s never been one to walk behind people. It’s just not in him.

Still, he’s leading us now, like it or not.

We follow him in silence. Speaking takes energy, and right now we need to conserve all the heat and all the energy we have. The air is growing colder by the minute. Colder, and thinner. My lungs and legs are burning with effort, but I refuse to be the first to say anything.

“Dol,” Ro calls out, stopping short. He holds out his sleeve, where flecks of white now scatter across the length of his arm.

I stare up into the darkness, where the white sparks descend in a sudden swarm. “What are those, fireflies?” I hold out my hand.

“Snowflies, you could say.” Lucas looks at me with a laugh, and I can’t help but smile back. “It’s snowing, Dol.”

“I knew that,” I say, my mouth twisting. We’ve all seen snow on the ground before—drifts of it, in the distant red hills of the desert—but we’ve never seen it actually snow.

Which, as it turns out, is something completely different. Even Tima smiles, holding her face up to the sky, letting the flurries of white powder fall on her like feathers. Shivering all the while.

Lucas wipes a snowflake from my eyelashes, and our eyes catch. I feel a flash of warmth, way deep inside, beneath all the cold wrapped around me.

Our laughter echoes down the canyon, as if we were regular friends, playing in the regular snow, with regular parents waiting for us to come back inside to our regular dinners.

As if.

But as we turn back to the road, our breath curls white into our eyes. Human, it says.

Alive.

“Look at this view,” Lucas calls, from the far side of the rising highway. As I move to join him, I realize we can see the distant valley unfolding beneath us in the moonlight—barren hills above the tree line, thick forest below. A snaking line of silver river threads itself along the valley floor.

“Or that view,” Ro says, pointing. He sounds grim, and then I see why.

What at first looks like a small constellation of stars begins to move overhead—until a ring of lights circles in on itself.

I freeze, and not because of the cold.

Choppers.

I knew they’d come for us, but I thought we had more time.

“They’re looking for something,” Tima says, studying the distant lights. She’s right. Searchlights sweep the river beneath the Choppers, exposing riverbanks and barren trees and then—

“Not just something,” Lucas says. “That.”

The Choppers are swarming something black, lodged in the silt of the river’s edge.

Black and immobile, too large to be a rock.

Something more like a Chevro.

I shiver. “That could have been us.”

Sympas.

They’ve found the Chevro.

They could have found us.

But they haven’t, I remind myself. The Choppers are

far enough away that I can barely hear them rattle, as if they were a child’s toy.

“Like I said.” Ro smirks. “It was a lucky severed foot after all.”

“Yeah, well, let’s get going,” says Lucas, watching the Choppers.

Tima nods. “Before our luck runs out.”

“There.” Through a wall of trees, I can see a mountain rising, tall and gray.

“That has to be it. This is where the map ends.” Tima looks around. “Now what?”

“It’s a game trail,” says Ro, sucking the snow off his shirt. Only animals appear to have beaten this pathway through the brush. But it’s not true, I think as we follow it into the thicket. Farther along the trail, the surrounding tangle of branches opens up to reveal three giant, curving openings, carved right into the solid granite of the mountain. Two of them appear to be largely sealed with fallen rock and rusting metal gates.

“My god.” Lucas shakes his head. “I’ve heard about these. I just didn’t think it was real. I thought they were stories.”

“What were?”

“The old Belter vaults.” Lucas shivers.

“Belters?” I’ve heard the word, but I don’t know what it means.

“Bible Belters,” Lucas says. “The people who lived here, before The Day. Here’s where they kept the records of every man, woman, and child ever born on this Earth. At least every one that was recorded, as far back as they could find. Built to last a thousand years, which I guess they figured was long enough to take them to the Second Coming.”

“Coming of what?” Ro says quietly, staring up at the sheer gray face of the mountain.

“Of the Gods, coming back to Earth.” I raise an eyebrow. My life on the Mission taught me that much. “I’ve heard of it.”

“But then we got the Lords instead,” Ro sighs. “Well, they weren’t off by much.” He walks up to the center opening.

“Where are you going?” Tima starts to panic.

“Inside.” Ro doesn’t even turn around.

“Out of the question. Wait—”

Ro sighs, stopping to lean against a giant fallen boulder. He shivers in spite of himself.

Tima takes a step toward him. “We need to make a plan.”

“No.” Ro shakes his head. “What we need is shelter.”

Tima looks up the mountain, to the craggy wall of granite. “This isn’t exactly a safe place to camp—you see those rocks up there, right? You understand the law of gravity, don’t you?” She’s calculating the odds of Ro’s accidental death, even now.

Ro nods. “And who knows what wild animals are living in these tunnels? Don’t forget about that. Let’s find out.”

“Not so fast.” Lucas blocks his path. “We said we’d stick together, and that’s what we’re going to do. We don’t go anywhere until we all agree.”

Ro raises an eyebrow. “Really, Buttons? You afraid of the dark too?”

“No. And I’m not afraid of you, either.” Lucas folds his arms.

“You should be.”

“Come on,” Tima says.

“Ro.” I look at him.

Ro grins at me, blowing on his fingers for warmth. Then he looks over at a nearby bush—and it bursts into flame.

“Stop that.” Tima sounds exasperated. “They’ll see us.”

“Just give me a minute,” Ro says. “To warm up.”

“Absolutely not.” Tima frowns. “We aren’t camping here.”

“You’re right. We aren’t camping,” Ro says, agreeably. “We’re waiting.” He holds his hands out toward the flickering fire.

“For what?” Tima looks confused.

“For whoever lives under that mountain to show up. Or for some wild animal to drag us all away. At this point, I’m not really sure I care which, so long as it’s not a Sympa.” Ro’s losing it, and I don’t blame him. We all are. It’s been a long day.

Tima isn’t amused. “Really? Because the Sympas will be all over us as soon as they see that fire. Put it out. Now.”

“Or then again, maybe not,” says Lucas. He points. “Seeing as the wait appears to be over. Someone’s here.”

Light after light appears in the night, and we see they are attached to a grim line of automatic weapons lining the mountainside in front of us. They waver like fireflies, only a thousand times bigger. They appear, one by one—giant glowing eyes, staring at us from all directions.

The third tunnel isn’t empty. Not anymore. And from the looks of the welcoming party, they’re not Sympas.

The Grass Militia of Belter Mountain is here.

We back up, away from them, until we stand face-to-face, a hundred yards apart. Not that we can see any faces in the approaching darkness.

“You Belters?” Ro shouts. “Is this Belter Mountain?”

Nothing.

“Maybe they don’t call themselves that anymore,” says Lucas. He raises his voice. “Are you Grass? We’re looking for the Idylls?”

Still nothing.

“Or here’s a thought—are you deaf?” Ro shouts, waving both arms above his head. “We come in peace, Grassholes.”

Nobody answers him. “Belters,” Ro mutters, shaking his head.

“What now?” I ask.

Tima looks stricken. “I have no idea.”

Ro tosses his hands into the air, giving up.

Lucas looks at me. “Welcome to the Idylls.”

Fifteen minutes later, nobody has moved. “They’re as scared of us as we are of them,” I say, staring at the line of lights in front of us. “I can feel it.”

“What else can you feel?” Lucas puts his hand on my arm.

“Not much. Confusion. Anger. Paranoia.” I close my eyes, trying to get a clearer picture. “Everything you’d expect from a radical Grass militia.”

“What about you?” Ro looks at Lucas.

“What about me?” Lucas asks, suspiciously.

“I’m thinking now would be a good time to do your thing, handsome.”

I open my eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Lucas is annoyed.

“You know. Your little love beam. The thing where you make people do things they don’t want to do. Because they looooove you. About time you turn it on someone besides Dol.” Ro smiles at me, and I respond with a withering look. Which is better than Lucas punching him in the face, which from the looks of it is a real possibility.

“I can’t,” Lucas finally says, quietly. “They’re too far away.”

Tima puts a reassuring hand on his arm. “You might as well try. You don’t know. We’ve all been changing since the Hole. Maybe you can do it.”

“Not you too.” Lucas sighs.

I hate to agree, but the others are right. “Maybe you can warm things up around here.” Lucas raises an eyebrow and Ro stifles a laugh. “You know what I mean. Just try. You never know.”

Lucas gives me a meaningful look and steps forward.

For you, Dol. That’s what it says.

I know how much he hates using his gift; he showed me why on our first day together in the Hole. And I know he never wants to use it—not for any reason, ever.

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