4

4:38 A.M.

Rett stumbled forward and fell to his knees in cold dirt. A strangled noise escaped from his throat. Bryn—

He scrambled to his feet. He was alone in a dark hollow. Above him in the sky a green flame flexed.

Bryn—

The green light shimmered over the dark angles of buttes and canyons. All was silent.

But Rett remembered: he and Bryn had been inside a shelter, and something had come down through the skylight. Rett still heard in his mind the sound of its scythe-like feet scratching over the metal floor, Bryn screaming.

The humped silhouette of the metal shelter loomed at the top of a slope. Rett hurried toward it, picturing Bryn on the rain-slicked floor, the creature over her …

Rett stopped. Something didn’t make sense. Why is it so dark out here? It had been morning. Now it was night. What happened to my boots? Grit clung to his bare feet.

He peered up at the shelter again. Scatter 3, he thought, remembering the marking he’d found on the inside of the door. Is Bryn really in there?

Then he remembered something else: while he and Bryn had been inside, someone had been outside, pounding on the door. Rett whipped around, but there was only a lonely boulder interrupting the empty landscape. Still, someone might be out there, at the edge of the darkness.

Get inside, he told himself. He turned back for Scatter 3.

5:37 A.M.

Someone is calling to me …

Someone is …

Screaming.

Rett woke to a crushing headache and a strange string of thoughts. He had the faint impression he had been outside—his hands were cold and grimy. But he couldn’t remember much beyond that except … Someone was screaming.

A swell of fear overtook him and he scrambled to his feet. For a moment, the room before him was slick with rain, and a dark form fell from the ceiling—

He looked up. Blue morning light filtered in through a skylight.

A nightmare, he decided. That was just a nightmare.

The metal room glowed faintly in the morning light, underwater-blue. From another room came the sound of singing. Rett closed his eyes, drinking in the hypnotic tune. The words brought a strange scene to mind: a lighthouse topped by a tattered flag, a piece of metal hidden in a boat, fleshy black bulbs circling overhead …

Whatever you do, don’t open that skylight, Rett told himself. He shook away the nightmare images.

Then he looked down and saw the blood on his clothes.

5:47 A.M.

He emerged from a changing room, dressed in a clean jumpsuit and a pair of boots, shaking with nerves and thirst and pain. What am I doing here? He glanced again at the bolted door. Locked, trapped. The logo on the door caught his eye. Jagged strokes like an uneven skyline. He had a sudden vision of ragged cliffs raked over by the massive hand of weather. Where? A place seen in a dream—no place he had been.

He turned back to the room he had first awakened in and was surprised to find a wall had been lifted away. And sitting on a long couch, like a figure in a diorama, was a girl. Slender frame inside a baggy jumpsuit, large hazel eyes bright against a dirt-streaked face. She folded herself even smaller in the tight space. Rett agreed with the sentiment. “It’s not safe here,” he said, his voice an unfamiliar croak. “We need to get out.”

She nodded slowly and moved from the couch to the middle of the main room. Blue light from above tinted her suit, her skin, so that she seemed to be surfacing from a darker place. Rett thought, Take me with you.

The girl dragged her gaze to the glowing skylight overhead. “Something’s coming for us.”

Rett tensed as he pictured again a black, fleshy form falling from above. “Do you know what it is—what’s out there?”

“No.” The girl moved her gaze to an open doorway. “But there’s a gun.”

Rett’s scalp prickled. “A gun?”

He crept to the doorway. The gun lay on the floor, a faint gleam of gray in the dim light. Rett regarded it for a long moment, thinking he was the wrong person to be here, to be expected to do anything like shoot a gun. But the girl was right—something was coming for them. He picked up the gun. It was cold against his palm and not as reassuring as he needed it to be. “We might need this later,” he said as she came into the room behind him. He spotted a desk against the wall and shut the gun in a drawer.

As the drawer slid shut, he realized something: he had known about the gun even before he had seen it, even before the girl had told him. A lighthouse topped by a tattered flag, a piece of metal hidden in a boat …

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked, her voice echoing faintly in the small space so that the question seemed to reverberate in Rett’s head. What’s wrong, what’s wrong?

Something’s very wrong here, Rett thought.

He turned to study her, still frowning in thought. He’d known about the gun because of the song she’d been singing. One lonely lighthouse, two in a boat …

A memory tickled at the back of his mind. “I know you from somewhere,” he said to the girl. “What’s your name?”

She tipped her head to one side, curious, or trying to take him in from a new angle to study him better.

And what do you see? Rett asked silently. Someone familiar? Or just a scrawny stranger trying not to shake with fear at the visions in his head?

Finally she said, “I’m Bryn.”

“Bryn…?”

“Bryn Ward,” she said quietly.

“Are you a ward at Walling Home?”

Surprise flickered in her eyes. “Is that a lucky guess, or have we met before?”

“I’m … not sure. I’m from Walling, too. We must have been sent here together.” It wasn’t exactly comforting to know she was from Walling. Some of the boarders helped each other—played lookout, warned each other about moldy food and the moods of the staff. But sometimes, perfectly nice kids ratted you out for skipping chore rotation, or cleared out your stash of pilfered food. And the not-so-nice ones, the ones you thought might be useful to have around, decided your face was the perfect canvas for their sudden, violent art.

Rett had figured it out a long time ago: you couldn’t really know who to trust. He’d learned that at age ten, when an older boy, Garrick, told him about a disused firewood box on the edge of Walling’s property that made the perfect place to watch shooting stars in secret. And then Garrick had come along and shut the lid with Rett inside. The stars had trailed above, unseen, while Rett imagined them behind his eyelids and tried not to waste his breath on pleading.

You choose who to trust. And sometimes you choose wrong.

What if I choose wrong again?

“Do you think…” Bryn frowned in thought. “I asked to leave Walling early. I think I might have graduated out.”

In his mind, Rett heard the click of the director’s door shutting, the wheeze of the man’s impatient sigh, the uneven scratch of his own broken voice: She’s sick, I need to go to her. “I think I did, too—graduated out.”

They turned to look around at the scuffed metal walls, the dour gray gleam of the place. “Congratulations,” Bryn said wryly.

This can’t be right, Rett thought. I’m not supposed to be here. His mother needed him. Without treatment she couldn’t hope for more than a few months. And how long ago was that? Rett wondered, eyeing the thick layer of dust coating the walls. How long have I been here?

“You don’t know what this place is?” he asked Bryn, trying to keep desperation out of his voice.

“I don’t even know how I got here.”

Rett cataloged the details around him: scratched metal, dirty footprints, a ladder mounted over a couch, a wall with a rusty plate where a handle should have been. “Do you feel like—somehow, this has happened before?”

Bryn looked from the ladder to the rusty plate, like Rett had done.

“This place feels familiar, this situation,” Rett said. “And … you. You seem familiar.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

Her words stabbed at him in a way he didn’t understand. “It’s Rett.”

“Rett…” Bryn seemed to be testing the name for familiarity. “You recognized me from Walling Home?”

“I guess, but—somewhere else, too.” Rett pictured her suit sun-dappled instead of tinted by muted morning light. He imagined a long stalk of grass twined through her fingers. “I knew you somewhere else.”

Bryn’s wondering gaze swept over him. It made Rett feel more vulnerable than any piercing stare ever could.

“Can you sing that song again?” he asked her. “Maybe it will help me remember.”

“What song?”

“The one you were singing a few minutes ago.” Rett moved to the wall that wanted lifting and kicked at the rusty plate.

“Was I singing? That’s a weird thing to do in a quarantine tank.”

“You were singing about a lighthouse,” Rett said, turning as he lifted the wall. “A boat…”

A haze passed over Bryn’s expression. She put a hand to her head. Rett’s fingers went automatically to a scar under his short hair. How did I get this?

Bryn swayed, and Rett moved to steady her. She grimaced with the same pain that knocked against his skull.

“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s just sit down.”

“I’m thirsty.”

He helped her over to the couch. “Sit here and I’ll look for some water.” He glanced at the ladder again. There’s water up there. I know it.

5:59 A.M.

In the room atop the ladder, Rett found a lever in the dark. He leaned his weight down on it until something moved behind the wall and a clunk came from the roof. He waited for something more to happen.

A line from Bryn’s song went through his mind: Three gulls circle, four clouds float.

He lifted a hand to the wall, slow as a sleepwalker, and traced the outline of what he knew was painted there in the dark: a cloud and scattered raindrops. The paint was smooth under his finger. How did I know? he wondered. How did I know something was painted here?

A chill went down the back of his neck. I’ve done this before. The thought nagged at him as he climbed back down the ladder.

“Sorry, no luck,” he called.

Bryn was nowhere in sight, but it was easy to guess she had disappeared behind the half-lifted wall opposite. Rett ducked under the wall to find her rummaging through some cabinets.

“You don’t waste time, do you?” Rett said, looking around at the equipment strewn over the floor.

Bryn glanced back at him before returning to her work, a shadow of resentment lingering in her gaze. “It was like that when I came in here.”

“Okay,” he said, a little defensively. “I promise I wasn’t angling to stake my claim to rain ponchos.”

She pushed the bin of ponchos toward him without comment and went on searching the cabinets. He blinked down at her offering and couldn’t decide whether he owed her a thank you or a sorry.

“So,” he tried, “you didn’t feel like sticking around Walling until you were eighteen and a proper adult?”

“Does taking health and safety matters into your own hands make you a proper adult? Because I think I might already be one.” She pulled a long metal pole out of the cabinet and hefted it to check its weight, preparing herself for whatever danger might await them.

“Now I’m changing my mind,” Rett said, watching her slow-swing the pole in practice. “I think I prefer a sheltered childhood after all.”

Bryn leaned back to scour the metal room with her gaze. “Depends on the shelter.”

“Good point.” Rett swallowed against the sticky pain in his throat. “At least Walling had water.”

“Why’d you ask to leave early? You had someone’s couch in mind, or where were you going to live?”

“I’m supposed to be on the East Coast. My mom’s at a workhouse, or anyway, she will be until they close them.” Or have the workhouses already closed? How long have we been here? He massaged a sudden ache in his chest. “She … she’s sick. I’m going to go take care of her.”

A barrage of questions went through his head. He waited for Bryn to ask them: What will you do if she’s already gone? Or: What if you can’t do anything to help? Questions Rett couldn’t answer. Because his mother hadn’t told him what her plans were. Because …

Because …

Some vague feeling of anger passed through him, like the ghost of it. He’d written those emails, before she’d gotten sick again. Written things he shouldn’t have said: You never came back … I’m better off without you anyway … I don’t need you …

Only one of those things was true.

He waited for Bryn to say something.

Her amber eyes warmed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Rett felt like he’d been walking down a narrow stair and had missed a step. He turned, freeing himself from Bryn’s magnetic gaze. “What about you? Did you leave Walling so you could start a new life in a metal dungeon?”

“I’m planning to meet up with my boyfriend. He’s two years older than I am, so he was already getting the boot.”

Rett tried to make sense of the disappointment suddenly washing over him. What do I care if she has a boyfriend?

“He’s one of the biggest reasons I survived five years in Walling,” Bryn went on. “He has a really great talent for finding bizarre alien movies online. Any time we felt sorry for ourselves, we’d watch Ripley get covered in alien saliva-slime.” She gave Rett a wry smile that sent electricity through his heart.

“But where will you go? I mean, the two of you. Without any money.”

She tensed.

“Sorry, it’s none of my business,” Rett said quickly. Like she doesn’t have enough to worry about right now.

But she didn’t even seem to hear his apology. Her eyes had gone hazy with some thought. “I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. I wouldn’t have done that. I had a plan…”

“Was this your plan?” Rett asked with a glum smile.

Bryn went on ignoring him. “You need money for your mom, right? To help her get better. And I wouldn’t have left unless I had some way to help me and my boyfriend get by.”

Rett felt another stab in his gut at the word boyfriend. “So we both need money. Is that why we’re here? What, there’s something … valuable here that we came to find?” The moment he said the word find, he knew there was something to the idea. Yes, yes! I’m supposed to find something!

Judging by the way Bryn’s gaze snapped to his, she felt the same way.

All at once, they launched themselves at the junk spilling out of the cabinets. They yanked out coils of rope and tangled power cords and slippery plastic sheets as if they were disemboweling a compliant creature. They turned over bins and pawed through empty backpacks and boxes of compasses and worthless empty water bottles. Rett even slid his hands all over the insides of the cabinets in case they had missed a hidden drawer or shelf. The most he discovered was an itemized list of the supplies they’d already found. He ran an eye over it: 12 feet of rope, 9×9 plastic drop cloth, 6 nylon backpacks, 6 pairs of binoculars, 6 shovels … It finally registered that the cabinets held only supplies they didn’t need, nothing valuable, not even water—which Rett would have happily accepted over anything worth actual money.

But Bryn didn’t seem fazed. She shot to her feet, a glowing green tube in her hand, and announced, “I’m going to search the rest of this place.” She ducked out of the room without waiting for his reply.

The metal pole she’d found lay among the scattered debris. Rett lifted it by its leather strap and wondered why it gave him an uneasy feeling.

We need to get out of this place.

But how? Door’s jammed shut.

A thought came to him that made his stomach shrink: What about the skylight?

He hefted the metal pole, a decent weapon. He had the feeling there was something out there, something bad.

But the skylight might be their only way out.

If it even opened.

He suddenly remembered the itemized list he’d found. Hadn’t he seen something on it about binoculars?

He hunted through the debris until he found a bin full of them—real binoculars with metal casings and leather straps.

Back in the main room, he lifted the binoculars to inspect the skylight overhead. The glass was dotted with rain, reminding Rett again how thirsty he was. Just underneath the skylight, off to one side, a narrow ledge was marked by odd symbols: two wavy lines and a row of overlapping circles. Strange, Rett thought. He moved the binoculars and found something else: a small crank that likely opened the glass dome. But I already knew I’d find that. I already knew the skylight opened. He moved to the edge of the room, haunted by the impression that something might come through the glass at any moment.

Something about the symbol on the underside of the ledge tickled at the back of his mind. He used the binoculars to inspect it again. Then he saw on the wall near it a chalky white line, stark against the dusty metal.

A wavy symbol, a chalky water line …

But why would the place fill with water?

He tried to understand what the segmented blob was trying to tell him. “Something’s going to break into pieces?” But the symbol wasn’t just a blob. When he focused the binoculars, the blob sprouted a pair of—

Antennae?

“The water gets rid of bugs,” he murmured.

A sound from the open doorway to his left interrupted his thoughts: the click of a drawer shutting.

Rett stepped into the doorway to see what Bryn might have found during her search.

She quickly turned from the desk. “Nothing in there.”

“Well.” Rett frowned. “Except the gun, you mean.”

“Right,” she said quickly. “I meant nothing new. Nothing we hadn’t seen.”

Rett watched her toy with the ends of her sleeves. What is she so nervous about?

Bryn nodded toward a narrow door to one side of the room. “Should we check in there?”

“Go ahead. Looks like there’s only room for one.”

The door opened with a pop. “Just a bathroom,” Bryn reported, “but it looks like there’s another door through here. Maybe just a closet…”

Something in Bryn’s stiff posture made Rett worry. If she finds something, will she tell me about it?

A feverish need to search the place for himself sent Rett out of the dark office. He darted back to the lounge area and slid his palms over the wall, feeling for any hidden switches or—

There! A panel slid away, revealing a blue spigot. Water!

Rett slapped at the spigot. Nothing came out. Damn.

The couch cushion he knelt on shifted under him. He yanked off the cushion to discover Mylar-wrapped bars wedged into the hollow seat. Each was marked RATION BAR.

Rett yanked one out. Underneath the lettering was some kind of serial number and an expiration date. “Still good for another decade,” he mumbled to himself. “Let’s hope we’re not stuck here that long.” He pocketed the bar, too thirsty and queasy to consider eating it, and then pocketed a few more.

What next? He’d already searched the room at the top of the ladder. Could there be anything else here he’d missed? What’s that white stuff? A smear of white chalk marked the edge of the wall that had been lifted into a slot over the room. Rett reached up to touch it, and the white stuff came away on his fingertips. He lifted his hand again to pull down the wall and examine it.

But just then, a light came on overhead. “How did I do that?” Rett wondered aloud.

“You didn’t,” Bryn called from the office. “I did. I found a fuse box … And what’s this?”

The clack of wood on metal echoed through the small space. Rett darted to the office just in time to see Bryn tug aside a partition they’d both missed earlier.

Another room lay beyond. The bed and the sharp smell of cleaner and medicine were enough to tell him it was some kind of medical area.

Bryn slumped against the wall, one hand clutching her head.

“Bryn?

“Something happened here,” she rasped. “Do you feel it?”

Rett scanned the room again and a memory flashed through his mind: a hospital room, a bank of bright lights. “Not here. Somewhere else. Some place bigger than this.”

Bryn blinked up at the overhead lights. A faraway look came into her eyes. “They put something in our heads.” She touched the scar that Rett knew must lie along her scalp.

Rett touched his own scar. A surge of remembered pain overtook him. He clenched his eyes shut and saw a face, a white lab coat. Heard a voice: “If you ever find yourself in danger, remember the song. It signals the mechanism.” The woman in the lab coat touched his head, carefully, near where the mechanism had been inserted into his brain …

Rett willed the pain away and the memory vanished with it. Bryn stood staring at him, still touching her head, grimacing with fear. Rett reached and moved her hand away. “Don’t think about it,” he said. His stomach churned, threatening to revolt. What did I let them do to me?

Don’t think about it, he told himself as he pushed away the memory of pain splitting his skull.

But his nightmare thoughts came to life: Blood bloomed on his fingertips.

Rett gaped at the sight. How…?

A vision of a black talon surfaced in his mind.

Then he realized where the blood had really come from: Bryn’s palm welled with it, so much that it dripped onto the floor.

“Bryn.” Rett took her hand in his again and led her out to the main room while she stared at her injured palm in shock. “Wait here.”

Rett ducked into the supply room. When he came back with a roll of gauze, she was gone.

“Bryn?”

Only spatters of blood on the floor where she had stood moments ago.

Then, her voice: “Look, Rett.”

Rett jerked back in surprise. Why am I so jumpy? It’s just Bryn.

She sat curled on the couch, cradling her injured palm in her good hand, a nylon backpack hooked over her arm. She gave him a weak smile and gestured at the Mylar pouches spilled along the seat next to her. “I found water.”

6:20 A.M.

“You remembered something.”

Rett held Bryn’s hand in his, palm up, as he finished wrapping the gauze and tucked in the loose end. “Yes,” he answered slowly. “I remembered…” Rett wasn’t sure if the reason his mind was buzzing was that he was still holding Bryn’s wrist or if the memory had left him shaken. “I remember someone saying that if I ever find myself in danger, I should use the song you were singing earlier to signal the—the thing in our—” A fresh bolt of pain went through his head.

“Here.” Bryn took her hand from his to offer him one of the water pouches between them on the couch seat. “We’ll think about everything else later.”

Rett pulled the tab almost mindlessly, but then thought better of drinking the water himself. “You first.”

Bryn lifted her eyebrows as she took the pouch. “‘Women and children first’? Very chivalrous.”

His face heated. “Injured first, I was thinking. And I’m pretty sure I’m younger than you, so if anyone’s the child here…” His hands were already fumbling to open another pouch. “Anyway, cheers.”

They drained their pouches and then Bryn said, “I could swear you’re older than I am. Maybe your wisdom just shows better on your face.”

“I can honestly say this is the first time anyone’s ever accused me of being wise.”

“You know how to wrap an injury.” Bryn held up her hand, which was wrapped with so much gauze, anyone might think she’d put on a mitten.

“That’s just me showing off my skills at winding things. I’m pretty good with yo-yos and electrical cords, too.”

“Electrical cords? You wind a lot of those?”

“If you wind them up and keep them out of sight, people are less likely to hurt you with them.”

They both fell silent. Great conversation skills, Rett told himself. Really cheerful topic.

Bryn didn’t take her gaze off him, but her eyes turned murky, almost gray. “You broke that guy’s hand. Garrick.”

Rett hid a jolt of surprise. “Garrick was the kind of guy I hid electrical cords from.”

Bryn scrutinized him for a moment longer, her expression unreadable but her uninjured hand moving closer to his on the seat. She slowly nodded. “I guess we do all kinds of things to survive.”

Rett knew he should take comfort in her sympathy. But her stony voice made him wonder exactly what kinds of things she meant. He saw her in his mind, hunting desperately through the supply cabinets in the other room. The image unlocked a memory of her from Walling Home. Best not to bring that up, he thought, noting her dejected slouch.

“Anyway, I could have really impressed you with my yo-yo skills,” Rett said. “Too bad there aren’t any of those around.”

She gave him a small smile. “Isn’t that convenient.”

“And checkers. I would destroy you in checkers.”

“Anything else?”

“I could draw you a terrible comic if we had some paper.”

“Only a terrible one?”

“My skills are … still sharpening. I only started drawing my own comics because I traded away all the issues I brought with me to Walling. Except for the last issue of Shine Fall. You ever heard of it? It’s for younger kids but…” He shrugged. For a moment, he was eight years old, marveling over illustrations of Hikaru’s daring adventures while his mother read the captions aloud, her voice a promise of warmth and safety.

“I only ever liked the scary comics,” Bryn said. “The kind you read by flashlight on camping trips until your stepdad complains the light is keeping him up.”

Rett grimaced at the scratched walls. “I’m pretty sure I have plenty of inspiration for scary.”

Bryn brought something out of the pack Rett hadn’t noticed she was rummaging in. She pushed the notebook toward him and said, “Give me your scariest.”

“Really?” He unclipped the pen from the cover and flipped through the blank pages. “I’m warning you, I’m not great at this.”

She watched him sketch. His skin warmed under her gaze. “What did you mean about using a song to…?” Her voice trailed off.

“Someone told me that song you were singing is supposed to help us,” Rett said as he sketched. He paused. “That means someone knew we would end up here.”

“There must have been a plan, then, and we just can’t remember it. Why don’t we remember anything?”

“Except the song,” Rett said. “You remembered that.”

“Music’s easier to remember than other things.”

Rett got a flash of his mother’s face glowing in the morning light while she sang, heard a broken phrase from the song she played on repeat when they most needed to forget the things they’d heard on the news. Yes, music’s easier to remember.

“Do you think if you sing the song, something will happen?” Rett asked.

“Nothing happened earlier. Not that I could tell.”

“Try again. Please?”

Bryn shifted in her seat. For a moment, Rett thought she was going to refuse him, or tell him she didn’t remember the song. But then the familiar tune came in Bryn’s quiet, clear voice. It echoed in the small space like a spell:

“One lonely lighthouse

Two in a boat…”

That’s us, Rett thought, trying to get through this together.

“Three gulls circle

Four clouds float.”

Even though they were sitting under the overhang of the upper room, Rett could swear he felt a shadow pass overhead as Bryn sang the last lines. He shivered.

“Nothing happened,” Bryn said. “Maybe we both have to sing it?”

Rett hunkered over his drawing. “My singing could only ever make things worse, not better.”

“I’m not asking you to romance me. Just get the words out.”

Rett kept his face lowered. “Well, that’s a relief. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know how to romance anyone.”

“Seriously, whatever you’ve got is fine.” Bryn touched his hand and he almost jumped in surprise. “Okay?”

“Sure, yeah.” Just let me move my hand first so I can think straight.

She started singing, and he managed to join in. “One lonely lighthouse…”

Her voice was like water pouring over him. It cooled the hot pain that throbbed deep in his skull, in his chest. It’s not so lonely in here, actually. In our bizarre lighthouse.

The song ended, and then the echo of it did. The only change Rett could see was that the light bathing the main area of the shelter had brightened a little, but he attributed that to the sun rising. And while he was ready to believe that Bryn’s singing could command all celestial bodies, he was convinced his own tuneless voice would cancel out any magic she might wield.

“You’re right,” Bryn said. “We’re probably better off if you don’t sing.” She cracked a smile, and Rett thought, A smile looks good on you.

“Too late for refunds now,” he said.

She nodded at the notebook under his hand. “You going to show me?”

It almost startled Rett to see the pen poised over the paper. He looked down at what he had sketched.

“What’s wrong?” Bryn asked. She pulled the notebook out from under his shaking hand.

The open page showed a jointed creature emerging from shadow, bristling with antennae, its jagged mandibles shaded so they threatened to strike from the page.

The notebook slipped from Bryn’s hands. “I thought you said you weren’t any good at drawing,” she mumbled. The color had drained from her face. “Guess you’ve practiced this one.”

Rett clutched the edge of the table. “No … I saw it in a dream or something. I don’t know how I…” It was the best thing he’d ever drawn. Well, the most horrifying, but the most skillfully rendered. If he hadn’t seen that very image in his head when he’d first awakened here, he would almost suspect someone else had drawn this picture and slipped it under his hand.

Bryn started to say something, but it seemed that the last of her strength had drained out of her. She pressed her eyes shut. Her skin looked gray.

Rett glanced at her injured hand and pressed another pouch of water on her. “Drink this. You need it.”

She shook her head. “We don’t have much. Better save it.” Her voice trembled.

Rett yanked open the backpack sitting on the seat between them. No shine of foil inside—not a single water pouch. The six pouches on the couch were all they had. “Drink it anyway. We’ll find more.”

She relented. Rett pulled the pack open again and squinted at its jumbled contents. He pulled out a black device to inspect it. Swiped at the screen, jabbed at the buttons along the side. Battery must be dead.

Didn’t I see some power cords in the supply room?

His heart sped up. The devices didn’t look quite like phones. A two-way radio, maybe? Something.

“Wait here,” he told Bryn.

“I’m going to look around a little more,” she said. But her eyes were closed, her head tipped back against the couch.

“It’s okay. Just rest for a minute.”

Rett scooped the rest of the devices out of the pack and took them to the supply room. He went to work plugging in power cords from the cabinet, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the devices to charge.

A metal clang sounded in the other room. “Bryn?” What is she doing?

He turned to duck under the wall, but before he could, a button set over the cabinet caught his attention. A familiar set of symbols marked it, a segmented blob under a wavy line.

The water drowns the bugs if they get in. Could that be right?

“But I don’t need to get rid of bugs,” Rett told the empty room.

He abandoned the mystery and ducked back into the main room.

Bryn no longer sat in the lounge. That’s weird. Why is that panel shut over the ladder? “Bryn, are you up there?” And why did you shut me out? “Bryn?”

No answer.

A dark thought came over Rett. It made him tremble, made his mouth go dry.

She said she was going to look around. He bolted for the changing room where he’d stashed the bloody jumpsuit. Did she come this way—did she see it?

He reached down to yank out the bin under the shelf.

But he didn’t need to. The stained jumpsuit hung half out of the bin.

Oh no oh no. Rett raked his fingers over his scalp. She found it and now she thinks—

What does she think? That I’ve been hiding something all this time? Something terrible?

Another thought crept into his mind: What if I did do something terrible?

No no no.

His feet took him back toward the lounge, but he could only stare up at the panel shut tight over the ladder. He imagined her huddled in the dark room, listening for the sound of his feet on the ladder rungs.

Listening …

He whirled toward the open doorway that led into the office. Remembered the click of a drawer closing …

He crept through the doorway, going hot all over.

Opened the drawer where he’d left the gun.

Empty.

He stumbled back and caught himself against the doorframe. Bryn has the gun. And she thinks I’m dangerous.

And then another thought occurred to him. What if she’s not up in that room? What if she hid somewhere else, but she closed that panel just to make me think she’s up there?

The air around him went electric. What do I do? Rett gripped the doorway. It yielded strangely—it was lined with heavy rubber strips.

What—?

Images flashed through his mind: the ledge under the skylight, the button with its mysterious symbol, the chalky white water line up near the ceiling, the rubbery strips along the doorway and—yes, under the half-lifted wall to the supply room.

In an instant, it came to him: The button makes the place fill with water.

It seals off the doors and floods the middle area.

Before he realized what he was doing, he found himself in the supply room, ripping the devices from their power cords, wrapping them in a plastic sheet, stuffing them in another backpack along with everything else close at hand—binoculars and rope and a first-aid kit. For what? He didn’t know, didn’t care, just couldn’t stop the impulse. He reached for the button set over the counter.

Wait. Am I really going to do this? Fill the place with water to keep myself safe from Bryn?

He remembered her electric smile, her hand reaching for his.

But the thought of her hiding—with a gun—panicked and weak and afraid—shouldered out all other thoughts.

He slammed his fist onto the button.

An alarm blared through the complex, throaty and insistent. Rett watched milky water pour under the half-lifted wall. I was right. The thought held him in thrall for a moment, and then he threw himself back into action.

He made to duck back under the jammed wall into the main room but stopped to grab the metal pole from the floor. I might need this.

In the main room, the wall had swung down to seal off the lounge. Water flowed over the floor while Rett watched in shock. This is happening. The room’s going to fill up.

The wall over the lounge shuddered.

Bryn. She was pounding on the wall from the other side. So she really was hiding in that upper room.

And now she was sealed away in the lounge.

What did I do?

The water had crept up to his ankles.

She has a gun, he reminded himself.

The water rose over his knees.

He looked up. Is something out there, waiting for me? He peered at the skylight, looking for any sign of movement beyond the glass. But there were only raindrops reflecting light.

The alarm went on blaring while Rett focused on holding the metal pole over his head and treading water with the backpack weighing him down. Finally, the water rose high enough to where Rett could toss the pole onto the ledge and then pull himself up.

He lay for a moment with his quads and shoulders aching. Then the alarm quieted. He watched the water for a long moment and decided it had stopped rising.

Now what? He turned over on his back to look up through the skylight. But a matrix of raindrops blocked any view through the glass. Raindrops … water … His throat was still dry, his head tight with the effect of thirst. If only he could collect the water from the glass, could let the rain fall into his mouth …

The crank he had spotted earlier was inches from his head. Just a few turns of the crank would open the glass. The rain would fall cold onto his face. Fresh air would drive away the stench of minerals and whatever else tainted the water so it wasn’t safe for drinking. And he could look outside and know, finally, exactly where he was.

He reached, tentatively. He tried to sense whether anything was out there, waiting for a chance to get inside. The only sound was of rain drumming on the metal roof, a maddening sound that chased away all thought except that of fresh water. Rett turned the crank. In his other hand, he readied the metal pole.

Pop. The glass lifted half an inch. A gust of wet air blew in and made Rett hungry for more. He went on cranking until the glass lifted away to reveal luminous gray clouds.

He pulled himself up through the opening.

A wall of black met him.

Rett gasped. A gleaming orb of an eye, the serrated edge of a long mandible. He ducked back down, heart hammering. What the hell? Clawed feet scraped over the metal roof. Rett crouched, frozen. This can’t be happening.

The long hook of the mandible shot through the opening. Rett couldn’t move, couldn’t think. His vision narrowed. He felt a strange pull on his consciousness, but the next moment a voice in his head cried, Fight!

He snapped back into the moment and hefted the metal pole. His hands were wet and shaking.

The pole slipped.

It fell into the water.

No! Rett watched it vanish, his only weapon gone.

His attention snapped back to the jagged mandible angling closer. What do I do?

There’s always something, he told himself.

He scrambled to slide off his backpack. It was heavy with the weight of the devices, the binoculars. Heavy enough to do damage.

He swung it as hard as he could.

Crack. It made contact.

Then—scratching and scrabbling as the creature retreated beyond his sight.

Rett’s heart shook violently as he pushed himself up through the skylight again and swung the backpack harder than he thought he had it in him to swing. This time something crunched. The creature fell away from the side of the building. Rett leaned out as far as he could, but the edge of the building cut off his view of the fallen creature. Still, it was gone. His heart went on trying to escape his chest. He gulped cool air. It’s gone, he told himself, and lifted his face to let the rain fall into his mouth.

He looked out over his surroundings. The landscape was nothing but towering folds of barren rock as far as the eye could see. No, he thought. This can’t be right.

He couldn’t have done this to himself. Couldn’t have gotten himself stranded out in the middle of a wasteland. Especially when he needed so badly to get to the workhouse that might be closing even at this moment. To get to his mother before it was too late to help her.

What am I doing here? How did I get here?

His hand went automatically to the scar over his ear. They put something in our heads.

A memory hurtled out from some locked-tight place: A room, a medical lab. A woman with a determined grimace. Bryn stirred on a white-sheeted bed nearby. Rett fingered the scar along his bare scalp, listening to a lilting song playing from a scratchy record.

And then another memory: Rett touching the scar under his cropped hair. The woman’s hard voice: “If you haven’t managed it yet, you never will. There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it…”

Rett’s heart beat fast. She brought us out here. The woman in the lab coat. Why?

The peaks of spires and buttes rose in waves all around. What am I supposed to do?

He remembered the devices in his pack and scrambled to pull out the plastic-wrapped packet he’d enclosed them in. Maybe they could help him—if they had enough charge to turn on. Maybe he could use them to call for help.

He wrestled one out of the packet and punched his finger at a button.

The screen bloomed to life.

It displayed a jumble of icons that made Rett’s heart race even though he couldn’t decipher them. He jabbed at one of them, which only opened up another screen of cryptic symbols. “What is this thing?” he wondered aloud. Not a phone, not a walkie-talkie. What good is it?

He tapped another icon and the screen displayed a prompt: ENTER COORDINATES.

Rett blinked at it. Coordinates.

This thing has GPS.

“What coordinates?” he asked the device.

He shook his head in confusion. I can’t get out of here if I don’t even know where I am. He’d been so sure he was supposed to find something, but the best thing the shelter had to offer were GPS units he didn’t know how to use.

Isn’t that what GPS is for? Finding things?

A wave of horror slowly washed over him as he took in the endless wasteland with new eyes. The thing we need to find isn’t inside the shelter.

It’s out here.

Out in the bone-colored canyons unspooling in every direction. Out in the lifeless wastes.

“No. No, I can’t do this,” he mumbled.

A series of rungs led down over the sloped edge of the building. Down to rocky canyon floors where he could wander forever with no hope of being found.

And the creature had fallen down there. Rett thought it might be dead—there had been that loud crack when he’d hit it with the backpack. And it was a long fall.

But he had no desire to go down there and find out if the creature was alive.

What am I supposed to do? I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

Inside the building, the milky water was gently sloshing against the metal walls. Rett noticed with alarm that the level had gone down several feet. There was no other choice—he’d have to jump in or be stuck out here.

He turned to take in the full scope of the white-gray vista. In the distance, a foamy line could only be a river. He could hike to it—it wasn’t far. Get more water. And then …

Head out into a wasteland. To search for who knew what.

He turned back to the opening that led into the shelter. The alternative was to go back inside and face Bryn.

Bryn and her gun.

The screen on the device in his hand still waited for him to ENTER COORDINATES. I don’t have any coordinates. I don’t know where I’m going.

“To the river,” he told himself. He’d go there first, drink his fill, and then …

Then he’d figure out what to do next. At least he didn’t need to know any coordinates to get to the river.

He let the rain fall on his face while he waited a moment for another option to present itself. None did. He started down the rain-slicked rungs.

I’m leaving Bryn trapped, he thought while he descended. Even when she gets out of the lounge once the water level goes down, she won’t be able to get up to the skylight. There might not be enough of that water to fill the place twice.

He stopped, clinging to the wet rungs. He’d closed the lid on her.

Just like the time Garrick had convinced him to crawl into that firewood box. “No one will know you’re here,” he’d told Rett. “I’ll put your pillow under your blanket. Nobody’s going to miss you at bed check. Go see your meteor shower.”

And then Garrick had closed him in the box.

Trapped him, same as Rett had trapped Bryn.

But I have to get away from Bryn. She has a gun.

Guilt twisted in his gut. Is that why I’m leaving her? he asked himself. Or is it because she knows now that I must have done something bad?

He ignored the thought. Jumped down from the last rung and landed in ashy dirt. No sign of the creature he’d encountered earlier.

Didn’t it fall this direction? It should be here …

He crept around the back of the shelter.

Not a single mandible in sight.

Just go, he told himself. Go fast and hope it crawled away to die.

He gripped the straps of his backpack and picked up his pace, angling toward the river. The ground sloped so that Rett half ran, half slid down it, rocks trickling down after him like tiny scuttling creatures. What about the person whose blood was on my clothes—what happened to them? Are they out here somewhere? Inside the shelter with Bryn?

Before him, scattered boulders lay like the heads of petrified giants, watching his progress toward the river, toward relief from the painful thirst that intensified with every step now that water was in sight.

Some nagging thought pulled at him while he hiked, but he refused to listen to it. He already had the missing creature to think of, and his overwhelming thirst, not to mention the guilt that came over him when he thought of Bryn’s electric smile, her hand grazing his …

Then he finally had to admit it to himself: the smell of sulfur that lingered in his nose was not a ghostly impression of the water he’d floated in inside the shelter. The smell had been getting stronger for the past ten minutes now.

It was the smell of the river.

The water that had filled the shelter must have been from the river. And if he couldn’t drink the water in the shelter …

He couldn’t drink the water in the river.

What’s more, the rocks he heard trickling down the slope behind him were not still falling from when he had skidded down—

No, something was coming up behind him.

“Rett.”

He whirled to face her—Bryn, her jumpsuit still wet, her hair damp from the rain.

Her hand at her side curled around the gun.

“What did you do?” she asked.

Rett’s heart jumped into his throat. “Wait, Bryn.”

“What did you do?” she asked again.

“I—I don’t know.” Did she mean pushing the button, flooding the place? Heading out without her? Or was she talking about the blood on the jumpsuit he’d hidden from her, the one he’d found dragged from its hiding place? His answer was the same either way. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

The rain pattered against the dirt. Otherwise—silence.

“Please, Bryn. We’ve got bigger things to spend bullets on. There’s something out here, something—”

“Rett.” She raised the gun to aim at his forehead.

Rett froze, every muscle taut with fear. “Bryn, listen…” His voice was hoarse, completely lost in the rain. For a moment, neither of them moved. I was right to try to get away, Rett thought, grimacing with fear and regret. I wish I’d been wrong.

Behind him, the rain tapped an uneven rhythm on the rocks.

It’s not the rain, Rett realized.

Tap tap tap-tap-tap.

Rett knew that sound.

He dove to the ground just as an earth-shattering crack sounded above his head. The sound rippled outward before it was covered by the pop and sizzle of something burning.

Rett dared to lift his head and found Bryn, a statue, arm outstretched, gun smoking in the rain. He whipped his head around in time to see the segmented body of a monstrous insect crumple to the dirt, squirming in agony against a burning mass of blinding red. A flare, Rett realized. Bryn’s gun is a flare gun.

He managed to breathe, though he shook so hard the rocks clattered in the dirt around him. “Thanks,” he said to Bryn.

His voice seemed to snap her out of some spell. She lowered the flare gun. With the sunlit clouds behind her, she made a dark sentinel. “You’re welcome.”

7:54 A.M.

“Why is there blood on a dirty jumpsuit in the closet back there?” Bryn demanded, her hand still clenched around the gun. “Why are you wearing a clean jumpsuit?”

Rett had gotten to his feet, and now he looked down at the dirt that clung to the front of his jumpsuit.

“You know what I mean,” Bryn said.

“I woke up. There was blood on my clothes. I don’t know why—I swear I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Unless.”

“Unless…” Her cold stare unnerved him. “Unless they were trying to hurt me. Okay? Yes, I would defend myself.” In his head, he heard knuckles breaking under a wrench. His stomach clenched.

Bryn’s gaze didn’t waver. “That makes two of us.”

Rett wiped his sweaty palms on his jumpsuit. I believe it—I believe you’d defend yourself.

“That picture you drew back in the shelter,” Bryn said. “How did you know about the…?”

“Six-foot-long killer insect?” Disgust pulsed in Rett’s stomach at the thought of the monster behind him. “I can’t explain that, either. I saw it in a dream. Or I think I did.”

He had that premonition again, the feeling he’d gone through all this before. He looked back at the black mass still smoking in the rain. It smelled of rust and rot. Near the creature’s ruined head lay the charred stub of the flare Bryn had shot.

“Was that the only flare?” Rett asked Bryn, wrinkling his nose at the terrible smell that lingered in the air.

“I don’t know.” Bryn slipped off her backpack. “There’s a case in my pack but—” She jerked open the zipper. A red case tumbled out, and Rett retrieved it from the dirt.

His heart drummed in his chest. “If there’s another flare in here we could—” He wrenched open the case. Inside lay a block of foam cut into the shape of the flare gun. And underneath the foam lay one unspent flare. “—signal for help,” he finished breathlessly.

Bryn looked around at the endless stretch of bleached dirt and rocks, the silent boulders, the shadowed canyons. “Do you think anyone would see a flare if we shot one up? Would we just be giving ourselves a nice light show?”

Rett squinted against the glare of the slopes shining in the humid air. Every part of the landscape seemed to be set against them—the wet crumbling ground, the snarled canyon paths. The stony emptiness, on and on for miles around.

“No other buildings anywhere,” he said, “no helicopter, no radio tower.”

“If we shoot the flare into the sky and no one comes to help us, we’re stuck with no way to fight off any more monsters.”

“I had the metal pole, but I dropped it in the shelter. You didn’t bring it?”

“Does it look like I’m carrying a giant metal pole?”

“We could shoot the flare and get back into the shelter to wait for help.” It occurred to Rett that they were making the decision together, that Bryn no longer gripped the empty gun like she wished another flare were loaded into it.

“Door’s locked, remember?” Bryn said. “And the water will have drained away, and I’m too fond of my ankles to make a two-story jump. Maybe we could…”

There it is again, that “we.”

Does she believe me, then—that I don’t mean to hurt anyone?

Or should I keep holding on to this last flare in its case?

“What is it?” Rett asked. A maze of lines had appeared on Bryn’s face.

“We said earlier that we thought we were here to find something.”

“Yeah … but I don’t think that something is inside the shelter. I think it’s out in this wasteland.”

Bryn nodded, and Rett had a terrible feeling she was agreeing to a plan he hadn’t meant to propose. “So,” she said, “we head out and try to find it.”

Rett gaped at her. Was she joking? Hadn’t she just watched an oversized bug monster try to attack him? “And how are we going to do that?”

Bryn wiped the rain-slicked flare gun against the leg of her jumpsuit as casually as if she were wiping sweat from her brow. “I found a map.”

Rett launched into a fit of coughing, suddenly bothered by the dirt in his lungs, the rotten stench in the air. “A map?”

“It was drawn in chalk on the back of the wall,” Bryn added.

“What?”

She inspected the flare gun in a way that made Rett relieved it wasn’t loaded. “I found it when you shut me in that room.”

Rett rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry about that.” White chalk, on my fingers—I remember that. “What exactly was on this map?”

“The drawings weren’t as detailed as the horror prophesy you sketched in that notebook, but they were labeled: a river and three depots.” Bryn tilted her head toward the shelter behind her. “Ours is Number Three.”

Scatter 3, Rett thought, remembering the logo on the inside of the door.

“And something else,” Bryn said. “Something was marked on the map in between the depots.”

“What, like ‘X marks the spot’?”

“Sort of. It was a skull and crossbones.”

Rett started coughing again. He threw his wet arm over his mouth, trying to block out the stench from the dead creature behind him. “Maybe we should get away from this thing,” he said into his sleeve. “It’s almost worse dead.”

He started back toward the shelter—the depot, Scatter 3—taking a wide path around Bryn for fear of triggering her defensive reflexes. After a long moment during which Rett’s heart thumped with equal hope and anxiety, she followed.

“We need the GPS units from your pack,” she said behind him.

He turned. “How did you know they were GPS devices?”

“I know all kinds of things I haven’t told you.”

The ground seemed to tilt beneath Rett’s feet. “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. I guessed. There were numbers written on the map. Coordinates.”

Rett had to stop himself from launching forward and embracing her. “Coordinates? That’s all we need, then. We can use the GPS units and get to…” To what? The answer brought dread to settle in his stomach: a skull and crossbones. “What exactly do you think they lead to?”

“Something valuable. Isn’t that what we decided? Back in the depot?” Bryn held out one hand, ready to receive a GPS unit from Rett’s pack.

Rett slowly pulled his pack around, thinking. “Yeah, but a skull and crossbones? Isn’t that usually … something bad? Not to be too incredibly obvious.”

“It’s not like whoever drew that map wants to advertise that there’s something valuable at those coordinates. They probably figured that symbol would keep away the wrong people.”

It actually sounded like a logical conclusion. “But still … a skull. And crossbones.” Rett dug out a device and handed it to her. A weight dropped into his stomach.

“Remember you said that someone knew we would end up here?” Bryn said, tapping on the device’s screen. “Someone sent us out here to find whatever’s at that location. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get home until we get to that spot and find what we’re supposed to find.”

A voice echoed in Rett’s head: There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it … The woman in the lab coat—the one who must have sent them out here.

What did she send us to find?

“What if we get there, find whatever we’re supposed to find…” Rett couldn’t believe he was considering this. “But no one’s there to help us get back?”

“We can’t just sit here and run out the clock, wait for the game to end.”

Rett winced. “You think I’m treating this like a game?”

“I think we must have had a plan. We must have come out here knowing how to get back. And those coordinates are part of the plan.”

“And the coordinates lead to…” Rett shook his head. “What?”

“Something valuable, or something we’re getting paid to find. Right? I know I’m pretty desperate for a payday. Aren’t you?”

A memory flashed through Rett’s mind of Times Square at night: towering columns of light and motion, the rush of wind and sound and excitement. “Bigger than I ever thought it would be,” he’d said, and reached for his mother’s hand, full of an electric fear that he might be swept away at any moment. His mother had crouched next to him so that suddenly, he didn’t feel so small. She had pointed at brilliant Times Tower with the black night sky behind it and said, “Brighter than stars.”

He looked now at the crumbling spires in the distance, the endless waves of barren rock. Bigger than I ever thought …

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m desperate. But who would send us out to the middle of a wasteland to find something? No water, no trees. Just dirt. It’s like a moonscape, completely barren.”

“But that’s exactly why someone chose us to do this.”

“Wait, what?”

“Walling Home isn’t holding its breath waiting for us to come back.”

Rett’s spine tightened.

“No one will care if we never get out of this,” Bryn said. “No one’s even going to realize we’re gone.”

“My mother—”

“—will think you gave up on her just like she gave up on you.”

Rett clenched his jaw. That email. His mother had told him not to worry about her, to make a life for himself instead of trying to take care of her. Even though he’d insisted he’d come help her.

She has to believe I’m coming. She has to know I won’t stay away.

But he’d written so many angry emails before that, before she’d gotten sick. I’m better off without you …

Terrible words that still haunted him. If he looked down he might see evidence of them on his clothes, his skin. Same as he’d seen that bloodstain when he’d awakened this morning.

More than anything else he feared in this place, he feared this: that his mother had believed those words.

“She always planned to come back. She just never could.” Rett curled his fists and uncurled them. “She didn’t have any money, any place for us to live.”

Bryn grimaced at her feet, like she regretted what she’d said.

“What about your boyfriend?” Rett asked. “You’re telling me he won’t notice if you never show up?”

Bryn’s expression went blank. “He’s … not exactly expecting me.”

Rett didn’t know what to say to that. He decided it was best not to say anything.

“We can send up a flare if you really believe someone will come save us,” Bryn said. “But there’s not much good in getting out of here if we’ve got no money for where we’re going.”

“Trust me, I know that.” Rett looked at Bryn out of the corner of his eye. He’d remembered something about her from Walling Home, although he wasn’t sure when it had come to him. The glint in her eye now made him think of it. “What about…” He hesitated. “I heard that you had something saved up for when you graduated.”

Bryn tensed. “Saved up?”

“Some things you took. From Walling’s staff.”

She paled.

“Never mind,” Rett said quickly. He shouldn’t have brought it up. “Forget I said—”

Bryn started trudging ahead of him. “That’s all gone now.”

Rett followed her, regret and embarrassment roiling inside of him. Just drop it. Shouldn’t have asked. “So how far away are these coordinates?”

“I don’t know,” Bryn said over her shoulder.

“Can’t you tell?”

She held up the screen so he could see an icon of an antenna surrounded by moving lines. “It’s still searching for signal.”

Rett’s stomach shrank. “But it’ll pick up, right?”

Bryn stopped walking, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. “What’s that?”

Something small and black lay in the dirt near the wall of the depot. Rett trudged over to pick it up. “It’s a hat.” A dirty, rain-soaked cap …

 … marked with a familiar symbol: overlapping, jagged lines.

Rett slowly turned as he sensed something behind him. Lying in the rain-darkened dirt was a man twisted into an odd position. A body, Rett thought, and horror washed over him. He scrambled away from it as Bryn let out a gasp and then a tortured moan.

“What happened to him?” Bryn said with a shaking voice.

The man was pale as paper, completely bloodless despite the fact that his torso had been nearly severed. Rett’s stomach threatened to empty itself, and he lurched away.

“Let’s go,” he said to Bryn. “Come on, hurry.”

They skidded down a crumbling slope, into the shelter of some scraggly gray junipers twisting out from a cleft in the canyon wall.

“You okay?” Rett asked.

Bryn stood with her face turned away and didn’t respond.

Rett tried to rid himself of the images seared into his mind, tried to stop feeling them in his stomach, in his nose, where the smell of death was suffocating. His stomach seized, but nothing came up.

“Bryn?” he said again.

She finally turned back to him, her face pale, lips trembling. “The monster,” she said. “It got him.”

Rett didn’t respond. He wrestled another GPS unit from the plastic packet in the backpack.

“Who is he?”

“He had the symbol on his hat.” Rett touched the same collection of jagged lines on his jumpsuit. “I wonder if he was sent to help us.”

“Could be he was stuck out here just like we are.”

Rett worked the buttons on the device he held and shuttered his mind to all other thoughts.

“That would have been us.” Bryn turned away again and leaned over her knees like she might be sick.

“We have the flare. We can defend ourselves.”

“He was near the door,” Bryn said, still doubled over. “Do you think he was trying to get inside?”

Rett’s stomach dropped. That man had been outside the entire time, just trying to get to safety. As desperate to break into Scatter 3 as they had been to break out. “The door wouldn’t have opened. We couldn’t have helped him.” Rett said it as much to himself as to her.

“If he had come up onto the roof…”

“It probably still would have gotten him.” True? Rett couldn’t let himself answer that. His hand shook as he tapped the screen of the device. The antenna icon appeared again, along with the moving lines. “Still no signal.”

“Is it broken?” Bryn asked, coming closer to look.

Rett swiped water from his hair, trying to think of what to do. The bloodless corpse kept flashing before his eyes. Locked out, left outside … Rett’s thoughts swirled madly. If I’d known he was out there … if I’d had any idea what would happen … What? What could I have done?

“Rett?”

“Maybe it takes a while to find a signal out here,” Rett answered.

“There could be more of those things.” Panic edged her voice. “They could come for us at any moment.”

The flare gun in her pocket caught Rett’s attention. He looked at it, at Bryn. “We could try … See if anyone…”

Bryn seemed to read his thoughts. “That man was from Scatter. He was in trouble and Scatter didn’t come to help him.”

The humid air went heavy in Rett’s lungs.

“No one’s going to come for us. We’re on our own.” Bryn slid her pack off and yanked angrily at the zipper. “We’ll have to make it to where we’re going if we’re ever going to get out of here.” Her hands trembled as she pulled out a compass small enough to wedge into her palm. “The place is northwest from here. I saw on the map. We can head in that direction until the signal picks up.”

How accurate was that map? Rett wondered. He glanced back at the depot up on the slope. Even a glimpse of it sent up a flare of horror inside of him. We can’t stay here. “Okay,” he finally said.

“We should consolidate our packs, too. Take turns carrying it.”

Rett wasn’t sure that made sense, but he didn’t have it in him to debate. Bryn unzipped the packs and loaded the contents of one into the other.

“I’ll carry it,” Rett blurted, suddenly worried by the thought of her having the gun and all the supplies.

Bryn reluctantly handed it over. “I’ll navigate.” Her arm shook as she held the compass out before her. “You keep an eye on the GPS unit and watch for when it picks up a signal.”

Her wet boots squelched as she started down the slope. A thought occurred to Rett as he made to follow. “A signal from what?”

“What?”

“How does this thing determine coordinates?” Rett lifted the GPS unit. “It gets a signal from what?”

“A satellite. Does it matter?”

Rett moved his gaze from the barren moonscape to the soup of gray clouds overhead. “Do satellites work when it’s cloudy?”

“They should.” She started again down the crumbling slope, headed for the canyons. “Just tell me when it picks up a signal,” she said, her voice low in the quiet air.

Rett silently added, If it picks up a signal.

His thoughts went back to the corpse they were leaving behind. Locked out, left out. Rett’s stomach turned cold. We’ve got the flare, he reminded himself. We’ve got a weapon.

One flare, he thought while he walked.

8:44 A.M.

Rett stumbled on, his gaze flicking constantly to the antenna icon as he walked. Striated rock walls rose on either side like the window tiers of skyscrapers. A mineral smell hung in the air that reminded Rett too much of the milky water now draining from the depot they’d left behind.

He thought constantly of water as he walked—clean water, the water stashed in his backpack. And of his raw feet inside his damp boots. The mesh uppers had shed most of the water from the depot, but even so, Rett felt like his skin would soon be rubbed right off.

Every once in a while the image of a bloodless corpse would pass through his mind and he would think, That was almost me.

If not for Bryn, that would be me.

Just ahead of him, Bryn stopped walking. Her arms hung limply at her side. “Let’s stop for a minute.” She glanced at the GPS unit in Rett’s hand and said, “Signal?”

Rett pushed a button to bring up the antenna display. “Still nothing.”

Bryn wilted.

Overhead, the clouds were clearing. The air had turned warm and muggy and was now choked with the dirt they had been kicking up. “Maybe we need to get up to higher ground?” Rett suggested.

“We started on higher ground,” Bryn grumbled. “No signal then, either.”

Rett dragged his sleeve over the back of his sweaty neck. “Let’s have some water.”

“You need a new GPS unit, too,” Bryn said. “Looks like the battery’s about to die.”

Rett took one out of the pack and stuck it in his pocket for later.

“And I’ve been thinking,” she said, her voice a dry rasp. “We should have the flare gun ready to go. In case anything surprises us.”

Rett nodded, mouth too dry to speak. He retrieved the red case from his pack, and before he realized what was happening, Bryn had taken it from him and opened it. She slid the gun from her pocket, snapped the barrel down, and loaded in the flare. “Okay,” she said. “I feel better now.”

Rett wanted to agree, but he could only stare, trying to decide if he felt reassured or threatened.

She seemed to notice his hesitancy. “Don’t worry. I won’t use it on you.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I guess that’d be a waste after saving my life.”

“Especially considering you thanked me so nicely.”

“Near-death situations bring out my best manners.” He thought about asking if he could be the one to hold the flare gun, but she slipped it into her pocket and thrust the case at him. Guess not.

They retreated farther into the shade at the side of the canyon and finished two water packets and one maple-flavored ration bar each, then took off their boots and wiped grit from their raw feet.

“I keep hoping for the stupidest things while we’re walking,” Bryn said. “Like, maybe we’ll suddenly come upon a stream by surprise.”

“I don’t think any surprises we’ll find out here will be good ones.”

“Once I was backpacking as a kid, and my mom and I stumbled onto this lake, completely unexpectedly. It happens.”

“Was your secret lake in the middle of a wasteland?”

She didn’t answer. Rett looked over at her. Dirt had settled into the lines in her face so that her worry seemed permanent. Through the opening in the pack, two water pouches showed. The only two left.

“Do you ever worry,” Bryn said finally, “that for every good moment in your life, you have to go through the inverse? Like, I swam in a secret lake once, and it was the best day of my life. Now I’m lost in a wasteland, and no one knows I’m stuck out here.”

Rett thought of the things he’d done that he regretted. Things he’d said. I’m better off without you. Now he was alone. Maybe that was what he deserved.

Not quite alone, he told himself. He looked at Bryn. “After growing up in Walling, we must have a really long vacation coming to us.”

She pawed grit out of her boots. “If this is the vacation, I’ll pass.”

“What are you going to do with your payday when we get out of here?” Rett asked.

“I told you, I’m going to find my boyfriend,” she said, her voice tight. “He graduated already.”

Why so tense? Rett wondered.

The light had gone out of Bryn’s eyes. She hunched over the pack like something deflated.

“You don’t know where he is,” Rett guessed.

“I have a few ideas. For one thing, we used to talk obsessively about White Castle. Like, we used to pretend to place orders with each other for sliders and fries, and then apologize that the kitchen had just closed.” Her smile trembled.

“But he hasn’t told you where he’s gone.”

Bryn only hunched lower.

Rett scratched his ear. “You sure he’s still your boyfriend?”

Bryn glared at him, then at her boots. Not exactly a yes, Rett thought. He tried to figure out what she wasn’t saying. Her boyfriend had left Walling without telling her where he was going, and she had left to find him. But desperation had led her here first …

“He took your stash, didn’t he?” Rett asked her. “All the stuff you stole from Walling’s staff. He swiped it from you when he left.”

Bryn shifted in the dirt.

“That’s why you need money now,” Rett said, more quietly. He didn’t mean to make her feel bad. He only wanted to understand. “But why do you want to find him? If he stole from you?” Rett considered that she might want revenge. He remembered her standing on the slope above him near the depot, flare gun aimed in his direction.

Bryn finally answered: “Same reason you still want to find your mom, I guess.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She left you at Walling.”

Rett stifled anger. “She brought me to Walling because she was sick. She couldn’t take care of herself and a kid.”

“She never came back.”

“She couldn’t. She didn’t have any money.”

Bryn squinted at him in the sunlight that was edging its way closer to the cliff wall. “That wouldn’t be enough to stop me.”

Rett bristled. He worked at pulling his boots back on even while he felt as if he were shriveling in the sun. His mother never came back during all those years, even after he’d begged her to. He would have lived anywhere with her—in a workhouse, anywhere. How could she think he was better off at Walling? “She’s sick again. The cancer came back.” He’d already told Bryn a million times. He stood and brushed dirt off his jumpsuit. “We should get going.”

Bryn didn’t move. She curled her fingers around the pack’s strap. “He didn’t steal it.”

“What?” Rett twisted back toward her, annoyed.

“My boyfriend. He didn’t steal my stuff.” Bryn looked up at Rett, but he turned away. “He asked for it. He was supposed to graduate a year earlier than me and he had nothing. He asked for the stuff I’d stolen so he wouldn’t have to live on the street.”

“And you gave it to him.” Because some people help the ones they love instead of just trying to survive, Rett thought bitterly. Unlike my mom—is that what you mean? Bryn hadn’t said anything more, so Rett turned to see if she was ready to walk yet. Her boots still lay in the dirt. She sat curled in on herself, her face lined with regret.

“No,” she said.

“You didn’t give it to him? I thought you said all that stuff was gone.”

“It is. But not because I gave it to him. I wouldn’t. And then someone on staff found it. So now neither of us has it.”

Rett let it sink in: “You wouldn’t share it with him?”

“You can’t always trust people,” she said to the ground.

“You were worried he’d take it and leave you to fend for yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Rett’s heart sank. “You meant he shouldn’t have trusted you.”

“I haven’t exactly proven myself.” Bryn squinted up at him. “Isn’t that why you tried to leave me trapped in the depot? You couldn’t trust me.”

Rett looked away. Do I trust her?

She has the pack, the gun. I need her.

But do I trust her?

You choose who to trust. Or do you?

“I shouldn’t have trapped you,” he said finally. “I’d be dead right now if you hadn’t followed me. I owe you for that.”

Bryn tugged on her boots. “No, you don’t. The only reason I followed you was to get the GPS units in your backpack.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

Because once—I don’t know when—you put your hand in mine and let me trace the trail of freckles below your knuckles. Once, you drew close enough that I could see the color of your eyes shift when you smiled. “Because you have the pack now. And the gun. And you haven’t ditched me.”

Bryn finished lacing her boots. She stood and swung the pack onto her shoulder without looking at Rett. “I’m going to use whatever we find to help him. My boyfriend. As soon as I get out of this place.”

The compass glinted in her palm as she turned to find her way. Rett followed her, clutching the GPS, wishing it weren’t so completely useless.

“Do you think that’ll make up for what I did?” Bryn asked.

Rett kept his eyes on the path ahead. He wanted to ask if she actually missed her boyfriend or if she just needed relief from her guilt. Instead, he thought of the workhouses that were closing even now, and of his mother waiting for him or not. “If it doesn’t, I don’t know what will.”

9:25 A.M.

A shadow went scuttling over the top of a distant rise.

It wasn’t the first one Rett had seen.

He eyed Bryn up ahead, wondering if she had noticed the creatures, too. She plodded on, head down, every step sending chalky sprays of rock falling to either side of the ridge they had climbed.

They’d been forced to leave the shade of the canyon when it had curved away from their northwest route. Rett felt dangerously exposed—to the sun angling through the thinning clouds, to the creatures lurking in dark crevices. “We need to get down from here.”

“How?” Bryn croaked, barely lifting her head to get the word out.

The descent on either side of the ridge was steep and loosely blanketed with rock. Rett felt a surge of annoyance toward whoever had included the rope among the depot’s survival gear. What good is rope when you have nothing to anchor it to? Only one scraggly juniper jutted anywhere in sight, and Rett wasn’t confident it would hold their weight.

“What do you think?” Rett asked Bryn, nodding at the stunted tree.

“About what?”

“Climbing down.”

Bryn regarded the tree for a moment. “I think the tree would decide to come with us.”

Rett had to agree, but he wasn’t sure they had a better choice. “Are we even sure we’re heading in the right direction?”

“I know how to read a compass.”

Rett held up the GPS so Bryn could see the same antenna icon that had taunted him for hours. “I’d feel better if this thing worked. Why won’t it grab on to a signal?”

Bryn looked out over the jagged horizon. “Do you remember…” She frowned at him. “I keep picturing myself outside at night, maybe early morning. And—a green light in the sky.”

Rett’s head snapped up. A green flame, dancing overhead. “I remember that, too.”

“It made a sort of crackling noise. Like electricity.”

Rett looked down at the device in his hand. The little light near the corner of the screen had turned red. Almost out of charge.

“Can an aurora interfere with satellites?” Bryn asked.

“An aurora? You think that’s what that green light was?”

“Maybe that’s why we can’t get a signal. Maybe it takes a while for the satellite to get working again.” Bryn moved closer to peer down at the screen in Rett’s hand. “The date on this thing is wrong.”

“It’ll fix itself when it connects to the satellite.” If, Rett corrected himself.

“But why would it be wrong in the first place?”

Who cares? Rett thought. “It’s not broken, Bryn. It’s just a little off.”

Another shadow rippled over the next rise, this one close enough to send lightning through Rett’s heart. Rett’s hand went out, quick as a whip, reaching for the butt of the flare gun sticking out of Bryn’s pocket.

But Bryn was just as quick. She closed her hand around the barrel as Rett drew the gun.

“What are you doing?” she snapped, trying to yank the gun back from him.

“There’s a bug,” Rett said as she yanked again.

He lost his grip on the gun.

So did Bryn.

The gun flew from their hands and slid down the incline on a waterfall of gravel, skidding over the rocks until it finally came to a stop near the canyon floor, a glint against pale dirt.

Rett gaped in horror.

Their only protection against the creatures—the bug he had seen moments ago—was gone.

“What do we do?” Bryn said, her voice choked with panic.

“Go down after it?”

They both looked at the spindly tree, their only anchor for a rope. Rett swore.

“You couldn’t just let me have the gun?” Rett raked his fingers over his skull. It was the worst thing that could have happened. No, the second worst, after being eaten by a monster that might be stalking them even now. “You want me to trust you, but you don’t trust me.”

Bryn glared back at him. “You want me to trust you, but you’ve been waiting hours for an excuse to grab the gun from me.”

They considered each other silently. To Rett, the patter of rocks still tumbling after the gun sounded too much like the tap of scythe-like feet.

“Fine.” He looked down at the gun glinting far below. “Next time I’ll let you shoot it.”

Bryn didn’t reply. She slipped off the pack and brought out the nylon rope and a carabiner.

“Bryn, wait, I was kidding,” Rett said, gaping at her as she wrestled the end of the rope around the carabiner. “We can’t go down there. You said yourself that tree won’t hold our weight.”

“It might hold my weight. Alone. You can come down after I reach the bottom.”

Rett scanned the slope for signs of movement, for any twitching shadows among the rocks. “I told you, I saw a bug.”

“I don’t see anything.”

Rett had to admit she was right. Had it been a trick of the light? A thirst-induced hallucination?

Or maybe …

Maybe she was right: he’d seen a suspicious shadow and had jumped on a reason to grab the gun. “I still don’t think we should split up.”

“So you think we should forget the gun? Hope we don’t run into anything that wants to eat us? Or you think we should go down the rope at the same time and double the odds of the tree breaking?”

“I think we should backtrack and find an easier way down.”

Bryn just went on tying another knot. Rett watched her loop the rope in complicated patterns and tried to take comfort in the fact that she seemed to know what she was doing. “You’ve done something like this before?”

“It’s been a while. Used to backpack with my mom, BW. Before Walling.” Bryn gave the rope a sharp tug, testing her knot. “And my stepdad. But then my mom died and my stepdad took me on one last camping trip, except it wasn’t a camping trip, it was a ride to the front door of Walling.”

Rett opened his mouth to say something, but Bryn went on.

“So trust me when I say I know splitting up isn’t great.” Bryn gave the knot one final tug and looked up from her work. “But I promise I’m not going to abandon you.”

Rett’s throat went raw. He felt the pull of Bryn’s gravity on his bones, as if he were a satellite to her. Then he was somehow nearer to her, his ears full of the sound of his boots scraping over the dirt, of his breath gone uneven.

She had named a fear he didn’t know was pressing on him—that she would leave him.

And now that fear sat heavier in his gut.

He thought she might say something more as his arm brushed hers, but before she could, a high-pitched beep sounded from his pocket.

“What’s happening in your pocket?” she asked.

“It’s the GPS unit.” Rett fished it out. The screen showed the familiar antenna icon, but in place of the moving lines was a set of concentric rings. Adrenaline quickened his weary muscles. “I think we have a signal.”

“Can you enter the coordinates?” Bryn asked, moving behind him to look over his shoulder.

Rett found the field where he could touch-type the numbers she recited for him. A moment later, the screen showed a topographical map with a location pinpointed among sharp rises. “It’s not far,” he announced. “Less than a thousand feet.”

Bryn gripped his hand, and Rett turned without thinking. His arms went around her thin frame, and he thought about how odd it felt to hold her—not at all like he’d imagined. And then he wondered when he’d imagined it and realized it was every time he’d stood close to her, and every time she’d moved toward him, and whenever her eyes held that wary challenge she liked to aim at him. All the time, he realized.

Bryn put her head against his shoulder for a moment, like she might only be resting. And then she pulled away. She didn’t look at him. He remembered about her boyfriend and wondered if she did, too.

“Which direction?” Bryn asked.

Rett poised himself over the crest of the ridge. “Down.”

“I guess we’re really doing this, then. Let’s hope the tree holds.” She sidestepped down to the tree and looped the rope around its swaybacked trunk. Then she gave the tree a few solid kicks to test its commitment to staying rooted in the loose dirt. It seemed to shrug at her as it swayed under her weight.

“You sure you want to go first?” Rett said.

They both looked down, searching for the shine of metal against the pale slope.

“I’m lighter,” Bryn said, already inching downward. “More chance of the rope holding if I go first.”

It’s fine, Rett told himself. She’ll get the gun, and then she’ll be able to watch out for bugs while I climb down.

She won’t leave.

She won’t leave me all alone out here with no way to defend myself.

With no way for me to help her.

Halfway down the slope, Bryn suddenly stopped. She stared at a distant rise, her body tense and alert. Rett pivoted to find nothing but barren slopes. And then—a darkly gleaming shape scurried over the top of the ridge and out of sight again, not three hundred feet from where they stood. I wasn’t imagining things, Rett thought darkly.

Bryn stumbled in surprise. Rett thought she would lose her footing, but she caught herself.

“Bryn, go fast!” Rett yelled. “Get the gun!”

But Bryn was caught in a spell, rooted to the spot. She tipped her head toward him, swaying. She seemed lost in a haze of fear or confusion.

Rett swore. Get moving, he told himself. He clambered down to the tree and took hold of the taut length of rope. Don’t look, just go. The dirt slid under his shoes as he backed down the incline, his gaze darting over the ridgeline for some sign of what he knew was coming.

A black form rose over the ridge like a sun in negative.

The creature picked expertly over the rocks on its six clawed legs. Its mandibles opened to reveal a hooked fang. An image flashed through Rett’s mind of a man’s severed body, pale and bloodless.

“Go!” Rett shouted at Bryn. “Down, now! Try to get to the gun!”

He scrambled down the rocky incline, hands sliding dangerously over the rope. The creature followed with careful steps, its fang still bared.

And then the rope gave way.

Rett fell back, tumbling crazily over jagged ground. His vision went dark and he felt the familiar pull of his mind retreating into blackness. But then he skidded to a stop on level ground, and the brightness of the gray-white canyon returned, along with a feeling like his ankle had snapped. The creature danced madly on the slope, trying to gain purchase on the falling dirt. They would be at its mercy once it made its way down. Rett couldn’t run with his ankle like it was. And Bryn—where was Bryn? Rett caught sight of her in the corner of his vision just as the sun flashed on the flare gun now falling down the trickling slope toward him. He lunged for the gun. Pain ripped through his injured ankle. The gun went skidding over the dirt, out of reach. Rett got on his hands and knees and scrabbled over to it, got his fingers around it, and then—

He lifted his head. The creature was a stone’s throw away, looming over Bryn on the shifting slope.

But Bryn had yanked the rope down after her, the broken sapling with it. She swung the sapling like a bat.

Crack. Tree met creature. The black form twitched in the dirt. It rose on unsteady legs and retreated over the slope with jerking movements, trailing putrid liquid.

Rett released the gun out of sheer relief, and it tumbled to the ground, the flare unspent.

“Are you okay?” Rett called after Bryn.

Her breath heaved. The broken sapling lay in the dirt, sticky with black bug innards. “I don’t know. Ask me after I get the feel of bursting bug out of my mind.”

Rett closed his eyes again, relieved but wishing he could escape into darkness, could escape from the pain fizzing over his scraped skin and throbbing in his ankle.

“Are you okay?” Bryn stood over him, blood staining a dozen rips in her jumpsuit. She had a hand cupped over one eye but it didn’t stop the blood pouring from a gash over her brow.

“Where’s the backpack?” Rett asked. He immediately regretted speaking—it only made his ribs, his everything, feel worse. He thought vaguely about examining his injuries, but any movement invited blades of pain.

“Up there.”

Rett followed Bryn’s gaze halfway up the slope, where the pack showed black against the lighter dirt. Rett cursed softly.

“Check my pocket,” he told Bryn. “See if the GPS unit is still in there.”

Bryn moved carefully toward him so that Rett wondered exactly how terrible he looked. She reached for him as if afraid he’d fall to pieces at her touch.

“Seems okay,” she said, examining the device’s display. “We’re not far from the coordinates. Can you— Are you—?”

Her unspoken question hung in the air while Rett contemplated the horror of moving. He shifted and let out a grunt of pain.

“What hurts?”

“Moving,” Rett replied dryly. He tried lifting himself and gave up when pain shot through his ankle, his ribs. “I need a minute.”

“We can’t stay here long.” Bryn turned to gaze at the top of the ridge. Rett prayed she didn’t spot anything more sinister than a broken tree and sun-bleached rocks.

At least they were in the shade now, close to the wall of the ravine they had fallen into.

“You’re right,” Rett said. “We should get out of here, find the nearest walk-in freezer, and refuse to come out until we’ve eaten all the ice.”

Bryn gave him a faint smile. “Can I get some sliders and fries with that ice? And a fish sandwich with cheese—I hear those are really horrible and I need to find out for myself.”

Rett’s smile faltered.

“Sorry,” Bryn said, “I was just doing that weird fake-ordering-from-White-Castle thing…”

“That you used to do with your boyfriend.” Rett cleared his throat. “No, I get it.”

He didn’t really want to keep talking about it. “Your eye,” he said, as if she didn’t know the cut was still bleeding.

Bryn clamped her hand down harder over her wound. She sat in the dirt and tugged at the shredded fabric at the leg of her jumpsuit until a piece ripped away. Then she pressed it to the gash over her eye and leaned back in attempt to staunch the flow of blood. For a moment, there was only the sound of rocks trickling down the slope, the aftermath of Rett’s and Bryn’s terrible slide. Then Bryn said, “I almost blacked out. I mean, when I saw … that thing. Everything got dark. And it felt like—like something was trying to pull me away.”

Rett nodded slowly, grateful that the movement brought little pain. “Me too. After we slid down. I thought for a minute I was going to escape.” He looked to her to see if she understood. “Like it was all a dream and I was going to wake up.”

Bryn probed the dirt with the toe of her boot. She knows exactly what I mean, Rett thought. He could see it in her eyes—that faraway look that meant she had remembered something.

“It’s happened before,” she said quietly. “That feeling.”

“What?” Rett took a few breaths through gritted teeth while he willed the pain in his ankle to subside. “When?”

“A few times. I keep trying to follow it, to let myself—I don’t know. Get away. It feels like I’m going into a tunnel but I can’t get to the end of it.”

Rett thought it over. That wasn’t exactly what it was like for him. More like he’d gotten into a tunnel and backed out again on his own.

“But there was one time,” Bryn said. “Outside the depot, near the river. I saw that creature coming up behind you. I felt like I was going into that tunnel again. But I fought against it because I knew you were in trouble.”

Something stirred in Rett’s chest. She cares. At least a little, he thought. He remembered the feel of her in his arms when he’d embraced her on the ridge, the weight of her head on his shoulder. He wished she would come closer now, pained as he was.

“I got the flare gun out and the feeling went away,” Bryn said.

“Good thing.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The knowledge that another creature could come over the rise at any moment made Rett hot with panic. They still had one flare.

He stretched his fingers out, grimacing against the pain that stabbed at his ribs, and slid the gun closer.

“Rett,” Bryn said.

Rett looked over at her. The rag she held to her forehead had gone red, but at least the blood had stopped dripping.

“I remember something strange,” she said. “Something I can’t explain.”

Rett’s stomach tightened. That’s become the theme of my life.

“I remember that creature coming into the depot,” Bryn went on. “Through the skylight. Falling onto the floor.”

Pain glazed Rett’s thoughts. He couldn’t focus. Had the creature come through the skylight? The image came to mind so easily: a black form blocking the light, struggling through the opening, falling onto the floor.

But had that happened? “Wasn’t it near the river? You shot it with the flare.”

“I know,” Bryn said. “I remember that. But I also remember it coming down through the skylight.”

Rett struggled to understand. He had opened the skylight and hit the creature with the backpack. And then it had come back when Bryn had found him near the river. So why did he also remember it coming down through the skylight?

“Do you think we’ve been in that depot more than once?” Bryn asked.

Rett remembered something else now, something that surfaced in a wash of anxiety. “That man—the one we found dead outside the depot. He was pounding on the door, trying to get in.”

Bryn frowned. “Are you sure?” And then, “I think I do remember that. But did it really happen?”

More memories surfaced in the murky confusion flooding Rett’s mind: waking up in the depot, finding blood on his jumpsuit. How did I know it would have blood on it? I knew before I even looked down.

He thought of the feeling he’d had that there was something waiting on the roof of the depot, even before he’d opened the skylight to it. “Some of the things that have happened to us—I think I knew they would happen before they did.”

“Me too,” Bryn said.

Rett shook his head, lost. It was too much to think about at once, too much to try to make sense of.

Bryn trailed her fingers over her hair. “Is this why we get that feeling?” Rett realized she meant the scar over her ear. “Because they put something in our heads?”

The idea jolted Rett. Could it be that whenever he started to black out, whenever he felt that tunnel opening to him, it was thanks to some mechanism implanted in his brain?

And if so, did that mean he could control the feeling? Could use the mechanism?

He closed his eyes and tried to move away from the pain pressing at every inch of him, the rocks biting into his skin, the heat and dust filling his lungs …

And he felt an invisible channel open before him.

It waited to welcome him to a better place. Someplace lit by stars and bathed with cool air …

But Rett couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t get through the channel.

“I can’t do it,” he said aloud.

Bryn was watching him, her gaze narrowed.

“I can’t get away,” Rett explained, although he thought she might already understand.

“When was the last time you got that feeling, like you could get away?”

“When we were falling down the slope. And I think when … one of those creatures attacked us before, in the depot.” Did that happen? “When I get scared, I guess. When I think—” He lowered his head and spoke into the dirt. “When I think I’m going to die.”

Bryn touched his wrist, and he felt a rush of gratitude that it didn’t hurt like every other inch of him did. He turned his palm so that his hand rested in hers. That was as much as he could do. Even breathing sent waves of pain through him.

“Are we ever going to get out of here?” Bryn asked.

Rett fought against the wave of hopelessness threatening to overwhelm him. “Well, see, this has been my plan for a while now: wait until you’re desperate, then offer to finally put some effort into escaping if you’ll promise to reveal the location of your secret swimming lake when we get out of here.”

“If you get us out of here, I’ll take you to every secret lake in the country.”

The light in the corner of the device she held in her other hand showed red. The battery was running out. In another minute, the location of the coordinates would be lost to them forever. “Bryn. Last chance. You’ve got to go.”

“Could you stand if I helped you?”

Rett pushed his foot against the ground and felt a surge of pain. “Leave me here. It’s not far, right? Go check it out and come back.

The gun lay in his other hand, a slight weight that nevertheless reassured him. He didn’t want to give it up. But who knew what awaited Bryn at those coordinates? “You should take the gun with you. Just in case.”

Bryn looked over Rett’s near-shredded jumpsuit. “Maybe you should keep it.” She didn’t say what they were both thinking: In case another bug comes along while you’re sitting here like a ready-made meal.

“After all that, you can’t just let me keep the gun without a fight,” Rett said. He gave her half a smile.

“Rett…”

“Honestly, I don’t even need it. I prefer hand-to-hand combat. Hand-to-fang.” He pressed the gun into her hand. “Seriously, you better hurry before that battery goes out.”

Bryn eased herself onto her feet. “I won’t be gone long.” She fiddled with the GPS unit for a moment. “Wish me luck.”

“Stick to the side of the ravine,” Rett said. “Stay out of sight of anything that might be hungry.” He tried to say it lightly, but it came out sounding strained.

“Hope they find flares tasty.” Bryn’s voice was small in the wide space of the canyon. She limped off, GPS unit held out before her.

Rett tried to settle into a comfortable position but couldn’t find one. At least if a bug kills me, I’ll be out of my misery. He counted the seconds that passed so he could keep track of how long Bryn was gone. And if she’s gone too long? What then? He couldn’t very well go after her.

The rocks had finally stopped trickling down the slope of the ravine, though dust still hung in the air. Rett’s gaze snagged on a rock that stood out against the pale dirt, a rock as black as ink and veined with sun-flamed silver.

He scrambled for it, pulling himself on his knees and trying not to jar his injured ankle. Is this what we came for? he wondered as his fingers closed around the smooth rock.

He turned it over in his palm. The streaks of silver caught the sunlight and sent a thrill through Rett’s heart. I found it. I found what we’re looking for.

Maybe there are more. Maybe they’re all over this ravine.

His whipped his head around, searching for another glint of silver, another spot of black against the pale dirt. I’m missing something. There’s more to this.

His hand kept going to his pocket and he couldn’t figure out why. My pocket’s empty.

Something else nagged at the back of his mind, something important …

Bryn came hobbling back into view. Rett wanted to get up and meet her, but he still could barely move. “Everything okay?” he called to her, his voice betraying his alarm. “Did you find it?” He knew she hadn’t. He could tell from the slump of her shoulders, the defeat written all over her face as she came nearer.

Bryn collapsed into the dirt next to him. “The GPS unit took me to the coordinates,” she croaked.

Rett waited for her to say it.

She shook her head. “There’s nothing there. Nothing.”

The rock dropped out of Rett’s hand. No. “How are we supposed to get out of here?”

Bryn turned to Rett, an apology in her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Are you sure there was nothing there? Could you have missed something?”

“It’s just dirt. Nothing else.” Bryn’s face was lined with pain and panic.

Rett fought against his own pain. It threatened to take up all the space in his thoughts, and he needed desperately to come up with a plan. “We still have the flare. We can try shooting it up into the sky.” A nagging thought was still trying to get his attention, but panic smothered it.

“You know why we haven’t tried that yet,” Bryn said darkly. “No one will come for us. We both know it.”

“What else can we do?”

“We’re missing something,” Bryn murmured. “There’s another piece to this puzzle.”

Rett tried to clear his mind, to focus on the thought that pulled at him. Got to fit the pieces together. “I have this feeling … There’s something back in Scatter 3. Something we overlooked.”

“There were things in there we never made sense of. We should have figured that place out before we headed out into the wasteland.”

Guilt pressed at Rett. If he hadn’t tried to hide that jumpsuit from Bryn, if he hadn’t left Scatter 3 in such a hurry …

He wondered if Bryn was thinking the same thing. Did she feel guilty for hiding the gun from him back in the depot?

“Do you think it would have been better if you’d woken up here on your own?” Bryn asked. “All we’ve done is messed things up for each other.”

The creak in her voice worried him. He touched her arm, wishing he could pull her closer. But she didn’t respond. “That man outside Scatter 3 was on his own,” Rett said. “It didn’t turn out so well for him.”

Bryn didn’t seem to hear him. She rocked in the dirt next to him, humming her strange tune under her breath so that Rett felt half-hypnotized. He picked up the rock and turned it over and over in his hand. Something told him he knew what they needed to do. He knew how to fix this problem. He could get them out of this. He just had to think.

And then—

The thought came to him, the thing he knew they needed to do. One, change your jumpsuit. He thought while Bryn went on humming. Two, find some water. Three, get the—

“If I could do it over again,” Bryn said, interrupting his thoughts, “I would do it differently.”

She reached into her pocket but Rett barely registered the movement. He was too busy wondering why she wouldn’t look at him.

“Differently?” Rett’s heart thumped. “You mean alone?”

“I’m sorry, Rett.” Bryn lifted her arm and pointed the gun at his chest.

No, he thought. “Bryn, wait. I have to tell you—”

Too late. He saw her hand flex as she squeezed the trigger.

But as she did, she shifted the gun.

She’s not aiming for me, Rett realized, as the sound of the gunshot exploded in his head and he fell through a long, dark tunnel.