5

4:38 A.M.

Rett emerged in a starlit hollow, panting with shock and confusion. The wrenching pain in his ribs and ankle vanished in an instant.

Overhead, a green flame rippled across the night sky. Needles of light piercing the darkness. Rett thought he could feel the same effect on his skin, but it was only the cold air prickling his flesh.

The sensation brought with it a sudden realization: he was outside in the cold and the darkness. Still in the wasteland, but not where he had been a moment ago.

He jerked in alarm—the gun.

The crack of the gunshot echoed in his head even now. He brought his hands to his face, to his chest. But he was okay. No terrible burning wounds, no sign at all that he’d been hit by a flare.

Bryn—the gun—

He tried to get hold of his thoughts. She pointed the gun at me. But she moved it just before she pulled the trigger.

And then …

And then he’d escaped. A tunnel had opened in his mind, a channel he had slipped through. Like reality had gone soft, and he’d forced his way through it.

But to where?

And to when?

How can it be nighttime?

The sheet of green light overhead flexed like a flag, like the banner of a strange country.

Rett sank to his knees. The gun, the creature, the daggers of pain—all gone. But he was still lost and confused. And now he was alone.

He gazed up at the luminous curtain moving over him. An aurora? He wondered if auroras were like shooting stars—if you could wish on them. “I don’t want to be alone,” he murmured. Not a wish, exactly, but the feeling bled from him and he couldn’t help but give voice to it.

“Rett?” Someone called to him from the direction of a lonely boulder.

Rett shot to his feet. “Bryn?”

She and the boulder made a single, shadowy shape until she pushed away from it, her white jumpsuit aglow with starlight. She stepped toward him, and he let out a breath that steamed in the cold air. “Bryn.” He stumbled forward, flooded with relief, and folded his arms around her, testing the shape of her shoulders, the curve of her back, wondering if she could be real. After a moment, she put her arms around him and pressed her face into his shoulder. Her grip startled him. He leaned into it, grateful for an anchor to stop him from freewheeling into confusion and fear.

She said something into his shoulder, too muffled to make out. He pulled away. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

She only stared back at him, guilt and alarm mingling in her eyes.

“What happened?” he asked her. “How did we get back here?”

“The gun.” She looked away.

Rett remembered a surge of fear, an explosion of sound. “You didn’t shoot me,” he said, his voice wavering along with his conviction.

“No—I wouldn’t—that’s not what—” Bryn shook her head. “We said every time we got really scared, we felt like we were being pulled away. So I thought maybe we could get away if I used the gun to scare you.”

Away would be nice, Rett thought. But they were still in the wasteland.

“I think it’s because of whatever they put in our heads,” Bryn went on. She brushed her fingers over Rett’s scalp. His skin tingled at her touch.

He tried to sort it all out. Fear, pain, the explosion of noise from the flare gun. A quiet hollow, an endless expanse of stars. This is the place I sensed at the end of the tunnel, Rett thought. I reached for safety, for calm … and I found my way here.

And somehow, he’d pulled Bryn with him.

“I think I brought us here,” he said. “I think the mechanism in my head helped me find this place, somehow, and I pulled us both through.”

He gazed up at the inky sky, the spattering of stars. Like his favorite two-page spread in Shine Fall, a boy under a million midnight suns.

“I keep wanting to get home—to get back to my mom,” he went on. “But I think this is the closest I can get.”

Rett found that he had closed his hand around Bryn’s. Her skin was as cold as his. He pressed her hand against his chest to warm it.

Bryn looked up, her eyes full of uncertainty. “I’m sorry.”

For what? Rett wondered. For not knowing how to get us home? For shooting a gun at me? For not wanting your hand against my chest?

A sound interrupted his thoughts: the crunch of gravel.

“What was that?” Bryn gasped.

Rett turned, searching for the source of the sound. A humped shadow loomed at the top of a rise. “The depot’s up there. If we can find a way to get in…”

They scrambled up the incline, shedding cardboard slippers Rett hadn’t realized he was wearing. Where did those come from? he wondered, before fear chased away all thoughts beside, Get to safety.

He didn’t know how they’d get into Scatter 3, but they could at least climb the rungs up to the roof. And then—

They reached the top of the incline.

The depot’s door was ajar.

Rett jerked to a stop, heart hammering. “How can it be open?” It’d been bolted shut, jammed. And the man’s body …

It was nowhere to be seen now.

He exchanged confused looks with Bryn.

“We’ve done this before,” Bryn said. “Haven’t we.” It wasn’t a question so much as an admission of dread. “We’re starting over, somehow.”

Rett approached the door warily. The whole structure was battered and weathered. The metal walls, scratched and scarred by sprays of windblown gravel, glowed faintly in the pre-dawn light.

He touched the open door.

How is this happening?

He slipped through the opening. Inside, darkness blinded him. Then, a faint crack, and a green glow filled the narrow space.

“I stepped on something—a light stick,” Bryn murmured. She leaned to pick it up, and some of the liquid dripped over her hand. Rett was sure he’d seen this image before—her hands, glowing.

“Hope it’s not toxic,” Bryn said.

“Probably not unless you drink it. Although we’ve survived worse in Walling’s cafeteria.”

Bryn tensed. “Do you hear something?”

Rett tilted his head to one side. Silence muffled everything but his heartbeat in his own ears. “Nothing.” Even so, visions of jointed legs and hooked feet flashed through his mind. A long, wet fang …

He pulled Bryn into the changing room. They stood close in the narrow space, shoulders pressed against each other.

“If we’ve been through all of this before,” Rett said, “then all of the same things are going to happen again.” He tried to take comfort in the weight of Bryn’s arm against his, but his mind raced with fearful thoughts.

“We need the flare gun.” Bryn looked up at him. Her eyes glowed eerily in the green light. “We found it in the office last time, near the desk.”

“And the extra flare.” Rett pulled away from her reluctantly and moved toward the doorway.

“Wait,” Bryn said, catching his hand. “We know one of the bugs is going to come here to the depot. What if we use the water to kill it instead of a flare? Then we can go up on the roof, shoot the flare up like you said we should do. Hope someone comes to help us. We’d still have one flare left to defend ourselves.”

Rett could hardly follow her words for the feel of her palm pressed against his. “You want to lure a bug in here?”

“We’ll be safe inside one of the rooms. That’s what the water is meant for, right? A defense against bugs?”

Rett wanted to agree, but the tightness in his chest wouldn’t let him.

Bryn squeezed his hand, trying to reassure him. It only made his chest constrict more. “We’ll go up on the roof and open the skylight,” Bryn said. “When the bug comes, we’ll hide in an upstairs room, push the button—and drown it.”

“What if we get stuck out there again, like last time?” Rett craned his neck to get a look at the heavy door that still stood ajar. He didn’t want to move to where he’d have to drop her hand.

“I’ll get the rope from the supply room and tie it to the rungs outside the skylight.” Bryn dropped his hand and slid past him toward the doorway. “Then we’ll have another way in and out of this place in case anything happens to the door again.”

Rett followed her, already missing the warmth of her hand in his. “But what exactly happened to the door last time?”

“I don’t know, but we have to hurry before that bug comes.”

Rett waited, shivering in the cold, while she ducked into the supply room. He thought about her hand in his, her arms around his waist, her head on his shoulder. We’re going to get through this. We’re together now.

Bryn came back with the same rope and carabiner they had last seen tied to the traitorous sapling.

“How is this possible?” Rett mumbled. “That rope … everything’s back where we first found it?”

“We’ll think about it later.” Bryn headed for the heavy door, already knotting the rope like she had last time. “Come on.” She slipped outside.

Rett started to follow her. But a clatter from the office stopped him in his tracks.

He slowly turned to look through the open doorway. From this new angle, he could now see another green glow coming through an open partition. Fear plunged into his gut.

The clattering stopped. A figure eased into view—a crouching man with deep lines in his green-lit face. Before Rett could react, the man moved his hand into view. It held a gun.

Rett’s whole body went numb. His gaze locked onto the green-gleaming metal. Blackness crept along the edges of his vision and then came the familiar pull that promised to take him through a tunnel to someplace safer.

But something rooted him in the moment: the gun—it was identical to the one Bryn had pointed at him so recently. Same tube-shaped barrel, same scratched metal. He started to look toward the heavy door she’d gone through. But the next moment, soft thuds came from the roof, and it was all Rett could do not to look up at the skylight and call to Bryn. Don’t alert him to the fact that she’s here.

The man rose. He kept the gun pointed at Rett’s chest. Flare gun, Rett reminded himself, but that only made him shake with fear at the memory of the flare burning against the bug’s flesh.

“Who are you?” the man asked gruffly, stepping closer so that his blocky frame towered over Rett. His T-shirt was tattered, jeans ripped at the knees, boots coated in dust. The cap pulled over his eyes was limp with sweat, the symbol of overlapping jagged lines black with grime. Rett imagined him as a corpse sprawled in the dirt outside. It’s the same man, he realized. But how…?

The man thrust out his light stick and looked over Rett’s jumpsuit while fear churned in Rett’s gut. “You from Scatter?” the man asked. His teeth glowed in the green light.

“Scatter?” Rett croaked, lost in confusion. His gaze flicked from the gun to the logo on the man’s hat.

The man pulled on the bill of his cap. “I haven’t worked for Scatter in a long time.” The barrel of the gun drifted downward. He squinted at Rett as if trying to guess his age. “Someone send you here to collect loot?” The man craned his neck to look out through the doorway. He swiped at a patch of ashy skin under his jaw with a calloused finger. A black talon hanging from a cord around his neck swung like a pendulum. When he looked at Rett again, he peered out from under swollen eyelids. His voice dipped low. “They shouldn’t have sent someone so green.”

Fear rippled through Rett. The man took slow steps toward him, gun aimed now at Rett’s heart.

“Back up,” the man barked. “Toward the door. You’re gonna tell whoever sent you this place was empty. Will be when I’m finished, anyway.”

Overhead, the click of a latch sounded. The skylight, Rett thought. He coughed, trying to cover the creak of it opening. Does Bryn see the man? He prayed she did, prayed she wouldn’t call down to Rett and startle the man who held the gun in a shaking hand.

“Go,” the man growled.

Rett backed across the main room.

“They sent you here all alone?” The man stopped to look around the depot, pulling at his grimy cap. His gaze lingered on the open closet. “Or is someone else here?”

“No,” Rett said quickly.

The man looked him over again. He pulled at Rett’s sleeve, and Rett flinched away. “Clothes are so nice and clean,” the man said. Rett looked down at the dirt crusted on the cuffs on his pants and sleeves. His jumpsuit was still a lot cleaner than the man’s tattered clothes.

“How’d you get out here?” The man frowned at Rett’s feet. “What happened to your shoes?”

“I—I lost them.” He remembered the cardboard slippers that had fallen off his feet as he climbed the slope to the depot. Where had they come from? And who would wear flimsy slippers in a wasteland?

Gravelly laughter erupted from the man’s throat. “You came all the way out here just to get some new shoes? You know, those bugs don’t care if you’re clean or dirty when they eat you. They ain’t picky.”

Rett stared at the black talon dangling from the cord around the man’s neck and his alarm surged. The man touched the talon. Something like regret flashed in the man’s eyes. “You seen them?” he asked in a whisper. “You know?”

Rett recalled the scratch of scythe-like feet on metal, on rock. He shuddered.

The man slowly nodded, vindicated by Rett’s reaction. “A man couldn’t make up something like that.” He was lost in a fog, but the next moment, it cleared. He gripped Rett’s shoulders with his calloused fingers and shoved him toward the main door. Rett scrambled for some idea of what to do. He could at least lead the man outside, away from where Bryn crouched near the skylight. What then?

He was within a few feet of the door when the man behind him shuffled to a stop and grunted, “Outside.”

Rett hesitated. “You’re going to lock me out?”

“What’s wrong? Scared of the bugs?” The man chuckled. He scratched at the patchy spot under his jaw and his smile vanished. “I’ll let you back inside when I’m finished. What’s in this place is mine. Whatever you came here for—you aren’t going to get it.”

Rett inched forward. He thought about Bryn and her rope. What good will it be to get back inside the depot from the roof if we don’t have a way to defend ourselves against a gun?

“Hear what I said?” the man growled. “Out!”

Rett moved sideways through the door. He couldn’t stop himself from picturing a bloodless corpse sprawled in the dirt. That’s going to be me this time.

“Wait,” the man said.

Rett froze just outside the door. The man stood half in, half out of the depot and squinted at Rett. “Have I seen you before?”

The blue glimmer of coming daybreak revealed nothing to Rett except that the man was even grimier than he’d thought. “I don’t think so.” But I’ve seen you—dead, not ten feet from this spot.

“I don’t believe you’re here all alone.” His lips were chapped, but a drinking tube dangled over his shoulder from a hydration backpack. Water had dripped from the tube onto his faded T-shirt and the man pressed his free hand to it, as if trying to reclaim the moisture. “No one hikes all the way out here without gear. Someone drove you in.”

The man craned his neck to see around Rett. Then he edged out through the opening, gun first.

The next moment, there was a flurry of movement and a heavy thud. The man dropped to the dirt. Bryn stood behind him in the doorway, fire extinguisher in hand.

She stared in horror at the fallen man, at the dark blood spreading over his scalp and seeping into his wispy hair. The grimy cap lay in the dirt, a few feet from the gun.

“Is he—?” Bryn’s face was pale.

Rett put a shaking hand under the man’s jaw, checking for a pulse. “I think he’s just unconscious. Get the gun.”

Bryn had already picked it up and was now sliding it into the hip pocket of her jumpsuit. “I saw him through the skylight. I used the rope to climb down. I thought he was going to—”

“I’m okay.”

“I don’t think the door will close, even from the inside.”

“It’ll have to. Unless you just want to hope he won’t wake up angry. Help me move him.” The man’s legs were blocking the doorway. Rett gripped the man under the arms, trying to ignore the rank smell of sweat and the blood that was now smeared over his own jumpsuit. He had a gun, Rett reminded himself as he battled a twinge of guilt. Bryn had to do it. He hauled the man a foot or so, grunting with the effort. “Bryn, help me.”

Bryn stood frozen, gazing at the distant horizon turning from black to blue. “It’s almost morning. We’re going to wake up again with no memory. This is when it happens, isn’t it? Something’s out here, and it’s going to make us forget.”

Rett stopped to look up at her. Her gaze darted frantically around the landscape. “Just help me and we’ll—”

“We should get back inside. We shouldn’t be out here.” Bryn edged away, slinking back into the narrow opening behind her. Her free hand went to the scar hidden under her hair. “Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it coming.”

Rett turned and studied the blue-lit ridges in the distance. A shiver of fear went down his spine. He looked down at the unconscious man. A man he was about to shut out of the depot for whatever dangers were coming this way.

We can’t leave him out here, Rett decided.

“We have to get inside,” Bryn said again, her voice high with panic.

“Help me with him,” Rett said. But Bryn had already vanished into the depot. “Bryn!”

All at once, pain exploded inside Rett’s head. He dropped to his knees, arms wrapped around his skull. Hot needles shot down toward his spine. The pressure was unbearable; his head was going to explode any second.

He staggered to his feet. What’s happening? The pain had come out of nowhere. It was mounting still, and Rett only knew that he had to escape it. He threw himself toward the door of the depot. “Bryn,” he groaned. The pressure eased as he stumbled inside. But only a little. His skull still seemed ready to burst.

What’s going on?

The thing in his head. Something had gone wrong with it.

“Rett?” Bryn cried.

Rett could barely see her through the spots of light exploding in his vision. He gripped his head, willing the pain to stop.

“What’s wrong?” Bryn cried. “What’s happening?”

Rett collapsed against a wall. He thought he heard Bryn move to the door, and then there was a heavy squeal of metal. Rett caught sight of her heaving the door shut. Blocking out whatever had prompted Rett’s pain.

Rett clawed at his skull, willing the pressure to release. A loud banging echoed through the depot and sent the pain moving through his head in waves: Bryn was slamming the fire extinguisher against the door’s rusted bolt.

Rett let out a mangled cry: “Bryn, stop!”

The bolt finally scraped into its housing and Bryn dropped the extinguisher.

Rett slid to the floor and hurtled into oblivion.

5:37 A.M.

Someone is calling to me …

But I don’t want to wake …

I …

Rett opened his eyes to blue morning light filtering into a metal room. His skull felt as if it had been put in a vise. He moved his fingers carefully through his hair and found a long scar running along his scalp.

“Rett?”

He rolled his head toward the sound. A girl with short brown hair peered at him, worry etched into her dirt-streaked face.

“Rett?” she said again. “Are you okay?”

His head throbbed. He closed his eyes and opened them again, took in the sight of striped metal walls. “Where am I?”

“Inside the depot.” The girl handed him a Mylar pouch. “Drink this. I found it in the medical room with the backpack and everything—right where we first found it.”

Rett squinted at the label: DRINKING WATER. But why was it in a pouch? He didn’t care—he was so thirsty. He pulled the tab and drained the pouch in one go. “Got any more?” he croaked.

“We should save it.” The girl gave him a pitying look. “But the backpack—”

“What happened to my head?” Pain pulsed through Rett’s skull.

The girl studied him for a moment. She seemed worried about something. A shock of dark red caught the edge of his vision and he looked down to find blood on his jumpsuit. Am I bleeding? He pushed himself upright with a surge of alarm and probed at the stain with careful fingers.

“It’s not your blood,” the girl said.

Rett struggled to his feet. He almost didn’t want to know—Whose blood is it? Did I do something bad? He looked around for some clue that would tell him where he was. Doorway to the left, corridor to the right. He stepped toward the short corridor and saw a heavy door at the end, bolted shut. He turned back to the girl. “What is this place?”

She hesitated. “You don’t remember?”

Rett limped to the heavy door. He tugged at the bolt but it didn’t budge. It was bent at one end, jammed into the housing. On the floor lay a fire extinguisher that must have dealt the damage.

“I didn’t know what was happening,” the girl said behind him. “You were outside and then you came in. I only knew something had hurt you—was hurting you.”

Rett tried to make sense of what she was saying. But all he could think was, The door is jammed. He turned to face the girl, who was padding down the hallway toward him on dirty bare feet.

“At first I thought that guy was hurting you.” The girl pointed at the door. “There’s a man out there. He had a gun.”

His gaze went to her hip pocket, to a bulge there and a glimpse of metal. Alarm rang through his body. A gun, she has a gun.

“But I think it was something else,” she went on. “Something to do with an electrical signal or … I don’t know. Whatever caused that aurora. I think being inside shielded me from the effects of whatever it was. Maybe the walls block signals somehow.”

Rett couldn’t follow anything she was saying.

“I got the door closed,” she said. “I thought that would make it stop.”

“You did that? It’s jammed,” Rett said.

“I thought maybe he was hurting you.”

Rett’s gaze dropped to her pocket again.

“Can you remember anything?” She was frantic now, her words coming out in desperate spurts. She pushed her fists together, as if it took physical effort to get out her jumbled explanation. “We’re here because Scatter sent us. They want us to find something. We woke up outside and came up here to the depot for safety. But there was a man here already, and he had a gun. We got him outside and then something happened to your head.”

She reached out like she might touch him.

“Don’t come closer,” Rett barked. At the same time, his hand went to his head, to the scar he had discovered moments ago.

“There’s something in your head.” The girl held her hands up as if to calm a spooked animal. “Scatter put it there. I think something went wrong with it a minute ago, and that’s why your memory’s gone now. It would have happened to me, too, if I had been outside with you.”

She slowly lifted her hair with one hand to reveal a shaved swath and a long scar.

“See?” she said. “They put something in my head, too.”

Rett gaped in horror. He found he had backed right against the door. To his left was an open closet. He lunged into it and pushed the narrow door shut.

5:41 A.M.

Green light glowed at Rett’s feet, where a cracked plastic tube leaked luminous liquid onto the floor. In just a moment, everything would come back to him. Any moment now.

But it didn’t.

His breath came fast as panic flared. He dragged a heavy plastic bin to block the door, and then noticed what was inside the bin—more jumpsuits like the one he was wearing. He pulled out one that looked to be his size. He couldn’t bear to look again at the blood smeared across the fabric at his torso.

He watched the barricaded door while he stripped off the soiled jumpsuit and zipped up his new one. He’d have to go out there eventually. For one thing, thirst raked at his throat.

But the girl. She had a gun.

He was trapped in this place. That was the worst of it. No getting out if she got violent. He pictured the scar running half the length of her skull and shuddered. He reached to touch his own skull, to feel the scar running through his cropped hair. He jerked his hand away. What happened what happened what happened? He tried to squash his panic while he searched his memory for answers. He could find only fragments: a medical lab, a woman with an angular face, a green light in the sky.

The girl said Scatter had sent him here, and something about that rang true. He remembered a woman wearing a lab coat with a logo of jagged lines, her voice edged with frustration: 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 …

Pain sliced through his head. The walls suddenly felt too close. He had to get out of here.

He dragged the plastic bin away from the door. Opened the door and peered into the hallway. No sign of the girl.

He crept out, noticing the grit beneath his bare feet. Dizzying trails of footprints covered the floor of the main area.

Where did the girl go?

From an open doorway ahead—a loud clatter.

Rett’s heart lurched. He spotted a handle on the wall to his right and jerked it up. The wall lifted away to reveal a room like a lounge on a spaceship. I need to find a way out of here. He turned away from the strange space.

And there it was, right in front of him: a rope, leading up to an opening in the ceiling.

I can’t climb a rope, he thought.

But the idea of the girl emerging from an open doorway, gun in hand, sent enough adrenaline through him to make him try. He heaved himself upward.

Adrenaline must be more effective than I ever realized, he thought, marveling at the strength his arms and legs found to climb. Something about the way his muscles strained against his sleeves felt wrong—almost as if he were borrowing someone else’s body. People always feel stronger in emergencies, right?

At the top, he clambered onto a shelf, and then out through the opening in the roof.

All around was jagged wasteland, spires and buttes like rows of teeth in a gaping maw. No end in sight.

Rett’s breath came fast as panic washed over him.

No—there’s got to be something.

His gaze roved the metal roof.

Solar panels took up much of the space. A metal contraption sat to one side, its hinged panels like the petals of a closed flower. Is that an antenna? Rett wondered. A way to call for help? He eased over the rounded metal roof, trying not to advertise his escape, and wrenched the panels outward, confused again by his sudden strength. With a clunk, the panels fell open to the sun. But no button, no way to turn the thing on.

The girl had said that something outside had hurt him. Or no, it was something about a man—a man with a gun. But she’s the one with a gun, Rett thought. She’s the one who jammed the door shut.

Still—where was the man? Rett peered over the rounded front of the building. Below, a figure lay sprawled in the dirt.

“Hey!” Rett shouted. Doubt seized him immediately. Maybe the girl hadn’t been lying—maybe the man really did have a gun. He watched the figure for a few moments more, but the man didn’t move. Dead, maybe. Fear swept through Rett. No, just unconscious, he told himself, and he tried to believe it. Still, he scrambled back up to the roof’s peak, sending down a spray of dust and gravel in his wake.

What now?

He had no water, no shoes. No hope of crossing a treacherous wasteland. He had only two choices: stay outside in the wasteland with a man who might be dead, or go back into the building with the armed girl.

His thirst decided for him. The girl had given him that Mylar pouch of water. There were probably more in the shelter. And maybe a phone, or some way to call for help.

He climbed back down the rope, one thought on his mind: he had to keep himself safe from the girl. He needed a weapon.

The fire extinguisher.

He landed on the metal floor, wincing at the noise his feet made. In a moment, he had the fire extinguisher in his hand.

“Rett?”

The girl’s voice came from under a half-lifted wall. Rett shrank against the wall of the corridor and held the extinguisher ready.

“Rett?” she called again, a note of worry in her voice. “We don’t have much time. We have to be ready.”

Rett lowered the extinguisher. There’s something about the way she says my name.

The girl ducked into the room. She started when she saw him standing in the corridor, but her surprise quickly turned to concern. “Are you okay?”

Rett wasn’t sure what to say. The distress in her eyes unsettled him. Why does she care? “You mean, other than being trapped in the middle of a wasteland with a stranger?” he said.

“A wasteland.” She frowned at the rope swaying between them. “Did you go up on the roof?”

Rett felt like crumpling. Who cared what he had done? He was caught in a metal trap, and it didn’t matter if he escaped because the world outside wasn’t any better. “Where are we?”

“Rett, I’m sorry, we don’t have time for this.”

There it was again, that dip in her voice when she said his name. Rett hadn’t heard anyone say his name that way in a long time.

“Something’s coming,” she told him. “We have to work fast, before it gets here.”

Rett was lost in confusion. “What’s coming?”

“Honestly? You don’t want to know.”

Rett had a sudden vision of a dark shape eclipsing the morning light. He shook it away and thought, She’s right, I don’t want to know.

“I got together everything we might need,” the girl said, her words coming in a rush. “So we can go up on the roof and shoot a flare and see if anyone comes to help us. And if no one does at least we’ll have—”

A noise like thunder came from the other side of the heavy door. Someone was banging on the metal.

Rett went cold.

The girl turned to him, accusation in her eyes. “He’s awake. Earlier than he should be. What did you do?”

Rett opened his mouth and shut it again. He had no idea what she meant, but it was clear he had done something bad in waking the man. “I thought … maybe … he could help…”

The girl considered, her anger suddenly in check. “He had that logo on his cap. He said he used to work for Scatter. But he didn’t know anything about why we’re out here.” She shook her head. “He had the gun. He’s not interested in helping us.”

Rett couldn’t follow anything she was saying, but she didn’t seem to care. She ducked back into the room she’d come from without another word.

Something’s coming, Rett thought, shivering alone in the main room.

The man outside is awake. The girl inside has a gun.

What do I do?

He wanted to hide again. Barricade himself in a room where no one could get to him.

She knows my name.

Somehow, she knows me.

He followed her instead.

“We have to get onto the roof to shoot the flare gun,” she said as Rett came in. “But if he gets up there, too…” She opened a cabinet and pulled out a long metal pole as if sliding a sword from its scabbard.

Rett shrank back.

“Hey,” the girl said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s for him. In case he tries anything.”

Rett couldn’t take his eyes off the metal pole. He shifted his grip on the extinguisher, trying to decide if he really needed it after all. His gaze traveled to the girl’s pocket, where the butt of a gun showed. “Are you going to tell me anything else about what’s going on here?”

“Like what?” She turned to eye a button on the wall labeled with odd shapes. “We’re kind of in a hurry here.”

“Like your name, maybe?”

She stopped, turned to him. He thought he saw pain in her eyes, but the next moment it had vanished. “Bryn.” She turned back to her work. “Ward of the state, just like you.”

Rett’s grip on the extinguisher loosened.

“At Walling Home, just like you,” Bryn went on. “We got ourselves signed up for a job and now we’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. We thought we were supposed to find something but when we got to the coordinates, there was nothing there. So now we’re starting over.”

Rett reeled at the slew of information.

A job, finding something—that was vaguely familiar. But the rest …

“We graduated out,” Bryn said. “Workhouses are closing, no place for us to go, so we took a job with a company called Scatter. At least that’s what we think. Problem is, the job’s impossible to finish. The best we can do now is send up a flare—” She touched the butt of the gun in her pocket, and Rett flinched.

He couldn’t help it. He kept envisioning her raising her arm, aiming at his forehead.

She looked at his hand tightening around the fire extinguisher and went rigid. “What’s that for?”

“I was going to ask the same thing about the gun in your pocket.”

Bryn put a hand over the bulge at her hip. “I told you, I took it from the guy outside.”

Rett studied her for a moment. Her hazel eyes glowed with challenge.

“Would you rather I left it with him?” she asked. “He had it trained on you not thirty minutes ago.”

Rett shivered.

Bryn pulled the gun out of her pocket and laid it on the cabinet top. “How about we leave it right there? Does that make you feel better?”

It made him feel worse, actually, seeing the scarred grip, the dusty barrel. He moved his hand toward it with the hope that touching it would bring some sense of familiarity.

Bryn’s hand shot out to block him. She laid her palm over the gun. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Rett’s hand hung in the air, halfway to the gun. He lowered it to his side.

“We need to take it up on the roof,” Bryn finally said, and slowly slid the gun back toward herself.

Rett laid his hand on top of hers to stop her. Her face went tight but she didn’t move. She watched Rett slide the fire extinguisher onto the cabinet top. “Now neither of us has a weapon,” Rett said. “Okay?”

Their hands still rested together on the gun. Rett moved his away. Bryn’s fingers were curled loosely around the guard. She hesitated and then turned from the cabinet, leaving the gun.

Her shoulders slumped. She seemed completely lost, for once. “We’re screwed, Rett. This isn’t going to work. No one’s going to come for us. There’s no way out of here.”

Rett licked his dry lips. “There’s … There’s got to be some way…” There’s always something. Did he really believe that?

“We already tried going out into the wasteland. There’s nothing out there for us.” When Rett frowned, Bryn added, “Trust me, we did.”

Rett touched his throbbing head. “I must have hit my head hard. I don’t remember anything.”

“Not anything? Here, let’s try something.” Bryn pointed at a row of devices laid out on the cabinet, trailing power cords. “What are these devices for?”

“GPS?” It came out automatically.

Bryn brightened. “And what’s in the room at the top of the ladder?”

Rett squinted at the opening in the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Beds? Some place to sleep?”

She smirked at him the way he did when he beat someone at checkers back at Walling. Did that mean he was getting this right or wrong?

He hopped up on the ladder and looked into the room overhead. I was right. It’s a dorm room or something. He grinned down at Bryn.

“I’ll give you a whole box of carabiners if you can answer my next question,” she said.

“Make it a large Coke and you’re on.”

“What secret place did I promise to take you to if we ever get out of here?”

Rett searched his mind, watching the corners of Bryn’s mouth tremble. He came up blank. “I think I’ve had my fill of secrets, if I’m being honest.”

Bryn’s smile fell. “Me too.”

She made a show of searching the debris littering the floor, as if she might find something else they needed. But then she swiveled back toward him. “I know I said I’d be better waking up here alone, but—” She reached to touch the edge of his sleeve, and he let her. “Please remember. I need you to remember.”

Rett took half a step closer and she wrapped her hand around his arm. Just below her knuckles, a line of freckles trailed. He traced them with a finger. I remember …

He tensed. He’d just realized—“It’s too quiet.”

Bryn cocked her head to one side, listening.

No more pounding noises, Rett thought. Good or bad?

Bryn ducked under the wall and Rett followed. All was eerily quiet. Then came a sudden pattering on the roof and they looked up to see rain falling through the skylight. Rett reached to catch the cold drops on his palm. Water, he thought, and then an image came to him: The metal contraption on the roof, open like a flower. Open to the rain.

“There’s a rain trap on the roof,” he told Bryn. “I opened it earlier.”

“What?” Bryn asked breathlessly. She craned her neck as if she’d get a view of the trap through the open skylight.

“We just need to find where the water comes through.”

“I already know.” Bryn moved to the couch and opened a panel on the wall to reveal a blue spigot. She pushed it with a finger but no water came out.

“Maybe in a few minutes?” Rett said.

Rain drummed harder and harder on the roof. In a minute, the floor beneath the skylight was slippery with it.

“Get the water bottles,” Bryn said over the drumming of rain. “In the cabinet on the—”

“—far left. I know.”

They locked gazes. Remember, Rett urged himself. “And, swimming—that’s what we’re going to do after this, isn’t it?”

He could tell he’d caught her by surprise, but she only said, “Sooner than you think.”

He ducked into the supply room and yanked open a cabinet to pull out the box of empty water bottles along with an empty backpack. Then he stopped, pack in hand, when he noticed the GPS units. A tiny yellow light shone on each device, proof that they had gained some charge. Rett probed at the buttons on one until it turned on.

An icon flashed under his fingertip, a stylized question mark. It opened a scrolling image of a hilly landscape.

A game.

Rett tapped on the screen to collect a smooth rock before it passed out of reach. +1000 points. He tapped on another rock, this one jagged. –500 points.

Not sure what good a game does us, Rett thought. And it’s not even fun.

Rett looked up from the screen and squinted around at the cabinets, the hiking gear. At the walls of rooms that held jumpsuits and boots and water and beds. All for workers sent to collect some kind of mineral. Could that be what this place was? A shelter of sorts, a depot for miners collecting rocks from the barren landscape outside?

Was that what he and Bryn had been sent to find—rocks?

A memory came to him then: the weight of something in his pocket, the feel of a smooth rock. He’d found it here somewhere—in a little room with boxes and switches. Where was that?

He went out into the main room. Bryn was testing the spigot again. A thin stream of dirty water trickled out.

“Pipes aren’t great, I guess,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Just dusty, probably.” Rett licked his dry lips. “It’ll clean out.”

“Rett.” Bryn’s eyes darkened. “That guy is out there. If he climbs up on the roof…”

“I’ll shut the skylight. I can climb up and—”

“And then he’ll be trapped out there. But there’s something else coming this way. He’ll die if we leave him out there.”

Rett’s stomach lurched. Die?

What exactly is coming this way?

“But if we go out there,” Bryn went on, “even to help him, I don’t think he’ll be happy to see us.”

“Why not?”

Bryn’s gaze went to Rett’s abdomen, where blood had stained Rett’s old jumpsuit.

“What happened?” Rett asked.

“He had the gun. He was going to hurt you.”

Rett’s veins filled with ice water. “Okay, bad question. How about, who is he? What does he want?”

“I don’t know.”

Then an answer popped into Rett’s head. “Is he … looking for rocks?”

“What?”

“Rocks. I saw one here. In a room with switches.”

“The power supply?” Bryn gave him a baffled look.

“Where’s that?”

She pointed to the open doorway.

Rett went through and found a bathroom to the left, and beyond that found another door marked with a lightning bolt in a triangle. A ping of familiarity went off in his brain.

Beyond the door was the power supply he remembered: switches and boxes and—

His foot hit something that clattered over the floor: a small, smooth rock.

He picked it up. Yes, this is it. He’d found this rock before, somehow. He turned it over in his fingers. Veins of silver flashed in the low light. The effect was mesmerizing.

An eerie song floated through his mind, though he couldn’t say where it had come from: One, change your jumpsuit. Two, find some water. Three, get the—

Shovels.

Rett had no idea where that last word had come from. Bryn didn’t say anything about shovels, did she?

And yet the more he stared at the rock in his hand, the more he was sure he needed to find shovels.

Bryn said we’re supposed to find something, but when we got to where that something was supposed to be, it wasn’t there. Could it have been buried? Hidden underground and we didn’t know it?

But why had this little rock made him think of that? He could call to mind now a list he must have seen somewhere: 12 feet of rope, 9×9 plastic drop cloth, 6 nylon backpacks, 6 shovels …

There hadn’t been any shovels in the supply room, though. That long metal pole had been the largest thing in the cabinets.

A thought surfaced in Rett’s mind: Where there are rocks, there are shovels.

But there was no room in this small space for hidden shovels. If they were here, they were behind the walls.

He felt along the panels, looking for a handle or a button. All was smooth from ceiling to floor and along every wall. Doubt crept in. Why would someone want to hide shovels, anyway?

Rett felt for the rock he had slipped into his pocket. They don’t want to hide the shovels. They want to hide the rocks. And the shovels are with the rocks.

He ran his hands over the back wall again, but this time he pushed at the panels with sharp thrusts.

Pop. A panel gave way and then clattered to the floor into a compartment beyond the wall.

Rett peered into the compartment, but it was too dark to see anything. He stuck a hand in and groped around. His fingers found a metal basin that he guessed was for storing rocks. And beyond that—a handle.

“Bryn!” he called as he pulled out a heavy shovel. He hefted it and maneuvered back to where Bryn waited. “Look what I—”

He was interrupted by a shout from above: “Hey!”

Rett looked up. A figure showed above the open skylight, dark against the gray sky. From the corner of Rett’s mind emerged a terrifying memory of a heavy black shape falling through the skylight—

“Hey!” the figure called again in a gruff voice. It was the man Rett had seen sprawled on the ground near the door of the depot. Same hat, same dirty long-sleeved T-shirt and tattered jeans, now soaked with rain. “Stupid kid—you knock me out and leave me for the bugs?” the man called in his parched-throat voice.

Rett looked to Bryn, who stood frozen near the couch, water bottle in hand. Her gaze traveled to the half-lifted wall behind Rett, and he knew what she was thinking: the gun.

Another shout from above: “You know what I’m going to do to you when I get down there?” The rope twitched.

Rett shifted his weight on his feet. He tightened his grip on the shovel. It’s not enough. I need the gun.

Above, the man looked over his shoulder at something and let out a string of curses. “It’s coming.” His voice went high with panic. Rett’s scalp prickled at the sound.

“Drop the shovel and back away,” the man called. “I’m closing this skylight and climbing down. Unless you want the bug that’s headed this direction to come crawling in to meet you?”

Bug? Rett thought. What’s he talking about? The memory returned of a dark shape falling through the skylight. A high-pitched scream echoed through his mind. Rett’s mouth went drier than dry.

“Hey!” the man called again, and the black talon dangling from his necklace swung violently. “You ain’t got time to think about this. Drop the shovel.”

Rett shifted uneasily, watching the talon swing. He let the shovel clang to the floor.

“That’s right,” the man said, lowering himself through the skylight. “Now back away.”

Rett held up his empty hands. “Okay.” He gave Bryn a look and then directed his gaze at the spigot. She nodded and went back to filling the water bottle in her hand.

Rett ducked into the supply room. The gun lay where Bryn had left it. Rett eyed it, his nerves buzzing. He slid the gun off the cabinet top and imagined pointing it at the man, ordering him into the closet and shutting the door. And then what? He and Bryn had to get out of this place.

But something was out there.

Rett slid the gun into his pocket. It pulled at his jumpsuit, weighed it down. He wiped his sweaty palm on his sleeves. The man was shouting again when Rett ducked in the main room.

“What are you up to?” the man growled, struggling down the rope in his rain-wet clothes.

“You can have whatever you want from this place,” Rett told him, trying to keep his voice steady. “But you’re going to let us take what we need and get out of here.”

Bryn kicked a pair of boots toward Rett, and he jammed them on, his gaze still locked on the man.

“‘Get out of here’?” the man said, grunting with the effort of climbing down the rope. “You might want to take that up with the bug crawling up the side of the building.”

Rett tried to imagine what could be making its way onto the roof. He saw in his mind a creature sketched on the page of a notebook. A shadowed form baring hooked feet and jagged mandibles …

“They’re used to hunting down dogs, but they’ll take anything with blood,” the man went on. He dropped to the floor and pressed his red-raw hands together. “Best hope you know what you’re doing out there. Doesn’t seem anyone has let loose any dogs for them in a while now.”

In the light filtering through the skylight, Rett could see the man clearly for the first time. His skin was shrunken and ashy—under his jaw, along his collar. His eyes were dark and frantic beneath swollen eyelids. His hands were chapped, nails broken or missing altogether.

Rett backed away. But the man only tipped his head back to regard Rett through slit eyes.

“You give me this goose egg?” he growled, rubbing a hand over his head and eyeing Rett’s shovel. He turned to Bryn. “No … it must have been you.”

Rett stepped between them. The man’s gaze traveled to Rett’s hip, where the grip of the gun was barely concealed.

“Never mind,” the man growled. “I just want my things. Starting with the backpack I left in the other room. Then I’ll have that gun back.”

Rett put his hand over the butt of the gun.

“This is no place for junior treasure hunters,” the man said. He took a step closer so that he towered over Rett, all gnarled muscle under his rain-soaked clothes. “You’ve got no claim here.”

He clamped a hand on Rett’s shoulder and shoved him onto the couch. “Stay there and don’t move. Shouldn’t take me long to get what I came for. And then we’ll figure out what to do about that bug.” He gave Rett a grin that was all teeth. “Maybe it’ll be satisfied with an offering.”

Bryn caught Rett’s eye. He knew what she wanted him to do. His fingers twitched on the butt of the gun. Point it at him, Rett told himself. Tell him to get into the changing room.

He thought of Garrick and his gang hurting him with whatever they could find, coming after him in the yard, trapping him in a box. He tried to use his memories to conjure enough anger to draw the gun and point it at the man.

All he could manage was a sour, weighty dread.

“You can take what you want,” he told the man, “but leave us some of the GPS units.”

A gravelly sound erupted from the man’s throat. “For what?” he snarled. He kicked Rett’s discarded shovel so that it clattered against the wall loudly enough to shred Rett’s nerves. “Those rocks are all gone. This place is picked clean.” The man’s gaze darted around the depot, wild and hungry.

Rett pressed his palm against his jumpsuit pocket and felt the round shape of the rock there.

“Don’t tell me that’s why you came out here,” the man said. “For the meteorites?”

Rett’s memory flashed back to a cobwebbed firewood box, the lid that closed over him, the meteor shower he never got see—

The man’s laughter was like some bit of machinery grinding in his throat. “Those are long gone. Guys like me picked this wasteland clean, so don’t think I don’t know what I’m talking about. Scatter stripped the rocks of that fancy alloy, gave us next to nothing for it.” He sneered at Rett. “Only way Scatter would pay you for meteorites is if you could get a whole pile of them.”

He backed toward the office and peered inside, didn’t seem to see anything he wanted. He vanished into the medical room.

Rett stood, thinking of going for the GPS units. But the man was back a moment later, empty-handed and even more agitated.

“They didn’t tell us at the time how much that metal was worth.” The man’s gaze roved the depot. He found a pack Bryn had left on the floor and jerked it open. “Maybe you’ve noticed that the countries we just started wars with are all bursting with valuable metals?”

Rett tried to make sense of the man’s jumbled ideas. “‘Just started wars’? What are you talking about?”

The man rummaged through the pack. “Don’t you listen to the news?” He tossed aside compasses and bandages and foil medicine packets. “When half our farmland has gone sterile, and import taxes are sky-high, it ain’t hard to convince people to go to war. You tell them it’s someone else’s fault they’re all sick and hungry and poor…”

He stood and kicked aside the empty backpack. “This place is worthless now except for the equipment. And it’s mine. I worked for Scatter for fourteen months. Long enough to earn more money than I’d ever been paid for a job, but not long enough to pay for my treatment. Scatter owes me. So I’m gonna get what I came for.”

He lurched toward the supply room. But then he froze. Turned and narrowed his eyes at Rett, then Bryn. Rett felt the man’s suspicion like hot oil on his skin.

“Then again,” the man said in a low voice that was almost a growl, “maybe you didn’t come for rocks. Maybe you came here for something else.”

Yes, Rett thought, swiveling to face Bryn, but for what? Bryn kept her expression blank, but Rett saw her hands clench on the seat as she waited for the man to say more.

“You think you can find what’s buried here?” The man toyed with the black talon that dangled against his chest. He pointed the talon at Rett. “You think I’m too stupid to know it’s worth a lot more than what’s in these depots?”

Rett slowly shook his head.

The man’s face twitched. “I know a guy on the inside. He told me all about it. He also says the government keeps tabs on this place. There’s a reason they’ve got it walled off all the way around, keeping people out. And they know when you go digging things up. Only way I got past their walls was because that solar storm knocked their system offline.”

Rett exchanged another glance with Bryn. “What’s buried out here?” he asked the man.

The man gave a throaty laugh. “If you manage to find it, you can tell me what it is.”

In one quick motion, he turned from them and ducked into the supply room, out of sight.

“The GPS units,” Bryn said in a fierce whisper.

Rett looked to the supply room. The man would surely see the devices lined up on the cabinet top and would take them all for himself. “We’ll get them.”

“How?” Bryn huffed. “He’s not going to let us have them.”

Rett’s fingers twitched over the butt of the gun in his pocket but they refused to pull it out.

“Give it to me,” Bryn said.

Rett hesitated. “Are you going to shoot him with a flare for some GPS units?”

“That would be a waste of a flare. I’m just going to point the gun at him.”

“That only gets us the GPS units. How are we going to get out of here? He said something was climbing up the side of the building. We can’t open the skylight.”

“Actually”—Bryn plucked the gun from Rett’s pocket and shoved it into her own—“that’s exactly what we need to do.”

She shrugged off her pack, which was bulging with water bottles, and handed it to him.

Then she grabbed hold of the rope dangling in the center of the room.

“What are you doing?” Rett said.

“Getting us the GPS units and making a way out of here.”

“Bryn.”

She kept climbing.

Behind Rett, boots clattered, and then the man ducked into the main room. He took one look at Bryn and shouted, “You open that skylight and we’re all dead.” He seized Rett’s arm in a viselike grip. “Tell her to get down.”

But Bryn had already reached the shelf near the ceiling and started turning the crank. “If you don’t want to die,” she called down, “I suggest you lock yourself in a room with a working door.”

The man turned and fled back into the supply room.

“Rett!” Bryn called down. “Push the button!”

“What button?” Rett called hoarsely. But then he remembered odd shapes marking a button in the supply room.

He scrambled under the half-lifted wall and slammed his palm over the button. An alarm blared through the depot, and milky water sprayed over the floor.

“What’s happening?” he called, but he heard no reply over the bleating alarm.

A panel overhead banged shut, and Rett realized the man had climbed up into some safer space. Half the GPS units still lay on the cabinet top. If the water that was now over his ankles rose as high as he thought it might, they’d be ruined.

Rett yanked open a cabinet and spotted a plastic sheet. In a minute, he had the devices wrapped and shoved in a nylon backpack. By then, the water had risen over his knees. He shouldered the pack, turned toward the main room—

Bryn screamed.

Water buffeted the stuck wall and surged underneath it. “Bryn!” Rett called. What’s happening?

Before he could think, he dove under the wall.

The water was too milky to let him see anything. He felt his way under the wall …

Only to graze a twitching form.

He scrambled to his feet in waist-high water. A shadow showed beneath the water’s nearly opaque surface: a dark bulb dancing madly in the current. It swung a jagged mandible toward him, and he flung himself back.

What is that thing?

It skittered toward him. Its erratic movements brought to mind a flipbook of scribbled drawings, a flickering of mangled stills.

The shovel. Rett twisted in the water, trying to catch sight of his only weapon under the opaque surface. No good—he couldn’t see a thing through the white churn of minerals. He dove under, scrabbling at the floor for a handle. A hooked foot lashed through the water and drew a juddering path down his arm. Rett jerked back.

The next moment his hand hit metal. He grabbed for the handle. Rose out of the water, shovel ready.

The creature was a tangle of clenched talons and nothing more.

“Rett!”

Bryn still lay on the shelf up near the ceiling, under the open skylight.

“Are you okay?” he called up.

“Are you?”

The mass of talons next to him twitched and then went still again. Dead, Rett thought. Drowned. Isn’t that what the water was for? But he didn’t wait around to see if it would come to life again. He swam toward the rope, trailing the shovel.

“The GPS units?” Bryn called.

“I got them. Three GPS units, four limbs, half my sanity.” He panted. “And a shovel.”

7:03 A.M.

From the outside, the depot was a huge metal canister, scarred by windblown grit. Long scratches showed where the creature had clawed its way up to the skylight.

Rett and Bryn moved around to the front of the depot, rainwater running past their boots in rivulets. The man’s still inside, Rett thought. Here was the spot in the rain-darkened dirt where he had seen the man sprawled half an hour ago. Dead.

No—only unconscious.

So why do I keep seeing him in my mind as a mangled corpse?

“He was dead.” Rett turned to Bryn, who was pulling the packet of plastic-wrapped GPS units out of the backpack.

“No, he’s probably okay if he went up into the upper room. I don’t think the water level went up that high. The other wall was open, remember?” She stuck a GPS unit in each pocket and then dug around in the pack for something else. “He’s probably still sitting up in that room, waiting for the water to drain. We should get out of here before he follows us.”

Rett couldn’t tear his gaze from the wet dirt. A terrible vision kept appearing before him. “But he was dead. Before. Cut in half.” He shuddered.

Bryn stopped digging in the pack. Rett looked up to find that she had gone ghostly white. Rainwater ran down the sides of her face.

“Why do I remember him dead?” Rett asked.

Bryn turned away from the depot. She busied herself with the pack again. “It’d be better to forget,” she said over her shoulder. “We have to head northwest. That’ll take us close to the coordinates of whatever we’re supposed to find.”

Rett tried to push the haunting images out of his head. The man’s okay. He’s alive.

“Nice job finding the shovel, by the way,” Bryn said. “It makes sense now why I didn’t see anything at the coordinates before. Hope you’re up for digging. At least I didn’t cut my hand in the depot this time.”

She turned and handed him a GPS unit and then palmed a compass. “Keep an eye on the GPS. Let me know when it picks up a signal.”

“Why isn’t the signal picking up now?”

“There was an aurora. Or—the guy said a ‘solar storm.’ I think that’s what caused the aurora, and it must also interfere with the satellites. So there’s no way to grab on to a signal.”

A green flame dancing over jagged spires—so easy to envision. An aurora, Rett thought.

“I think that’s what happened to you, too.” Bryn drew her fingers over his scar, setting all his nerves alight. “An aftereffect of the solar storm. It made the mechanism in your head go haywire. It would’ve done the same to me if I hadn’t been inside the depot. The walls acted like a shield.”

“That’s—” Rett tried to ignore the tingling left by her touch. “That’s what made me forget everything?”

“I don’t know, but isn’t that what happens with head trauma sometimes? You forget everything surrounding the event that injured you?”

“Forget whole days? Forget how I got here? I can’t even remember how I left Walling.”

Bryn studied the compass glinting in her palm. “Maybe when we finish this, things will get clearer.”

“When we find what Scatter sent us here to find? And then—how will we get home?”

Bryn shifted her pack. “I’m hoping that’ll be clear after we dig up whatever we’re supposed to dig up. You ready?”

“Wait. Didn’t you hear what he said about the government keeping tabs on this place? How they’ve got it all walled off and they know if you go digging something up?”

Bryn took a moment to read her compass and orient herself. “Yeah. I heard.”

“Aren’t you … worried?”

“If they catch us digging something up, at least they’ll know how to get us out of here. Although … I’m not big on the idea of going straight from one kind of prison to another.”

“How are they even going to know if we dig something up?”

“He said they would. It sounds like whatever Scatter sent us to find, the government wants to keep buried.”

“He said the government has this whole place walled off.” Rett wiped rainwater from his face and took in the shining walls of the canyon around them. “Who would want to come here in the first place?”

“They’re guarding something. Something they’re so desperate to keep secret that they’d bury it in the middle of a wasteland.”

“And Scatter wants us to dig it up?” Rett shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. No one would send us to do something like that. No one would send—”

“A couple of orphans desperate for a paycheck? Trust me, we’ve been over this. No one cares if you and I never come back.”

Rett started to say something but Bryn interrupted him.

“I know,” she said, her voice softening. “Your mom. You told me.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t help resenting the pity in her eyes.

He shifted away from her. How much did I tell her? “Exactly how long have we…”

“… been stuck here together?” Bryn’s mouth twisted. “That’s something I can’t quite figure out.”

“What do you mean? How did we get here in the first place?”

“We woke up here,” Bryn said. “We keep waking up here. Over and over, I think.” She must have read the bewilderment on his face because she said, “It doesn’t make sense to me, either. But we’ve done this before. We woke up in that depot and went out to find whatever we’re supposed to find. When we got there, we didn’t see anything—we didn’t know it was buried, and we didn’t have shovels anyway. So we … started over.”

“Started over?”

“There are seven pouches of water in your pack. We already drank all that water the last time we went into this wasteland. But when we showed up back at the depot a couple of hours ago, all that water was back. All of our supplies—everything we left in the wasteland. It was all back inside the depot.”

Rett was starting to feel irritated. It didn’t make any sense. “But how did we get back to the depot?”

“I…” Bryn raked her wet hair back from her face. “I shot the gun at you.”

Rett blinked at her. “Sorry?”

“Near you, I mean. To scare you. Every time we get really scared, something strange happens. We wake up back at the depot.”

Rett struggled to absorb all she was saying. “But … how?”

With her hair pushed back, the scar running along the side of Bryn’s head was partly visible. Rett tried not to stare, but Bryn didn’t seem to mind. She touched a finger to it.

“It has something to do with what they put in our heads,” Rett guessed.

“You told me that you felt like the mechanism let you pull yourself back toward the depot, somehow. And you took me with you.”

Rett closed his eyes and saw a starry sky, a flicker of green light—just a memory. But he had been there. Could he get there again? “What if I can’t do that next time we’re in trouble? Or what if something happens to me—would you be able to wake up and start over on your own?” He clutched her arm. “Bryn, I don’t know if I can—”

“We’re going to finish the job this time. We’re going to end it.” Her hazel eyes glowed, full of reassurance.

Rett nodded, released his grasp. Her fingers trailed his palm as he did, leaving him with the dizzying sense that he had felt her gentle touch before, had even held her hand in his. But then she turned and strode ahead, leaving Rett to follow like something tethered by expectation.

7:15 A.M.

Rett’s boots rubbed against his feet while he sweated with the effort of climbing another slope.

Bryn let them stop only briefly to drink water and air out their pruned feet. The GPS unit’s battery was low, so Rett switched it out for another and checked again to make sure it still hadn’t found a signal.

The face of Bryn’s compass flashed in the sun while she checked its reading.

“You sure we’re heading the right way?” Rett asked.

“We’ve going to veer a bit. Avoid getting ourselves up where we can’t get down.” A flicker of doubt passed over her face.

“Is that what happened before?” Rett asked.

Bryn kept her gaze trained on the compass. Fear seeped into Rett’s bones. We’ve done this over and over. We might never get it right.

“Last time I insisted we climb down a slope and then you fell and I think you broke your ankle,” Bryn said.

Rett drank from his water bottle. “And then?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

“And then we realized we didn’t have a shovel and we started over back at the depot. Got inside, realized someone else was already in there, and … had a bit of an altercation.”

“An altercation?” Rett wrapped his arms around his stomach, as if to hide the blood that no longer stained his clothes. “What did I— What happened?”

“It wasn’t you, actually.”

Rett dropped his arms. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the guy was pointing a gun at you, trying to force you out of the depot and into bug territory, so I came up behind him and…”

“And what?” Why won’t she look me in the eye right now?

“I knocked him out with a fire extinguisher.” Bryn squinted into the distance. “Then you tried to help him. Well, first we dragged him outside and then you tried to get him back to safety when you thought twice about it. And some of his blood got on your clothes.”

So that’s where that stain came from, Rett thought, looking down at the spot where he’d seen the blood earlier that morning. Like something out of a comic book—a stain of guilt, a brand of warning. Except … “I didn’t hurt him?”

“Honestly, I…” Bryn tipped her head forward so her hair hid her face. “I thought you did hurt someone. I found your jumpsuit last time we went through this. I saw that stain. You told me you hadn’t hurt anyone but I didn’t know whether to believe you.”

Which is worse? Rett wondered. Not knowing whether you’ve done something terrible, or not knowing whether the guy you’re trapped in a bunker with did something terrible?

He moved her hair behind her ear so he could see her face. “Hey,” he said softly. “That must have been scary.”

She looked up, surprised.

“For the record,” Rett told her, “I’ve hurt exactly six people in my life. So it’s not like I’m an innocent newborn fawn of a boy.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “Tell me six of them had it coming and I’ll restore you to fawn status without further questions.”

He shrugged. “Five, maybe.” He meant it as a joke, but as soon as he said it, his heart turned to lead. Those emails, the terrible things I said. What else could he do but pray his mother didn’t believe them? I’m coming for you. You have to know I’m coming to help you.

“I’ll give you credit for trying to help Mr. Scavenger back there when he was unconscious,” Bryn said. Rett’s heart lifted a little at her smile. “Now, can we please get moving again?”

He caught her wrist. “Wait. You get what I’m saying, right? I don’t blame you for being scared of me. For whatever you did when you thought I could be dangerous. We do all kinds of things to survive.”

A question flashed in her eyes.

“What?” Rett asked.

“I said that same thing to you before.”

Did she? He couldn’t remember. “I’m a good listener. Add that to my credit.”

“But you know that doesn’t mean you get a pass on attacking someone now? That’s not how this credit thing works.”

“Disappointing.”

Bryn smirked down at her compass and oriented them again.

Rett caught her wrist one more time. “And thanks.”

“For what?”

“Sounds like it would have been my own blood on my clothes if you hadn’t beaned that guy.”

“Actually, I think you were willing to go quietly. So he wouldn’t have hurt you at all. You’d just be—” She stopped.

Bug food. Rett shuddered. “Thanks anyway.”

They angled down the far side of the slope they had climbed, sometimes skidding over the rocky ground. Rett had to use the shovel to brace himself against the slope so he wouldn’t slide all the way down, but Bryn proved nimbler. When they made it to the floor of the ravine, she only quickened her pace.

“Wait.” Rett panted.

“It’s just ahead,” Bryn called over her shoulder. “I recognize this spot.”

Rett followed her along the twisting bottom of the ravine, keeping to the shade at the steep wall. Bryn’s gaze kept bouncing from the dirt to the cliff tops. More bugs, Rett thought, straining his ears for the clack of talons. He heard only the scrape of their own boots over dirt.

Soon Bryn veered out to the middle of the ravine and circled the area a few times, head down, eyes trained on the ground.

Finally, she stopped in her tracks, electric with discovery. “I remember these rocks! See how this one is darker than the others? This is the spot.”

Rett knelt to examine the rock. Silver glints showed through its dark surface. Just like the one in my pocket, he marveled.

She jabbed the toe of her boot into the dirt. “Ready to dig?”

“I need some water first.”

Bryn fished a water bottle out of the pack. “We’ll take turns.” She fished the gun out next. “I’ll dig first. You keep watch for bugs.”

9:14 A.M.

The dust from Bryn’s digging hung in the humid air like a thin cloud of smoke. It made Rett’s nausea worse. Just dehydrated, he told himself. Or, you know, could be my steady diet of fear and confusion.

He watched Bryn dig. At least I’m not alone.

“Are we even sure there’s something buried here?” Rett called from where he sat in the shade.

“He said there was.” Bryn’s shovel chucked into the soft dirt.

“He also seemed kind of … high-int, low-sanity.”

“What?”

“He said the U.S. just started a bunch of wars. But I haven’t heard anything about that. And he said the government’s got this whole place walled off. Why would anyone need to wall off a wasteland?”

Bryn leaned on the handle of the shovel. “Maybe…” She took in the crumbling ridges that crowned the canyon. “Maybe they walled this place off because this is where it all started.”

“Where what all started?”

“There’s a theory floating around the internet about a government experiment gone wrong. This site called Dark Window says the experiment is to blame for the failing crops, the cancer clusters—all of it.”

“What kind of experiment are we talking about?”

“Some ecological experiment. That’s why people find two-headed frogs in their garden, why farmers can’t keep their crops from shriveling.”

“Why the trees in the park turned black,” Rett mumbled, thinking of home.

“So maybe the government walled this place off because the wasteland is proof that they’re to blame.”

“It’s not just the wasteland they’re hiding. They buried something out here where they know nobody can get to it. But what did they bury?”

“You’re asking me what people bury in wastelands? And then mark with a skull and crossbones?”

“Pirate treasure?”

Bryn gave him a look like, Really?

He grimaced. “Okay, obviously not. Unless I’m making clever commentary on corporate greed? I mean, are we assuming Scatter sent us out here to steal something for them?”

“From the government, no less. Any problem with that?”

“I’m pretty sure the government would have a problem with it. So there’s that to think about.”

Bryn stabbed her shovel into the dirt, continuing her work. “It’s not like the powers that run this country have ever done anything but screw us both over. Am I right? Ecological disaster, shoddy health care, underfunded facilities—”

“Do you think it might be meteorites?”

“What?”

“The guy in the depot said Scatter had him hunting for meteorites. Maybe the government confiscated them all and buried them.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. But maybe that means Scatter actually is the rightful owner of what we’re about to dig up.”

“Honestly, all I care about is getting this job finished.”

“Yeah. I just wish I knew what I signed up for.”

“Something tells me you wouldn’t have signed up to do this if you thought it was shady.”

“Why do you say that?”

She paused to take a drink from her water bottle. “You sure you’re okay using that thing?” She nodded at the flare gun resting in Rett’s lap and took a drink from her water bottle.

“Can’t be that hard.” Rett coughed against the dirt irritating his throat.

Bryn tossed him the water bottle. “You couldn’t do it in the depot.”

Rett glowered at the distant ridge of the ravine as he took a drink. “That was different.”

“That guy would have hurt you, same as a bug would.”

“Good to know you don’t have qualms about shooting people. Thanks for the warning. By the way, I think I’ll hold on to the gun from now on.”

“You’re not upset that he pointed that same gun at you?”

“I hope you see the irony in what you just said.”

Bryn went back to shoveling, head down. “You told me before that you would defend yourself if you had to.”

“Don’t you ever wonder what kind of person you might be if there was no ‘had to’?”

Bryn paused, leaned on her handle. “You don’t remember anything about me. Do you?”

Nausea and anxiety roiled in Rett’s stomach. He tried to shift his attention to the images surfacing in his mind. “I remember—” How it felt to be close to her, to hear her say his name. What it was like when she looked at him, angry or scared or otherwise.

“You remember what?”

“I remember…” It came to him suddenly: “… that you have a boyfriend.”

Bryn plucked the shovel out of the dirt. “That’s right.” Sliced into the soft ground. “I’ve been waiting for that to come back to you.”

Rett didn’t know why she seemed so annoyed by it. He was the one who should be bothered.

“Any signal yet?” Bryn asked.

Rett checked the display. “Not yet.” He coughed into his sleeve, trying to clear his lungs of dust. The scrape of the shovel accompanied the sound, along with the patter of rocks falling down a steep slope.

The sound came again—rocks tumbling. Rett looked up to find a shadow haunting the ridge.

A bug.

He raised the gun, his heart beating wildly.

Just as he fired, Bryn pulled his arm down and the shot went low. A sputter of sparks and a cloud of blue smoke filled a curve of the ravine, sending the bug scuttling back over the ridge.

“What’re you doing?” Rett cried.

“Don’t shoot up there!” Bryn answered. “That man said the government is keeping tabs on this place. They’ll see the flare and know we’re here.”

“I thought you wanted to get found.”

“Not until we find what we’re looking for.”

Rett scanned the ridge again. The creature had gone.

“I think you scared it,” Bryn said.

“Or proved to it that I can’t aim.”

“If someone sees that flare and comes after us, we can’t finish this job.”

“I get it.” Rett grabbed the pack from the dirt and searched inside for another flare. “But if that thing comes after us, we’re not finishing the job, either.” He snapped open the barrel and slid the cartridge inside. “I don’t much feel like starting over again. Or, you know, dying.”

The shovel rang against dirt and gravel. “Just watch my back,” Bryn said. “If it comes down here, then shoot it.”

“I have your permission?” Rett asked.

“Do you want to get paid for this job or don’t you?” Bryn snapped.

“Yes, I want to get paid,” Rett snapped back.

“So you remember that at least.”

Rett dragged his sleeve across the back of his sweaty neck. He thought of his mother, the workhouse. “Yeah, I remember.” His mother had always worked so hard to convince him that he’d be better off on his own, that he shouldn’t worry about her.

He scrubbed his hands over his face. How could she think that?

For a minute there was only the chuck of the shovel and the sound of Bryn’s labored breathing as she worked.

Rett kept his gaze trained on the ridge where he’d seen the bug. “What’re you going to do with the money?”

A scoop of dirt hit the pile. “Going to meet up with my boyfriend. Share it with him.”

“He’s waiting for you somewhere?”

Bryn frowned at the dirt. “I figure, if you get enough money, people will find you.”

Rett swallowed. His throat was choked with the dust Bryn was making. He wasn’t so sure what she said was true.

Bryn used her sleeve to wipe sweat from her face. “Do you remember any of the conversations we had before?”

“Why don’t you just tell me what it is you keep waiting for me to remember?”

“I’m just trying to point out that you barely know me. Barely remember me, whatever.” She went back to digging.

“If you’re trying to tell me not to trust you, too late. Although, thanks for letting me hold the gun, then.”

Thunk. The shovel hit something hard.

Bryn looked up at Rett, her gaze electric.

Rett scrambled toward the hole to see what she’d found. Bryn fell to her knees and used the shovel blade to pry a small black box out of the dirt.

“What is it?” Rett asked.

“Some electronic thing.”

“Is that what we’re supposed to find?”

Bryn jabbed at a small bulb at the corner of the box. “Whatever it is, it’s not turned on.” She turned it over to examine it, and then ran her fingers all over it. “No power switch.” She bent lower over it. “Wait. It says something near this little bulb.”

She held it up for Rett to see the tiny white letters: SIGNAL. “Light’s not on—no signal,” he said. “Just like the GPS units.”

Bryn frowned, turning the box over and over in her hands. “‘They know when you go digging things up.’”

“What?”

“That’s what the man said. That the government would know if we tried to dig up something they buried. But how would they know?”

“Cameras?” Rett glanced around, but he already knew they’d have seen any cameras.

“I don’t think this is the thing we’re supposed to find. I think this is the thing that tells them we’re about to find what we’ve been looking for.” She tapped her shovel in the dirt. “I think there’s something else down here.”

“So this box is what—some kind of alarm? But it’s not working?”

“How would it work? It’d have to send out a signal, right? So, the minute we dig it up, it picks up signal, and that’s what alerts the government that we’re digging where they don’t want us to dig.”

“Good thing the satellite’s not working then. No signal.”

In response, Bryn dropped the box at her feet and brought the shovel down on it, over and over. The metal housing cracked and flew apart to reveal wire innards and circuit boards.

“Bryn.”

Bryn went on hammering. Bam bam bam, until the pieces flew apart.

Rett stared at her while her breath heaved. “Bryn. I think it’s dead.”

Bryn gave him a brief glance. “The satellites are going to come back online any second. We got here a little faster than last time, but not by much.” She looked down at the splintered device and seemed to register its destruction for the first time.

Rett gaped at it in horror. “I hope that wasn’t the thing we were supposed to come find.”

“Trust me, I have a feeling about this.” Bryn held out the shovel. “Here.”

Rett was about to trade the gun for it when a loud beep sounded from the GPS unit in his other hand.

Bryn tensed. “Was that—?”

The display showed the antenna icon, this time with a set of concentric rings. “Signal,” Rett said.

They both looked down at the electronic components strewn in the dirt. A tiny red light blinked in a nest of wires.

Bryn hacked at it with the shovel. The light went out.

Rett chewed his lip. “Think it sent out a signal?”

“Don’t know.” Bryn stared at it, almost daring it to turn on again while she stood guard with the shovel. “Hope not.”

“Guess we’d better hurry either way.” Rett scanned the ravine for signs of hungry bugs.

Bryn was red-faced and sweating. She glared at the busted metal casing with an anger that Rett thought might really be fear. It unnerved him, the way she could bring out that intensity and then lock it away again. Is it locked inside of me somewhere, too? he wondered.

He handed Bryn the gun and took the shovel. “Go sit in the shade. I’ll keep an eye out for bugs while I dig.”

Bryn plodded over to the wall of the ravine and sat. Just as Rett took up digging, she said, “He trusted me and I screwed him over. My boyfriend. I told you but I guess you don’t remember.”

Rett’s muscles locked.

“No one’s waiting for me when I get out of here,” Bryn went on. “He doesn’t want me to find him.”

Her words found some hollow place inside of Rett and made it ring.

He wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t think like that. That things would seem better once they got out of here.

But he couldn’t.

What if my mother isn’t waiting for me?

He waited a moment for his frozen muscles to thaw and then lost himself in his work.

10:27 A.M.

Every time Rett stopped digging to rest, doubt crept over him.

Only a little water was left in the bottle waiting at the edge of the hole he and Bryn had dug. It was the last bottle, too. Nothing left after this except what was in the Mylar pouches, and that would be his last defense against thirst and nausea.

He snatched up the water bottle and held it to his lips. Bryn watched him from the shaded edge of the ravine. The gun rested on her knee. Her gaze lingered for a moment while Rett drank, and then she looked away. Worried about the water? Rett wondered. Or maybe— He thought of all the glances he’d taken at her when she wasn’t paying attention. Maybe she just likes looking at me.

He shivered at the thought. Then his gaze went back to the gun. She pointed it at me, he told himself, trying to gauge how he felt about it. She tried to scare me with it.

But his doubts were eclipsed by the memory of Bryn standing close, her hand brushing his hip as she took the gun from his pocket.

He shook the thought away. They were dead if they didn’t finish this job. They were almost out of water. Exhausted, alone.

He tipped the water bottle to drink the last of what was inside. But then he stopped, lowered the bottle. A sound floated to him from the shaded edge of the ravine: Bryn was humming. Rett stood frozen, hypnotized by the tune. It seemed to reach deep into his fractured memory. “What’s that song?” he asked.

Bryn had her hand draped over one knee now, dangling the flare gun. Rett’s question seemed to snap her out of a dream. “What?”

“The song you were humming just now.”

The lyrics floated out from some recess in his mind:

One lonely lighthouse

Two in a boat

Three gulls circle

Four clouds float.

“About a lighthouse,” he said to Bryn, “and a boat.”

Bryn frowned. She started the tune over again, this time mumbling the lyrics. “I think they taught it to us. Scatter.”

“What for?”

“Don’t know.”

Rett probed the dirt with his shovel. He stopped. The tune needled at him. “They taught it to us?” he echoed.

“Doesn’t make much sense, though,” Bryn said. “A lighthouse and a boat.”

No, it doesn’t, Rett thought as he went back to digging. Unless it isn’t really meant to be about this place.

Just then he remembered something Scatter had told him. He froze with the shovel still sticking out of the dirt. “It signals the mechanism,” he said. “The mechanism in our heads.”

“You said that before. What does it mean?”

Rett pulled the shovel free and started digging again, trying to remember more. Bryn came over to squint down at him, but she couldn’t seem to remember, either.

And then—thunk. The shovel hit something.

Bryn looked at Rett, looked down at the dirt where a gleam of silver showed through. Rett scraped away a swath of dirt with the shovel blade. More silver.

Rett dropped to his knees and swiped at the dirt with his hands. Bryn knelt next to him and did the same until they had uncovered a metal panel, two feet square. “What is it?” Bryn said.

“Are those words?” Rett used his fingers to wipe dirt from the grooves in the metal—letters stamped onto the panel’s face.

“It’s the song.” Bryn gasped. “And there’s more to it.”

Rett read them aloud:

“One lonely lighthouse

Two in a boat

Three gulls circle

Four clouds float.”

He took a breath and read the rest:

“Five foaming waves fall

Six stars glow

Seven fish follow

Eight steps home.”

The last word echoed in the stillness: home.

I want to go home, Rett thought. “The song is supposed to signal the mechanism in our heads,” he said. “We just didn’t have the whole song before.”

“Is it supposed to—?” Bryn’s question hung in the air, unfinished.

“Eight steps home,” Rett mumbled. “This song is supposed to help us find our way back.”

“But what does it mean? Eight steps—what does that mean?”

Rett ran a finger down the lines of stamped letters. “It’s a numbered list.” He’d used the list himself to remember what to do: One, change your jumpsuit. Two, find some water. “I think the song is a memory device, something to help us remember how to signal the mechanism.”

“We signal the mechanism by singing the song—the whole song.”

Rett shook his head. “By saying the words. Eight words, one right after the other. One from each line—like a passphrase.”

Rett forgot his thirst, forgot the blisters on his hands and feet, forgot the nausea in his lurching stomach. They could get home. Somehow, eight words from this song would send out a signal, and they would escape this wasteland.

“We can’t go back yet. We have to know what this thing is first.” Bryn tapped on the metal panel. It loosened in the dirt.

Rett shuffled his tired feet in the dirt. He wanted to get out of this place, before any more hungry bugs came along, before he collapsed in the dirt from exhaustion. He wanted to make sure the words would really work.

But if they really were here to do a job, Bryn was right—they had to finish it.

And then—home. Payday. Money for his mother’s treatment.

If she still waited for him.

Bryn pried at an edge of the metal and the whole panel came up like a lid. Underneath lay another metal face inset with a digital display. A list of names took up most of the screen, each followed by a string of numbers and then a tiny icon of an antenna emitting concentric rings.

Cay, Vanessa 118173558

Duvall, Tamara 781778128

Torrez, Andy 817842374

Ward, Bryn 812419393

Ward, Rett 123779243

Stein, Erik 931211466

Michel, Gwynne 617741717

Hotchkiss, Charles 648127353

Reeder, Gayle 968473143

Loyd, Jason 143785017

Nguyen, James 873563755

 …

Bryn traced the list with a trembling finger. Her hand stopped at WARD, BRYN. “Rett…”

All the blood drained from Rett’s head. “Our names.”

Bryn moved her finger to the antenna icons next to their names. Theirs each had more concentric rings than any other name.

“What does it mean?” Rett wondered aloud.

“We’re giving out some kind of signal,” Bryn breathed. “And this thing is picking it up.”

“Or the other way around.”

Bryn trailed her fingers over the display. The gesture brushed away the dirt along one corner of the screen, and Rett noticed a small logo emblazoned there. Something cold and hard dropped into his stomach. “Bryn, look.”

She followed his gaze to the graph of overlapping lines accompanied by a single word. “Scatter,” Bryn read. “This device belongs to Scatter.”

The silver of the box gleamed in the angled light. Rett reached into his pocket and brought out the rock he’d found in the depot. The bright veins flashed silver.

“Where did you get that?” Bryn asked.

“From the depot.”

Bryn took the rock from him. “That man said Scatter was collecting meteorites. So they could strip an alloy from them.”

“So they could build this thing,” Rett agreed, surveying the box. “But what is it?”

Bryn examined the display again—the list of names, the antenna icons. “The mechanisms they put in our heads…”

“They’re communicating with this box. Why?”

Bryn mumbled something to herself. Rett strained to make out the words. “Every time we get scared, we start over,” Bryn said. “The mechanisms in our head know when we need to get away. They send a signal … and this box sends a signal back…”

“Why? What does it do?”

Bryn turned to him, a faraway look in her eyes. “The GPS unit. The date—what’s the date on the display?”

Why does it matter? But Rett took the unit out of his pocket and handed it to Bryn.

“Still wrong,” Bryn said. “Six years in the future.”

“It’s broken.”

“No. It can’t be wrong. It’s connected to a satellite.”

Rett let out an impatient huff. “The satellite’s wrong.” Who cares?

“It’s not wrong.” Bryn pocketed the unit with a trembling hand. “We woke up in the depot—no, outside the depot. We just showed up there. That’s how we first got to this place. We showed up six years in the future.”

“What?” Rett shook his head again. “That doesn’t make any sense.” But the images swimming in his head said otherwise: dates printed on foil and scratched into the metal of a wall in the depot. All future dates.

“And every time we get scared, we go back to that original point,” Bryn said. “Because of the mechanisms in our heads. Because of this box.”

“Are you saying—?” Rett couldn’t quite make the words come out.

“We’ve been traveling in time,” Bryn said. “And this box is how we’ve been doing it.”

Rett’s fingers went to the scar on his scalp before he realized what he was doing. They put something in our heads … An urgent voice came to him: There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it.

They’d sent him to do a job. In the future. Some experiment they weren’t willing to try on themselves. Only on orphans no one would miss if they never came back.

“Why did Scatter send us to dig up their own device?” Rett wondered aloud.

Bryn touched the silvery metal. “The government’s guarding this thing.”

“Maybe they know Scatter is using it and they’re trying to catch them.” Rett fought against the panic needling its way under his skin. “Maybe they don’t want Scatter to use it.”

“But why?”

“Maybe the government wants to use it for themselves.”

Bryn lifted her gaze to Rett’s, her eyes wide. “They could use this device to go back in time. Reverse the experiment that turned this place into a wasteland. That made everyone sick.”

Rett took in the sandy crawl surrounding them. “It doesn’t look like they’re doing that.” Why not? If we can go to the future, why not to the past? His nerves went electric at the thought. We could go to the past and prevent this disaster from ever starting. My mother would never have gotten sick, we’d never have gone hungry. And all those other people—

“They don’t want to,” Bryn said. “They don’t want to change what they did. The man in the depot said all the government really cares about is getting more rare metals. They need to use this crisis as an excuse to go to war.”

Rett felt as if he were sinking into the soft dirt. “Scatter could use this device to go back in time and make everything better, but the government’s trying to stop them.”

Bryn’s voice shook when she next spoke. “Which means we walked right into the government’s trap.”

A distant hum that had been building in Rett’s ears now grew too loud to ignore. He looked up. Far off, a black smudge moved across the sky. “The signal from the alarm box,” Rett said, rigid with fear. “The government knows we’re here.”

Bryn followed his gaze. “A helicopter. They’re coming for us.”

“They know we found the device. They don’t want it dug up.”

The buzz of the helicopter was loud enough now that Bryn had to raise her voice. “Why did Scatter send us here in the first place? Are we supposed to bring this back with us?”

Rett looked from the device to the helicopter, his heart beating to match the thrum of the blades. Wind from the blades whipped up the dirt around them so that Rett had to cover his face with his arm. “We have to go now.”

The helicopter descended. Rett gripped the sides of the box, hoping it would go with him wherever he was transported to. After a moment, Bryn did the same, her hands touching his. “Lighthouse,” Rett said, and Bryn joined in. “Boat, gulls, clouds.” The wind from the helicopter’s rotors tore the sound from their throats. “Waves, stars, fish, home—”

2:07 P.M.

The drum of the helicopter gave way to the low hum of an air vent. The whip of wind and dirt vanished. Rett sat in a stuffed armchair, facing a window that looked out on a garden where green vines tumbled down to meet a thicket of green leaves. His mouth watered at the sight.

He eased himself out of the chair and found cool wood under his bare feet. Pain and thirst no longer knocked a steady beat against the inside of his skull. Air from a vent ruffled the sleeves of his clean white jumpsuit.

A crumbling canyon. Then—a cool, clean room.

The shock of it made his legs tremble so that he almost had to sit back down. Where am I?

A narrow bed lay along one wall of the small room, a bookcase along another. The window shared space with a nicked wooden desk. A pair of cardboard slippers stuck out from under the armchair. Rett moved to a record player on a little table and set the needle in the groove of the record waiting there. A tinkling melody filled the room, so familiar he stumbled back. The song. The one Bryn sang in the depot.

Bryn.

Where is she?

What is this place?

He yanked open a desk drawer. Inside lay a single sheet of thick stationery marked with a logo of jagged lines. Familiar words were printed on it.

…

One lonely lighthouse

Two in a boat

Three gulls circle

Four clouds float.

Five foaming waves fall

Six stars glow

Seven fish follow

Eight steps home.

…

The song. The passphrase that had initiated their return home.

I’m home, Rett thought, testing the idea. Is this home?

He looked around the room. No metal walls, no buttons or levers. No dust or mysterious gouges. Only a bed, a desk, a table, a bookshelf.

A window showing the green world outside.

He opened another drawer in the desk and found a sheaf of papers inside. Sketches of strange artifacts: amulets and staffs and a battered treasure chest. I drew these. He recognized them from the comics he’d created at Walling, except these sketches were smoother, the shading better. I sat at this desk and drew these.

He touched the drawing of the treasure chest and conjured an image of a metal box unearthed from a wasteland. Unease settled over him. I was just in a wasteland, and now …

He turned to take in the room again: the bookshelf too nice to belong in Walling, the narrow bed awash with sunlight.

The keypad over the door handle.

He scrabbled at the handle, punched the keypad. “Hey!” The door shuddered under his fists. “Hey!”

He landed a kick on the door, and then, to his surprise, it opened.

A woman in a white lab coat stood on the other side, holding the door handle.

I know her. Flushed cheeks, shatterproof expression. He knew what her voice would sound like before she spoke: calm, careful.

“Rett?” She peered at him, eyes wide with concern. “Is everything okay?”

He gaped at her, picturing her standing over a hospital bed, listening to her urgent warning in his ear. You’ll have to find it …

Two men in white scrubs stepped into the room with her, and then Rett found himself sitting on the narrow bed while a penlight shone in his eyes. One of the medics held his wrist, checking his pulse.

“He seems disoriented. Rett, how do you feel?” The woman’s musical lilt worked like a spell to calm Rett’s nerves.

But something was happening to him while he sat trembling under her concerned gaze. The room around him seemed to gather closer, or at least, it was losing its strangeness. He felt he had sat in this place before, had spent nights sleeping in this bed, days gazing out that single window into the bright garden. He knew this woman, Dr. Wells. In fact, he’d lived in this room for weeks—months, maybe. Ever since he’d left Walling Home.

But how could that be true?

“Rett?” Wells’s voice cut through his tangled thoughts. “You know it will take some time. You can’t expect to learn how to use the mechanism right away.”

Rett stared at the logo on her shirt, the overlapping jagged lines. Reality splintering to pieces, he thought. I was lost in a wasteland, I’m safe in this room. It didn’t make any sense.

“The mechanism,” he mumbled, touching the scar on his scalp.

Wells lowered herself into the armchair facing the bed and gave him a sympathetic smile. “It may be years before you’re able to use it. These bursts of frustration, pounding on the door—”

“Years?” Rett didn’t understand. “But I’ve used it already.”

Wells’s gaze snapped to the medics standing now to one side of the bed. One of them entered a number on the keypad, and then they both slipped out and closed the door behind them. Rett felt the click of the lock down to his bones.

“Rett.” The woman’s voice trembled with what Rett thought might be surprise. She leaned forward to claim his attention and settled her featherlight fingers on his arm. “Rett, can you tell me the coordinates?”

“The coordinates?” Rett echoed, unnerved by her sudden fascination.

Uncertainly shadowed her gaze.

“I didn’t get the device,” Rett admitted. “I found it, but I didn’t bring it back here.”

A flicker of confusion crossed Wells’s face. “Do you know the coordinates?”

Rett closed his eyes, recalling the coordinates he’d entered into the GPS unit in the wasteland. He recited them.

When he opened his eyes, she was fumbling with her tablet, pecking at the screen with a shaking finger. She read something in the display and then looked up at Rett, mouth agape.

The next moment, she straightened, her face blank.

What was that about? Rett wondered.

“Tell me what happened—how you got the coordinates,” Wells said in her careful voice.

The air coming through the vent chilled Rett’s neck. But his skin still remembered the heat of the wasteland, the itch of sweat mingling with dirt. “I was in a wasteland.” Out in the wasteland, digging in the sun—and then here, in the cool air. “It was terrible—nothing alive for miles around. Like an ocean, a poisoned ocean.”

Wells’s hand settled on his arm again, and he calmed.

“Bryn was there, too,” he said. “Good thing—I don’t know if I would have survived on my own.”

Wells gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Your mechanisms are synced.”

“Synced?”

“So that if you should find yourself in the future, she will find herself in the future, too.”

A thousand needles pricked Rett’s skin. “You sent us to the future.” Six years into the future. How can that be possible?

“We activated the mechanism.” Wells gave him a surprised smile. “We didn’t realize you would try to use it so soon.”

Rett touched his scar again. His fingers curled away almost instantly. We were right. They put something in our heads. It sent us to the future. “You sent us to find something: the device in the wasteland.”

“You found the device?”

“Yes, we had to dig it up. We hiked for miles, we had hardly any water.”

Her gaze flicked from Rett to the tablet she still held, as if she didn’t know which of them to consult. “That wasn’t part of the plan. If you were ever able to get the mechanism to work, if you were able to reach the future, you were supposed to get the coordinates from representatives in Scatter Labs.”

Scatter Labs—the phrase rang like a bell in his head. That’s where I am: Scatter Labs, six years before the nightmare in Scatter 3.

And I was supposed to stay in these labs when I traveled to the future. But somehow I ended up in that depot in the wasteland.

“That sounds like a lovely plan,” Rett said with a frustrated sigh. “Much nicer than almost dying of thirst in a metal canister. Or of injuries in a wasteland.”

Wells studied him for a moment, head tipped to one side as if he were a puzzle to solve. “You dug up the device.” Her brow furrowed. “Did you see the ID codes? The string of numbers that would have been next to your name?” Her fingers tightened around the edge of her tablet so that Rett thought the screen might shatter.

“I don’t remember. Was I supposed to remember those, too?”

“No, you’ve done fine.” She patted his arm, and Rett was embarrassed to find himself happy to gain her approval. She waited for him to say something, her gaze probing. “What else can you tell me?”

What does she want me to say? “You only wanted the coordinates? Because … someone stole the device from Scatter? And you’re trying to find it?” Helicopter blades thrummed in his head. The government was guarding it. “They put it in the middle of that wasteland.”

“You’re confused. You weren’t supposed to find the device.”

Frustration clawed at Rett. “Can’t you just explain it from the beginning?”

Wells took a long breath that seemed meant to prove her patience. “We successfully implanted the mechanism in your head ten weeks ago.”

“Ten weeks?”

“We turned it on and synced it with Bryn’s. You were told that if you were able to get the mechanism to work—if you ever reached the future—you should ask someone at Scatter Labs for the coordinates of the device. Then you would return to your origin time—here, to this time—and report the coordinates. That would prove that you had visited the future.”

Rett shook his head, trying to clear away the static behind his eyes. “How would that prove it?”

“Because the device doesn’t exist now, in our time.”

Now Rett was really confused. “How do you know it exists in the future?”

“Because it’s sending a signal all the way here to the past. When our team first discovered that signal, we founded Scatter Labs to investigate it. All of our research and development has gone into finding ways to engage with the signal. This was a test run, meant to prove that you could successfully employ the mechanism in your head—that you could travel to the future.”

“The device is sending a signal from the future? And that signal is what allowed me and Bryn to time travel?”

“It interacts with the mechanisms in your head.” Her gaze went to his scar. “The mechanism opens your consciousness and the signal guides it to other moments in time, moments in your own future.”

Rett shook his head. “What does that mean?”

Wells thought for a moment, her gaze roving the room. “Normally, your consciousness is tied to the present.” She spotted the sheet of stationery on the desk and picked it up. “Your life is like a list of moments that you read in order.”

She held the paper before him so that the blank side faced him, and ran her finger down it like she would down a list.

Except Rett’s side of the paper wasn’t actually blank.

A message was scrawled there that made Rett’s heart speed up.

Wells continued, oblivious to Rett’s anxiety: “But what if you could skip down the list? Skim over some of those moments and read the ones toward the bottom of the paper?”

Rett wanted to nod, to show he was following and not thinking about the words scrawled just next to the woman’s fingers wrapped around the paper. But his muscles wouldn’t obey.

“That’s what the mechanism in your head does,” Wells went on. “It allows you to … skip ahead.” She laid the paper on the bed, message-side down, and Rett could breathe again. “We’ve been over this before. Do you understand now?”

“So you’re saying I…” Rett tore his eyes from the paper on the bed and struggled to process what she’d told him. “I somehow moved forward to a time in my life when…” His stomach lurched as he realized— “You’re saying that the wasteland—being trapped there—that’s my future? That’s where I’ll be six years from now? I skipped ahead in my own life, and that’s where I end up?”

No. That can’t be.

Please say it’s not true.

Wells smoothed Rett’s sleeve. “I’m saying—”

He jerked away. “I’m supposed to find my mom. She’s sick, she needs me—”

“Of course. We can help you with that.” Her voice was smooth, placating. “Whatever you experienced in your future, it’s not set in stone.”

“Other people have changed their futures, then?”

Wells hesitated. “No one’s ever done this before.”

“No one…” Rett gripped the edge of the bed. “You’re saying Bryn and I are the first people you’ve tried this on?”

Wells pressed her lips together. She seemed to be trying to come up with something to say.

Rett shot to his feet. “Where’s Bryn?”

“She’s fine.” Wells held up her hands, as if Rett were a spooked animal she needed to corral. “She’s resting now. Everything’s fine. Please calm down.”

“I want out of here.” Rett jerked toward the door. “I want to see Bryn and then we’re leaving.”

Wells stood, smiling at him as she smoothed her lab coat. “That’s fine. But you need to rest first. You’ve been through a lot.” She tapped at her tablet. “I’ll have a medic come back and run some tests to make sure everything’s checking out okay. And then you can go.”

Rett raked his fingers through his short hair. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted to go now.

Wells put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done a huge thing for this program, for this country.”

The country?

She must mean the wasteland—now Scatter can go back in time and make sure the government never carries out its terrible experiment. Is that it? Could they really undo all of that?

“The government was guarding your device,” he told Wells. “In the future—six years from now, in the wasteland.”

The doctor’s face went as pale as her lab coat. “The government?”

“I don’t think they want Scatter to use it to go back in time and prevent them from carrying out their experiment.”

For a moment there was only the sigh of the air in the vent, the rustle of leaves outside the window. Wells turned toward the door. “You should rest. You’re back in your own time now, back where you started.” She brushed her hand over Rett’s head, like his mother used to do ages ago, before he’d gone to Walling, before he’d left Walling and come to Scatter Labs. Rett’s lead-heavy heart lightened a little. “None of those things has happened yet. That’s all in the future and you don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

Everything will get better. Rett could hear his mother promising it in his head.

His mother—

“The money?” he asked.

“Fifty thousand, as promised,” Wells said over her shoulder as she slid a keycard through a slot over the door handle.

Rett went numb with disbelief.

“If there’s anything you need, I’ll make sure you have it,” Dr. Wells said, smiling at Rett as she opened the door. “You’re safe here.” Her face glowed in the sunlight coming through the window, and for a moment, she could have been his mother singing over him to wake him from a dream.

Then she closed the door, and Rett sank onto the bed, weary to his bones. You’re safe here, he told himself, basking in the soft light filtering through the leaves, the quiet hum of the air vent. You’ll have your money, you’ll have everything you need.

His hand brushed a crumpled paper.

He froze, wishing he could forget what was written on the other side. Maybe I imagined it, maybe it wasn’t real.

He turned the paper over.

They’re lying. Don’t trust them.—Bryn

4:39 P.M.

Rett woke to sunlight and stirring leaves. Late afternoon, by the slant of the light. He must have slept for hours.

A plate of food waited on the desk. Rett devoured cheese and crusty rolls and the largest plums he’d ever laid eyes on. An entire pitcher of chilled water vanished next. He was unwrapping a Hershey bar when his gaze fell on Bryn’s note. They’re lying. Don’t trust them.

The food in Rett’s stomach shifted. What does Bryn know that I don’t?

Or …

Wasn’t the truth that Bryn had a hard time trusting anyone? Hadn’t she told him that she felt better off on her own?

Annoyance hummed underneath Rett’s thoughts. What’s so bad about waking up in a nice place with real food and someone to take care of you?

Was he wrong for wanting to be here rather than in Walling’s cold dormitories? Scatter’s nightmare depot?

He plucked the note from the desktop. He needed to put it out of sight. Not for his own peace of mind, but because he worried what Dr. Wells might think if she saw it. Rett would ask her to take him to Bryn, and then he’d find out why Bryn had written the note. The two of them would figure this out together.

He went to the bookshelf, rows of gleaming leather spines that seemed to prove Scatter thought better of him than Walling ever had. He could tuck the note into one of the books, keep it secret.

He tugged on one of the spines to pull the book from the shelf, but it didn’t budge.

He tried another book, but it didn’t budge, either. Tried reaching to the back of the shelf. His fingers jammed against wood.

Fake. They’re all fake. The spines were only thick foam glued to the back of a too-shallow bookcase.

Just then the door clicked open. Rett stuffed Bryn’s note into his pocket as Dr. Wells entered the room.

“Rett? How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” Rett wasn’t sure why he felt guilty, but he turned away from the strange bookshelf. “Where’s Bryn?”

Wells’s smile seemed to say that she was pleased Rett had thought of his partner. “She’s fine. She’s in her room. She said she needed some time to rest. I thought you two wanted to leave together, so I assumed you would stay until she’s ready.”

Rett noticed for the first time a pouch Dr. Wells held at her side. She held it out to him. “As promised.”

Rett took the bulging pouch and slowly unzipped it. His heart stopped.

Inside lay a thick wad of bills.

“You know…” Wells went to the armchair and sat, this time leaning on one chair arm like she wanted to divulge a secret. “There’s more where that came from.”

Rett pressed the pouch of money between his palms, reassured by how solid it felt.

“You and Bryn have achieved something incredible,” Wells said. “There’s so much more you could do for us.”

Rett zipped the pouch shut. “You want us to go back and stop the government from carrying out whatever experiment created that wasteland. Gave my mother cancer.”

“I would like to do that very much. But it isn’t possible.”

Rett’s heart was a stone dropping into deep water.

“Of course we’ve thought about how we could do that, but it wouldn’t work.” Wells folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head to show her regret. “You couldn’t travel back any farther than the time at which the mechanism was implanted in your brain. So our only option at the moment is to look to the future.”

“Then what kind of job do you want me to do?” Rett cradled the pouch of money against his stomach.

Wells leaned toward him, her eyes shining. “With your ability, we can know about disasters before they happen. Prevent the kinds of horrible things that made your mother and all those other people sick. All you would have to do is get the information from the future and then give it to us now.”

“I don’t exactly know how to do that. Last time I ended up in the middle of a wasteland.”

“We need to perfect your technique, that’s all.” She gave him a patient smile. “We could start with something very simple. And if you complete the job, we could give you, say, another fifty thousand.”

Rett’s fingers went numb. He almost dropped the pouch of money.

“Scatter could make sure your mother is well taken care of, you know.”

Rett looked down at the brick of cash in the pouch he held. It really was his after all, enough to make his mother well again. “And if I don’t want to do it?”

Wells gave him a small, sad smile. “Then I give you a code, you say it aloud, and that’s it—your mechanism dies and your work with us is finished.”

“Simple as that?”

She nodded. “You don’t have to decide right now.” She stood and gave her lab coat a brisk tug. “I just came in here because I thought you might want to go to the common room. There are a few new operatives there, and I remember you play a mean game of checkers.”

Rett flushed, and then felt stupid for caring that she knew about his one and only skill in life. Well, maybe not only. His drawing was improving, if the sketches in the desk were any proof.

“Why don’t I remember more about this place?” he asked her.

“It’s understandable, considering you’ve been jumping around in time. It’ll come back to you as you get your bearings.”

Rett felt she must be right. Already, he knew to expect the click of the cooling system turning on, and to avoid the nicks in the desktop if he was going to sketch. Other memories were starting to surface, too, mundane visions of tiled hallways, wooden checkers sets, padded chairs.

And then, as if those few memories had opened a gate in his mind, more rushed through: The director of Walling calling him into his office, telling him about an “exciting opportunity with a company named Scatter.” The surgery he’d undergone—the hospital bed, the bank of lights, the smell of antiseptic. Coming to live at Scatter Labs. Recovering in this very room, waiting for the day Scatter would call on him to use the mechanism in his head to force his consciousness into a time in his own future. Time travel, Rett thought, awestruck.

Wells held the door open, waiting for Rett to walk through. He shut the pouch of money in a desk drawer and then gave Wells an uncertain look.

“No one else will come in here,” she assured him. “It’s safe.”

He followed her into a tiled hallway. White walls and heavy doors guarded by keypads. Is Bryn behind one of these doors?

A single poster interrupted the white expanse of a long wall. It showed proposals for three identical, humped buildings.

Scatter 3. Rett stared at the label, startled by its familiarity. Three different depots, planned for construction. Three shelters to house the workers Scatter planned to send to the wasteland to collect meteorites so they could use the alloy to build their device.

A device that doesn’t exist yet, that will exist in the future, just like these depots.

He fought a wave of dizziness.

“Rett?” Wells put a steadying hand on his arm.

“That’s where I was,” Rett said, pointing at the depot in the poster. “It’s some kind of shelter for workers collecting meteorites. For Scatter.”

He watched her reaction, wondering if she would lie to him about the danger Scatter had put its workers in.

But she only nodded, her face smooth and calm as ever. “The meteorites have been there for some time, but we recently discovered that they’re traced with a rare alloy that’s hard to re-create in a lab. We’re still experimenting with making our own version of the alloy, but so far it’s proven unstable. We hope there are enough meteorites to provide us with the metals we need to create the device you found in the future.”

“If you find a way to make the alloy in your labs, you won’t need the meteorites? No one would have go into the wasteland?” And I won’t end up in your depot in six years.

Wells pursed her lips. Her gaze flicked toward the end of the hallway. “The truth is, the future echoes into the past. If we were going to find a way to replicate this alloy in the future, you wouldn’t have seen the depot six years from now. There wouldn’t be a depot.”

“So … that proves that the meteorites are the only source for the metal you need?”

The look in her eyes changed from intrigue to pity as she realized why he wanted to know. “I said before that the future isn’t set in stone. We can’t be sure exactly what will happen, can we? If you decide to stay here, I can promise you that I’ll do everything I can to make sure nothing bad happens to you.”

She waited until Rett gave her a reluctant smile and then steered him down the hallway. At the last door, she said, “I’ll be back to check on you.”

The common room was like Walling’s rec room but without the holes in the walls or stains on the furniture or busted lights sending the place into gloom. Basically, nothing at all like Walling. Gleaming leather couches clustered around a television, where a couple of teens in jumpsuits watched a show with a roaring laugh track. Arcade games lined another wall, and a pool table hunkered in a corner. Rett realized he already knew where he could find the checkers set (underneath the table along the far wall) and which movies he could play on the TV (mostly comedies and patriotic thrillers). He felt he’d spent hours slumped on the couches and scratching up the pool table. He even remembered that he could get snacks delivered if he asked—

—the guard standing next to the door.

It’s not going to be easy to duck out of here to find Bryn.

Dr. Wells had already left, so at least Rett only had one person to shake off. “I have to use the bathroom,” he tried.

“Over there.” The guard pointed to a door next to the pool table.

Rett had been hoping he’d need to go out of the common room to get to the bathroom, but it looked like he wasn’t allowed anywhere without a guard.

When he came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he didn’t even notice the guard still blocking the door to the hallway—his attention was locked on the girl sitting in an armchair facing the TV.

“Bryn?” He lurched toward her, but when the girl turned, Rett realized he didn’t know her.

“Who are you?” she asked, her dark eyes full of uncertainty. “I’m new.” She gestured at the line of stitches showing through her cropped hair, then shrank down in her chair as if embarrassed by the wound.

“I’m Rett.” He turned his head so she could see his scar. “Don’t worry, it gets better. Mine’s actually kind of cool. I swear it plays music when no one’s around.”

The girl’s mouth quirked. “They did say the mechanism they put in my brain is like an antenna.”

“I just wish I could switch channels. There’s only so much country music one guy can take.”

Another form stirred on the couch nearby, a boy not much younger than Rett who angled to shoot him a sharp look for interrupting the TV show.

“Do either of you know a girl named Bryn?” Rett asked as the boy slumped back down on the couch.

“We’re new,” the boy mumbled, sipping from a can of root beer, “like she said.”

“Who’s Bryn?” the girl asked.

“She’s…” Rett wasn’t sure how to explain it. The girl I was trapped in a wasteland with. The girl who helped me escape. But if he were going to give her the full picture, he’d have to tell her that ever since he had woken up in this place, something had lodged itself in his chest, something that blossomed into pain whenever he thought about Bryn locked away somewhere he couldn’t get to her. He settled for, “She’s my partner.”

The girl gave him a pitying look. “I heard they keep synced pairs separate after the first week or so.”

The boy on the couch stuck his head up to say, “I wouldn’t mind that. Maybe I could watch my show in peace.”

“Why would they do that?” Rett asked the girl. A familiar pain throbbed behind his eyes.

“You’re supposed to report on each other. So Scatter knows you’re completing the jobs they give you, the right way.”

The throb turned into a drumbeat.

The girl pulled her knees to her chest. “But don’t you think it’d be better if they let you be friends? If you had a connection to each other, maybe you could help each other more.”

“They only need one person to do the job,” the boy said from the couch. “The other person’s just a backup in case something happens to the first.” He gulped root beer while Rett tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his own stomach.

I need to find Bryn.

He glanced at the guard, whose gaze was fixed on the TV. Rett moved to where the guard wouldn’t see him, and then shot a hand out and knocked the can of root beer from the boy’s grasp.

“Hey!” The boy sprang up from the couch. “What the—”

Rett kicked the boy’s ankle. The boy tumbled to the floor. Rett hesitated, horrified by what he had done. I have to get out of here. “Something’s wrong,” Rett shouted to the guard. “I think he’s having a seizure.”

The guard spoke into his radio as he hurried to the boy’s side. Rett didn’t wait for whatever was coming next—he bolted into the hallway.

He ran past locked doors until he found an opening to duck into. Three men in black uniforms and matching black caps sat at the desk, glancing between monitors and a television tuned to a news channel.

Great, I found the security office.

The men had their attention focused on the screens, but if they turned around, they’d see Rett standing there. He inched backward, grateful for the blaring news program.

“The president-elect has promised to honor the treaty that his former opponent argued placed too many limits on imports of rare earths, or metals, into the country. The announcement comes as the treaty falls under new scrutiny…”

A blast of radio static made Rett jump back. One of the uniformed men turned from the monitors to speak into his radio, and Rett scurried around a corner, out of sight.

“Nothing on the monitors,” the man said into his radio. “I’ll do a visual now.”

Another door opened and Rett ducked, trapped in the hallway with nowhere to hide. But the man who came through the door was in too much of a hurry to notice him. He went running down the hallway in the other direction, lab coat flying behind him. Rett shot toward the door he’d just exited before the latch could close, and pushed it open to slip through.

Electrical components lay strewn over every surface of the room. Rett hunted through wires and metal casings, searching for a stray keycard that would let him into the rooms that lined the hallway. Bryn’s got to be in one of those rooms.

His hand bumped a terrarium on the cabinet top. Inside, fat black beetles lumbered over strips of bark, their jagged mandibles no longer than paper clips. Rett edged away from the glass. He had a feeling he’d dread the sight of bugs for the rest of his life.

He moved to another table, where his gaze lit on a small, familiar box in a nest of wires and screws—a half-finished device, with a tiny bulb in one corner under the word signal. For a moment, the heat of the wasteland beat down on the top of Rett’s head, and dust choked his lungs as he examined the tiny box. It’s the alarm box. The one the government was using to guard Scatter’s time travel device.

But what’s it doing here?

He shoved it in his pocket, going hot all over, needled by a fear he couldn’t explain. He turned back to the door, eager to move on. Bryn, where are you? I need you.

He stepped out into the hall. The door clicked shut behind him just as he realized someone stood there in the hallway.

A man in a khaki uniform looked up from the broom he’d been pushing over the tiles.

No, not a man. Someone just a couple of years older than Rett. Someone who gripped the broom with crooked, overlapping fingers.

“Garrick?”

A slow grin spread over the older boy’s face. “Oh, look. It’s the box boy.”

Rett cringed at the nickname. He tried not to recall the feeling of rough wood against his fists, of air going stale, of darkness pressing against his eyes—

“So it’s true.” Garrick looked over Rett’s jumpsuit, his bare feet. “Scatter did make you one of their test subjects. Out of the box and into the echo room, huh?”

Rett pushed on the door at his back, but it had already closed, and he couldn’t open it without a keycard or a code. “The what?”

“They stick you in a room with no one to talk to but yourself. Day after day. Just you and the echo of your own voice. I hear it when I walk down the hallways: people talking to themselves, bored out of their minds.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” Garrick nodded at his broom. “You think you’re the only orphan Scatter picked up from Walling? At least I didn’t get the science project treatment.”

A burst of radio static told Rett that a security guard loomed just around the corner. “I did a visual check,” came the guard’s voice. “He’s not in the south hallway.”

He means me, Rett thought, heart racing.

Garrick frowned in the direction of the security guard. He looked back at Rett, and realization widened his eyes.

“Don’t say anything,” Rett mouthed. “Please. Don’t tell him I’m here.”

“Tell me one reason I should help you,” Garrick said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you one reason I shouldn’t.” He held up a hand in front of Rett’s face, showing him the broken fingers that had never healed properly.

Rett winced at the sound that went through his mind: the crack of knuckles breaking against a wrench.

But then Bryn’s words came back to him: We do all kinds of things to survive.

I did what I had to do to survive, he told himself.

But how am I going to survive now? Cornered again. He glanced down the hallway and prayed the security guard would go into his office, wouldn’t come this way. “You can have some of the money,” he whispered to Garrick. “When Scatter pays me.”

“You think they’re going to pay you for this?” Garrick scoffed.

“They already did. Fifty thousand dollars. They said I was the first person to—”

“Shut up, you think I believe that?” Garrick crowded him close to the locked door. “Think I don’t know your game?” He jabbed Rett’s chest with his fist. “You always acted like you were better than the rest of us. Always saying someone was going to come take you home. But no one did. We both ended up here, didn’t we?”

Rett glanced down the hall again. The security guard must have heard them by now. He’d come around the corner any minute, find Rett in his obvious white jumpsuit. Take him back to his room before Rett had the chance to find Bryn.

Garrick grabbed the front of Rett’s suit. “Both of us landed here, but you’ll be stuck here like a rat in a lab while Scatter sends me out to one of their depots. I finish my job, go home, never need to sweep another floor in my life.”

Rett could hardly breathe with Garrick’s fist pressing into his chest, with the thought of the security guard rounding the corner at any moment. “You’re going to collect meteorites for Scatter?”

Rett pictured the poster of Scatter’s depot, and then the sun gleaming on the metal shell of Scatter 3. He imagined the hammer of fists on the jammed door, the sight of a corpse sprawled in the dirt …

“Garrick, listen, six years from now, if you hear of someone planning to go back to Scatter’s depots to scavenge their equipment—”

Garrick shoved his fist harder into Rett’s chest. “Are you calling me a thief?”

Rett struggled to breathe. He recalled an image of the man in the depot, the one who had come to scavenge Scatter’s equipment. The one I saw dead, drained by a bug-monster.

Could that have been Garrick? Six years in the future?

He studied Garrick’s face. Easy to do with it scowling just inches from his own.

But no, Garrick didn’t look anything like the man from the depot, even if Rett imagined six years added onto Garrick’s age.

Even so, if Garrick were going to work in the wasteland, he’d be working alongside whoever the scavenger was. He could warn him about what would happen if the man came back on that day—could warn him about the bugs that would hunt him down. “Listen—six years from now, there’s going to be a solar storm. It’s going to take down Scatter’s security system.”

Garrick took his hand from Rett’s chest and turned away, uninterested in what must sound to him like ranting.

Rett pressed on. “Someone who works for Scatter is going to break into their depots—”

“He’s over here,” Garrick called.

A man in a black uniform swung around the corner. He locked eyes on Rett and spoke into his radio.

Rett didn’t even hear what the man said. He grabbed at Garrick’s sleeve. “Garrick, listen, you need to know, six years from today—”

He doubled over as Garrick sank an elbow into his stomach. The next moment, a hand locked around his upper arm, and then Rett was scrambling down the hallway, pulled along by not one but two security guards in black Scatter uniforms.

“Check his pockets—what is that?” one of them said at the door to his room. “You go on a little shoplifting spree in the utility room, kid?”

He ripped from Rett’s pocket the small black box, the alarm. A keycard zipped through a slot, and then Rett went stumbling back into his room. But not before he saw what was printed on the inside of the half-finished alarm box in the security guard’s hand, the box that the government would use six years from now …

Scatter’s logo.

The door clicked shut and Rett sank onto the bed, shaking.

Six years from now, Scatter is the government.

8:01 P.M.

They’re lying. Don’t trust them.—Bryn

Rett clutched the paper in his hand, reading the words over and over while he lay on his bed.

More memories had surfaced in the time he’d sat alone on his bed while the light from the window died: Dr. Wells telling him that she’d switched on his mechanism, then explaining she had synced it with that of a girl named Bryn. He remembered spotting the girl in the hallways, in waiting areas, in the garden during exercise hours. Rett had recognized her from Walling, but he didn’t really start paying attention to her at Scatter Labs until the day he’d seen her leaning over a bed of daisies in the garden, struggling to conceal something in her pocket. “Hey,” he’d said, because he wanted to know what she was hiding. Something from the one of the medical rooms maybe—he’d been warned not to try to smuggle extra pain pills, and he could really use them for nights when the pain in his head wouldn’t let him sleep. Maybe she’d share.

The girl had straightened, her expression sharp as glass. And Rett saw what was spilling out of her pockets: a fringe of daisy petals. She had picked flowers and stuffed them into her pockets to take back to her room. “Did you get bored of staring at books you can’t open?” he asked her.

“They won’t give me real books,” she’d replied. “They said reading is too much of a strain for—” She flattened her hair over the spot where Rett thought her scar must be.

“They said it’s too dangerous after, you know, brain surgery.”

“Not to mention every other day,” Rett said, thinking about the comics that went around Walling: zombies and mutant soldiers and, most dangerous of all, ordinary kids rebelling against their captors.

He turned so she could see the scar running along the side of his own head, so she’d stop being self-conscious about her own scar.

“You look like you could use something to read, too,” she said. She pulled a stub of a pencil out of her pocket, along with a piece of paper, and scribbled something.

Rett held out his hand for the paper, but she reached and stuffed it into his pocket just as someone in a uniform came to show her back to her room. Then she was gone, and Rett wondered if he’d ever see her again, or if the mysterious note she’d shoved into his pocket would be all he had to remember her by.

The zip of a keycard called Rett back to the present. He sat up and jammed Bryn’s note into his pocket just as Dr. Wells stepped into the room.

“I heard you were upset,” she said, using her best no-need-to-try-to-escape-again voice.

Rett shifted his gaze to the wall behind her. “No one would agree to play checkers with me.”

She ignored his joke and lowered herself into the armchair. “Rett, I need to tell you something. Bryn decided to leave.”

Rett’s gaze snapped back to Wells. “She left?”

“This job is more than some people can handle—”

“She wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.” Rett clenched his fists. Would she? Heat rushed to his head.

“She said it was too painful.” Wells mouth twisted with pity. “She wanted me to tell you that she’s grateful for everything you did for her in the wasteland. But she felt she didn’t have it in her to do any more assignments for Scatter. We gave her the code to stop her mechanism from working and let her leave.”

Rett’s head swam. He didn’t know what to believe, but a twisting in his gut told him that Bryn wouldn’t have wanted to stay in Scatter Labs. She wouldn’t risk another trip to that wasteland.

“I know this is hard,” Wells went on. “I don’t want you to feel like Bryn didn’t care about you.”

Rett sank against the wall.

“I promised Scatter Labs would take good care of you.” Wells clasped her hands together. “The truth is, you’re the one with the unique talent, Rett. Bryn told us that it was thanks to you that both of you were able to find your way into the future.” She beamed at him so that he almost felt proud of himself.

All he really wanted was to see Bryn again.

“I promised you that if you did another assignment for us, I’d make sure both you and your mother were taken care of,” Well continued. “And they won’t be difficult assignments—nothing that puts you in danger. I’ll only ask you to gather information. We’ll start with something simple: You wake up four years from now and find out who the next president will be, then find your way back to this time and tell us.”

An alarm went off in Rett’s head. Is that how Scatter comes into power in the future? They align themselves with the candidate they know will win the next election?

Or do they use time travel to make sure their preferred candidate wins?

He looked down at the floor, trying to hide his feelings. “I could find out if the next president will get rid of the treaty the current guy won’t fight against. The one about the rare metals.” He waited to see if she’d fall into his trap, if she’d prove Scatter’s greed after all.

The garden beyond the window turned to a bank of shadows while the sun set. The leaves were jagged black shapes.

Wells said, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

Maybe I’ve got it wrong, Rett thought. Maybe Scatter really does want to make things better.

Bryn’s note crinkled in his pocket every time he shifted.

“Rett.” Wells sighed. “I know it’s hard to think about Bryn leaving you here. I know you’ve been left behind before.”

Rett felt like he’d been kicked in the chest.

“You’ve had to do a lot of things you didn’t want to do,” Wells said, “because no one ever took care of you like you needed them to.”

Something stirred deep within Rett: a ghost born of bitterness and anger.

“You deserve to be taken care of,” Wells said. “You shouldn’t have to take care of yourself any more. Let us take care of you.”

Rett’s bitterness melted into exhaustion and relief. Would it be so bad to stay here? He wouldn’t have to worry any more about his mother. Scatter would take care of her, would take care of them both.

“You need sleep.” Wells stood and moved to the door. “In the morning, we can talk more. Some of our team want you to debrief them on how you managed the incredible feat you pulled off.”

Rett slumped back against his pillow.

Wells swiped her card, and the door clicked open. She turned back to Rett. “I know this has been hard. But everything’s going to be better now.”

Then the door clicked shut, and Rett was alone.

The light outside the window had gotten so low as to leave Rett in near darkness. The click of the door echoed in his head, loud as the slamming of a box lid.

I’m safe here, he told himself.

So why didn’t he feel that way?

His gaze fell on the bookshelf. The rows of false books. They’re lying. Don’t trust them.

He shot up from the bed. I have to see for myself if Bryn is gone.

How am I supposed to find her?

He tried the door handle, but he knew there was no point. Why did he always seem to come back to this situation? I’m ten years old, trapped in a box, lid shut tight.

He’d waited so long that night, while Garrick held the lid shut, while the stars rushed past somewhere high above. He’d stopped banging on the lid and only prayed for Garrick to get bored and leave.

And then he’d finally remembered the trading cards in his pocket. There’s always something that can help.

The trading cards were only cheap bits of paper printed with historical facts, but they were rare currency in a place where you had little to call your own. He’d forced them out under the lid of the firewood box, one by one, until Garrick had hauled himself off the lid of the box to snatch them, and Rett was able to break free …

Rett pressed his ear against the door. Waited.

Finally: footsteps passing. A security guard, or a medic, or who knows.

Rett pulled hundred dollar bills from the zippered pouch and shoved them underneath the door, hard enough to send them zooming into the hallway.

The footsteps stopped.

Then quickened.

A keycard slowly passed through the slot on the other side of the door. Click. The door opened.

A man in a khaki uniform stood there, and Rett suddenly knew he’d been right: the man he met six years in the future, in the depot, wasn’t Garrick.

It was this man.

The man standing in the doorway, eyes wide with surprise under the brim of his black cap.

“You,” Rett said.

Confusion lined the man’s face. Rett imagined him lit by the green glow of a light stick, by muted sunlight coming through Scatter 3’s skylight. “Do I know you?” the man grunted.

“No. But you will.” Rett looked down at the bills in the man’s hand. “Or maybe you won’t.” Maybe the money would be enough to allow the man to leave Scatter’s employ. To avoid the wasteland altogether.

Rett had been hoping for anyone at all to open his door for him, but he was glad this man was the one who had found the money. Much as he recoiled from his memories of the man, he didn’t want him to end up as a bloodless corpse, sprawled in dirt.

“Here.” Rett thrust more bills at him and took the keycard from his hand. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. I hope it doesn’t happen again.”

The man frowned at him, at the money Rett had shoved into his hands. “You’re not trying to get me in trouble, are you?”

“No trouble. I think we’ve both had enough of that.” He scrambled out of the room before the man could change his mind. I’m coming, Bryn.

He slid the keycard through the slot on the next door over, hoping it was Bryn’s room. Yanked the door open.

The room was larger than his own. Two beds lay along separate walls. Rett crept toward one. A figure lay under the blankets, just visible in the light of the monitor next to the bed. An IV line trailed from the monitor to an arm.

“Bryn?” Rett whispered. He crept closer to the bed, letting the door shut behind him.

But the figure wasn’t Bryn. Propped on pillows lay a boy his age, gray-skinned and unconscious. Wires trailed out from under the blankets to connect to another monitor hooked onto the wall.

Rett recognized the boy from Walling—someone who used to kick soccer balls with him in the yard, who used to scrawl tilted zombies in the pages of Epidemic X—but he almost couldn’t believe this thin wraith was the same boy. He ran a hand over the boy’s forehead, over the sunken cheeks, but the figure didn’t stir.

Rett backed toward the door, stomach twisting. His hand shook so hard, it took three tries to get the keycard through the slot. Then he was in the hallway, fumbling to unlock the next door over.

When he opened the door, a slumped figure looked up at him from the bed.

Bryn.

The next moment, his arms were around her, his heartbeat thundering against hers. “Are you okay?”

She pressed her forehead into his cheek. “They told me you left. They said you took your money and…”

“No way I’d leave without you.” He fought against the image that rose in his mind: the wraithlike boy withering in the room next door. That’s not Bryn—she’s okay.

“They were trying their usual game on us,” Bryn said, “making us think no one else can take care of us but them.”

Rett’s heart sank. How could I have believed that Bryn left? He let go of Bryn so he could sit on the bed next to her and pull the paper out of his pocket. “I got your note.”

“What note?”

He held it out to her. Her fingers brushed his as she took it, and it was all he could do not to pull her to him again. She’s okay. She’s not sick, she’s okay … He couldn’t get the image of the too-thin boy out of his head. He looked Bryn over in the pale light, trying to memorize her profile, to burn it into his mind in place of the terrible visions he’d imagined he’d find when he’d opened her door—

“I must have written it before,” Bryn said. “Before we ended up in the wasteland.”

Bryn’s hair looked different. Shorter, Rett realized. Not even long enough to hook around her ears. It hid her eyes while she looked down at the note in her hands.

“Did Dr. Wells tell you why we ended up in the wasteland?” Bryn asked. “She said it was a test run. But I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think we were supposed to end up out there.”

“She told me we were supposed to be here in Scatter Labs in the future. Something must have gone wrong.”

“I remember…”

Rett moved her hair out of her eyes so he could study her face. She looked different from how she’d looked in the wasteland, younger. The wasteland is six years in the future, Rett realized. I was older then, too.

A line appeared between Bryn’s eyes while she thought. At least that was the same as Rett remembered. “You remember what?” he asked her.

“Thinking something wasn’t right around here.”

Rett thought of the boy in the other room and his stomach dropped. “I saw … in the other room…” He did his best to describe it to her.

“Dr. Wells told me we were the only ones,” she said when he’d finished, her voice choked with horror. “She said—”

“I think we were the first ones to get to the future,” Rett said. “But we weren’t the first ones to try, were we? We’re not just the first ones, Bryn. We’re the only ones.”

Bryn found his hand and gripped it in hers, and he felt how hard she trembled. “Scatter’s never going to let us leave. If we’re the only ones who can do what they want, they can’t afford to let us go.”

“We have to get out of here.” Rett pulled her up from the bed and passed her the zippered pouch so he could use the keycard.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, breathless.

Rett glanced back at her. She was gaping at the cash in the pouch. “I think we’ve earned it.”

Bryn zipped the pouch shut. “Same here.”

She followed him into the hall. The thud of boots echoed nearby. Rett pulled Bryn in the opposite direction.

They ran, without any idea how to get out, with Rett straining to listen for the clack of more boots on tile. He thought of the girl in the garden—Bryn—with stolen daisies stuffed in her pockets, and he wanted so badly to get her someplace where no one could keep her locked away from anything again.

“Rett.” Bryn pulled him to a stop. The shadows at the end of the hallway grew, and then three security guards rounded the corner.

Rett turned back the way they’d come, but at the other end of the hallway, a familiar white lab coat stood out against two more black-clad guards. “Rett. Bryn,” Dr. Wells called. “You’re disoriented. You’re not thinking straight. Whatever you’re feeling, we can work through it.”

Rett ignored her. He reached out and clutched Bryn’s hand. “Bryn, I’m sorry I wasn’t always honest with you. I’m sorry I’ve screwed things up over and over.”

Bryn shook her head, but Rett didn’t have time to explain more. “Do you trust me?” he asked her.

She looked up, confusion in her eyes. Rett took her other hand and pulled her close.

Her eyes lit up. She understood.

She leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

Rett’s heart jolted and they spiraled into the ether.