14

Nok gives us salad and some kind of patties that seem like meat, but aren't. Garrett and I eat like pigs, sitting across from each other on foam cushions at the tiny dinette table. We keep our bound hands clasped across the table top.

I forget all about Graize being in the bathroom until she steps out. She doesn't look at us as she slips into the lower of the two back bunks.

"We sleep here," Nok says pointing to the bunks. Then he waves a finger between Garrett and I. "You sleep in front. Work in morning."

That's it. He waits for us to finish our last plate of food, washes the plates in a bucket of water, and then turns and goes to the bunks, climbing up into the top. It seems weird that they're sleeping in bunks. I don't know what I was expecting, but normal wasn't it. It seems like they would sleep upside down, like Batman, or not sleep at all, or sleep in rabbit holes beneath the trailer. But the other weird thing about them going to sleep is that they drop off immediately. Both are snoring before Garrett and I have even moved an inch from the place Nok left us.

And I have to go to the bathroom.

"Me too," Garrett whispers and I try not to laugh loud enough that I wake the Veritas. Garrett points to the bathroom. "There is a space under the door."

Oh my God, it's like finding chocolate in the toe of a Christmas stocking. I flash a smile at him. "Privacy."

"Just have to wrangle the door," he says. We do some fancy acrobatics, keeping as quiet as we can right beside the bunks, and with a few zips of the binding box, I'm in the bathroom...with the cable running under the closed door. And being alone in the bathroom is Heaven.

After Garrett's gotten a turn at Heaven, we climb into the large bed at the front of the camper. More Heaven. A mattress. It doesn't matter that I can feel the coils in my back. It's not restaurant chairs pushed together and it's not the cold ground. Garrett throws a light blanket over the top of us. If no Veritas pop up through the springs tonight, I will remember this night of sleep as the most perfect sleep I've ever had. I'm sure of it.

And I'm even more sure I accomplished it when I open my eyes in the morning.

"How did you sleep?" Garrett asks. He is lying on his side, his head propped up on his free wrist, elbow beneath the pillow.

"You were watching, weren't you?" I smirk, rubbing my face. He laughs, tugging my hand away with a jerk of the cable.

"It's not like I'm going anywhere without you," he says. "You hungry? Nok made us breakfast before he left."

"Left?"

"He's been going into the Core, scouring the ancient writings for anything he can find that will help." Garrett grins. "I guess we're not the only ones who didn't pay attention in school."

"What about Graize?" The camper is closed up to hide us and absolutely still inside, but I'm sure that doesn't mean anything. "Did she go with him?"

"She's outside, practicing her prayer," he says. "Veritas ritual. Let's eat and maybe we can watch her."

"Sounds good," I say, my stomach howling at the mention of food. I'm not sure how entertaining it'll be to stare at Graize while she's praying, but if there is food involved, I don't think it'll be a problem.

My fingers brush the sheets as I pull them back and I pause to feel the fabric. It's not smooth, like it should be. The bed feels like Nok and Graize have had a crumbly picnic between the sheets, with a truckload of crackers. I rub the grit between my fingers, trying to identify the texture.

"Dirt," Garrett tells me. "Nok brought us new clothes."

"This is from us?" I sit up and look down at my clothes, at Garrett's, at his face. We're beyond filthy. I run my fingers over my arm. My skin is a grimy blur beneath the dirt tarp I'm wearing. We're human collages of splatter art--colors totally reminiscent of the stench back in the dumpster. The memory ripples my stomach like a thick splash of old milk.

"We're a mess," Garrett says. "Want a shower first?"

I nod, thinking of the tiny bathroom. The half-tub shower is only a foot or two from the door. I'm sure we can run the cable under the door again. A private shower. This little camper is a bound-girl's Heaven. I'm sure of it, until I'm naked.

"This isn't going to work," I groan to Garrett through the door. I'm all jacked around in the mini-tub, the binding cable sawing at the box like mad as I do everything but stand on my nose to make this private shower idea work. But it's not working at all and now, with my wrist raw and hanging over the edge of the tub while I'm accordion-ed up with my foot on the faucet, I know what's got to happen. It's either hang onto the dirt or get clean with Garrett. And even if I go with door number two, I don't think the two of us in this tiny tub is going to be any kind of easier.

"You want me to come in?" he asks. No.

"I think you're going to have to," I groan as I grab the towel I brought in and wrap it around myself as best I can. He opens the door, working the cable up from under it so he can step inside. When he's inside, I can at least stand up in the tub.

Garrett doesn't pause to ask me how I want to handle this. He strips off his clothes like I'm not even standing here, shaking at the other end of his tether.

He pulls off his shirt with a smooth rip of the Velcro and I have to swallow down the appreciative sound that bubbles in my throat. His arms--they're just bones and muscle and flesh, but the color of his skin is that soft, inviting mocha tan of beaches and suede, and his muscles are those hard coils, stronger than even our binding cable. His elbow reminds me of the tapered end of a baseball bat. As soothing as Garrett's body appears to me, I know he would use every inch of it to protect me from anyone who would try to do me harm. Maybe it's reckless of me to think of it, as Garrett methodically strips naked in front of me, but every single thing about his body makes me feel safe.

Well, until the moment he's about to slide out of his boxers. My eyes jet away.

"You want to go first?" he asks. I'm busy, trying to keep my eyes off any part of his body.

"No."

"I'll go then," he says. I step out and he steps in. He flips on the water, drawing the milky curtain closed between us, although my arm is still looped around the edge, giving him slack to move. My arm is in there, with him. I'm sure he wouldn't have bothered drawing the curtain, if it wasn't for keeping the water from splashing out all over. I watch his silhouette move, well, gawk is more like it, as he soaps up his hair. I trace his outline with my eyes, beads of steam rushing down my back, not from the heat of his shower, but from studying the terrain of his body.

I step nearer, so he's got more slack in the cable, but being that much closer to the curtain, the barrier dulls the sharp lines of his body. I can still make him out. The edge of the curtain lifts as he runs his hands through his hair, rinsing away the shampoo, and as shameful as it might be, I peek.

His hair is thick and black as midnight, glistening beneath the rinse. I follow the tiny mounds of sud-pearls as they glide over the ink of his tattooed bicep; the familiar teacup gears and Grace's name.

I remember overhearing a couple of girls, bored in our English class, discussing which parts of a boy's body they liked best. They decided there were categories: Eye Girls, Arm Girls, Jaw Girls, Hair Girls, Chest Girls, Butt Girls. I steal one more glance at the curtain and the strong outline of Garrett's frame, his arms lifted as he squeezes the water out of his hair that goes streaming down his back.

Turns out, I'm a Garrett's-Body Girl.

The water has no shame, weaving down his ribs, over the bands of his abs, streaming even lower. My eyes immediately flick to his feet, but I want to see all of him. I force my gaze up his wet legs.

I look. The first glance brings back how the same girls from English class used to complain about penises, like they were separate things from the guys who owned them. The conclusion was usually that penises were disgusting, frightening, crude. They were insults. They were weapons.

The only other reference I have is from Health class, where I studied the penises drawn in my text--both the ones that were supposed to be there and the ones that weren't. There were the text illustrations that were as clinical as a doctor's rash chart and, usually, one-dimensionally weird. Then there were the ones that were creatively drawn or embellished by upperclassmen from Health classes past. Those were usually just funny or gross.

But this is Garrett. His body isn't funny or scary or gross. He's nothing like anything I've seen. He's beautiful.

The water streams down his legs, no longer in the bursts that came from him rinsing his hair. My eyes flick back up to his face and I'm caught. He grins, but it's not a creeper grin at all, but one like he's good with me being a total Peeping Tom. I pull back from the curtain, a blush roaring across my cheeks like an open flame. But with my free hand, I press my fingers against my smile.

Garrett twists off the water faucet.

"Can you hand me a towel?" he says, all normal. I hand it in, super awkward, my skin boiling now from ears to toes. I hear him rub the towel over his skin and as embarrassed as I am about getting caught, it takes everything I've got not to turn around and peek through the shower curtain again. "You know you can."

Garrett pulls back the curtain, look down at me with a smile, the towel cinched around his waist.

"What?" My tongue is a friggin' couch, parked behind my teeth.

"You can look if you want. It's okay." He laughs. He steps out of the tub, his chest rubbing against the towel covering mine. I spark up a whole new blush as we're smashed together. He leans over me, his skin hot and dewy and so close. "Your turn, Rebel."

I start to shake. A rivulet of water rolls down a lock of his hair and splats on my shoulder. He sees it, sees how the clear bead quivers on my skin. Then he swoops down and fastens his mouth around the droplet. The warmth of the inside of his lips conjures up this contented little sigh that escapes before I am even aware I did it. But my shoulders relax as Garrett's lips release, leaving a kiss on my shoulder, before he pulls away.

I don't know how he expects me to function when he does stuff like that. Clutching my towel, I climb into the tub and catch his eyes on the open slit of my towel that exposes my thigh. I push the shower curtain closed. Like that's going to do anything. I know what he can see. I know he's going to look, since I did.

He braces his hand on the towel rack inside, with me. The sight of his skin, or maybe it's the way his fingers are curled and the way his veins ridge up on his hand while it grips the rack inside the shower with me, I feel vulnerable as I unwrap myself. It's like his knuckles are starring. I finally suck it up and take off the towel, draping it over his arm like he's the towel rack. His laugh reminds me of just how thin the plastic curtain really is.

I turn on the water and soap up. Garrett's lime scent still clings in the air, but it mixes like a gorgeous bouquet with the soap and I close my eyes and inhale deep. I want him to look, but I can't stand to see him do it. I'm just not that gutsy.

I wash and rinse my hair, feeling every bead of water that runs down my skin. I feel the river the branches off my neck and runs down my chest. My belly button, drowning in suds. The way the stream dips between my legs and races down my thighs. And the whole time, I feel Garrett's gaze, following every drop, seeing every inch of me.

I'm positive my skin is the color of roses, but when I finally turn off the water and force my eyes open, all I see is his hand. Patiently gripping the towel rack. On impulse, I lean forward and kiss his knuckles.

"Oh, Nalena," he moans softly. He sounds like he's in pain, and naked or not, I almost throw back the curtain to see what's wrong with him. But then he whispers from the other side of the curtain, "Don't. Please don't. Just give me a minute, alright?"

His voice drains away and as I face the curtain, the slant of light from the overhead domed skylight illuminates him. The milky white curtain is nearly transparent in this light. I'm not sure what to do. I stand there and drip as he stares at me through the curtain. His eyes travel over me. I close my own eyes to save myself the embarrassment of being okay with it, wanting it, and concentrate instead on the water running off my hair, down my chest, over my stomach. I wait.

"Would you let me..." he whispers and his voice cuts off before he finishes the sentence. But I know what he wants. I turn around, showing him the rest of me. The rings on the shower curtain grit over the rod as he pulls the covering away. I hear the labored breath he pulls into his lungs. The air hits my back and the paths of water on my skin are suddenly as defined as if Garrett were tracing them with his fingertip.

I stand for a beat longer, considering everything: shifting my legs, turning around, what I should do, what he will do, what will happen next. But then, the wide expanse of my towel rubs against my back, the top edge scraping at my shoulders, the bottom edge tickling my thigh.

His voice is husky. "Lift your arms, okay?"

He wraps the towel around me and I take the edges, securing the knot over my chest.

"Thank you," Garrett says. His wet hair brushes over the space between my shoulder blades, just beneath my neck, as he leaves a soft, warm kiss there.

I think it's going to be awkward after that, but it's just not. We dress, not staring, but not avoiding seeing one another either.

We slide into the dinette, holding hands across the table top like we did last night. The bowls of oatmealy cereal that Nok left for us are cold, but it doesn't matter. Our cups of tea have steeped so much they are dark as coffee. Even cold, the cereal tastes like the best food I've ever eaten.

Once we're finished, Garrett finds a hair brush beneath the bathroom sink. He does his own, but when I reach for it, he pulls his hand back with the brush in it, to his shoulder.

"Can I do it?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say. Is he serious? All I want is for him to touch me. I've been burning for it since he wrapped the towel around me in the shower. I angle around in the dinette bench beside the closed window. He stands in the aisle. The hairbrush starts at my forehead and rolls over my scalp like its a mountain and slides into the snarls in back. It's always snarly right out of the shower, but his hand slides between my hair and my neck, lifting the strands and gently working the brush teeth through the tangles. He goes all the way around my head and when he's got the snarls worked out, he starts at my forehead again, this time with long, hypnotic strokes. I sway backward and my head taps against his stomach. Then I straighten up and he brushes again, swaying me back against him. The gentle tug of the brush through my hair is like a long kiss, deepened into the most incredible caress when his fingers follow behind the bristles. It is so relaxing that my eyes begin to droop.

I am sure Garrett senses that I'm about to pass out, because he sets the brush down on the table with a soft clink. He slides into the bench seat across from me, the cable hizzling as he removes the tea ball from his cold cup of tea. I remove mine, setting them aside for when we finish our drinks. Although it's never any different, we always pour the tea leaves into the bottoms of our cups afterward and watch them align into the gears that could slot perfectly if the edges of our cups weren't in the way. The same gears that decorate Garrett's bicep and the same gears that slotted together when our field entwined.

"What's our next step?" I ask.

"Not sure," he says, taking a drink. "Wait, I guess."

I lean forward and lift the edge of one of the slats from the blinds over the window and peek outside. The morning sun is just opening its eyes, still looking over the camp through the eyelashes of the trees. I'm startled to see Graize, sitting on the ground out there, folding up like a yoga pretzel, her palms sunny-side-up and resting on her butterflied knees. There's nothing but the fence beyond her, and then thick trees, so it's not like I'll be seen, but I still drop the slat. Watching feels the same as eavesdropping, somehow.

"Graize is sitting out there," I whisper with a jab toward the window.

"I know," Garrett whispers back.

"What's she doing?"

"Praying," he says, settling back against the seat. "Go ahead and watch her, she won't care. Focus. Sean told me once that if you get to see a Veritas pray, you'll never see anything else like it in the universe, and he's right."

"You saw one of them pray?"

"Nok," he says. "When you were being Impressioned the second time around."

Before all the memories flood me of the near-death I had then, Garrett grabs the cord and pulls up the whole blind so we can look out together. I pull back from the window and the cable hisses between us.

"What if somebody walks up?"

"Who? The Fury? It's like quarter-to-five in the morning. The Fury will be sleeping it off till ten, at least."

I still shy away from the window. "How can you be sure?"

"Because The Fury are predictable. They like to do what they do in the dark, so they aren't perky and ready to play in the morning."

Garrett hangs over his tea, watching Graize, and I eventually settle back against the padding of the dinette booth with my tea too.

At first, there's nothing to look at beside Graize's round head stacked on her round body like a couple of boulders. She even has a round bun, spun up in a black-and-gray circle at the back of her head, held in place by a short stick.

I take a sip of tea. It's relaxing to watch Graize sitting out there and I'm about to let my mind drift back to review what happened in the shower again when a tendril of something floats up off Graize's head. It's not her hair. But it's a tiny yellow wisp of something as lemon colored as a Halloween hair extension. As it rises up, I realize it's not attached to Graize. It's part of a field, I think, but it's not coming from Graize. It's rising out of the ground, dancing like seaweed in a gentle current, only as tall as Graize's seated form.

As I watch, the wisp thickens, stretching out. As it does this, another wisp rises, a green one this time. They expand like petals, unfurling quickly. The edges press together, alternating wide green and blue petals all around the seated Graize, until they reach up, sealing together over Graize's head. At the peak, a bit peels away from the top like the thick, pouting lips of a beautiful woman. The whole time, Graize just sits still in the base of the massive, iridescent tulip bulb. While her dead calms seems like enough cause for alarm, what freaks me out is the swirling smoke that churns up inside.

"It's on fire!" I say, but Garrett's hand tenses on mine, holding me down before I can jump up. I'm going to tear out of the camper, kick down the petals around Graize and pull her out, but Garrett's touch calms me. "Just watch," he says.

The blossom peels open at the top and a white lick of steam dances out. It rises, the color changing to a delicate blue. Another foot in the air and the steam's color dissipates into the blue-gray blend of the morning fog. I get up and balance on a knee so I can press my forehead to the camper window. Condensation collects on the glass as I realize that the morning fog is not drifting in, but rising up from all around the camp.

"What is going on?" I breathe.

"Balance," Garrett says. "Veritas fields look like lotus flowers. When they send their prayers into the world, the prayers mix with the oxygen in our air. It's their prayers that turn the sky blue. It's their prayers that we breathe."

I turn back to stare at Graize, feeling my lungs fill and release.

Graize is more beautiful to me, now that I've seen her pray. No. She is beautiful to me because her prayers are beautiful. That's not right. I kind of understand how cyclical the Veritas are after seeing her pray. Ugh. She can hear every stupid word I think and I can't seem to make any of it sound nice and good and what I mean.

I give up on trying to think the right things. For the rest of the day, Garrett and I hang out in the trailer, which is like being pushed into a gym locker and left there overnight. We decide to draw the blinds once the morning light gets into full swing, in case any of The Fury wander by. Graize stays with us, mostly in her bunk, until Nok returns at noon with food.

"Do The Fury ever raid the campers?" Garrett asks. Nok nods.

"Often. Veritas warn. Night: lights. Day: cricket."

"How will we hear crickets in here?"

"One cricket," Nok clarifies. Shoot. They're Veritas. They can hear everyone in the world talking, so of course they can hear one stinkin' little cricket. But we're human, and sometimes I'm so busy day dreaming or just thinking of whatever that I don't even hear Garrett when he's saying my name right in my ear.

"Here," Nok says, pointing to a vent. He motions for me to stay seated, but cups his hand to his ear, the sign for me to listen. He disappears out the door.

"What's he think..." I begin, and then there is a cricket chirp. A chirp like no other, it blasts through the camper's speaker system, as loud and quick as the crack of a gun. The sound is a cricket fired from a canon. I plug my ears with my fingers in case there are anymore crickets. Nok comes back in with a broad smile.

"That's amazing," Garrett congratulates him.

"Cricket," Nok says.

"What do we do if we hear the cricket?" I ask.

"Ahhh." Nok smiles as if he's taking fresh cookies from an oven. But he points to the jackknife couch. He reaches down and pulls up the edge of the seat cushion. The door lock slides shut simultaneously and peering down into what should be a shallow storage area beneath the couch, there is an unfinished, black pit. The dirt smells freshly dug, tree roots poke through the edges. Nok points into the hole. "Jump. Not far."

I hope he means it's not far down and not that we have to be careful how far we jump. Mostly, I just hope we have enough time to jump in if we hear the cricket chirp.

Nok gives us cold fish and rice with hard vegetables before he leaves again.

A few months ago, without Graize or Nok around to supervise, all that would have been on my mind was how I was going to kiss Garrett or get him to kiss me. Now, all Garrett and I do is pace as far as the binding box will let us stretch away from one another, wait and talk about what ifs. The talk isn't fun and light and romantic, it's all about trying to figure out what our next move should be, could be, will be. We try to reach into each other's brains as if they are crystal balls and pull out something that neither of us knows.

We play with ifs until we're both about to lose our glue. Garrett runs his hand through his hair and I sink my forehead down onto my arms. Graize comes in from who knows where and I can't help feeling a twinge of jealousy that she can come and go as she pleases. Well, I feel the twinge until I see the crust of the scab on her outer lip.

Graize pauses beside the table, passing her eyes between Garrett and I. She shakes her head as if we're hopeless.

"Faith," she says. As if a more beautiful or more shaming word could ever be spoken. I drop my forehead back on my arms. Such an easy word to say, but I have no idea how to make it work.

Nok returns at nightfall, as the camp comes alive again and the distant sounds of it filter through the trailer walls. We've been on edge the entire day, waiting for The Fury to figure out we're in here and to come with an army to cream us. When we see a shadow sneak along the side of the trailer, we brace for the worst. Nok slips in the door, but it is too quick and he is too wide-eyed to put me at ease.

"They start dragging," he tells Graize.

"What dragging?" Garrett asks.

"Drag Veritas out houses. Play."

"Play," I say flatly. The word doesn't make me feel good.

"Beat," Nok says.

"Like at the fire yesterday night?" Garrett says. Nok nods. "Who do they take?"

Nok shrugs. "Any. Worse tonight."

"How come?"

"Fury has all Cornerstone, but wait for one more come here," Nok says. The words are like baseball bats to my knees and seem to have the exact same effect on Garrett. We sink down together on the edge of the couch. Even Graize puts a hand on the dinette table and guides herself down slowly onto the bench against the wall.

"They can stop the Reset now," I say.

"They brought the Cornerstones here," Garrett says, his gaze traveling beyond the walls of the camper in thought. "Do they control the Reset or the whole Core with the stones, Nok? How do the stones work?"

"The Writings say--" Nok begins, but Graize interrupts by pounding her tiny fist on the table.

"No!"

Nok closes his eyes, the black almonds hidden momentarily as if he's trying to regain his patience. Then he opens his eyes and his speech is painfully slow, painstakingly deliberate. He speaks like one of us, instead of like one of the Veritas.

"I...have faith in my destiny, Graize." He turns away from her, his eyes flicking between Garrett and I as he explains further. "Veritas...the Veritas have ancient writings. Spiritual writings, that have us remember our purpose. They lead us. The Writings tell us that when the Cornerstones are joined together, the Veritas are muted. The Veritas work is done. The Capstone then controls the balance and the entire destiny...of the human race."

"A prophesy," Garrett says. "Which one is the Capstone?"

"I do not know exactly. The writings say the Capstone changes."

"So it could be any of the stones?"

"Yes."

"But The Fury are waiting for one more stone? Where is it?" I ask. Garrett, his thumb beneath his chin, pauses his finger from rubbing the peak of his upper lip.

"Maybe Van has it?"

"No." Nok shakes his head and lapses back into speaking like a Veritas. "Last stone, the 13th Cura stone is coming from Cache. Writings say Cornerstones to be gathered in mouth of mountain, Capstone placed last. Capstone seem determined by loyalty of Cura and I hear Van think 13th Cura most loyal."

"What if we steal the stone before it gets here?" I say. Nok shakes his head slowly.

"Too much guarded."

"How about getting us into the mountain?" Garrett massages his top lip again, as he formulates a plan. "If we could get up to the top, all it would take would be stealing one stone and none of them would work, right?"

"Writings show seven times two stones plus Capstone" he says. Garrett drops his finger from his lip.

"Fifteen? That can't be. There are only thirteen Curas, thirteen stones."

"Mouth of mountain has seven platform. Six placed like smile around opening." Nok taps his mouth to illustrate. "Capstone like nose at edge."

"But if we're supposed to put two stones on each platform," I think aloud, "where do the extra stones come from?"

"Do the writings say anything else about that, Nok?" Garrett asks. Graize glares at Nok--he's definitely about to tell us something that we're probably not supposed to know. He takes a breath, as if he's deciding if he should actually spill the beans too. Then, he speaks.

"Writings say seven times two stones. Say no one knows way, until Capstone in heart of air."

"What's that mean? Where's the heart of air?" Garrett asks.

Nok does the worst thing he can: shrugs.

"Do the Veritas have their own stones like the Curas do?" I ask.

"No," Graize says. We all shift around, surprised that she's speaking. I aim my next question at her.

"Does one of the Curas have extra stones?"

"No."

"Okay. Do the Veritas know where the extra stones are or who has them?"

"You're assuming there are extra stones," Garrett says. "Maybe there aren't. Maybe there's some other answer that we're just not seeing. Jeez, I wish Sean was here."

"Me too."

"What if one of the stones is broken?" Garrett asks. "Or just not..."

"Whole." Graize answers with a shake of her head.

"Would a chipped stone be enough to stop everything?" I say. The possibility seems exciting and frightening and possible to me. I remember how the Cornerstone felt in my palm--it wasn't a clean cut stone by a long shot. And how hard would it be to find a fragment? Maybe that's the way to keep the stones out of the wrong hands--break one and hide a chip of it. "It makes sense that the stones aren't all intact anyway, considering how long they've been handed around for Impressionings. Could they all be broken already?"

"Fury say Van knows secrets for stones. He must have Manga helmet. Veritas do not hear his thought. He come tomorrow and so does last stone. That why Fury celebrate tonight."

"Celebrate," Garrett repeats with a disgusted grunt.

The possibilities, both good and bad, begin to stack up in my head. Until the silence is broken with the chirp of a cricket.

My field explodes, linked to Garrett's. We're on our feet. Nok jackknifes up the couch. Garrett grabs my hand and I jump feet first. He is right behind me. We land in a heap, my face hitting dirt.

The hole goes black as Nok slams the couch seat down on us. A wide board drops quietly into place overhead. Weak lines of light peek through and the board is thin enough to hear too much. I hear the lock snapping off the trailer door as it is ripped open on its weak hinges.

My instincts aren't working. I'm not trying to bolt up and protect the Veritas and it doesn't make sense. Heavy boots stomp on the floor overhead and all Garrett and I do is remain utterly still, absolutely silent. We do squeeze each other's bound hands, steadying the cable so it doesn't whisper a sound.

"Two?" A man bellows overhead. "It's my lucky night! One for each hand!"

I focus my hearing, but there is no shouting, no smack of knuckles on skin, no struggle, no skidding feet. Zero sound of resistance at all. And that silence is more eerie than any screaming.

The man's boots plod heavily across the floor, accompanied by the light dance of the Veritas feet. The man pants like a bull.

"Who else?" he growls. "You got littler ones? Itty bitty kiddies you're hiding?"

The Veritas don't answer. The metal pot Nok had brought our dinner in, crashes to the floor. The man's heavy gait reaches the bathroom. He yanks the shower curtain, ripping most of it free off the rings, I think. Finally, the man's boots and the Veritas' skittering feet move to the door. The man kicks the pot out of their way first and then the trailer door second. It bangs against the outside of the camper. The boots stomp away. The trailer door creaks back on its hinges, banging softly against the latch without locking.

Garrett squeezes my fingers, a reassurance as much as a message to stay quiet. We squat in the fresh pit beneath the camper for at least an hour before we emerge.

"Why didn't we protect them?" I ask.

"They didn't need it," Garrett says, but his tone is as mystified as my question. He pushes the couch up and climbs out. "Somehow, they either blocked the signal for protection, or they didn't need it."

"It sounded like they needed it to me."

"It did," Garrett says as he drags me up. With one foot on the trailer floor and our hands entwined, the door flies open again. I'm yanked to the floor, my body driven into an instinctual crouch and a ferocious growl breaking through my lips, as a young Veritas screeches to a halt in front of us, a gun in his shaky little hands--a gun that he's got pointed straight at Garrett's chest.

I don't think. I do the least safe thing possible and launch myself, tackling the Veritas. I get lucky that the gun doesn't fire, but clatters to the floor instead. Thank God it doesn't go off and blow a hole through both of us.

"Pum!" the tiny Veritas whisper-screeches beneath me. I can tell there is something different about him--he's got the Veritas black, almond eyes and their same round face--but it's hard to put my finger on what exactly the difference is. Younger, louder, more willing to jump into this mess. That's it. Youth. This is not a full grown Veritas. He's a miniature version of a teenager, maybe even a little younger. Less like me and Garrett's age and more like Mark and Brandon's. While I'm assessing this, he whisper-hollers at me again, as if it is a secret password, "Pum!"

I clamp my hand over his mouth so no Fury back-up comes running. Garrett catches the door and shuts it tight before he says, "It's okay, Rebel, he's got to be with us."

"How do you know?" I ask.

Under my hand, Pum murbles, "With! With!"

"He's a Veritas."

I keep my hold on the squirmy little guy, even though I take my hand from his mouth. "Did you notice he had a gun?"

"Graize!" Pum says. "Nok!"

I don't let him up. Not yet. "I thought Veritas aren't supposed to get involved. Nok said..."

"Different," Pum pleads, his body and spirit tense up under me. Or maybe that he's pulling it together. His muscles tighten, along with his energy, becoming that calm and focused force that I usually see in the Veritas. At least, the whole whoppin' two of them that I know. Pum's eyes lock on mine. He says, calmly, "Son."

"Nok's son?" Garrett asks. Pum nods slowly. Whoa. I let him go. I roll off and he scoots up to sit.

"Help," he says. "Please."

Garrett doesn't waste any time.

"Did you see where they took them?" he asks. Pum squinches up the side of his mouth and makes a sound. A chirp. Not as loud as it was when it blasted through the floor speaker before, but it is definitely the same cricket sound. I stand and give Pum a hand up.

He hops to his feet so quickly it's startling and I almost tackle the kid again, without even thinking. He seems to sense it too, and jumps away from me.

"Where did they take them?" Garrett asks again, but Pum shakes his head and shrugs and wipes a hand through the air as if he is erasing our line of questioning.

"Friends," he says.

"Yeah, we're friends...I just didn't know who you were when I tackled you," I say.

"No," Pum says, raising a solid, intentional hand. I shut up and try to follow the line of thought he's giving me. He points to the windows opposite the door, the ones facing the camp and he says, "Friends."

"The Fury aren't our friends," I begin, but it gets real obvious, real fast, that Pum doesn't mean The Fury. He shakes his head and waves his hands, as if he's trying to erase my wrong thoughts.

"Friends," he says again. I look at Garrett.

"What do you think he's talking about?"

"Can you show us?" Garrett asks. Pum only blinks.

"How can he?" I say. "The Fury are all over the place, dragging, like Nok said. We can't just walk out of here and not get noticed. We're twice the size of the Veritas."

"We could be part of The Fury though," Garrett says. It's true that even if they're nuts, they might notice a couple of vigilantes trying to save the Veritas, but even the most sane ones won't recognize two that aren't their own. Lucky for us, Fury only shows on the inside.

"Drag," Pum says, lifting his wrists to us as if they're bound together. He points a finger at the windows facing into the bonfire center of the zoo. "There."

We bust out of the camper, our binding box disguised inside a thick rope tied to my wrist. Garrett hangs onto the other end, the end of the rope wound around the wrist of his bound hand for the look of traction. He walks ahead of me like he's walking a dog. With his free hand, he shoves Pum along ahead of us.

Pum plays the part way better than we do. When Garrett doesn't trip him, he does it on his own, face planting in the dirt, sending up a cloud of dust. Garrett laughs out loud, hauls Pum back onto his feet, and shoves him forward again. Pum stumbles along and Garrett pauses occasionally to pull me to his hip and kiss me hard in front of The Fury who join us in the street.

Nobody really notices us much because we look like everybody else. People are dragging Veritas out of their trailers and pushing them along the dirt streets toward the central fire pit. Along the way, there are whole groups of people kissing and groping each other, people fighting or about to fight one another, things breaking, people shrieking, laughter and terrified screams. It's a collage of everything insane. When a bicycle comes shooting over the top of a trailer, launched off a rickety, Jackass ramp, I hesitate, and Garrett tugs at the binding on my wrist to keep going. We do, even after we hear the crash and crunch and scream of the rider behind us.

We hit the main road that runs from the back of the camp to the fire pit and follow behind a group of girls who are arguing over which one sings the best. A couple of them start fighting and stagger off into the shadows as they try to yank out one another's hair extensions. The only thing we have to worry about is dodging the empty bottles the rest of the girls periodically toss over their shoulders.

It's still better than being further ahead, where The Fury have gotten ahold of some bows and arrows and are firing them off in all directions. There are so many people running around with quivers and bows, it's like someone handed out the weapons like party favors. An arrow sails down from the sky and sinks with a sickening thunk into the ground ten feet ahead. I gulp. Someone else screams from somewhere among the trailers and I have no idea if it is a Veritas being dragged, one of The Fury who has speared another with an arrow, or one of the million other possibilities that could lead to a scream like that in the Zoo.

Everything is going great until a guy, the size and width of a sturdy bookcase, staggers into the girl swarm. He's got on a cowboy hat that is too small for his mammoth head.

"Where to, Kevy? You lookin' for a little bitta new honey?"

It can't be. I just about drop dead in my tracks. Garrett too. It sure looks like Kevin, of Kevin and Honey who were living at The Fury's Cache. Kevin and Honey did business with me and Milo. They also tried to steal Grace from Garrett and me during the escape. If this is really that same Kevin, and if he's not totally witless by now, then he might just sound the alarm on us if he recognizes Garrett or me.

Garrett's thinking the same thing. The first branch in the road, he gives Pum a shove in that direction. Pum, already aware of what we're thinking, stumbles off down the side street, away from Kevin, but we're not moving fast enough. I flash Garrett a worried eyebrow even after Kevin and his new honey-harem continue on toward the fire pit. If that is the same Kevin, then we could be in huger trouble than just being recognized by him. If the cache has been imported to this camp, our odds of getting recognized just went up a terrifying, mystery percentage and no matter what the odds are, they are a million times worse if they're higher.

Then, like a nightmare, I hear Kevin's voice like the rev of a dragster. "Hey, that's them! I seen them!"

We both stutter a pace on the street and Pum falls in front of us, scrambles to his feet, and darts around us, back toward the main road. We have to turn back toward Kevin and I shoot a thought at Pum: What the crap are you doing?

As I turn to make a grab for Pum, I see only the back of Kevin's head, as he gapes at a truck rolling up the middle of the street. A truck I've seen before. Part ambulance, part exterminator truck, the Emen's wheels grind to a halt. Kevin wasn't looking at us after all.

I've seen the Emen in action a couple of times, but I've only seen this truck once before, when one of The Fury died in the rings, instead of taking a second chance at life. The Ianua's clean up crew, that the Emen are here is terrifying on a couple of different levels. It means, first off, that the Emen aren't all loyal to the Ianua anymore, and second, if they're here, there's a really bad reason for it. Something needs cleaning up.

The crowd gathers as four Emen exit the truck. I can see two of them on our side and only the feet of the other two moving along the other side of the truck. The two I see are what I've seen before, 40-something father-types who are as unforgetful as anyone who's ever stood two people away from me in a convenience store line. One's got a blue, gingham-print shirt, as if he's the tablecloth for a picnic. The other is in a dull plaid. But what catches my eye are the two that come around the back of the truck and open the doors. Smaller than the men on this side of the truck, both are dressed in all black, one is a girl in a baseball cap and the other is in the skinniest black jeans I've ever seen.

I suck in a gasp. It's Robin and Zane. But the moment I look away, I can't remember if it was really them or if whoever it was just resembled them. The old men help them lift down two huge coolers and as the crowd closes in around them, the guy wearing the checkered picnic blanket lifts his hands up to the crowd.

"We've got some clean up to take care of," he shouts. "Want to get the expired Veritas out of the way of your good time. Sorry for the inconvenience, we brought beer and chips to make up for it!"

Cheers and applause rise up. A couple of celebratory empties are fired at the truck, exploding against the paint job.

"Faster we get the workers through, faster we can start handing out all this beer..." the plaid-shirted Emen hollers. The Fury part like someone's parading a skunk down the center of them. Robin and Zane, I'm positive it is them, grab hold of the handles on the enormous rolling coolers and drag them off. I look away and start doubting it's them again. The open aisle the crowd created seals up quickly behind them and I squint, trying to compare the looks of Robin and Zane to the Emen that just left with the coolers. I can't. The Fury press in toward the truck and no one seems to care when the Robin and Zane look-alikes take a sharp left with their coolers and disappear among the campers.

I'm grasping to remember if I was standing here to get beer and chips or something else, when Robin and Zane pop up two streets down from us. Zane smiles right at me and jerks his chin to follow them.

"We need to go," I tell Garrett, with a jerk on our binding. We start walking toward the back of camp, but the further away the Emen get, the more convinced I am that I got it wrong. How would Robin and Zane get here? It makes sense and doesn't make sense and thinking about it is like scrambling a locker combination as the tardy bell rings. Sweat coats my palms as I try to remember what I saw and can't.

Pum slams into Garrett, sliding into Garrett's grip, fastening it around the Veritas's little drinking straw of an upper arm. Pum stumbles like Oz's scarecrow, yanking us in the same direction as the Emen went with the coolers. We catch on and go along with Pum's pursuit of the cleaning crew, as I wonder what we're getting ourselves into by stalking strangers.

Pum leads us to the very back of the camp. A string of busted-up trailers line the fence. Pum stops in front of a camper with a front and back door, although the back one, which is closest to the street, is taped shut with silver duct tape that seems to wrap around the entire camper, from base to roof.

The coolers are parked behind the camper. Pum drags us, although he makes quite a show of not wanting to go, to the untaped door. I jiggle the binding box. This could be a trap. It feels like a trap. We don't even know who we were following, and now that I am trying to remember why we followed them, I can't remember that either.

But Pum climbs into the back door of the camper and Garrett, although he pauses, finally flicks his chin toward the door. He wants to check it out. I pull back on the rope a little to let him know he's insane if he thinks I'm just walking in there.

It's a trap. I can feel it in my gut.

I stare at the sticker on the wall beside the camper door with the name of the dealership and all the contact info. None of the letters zing up to tralate a message. I squint at them, trying to make them move, to squeeze some kind of direction out of them. This has to be dangerous. Maybe my Tralation is busted or something.

Garrett grazes my fingertips with his, an assurance, before he climbs up into the camper and my arm is yanked up along with him. My stomach is doing greasy flops. The cable bites into my wrist and I don't have much of a choice but follow. That or take off my arm and hand it to Garrett. I climb in.

"About time," one of the Emen greets us with a grunt. "Told you it'd be Nals that wouldn't see us."

I blink, not exactly seeing who I think I'm seeing now. There are four strangers instead of two. It feels like my head is playing dirty at the poker table, showing one card and pulling another three out of its sleeve. I blink again.

"Keep blinking," the woman says, removing her baseball cap. Her dark hair falls in front of one of her goth, black-linered eyes and I blink again. If I focus on just her eye, I see Robin. Like I'm looking through a toilet paper tube. But if I look at her whole picture, I don't know who I'm looking at and it freaks me out. I go back to the eye that I know.

"Do you know a girl named Robin?" I ask.

"Atta girl," she says. "Just keep on blinking and it'll wear off."

The only thing that stops me from a full blown panic attack is that Garrett starts talking to the four people as if we know them. He wouldn't do that if they were dangerous. He even pulls me along with him, as we cram into the back of the camper, furthest from the door that works, to talk in low voices.

"Oh, you are screwed up, aren't you?" one boy asks me. He ducks in too close to my face and Garrett kicks him away, even though there's not a lot of heart in the kick.

"Leave her alone. We've got stuff to figure out," this comes from the other boy, who is close to the first one's size, but looks more serious than it seems he should.

"How did you find it?" the dark-eyed girl asks.

"Gears. Nok left us gears to guide the way," Garrett tells them. I touch his arm, to let him know we shouldn't trust them. We don't even know if we really know them. But Garrett only slides his arm around me and whispers a very calm it's okay in my ear, before asking them, "How about you?"

"We squeezed a few of The Fury," the skinny blond boy says. Jeez, with every blink, this guy looks like he could be Zane and Zaneen's missing triplet. "They told us about this place and a couple others. We did an eenie-meenie, took a chance, and got lucky."

"Knock it off, Mark!" Garrett says, tightening his arm around my waist as he shoves the boy back away from me with his foot. "She's going to end up killing you and I'm going to let her."

The guy that looks like Zane headlocks the kid that Garrett thinks is Mark. Zane holds the kid easily, despite the flailing arms and legs.

"Everybody, knock it off!" the girl whispers hotly. "You want The Fury to hear us? C'mon! We've got to get these two up to speed and get out of here! Is this really the Core, Garrett?"

"That's what Nok said," Garrett tells her. "There's a mouth--it sounds like a cave--at the top of the mountain. Nok said there are seven altars or stone or something up there and he thinks you trigger the Reset by putting the stones on them. Van is coming tomorrow and our Cura stone is coming over from the Cache sometime tomorrow too. That's why they're celebrating tonight."

"So the real party's tomorrow," says the kid that keeps smirking at me. The minute I look at him, he makes a goofy face. I look away.

"How you doin', Nali Girl?" the blond boy shoots me a grin. I don't return it. Zane's the only one who calls me that, and no matter how Garrett rubs my back or keeps talking to them, I'm still pretty dang sure this guy is just a really impressive imposter.

"Who's this?" the goth girl asks, pointing to Pum.

"Nok's son, Pum. Nok was taken. The Fury does this thing, called dragging. They pull the Veritas out of their trailers and literally drag them to the fire pit to play with them. It's sick." The whole time, Garrett's voice is so calm, it's like these people are our friends. After a million more blinks, something weird happens. I see that they actually are our friends. Zane and Robin and Mark and Brandon are standing in the camper with Garrett and Pum and me.

"It's you!" I say and my eyes tear up. I'd like to say it's from all the blinking, but I'm sure everyone knows better. I try to blink and pinch and dab the tears away, but more come. "Why couldn't I see you?"

"Tom-Emen-ry and shenanigans like that," Zane says.

"Cool, huh?" Mark says, rubbing his neck. "Robin's gotta teach us how to do it on our own, though. Riding shotgun in the cooler is too cramped."

"You should be more worried about getting a glob of brain on you in there," Brandon says and it's kind of nice to see Mark shiver, considering how he's been teasing me.

"Nah," Robin says. Her tone is almost playful. Robin. "The brains don't go in there if...well, never mind. Trade secrets."

I look down at Mark's wrist. I blink five more times, to be sure Lenta's not still dangling off it.

"Where's Lenta?"

"I don't know where she is now," Mark says, tenting his eyebrows. "Last time I saw her, she was handcuffed to some other girl named Berg. I guess Lenta sold Berg's brother out to The Fury. Berg said she'd give me twenty bucks for her, but I told her I'd trade Lenta for a new Hacky Sack."

Mark produces a worn little beanbag from his pocket and tosses it in the air. He kicks it off the side of his shoe, up and down and up and down, as if it's an upside down yo-yo.

"She only had that crappy old thing," Brandon says, "so Mark jumped on it."

"Good deal," Zane says. Mark knocks him the foot bag. Zane volleys it back and Mark catches it, sliding it into his pocket.

"Okay, enough already," Robin groans. "If you guys haven't noticed, there's a lot of mess about to go down. What's the plan, Garrett?"

He shifts beside me. "We don't really have one. All I know is that The Fury is gathering all the Cornerstones in the mouth of the mountain."

"And that's a cave, on top," Zane adds.

"Looks that way," Garrett says. "Nok was sneaking in and studying the ancient writings in the Core, but it didn't sound like the writings were clear cut. The Fury seem to think Van knows how to work the stones, but I think Van's keeping the Veritas around because he knows he can't. At least, that's what I'm hoping. More bad news: it looks like The Fury might have bussed in some of the ranks from the Cache, and if they did, any of us could be recognized out there at any minute."

"Great," Robin grumbles in a ways that sounds like swearing. "The Emen tricks...it took me months to teach Zane and he's a quick learner. There's no way I can teach you in five minutes."

Garrett rubs his forehead. "How about the cover you gave Mark and Brandon? Nalena couldn't recognize them. Can you do that for us?"

"I doubt it. That's why we had to drag those two in here in coolers. The covering over Zane and I was so strong that it slopped over onto them only because we're all standing really close in a small space. Out there, it won't work."

"Okay, so we need to figure a way to get ourselves all up in the grille of that mountain," Zane says. Garrett nods.

"Definitely."

"But we don't have any idea how to do that yet, huh?"

Garrett shakes his head slowly. "Not yet."

"And we don't know what we need to do when we do get there, right?"

"You got it."

"Sounds like a stellar plan," Robin grumbles. Her eyes find Pum, frozen in the corner like a carving. "What about you? Pum, right? You know how to get into the mountain?"

"No," Pum says. "Father do."

"Then it looks like we gotta snatch his daddy back and get inside that mountain," I say as confidently as I can. Everybody turns and looks at me. Garrett and Zane bust out grins like I'm the new baby they're showing around to friends. Robin even has a proud smirk, while Mark and Brandon are just plain smirking, like I've gone off the edge and they want to stick around just to see what will happen next.

I lower my voice and plant it like an extended hand during a football team's half-time pep talk. "Well, what do you say?"

My family stacks their hands on mine and Pum, on tiptoes, places his on the very top.

"Thank you," he whispers.

"I can show you guys a few things that might help," Robin says. "The Emen are going to kill me if they ever find out I did this."

"Or we could just die," Mark says. Brandon shrugs.

"Might be easier. You can just let us die."

"Shut up, gentlemen," Garrett says sternly. It's what his father would've said, and it seems to wrangle all three of the Reeses into a more serious mode. Even Zane keeps quiet as we all lean in to listen to Robin.

"The reason why Emen are so forgettable, is because we know how to blur ourselves out. Doing it is tricky and I'm telling you now, if you screw it up, you'll screw up your field forever, so you better do it perfectly." Robin squats in the center of us like a coach explaining a secret play. "What we do is thin our fields. Doing that, your spirit and body dimensions kind of show through together, like layering tracing paper over drawings. They don't match up perfectly. Thinning the field makes you look blurry to the human eye. But you gotta be careful, because if you thin it too much, you can stretch your Cavises and you could end up with your whole body being one big weak spot. If that happens, you're useless as a Contego because all anyone'd have to do is poke you with their eyelash and it could kill you.

"On the other end of it, if you don't thin your field enough, people might be able to remember something about you that will get you identified. Emen call those details hairpins, like a hairpin left at the scene of a crime. It can unravel the whole mystery and lead directly back to the killer. So, no hairpins."

"This is pretty tricky then," Garrett says.

Robin drops her hands to her sides. "Sure is."

"Then I don't want Mark and Brandon doing it," Garrett says. Both his brothers immediately reel back and start griping.

"Nuh uh, we're coming!" Mark says. "I ditched a wife to do this!"

Brandon chimes in, "This is a pile of crap! You need us out there! We didn't get stuffed in those coolers and wheeled in here just to watch the stupid perimeter for you!"

"They're right," I say. Garrett groans, rubbing his temples with one hand that covers his face. Zane slaps him on the back.

"We need everybody we can get," Zane says.

Garrett groans again. "You're right. I know it, but I need you safe, and Mom and Sean and Iris and Grace need you safe, so be careful. More careful than we've ever been. More careful than Dad and I were."

The gravity of that last part weighs down the whole room.

A bang outside reminds us all of where we are and what needs to be done. Robin digs right back in.

"I'm going to give you the cliff notes on thinning," she says. "First, activate your field. After it throws you out of your body, you have to get yourself back inside the field. You do it by focusing on your body. You'll have to focus hard...Mark," she stops to growl, "wait for the rest of us and wait until you've heard all the directions. I'm telling you, if you mess up, you're finished. And you might end up dead."

"Listen to her," Zane says, collaring Mark again and rattling him. Mark shoves Zane away with a scowl.

"Just say it already then," he says.

"Shut up and I'll tell you," Robin snarls. She somehow seems two feet taller when she gets mad and I wonder if that's an Emen trick she's got too. Or maybe, that's just Robin. Whatever it is, it settles Mark down and Robin starts back up. "Get in your field and you'll know you're in there if you can push your fingernails into your skin and feel it. When you feel it, put your hand up and feel the field. You have to rub down the walls of your field. You've got to be extremely thorough too. It's going to take a couple minutes, but be sure you get every inch of it, so don't forget under your feet. That part is where it's tricky. You have to be positive you are feeling your field. It's kind of cold and ripply, but you have to be sure that there's still enough under your hand when you thin it. If it bunches up, you have to be sure it lays back down before you start thinning again or you could make a hole. And if you forget a spot, it'll pull on the rest of your field and it could make a hole too. When you've rubbed the whole thing down, get back out of your field and stare in at your body. You'll know you did it right if it's blurry."

"Is it staying like that forever then? Are we Emen if we do it?" Mark licks his lips and rubs his hands together. Robin grunts.

"Hardly. You don't get to be an Emen on the cliff notes version of thinning. There's a whole thing to it, you know. But yeah, you're going to be blurry forever."

Brandon temples his fingertips together. "The field's got a memory?"

"Dur." Robin frowns. "It's more like you're taking off a layer of the field. You'll see."

"I already forgot the steps," Brandon say. There's a little panic jumping in his voice. I feel just as spun-out as Brandon, as if I'm walking into a final exam we didn't study for.

"I'll walk you all through it, don't worry," Robin says. "Now put your fields up."

There's no more time to panic. I don't know if I'm relieved or terrified about that, but Garrett and I open up our fields at once, the two of them linked. We each have our own field, but they overlap, Garrett's encircling mine. We move in sync, automatically moving our bumps-and-bruises Cavises, just like Zane taught me to do. Except the heart Cavis. It's gear shaped, transparent and glimmering like a diamond. It hangs between Garrett and me and neither of us can move it. Zane's grin is all proud-papa when he sees it, and then, his brows drop and he says, "Whoa."

Robin glances over and her glance gets stuck. It's another whoa, even though it's just with her eyes. Her mouth hangs open.

"You've got a double field," Robin says.

"Weird!" Brandon says. Mark giggles.

"Your field looks like my--"

"Shut up, Marko," Zane pops Mark in the shoulder. "You know how rare that is?"

It would feel like the lead-in to a bad joke if I wasn't so curious. "How rare is it?"

"One in something like 500,000." Zane's still staring. "Did you guys know you were piggy backing it?"

"Yeah," Garrett says. He doesn't give the details of when or why it happened.

"Bizarro," Mark says. "Your heart Cavises are a diamond. Nobody's going to be able to get through them though."

That makes my eyes sting. When my mom was my connection, our field looked like a diamond and when I saw her during the Memory ceremony, she left a diamond bell in my heart that jingles when I think of how I loved her.

"And zang," Zane whistles low, as if he's admiring a fine ride. "Looks like you got a tasty titanium crust on it too."

"Sweet," Brandon adds.

"Since you're part of each other, you must be able to project to each other then, right?" Robin says.

"We can anticipate each other."

Zane smiles. "Handy."

But Robin frowns. "It also means that if one of you gets killed, the other one dies too."

"What?" I turn to Garrett. He never mentioned that could happen.

"It's part of it," he says. This is more than I expected. I thought Garrett was just my Connection, not that I had become his definite liability. We are in this together in the most real way that real can ever get; it means that I'll never die alone but it also means that I could get Garrett killed if I'm the weakest link in our equation. Terror and relief come as a box deal.

A clunk outside reminds us where we're at and gets us all moving again.

"Fields up," Robin says. She coaches us as we go through the steps she explained. "Push your fingernails into your skin, see if you can feel it."

Garrett digs his thumb into the side of his finger. Mark and Brandon are clawing at their arms like they're going to take out chunks.

Robin snaps at them, "You're not trying to draw blood, you just want to be sure you have feeling. That your body and your soul are there together, feeling."

"Got it," Zane says.

"Got it," Garrett and I chime in.

Mark nods. "Ouch. Yep, got it."

"I think so," Brandon says.

"You can't think so," Robin says. "You have to be sure."

Brandon digs his fingernails into his skin like he's peeling a woody banana. I wince.

"Oh yeah," he says. "Yeah, I got it."

"You sure?" Robin asks.

Brandon sneers at her. "Yeah, I'm sure."

I'm not sure that any of us believe it, but after some screams kick up closer to the camper, Robin continues on.

"Put your hand up and try to feel your field. It'll kind of move, but don't push on it. You don't want to make a new Cavis in it. Just, kind of...just go slow."

We put up our hands and my fear of punching a hole in it sends a shiver through my and Garrett's field. It tries to shatter with my hesitation, my lack of faith in the whole thing, but Garrett's field holds it firm and keeps it from breaking. Just seeing that strengthens up my part of the field again.

I extend my hand and when the bubbly gush of my field waves up against my hand, I almost shout out of relief. Instead, I look up and catch Garrett's grin.

"Feel it, Rebel?" he says.

"It's like an overfilled water balloon." Except that when it waves out from under my hand, I can't just scoot my hand and feel it right away. It takes a second to feel it again. It's as thin as the oil film on a puddle, rushing around once it is disturbed.

"When you've got it, you need to touch every inch. Like you're painting a wall with your hands. Make sure you get the part under your feet too." I glimpse Brandon, his extended hand shaking as he tries to feel his field. Robin sees it too.

"Brandon," she says, "just go slow."

"I think I got it," he says, but his face is all screwed up like he's focusing a laser beam on a gnat.

"Don't focus. Just try to find it with your palm, like this," Mark tells his brother. Brandon watches carefully as Mark holds his palm up against his own field. Mark slides his hand across and the patch he touched goes milky and blurred. Brandon goes back to trying and I can see Mark is just as worried that his brother isn't getting it.

"Why do we have to do this again?" Brandon asks.

"You're going to be harder to identify," Robin says. "But you'll also be harder to identify to the good guys too. You'll have to tell them you're an Emen and hope it's none of the Emen that will kill you on the spot for being a liar."

Mark visibly gulps, dropping his arms at his sides.

"Think of it this way," Zane says. "What difference does it make if we run into an Emen who follows code, or if we run into an Emen who's with The Fury? They both want us dead, so an Emen is an Emen. Just fight them if they come at you, right?"

Zane laughs, but none of us join him. It's just too close to the dead center of the truth.

Once our fields are thinned, we leave the camper.

We drag Pum back to the fire. Drag him.

He insists on it and we insist against it, but once we're out of the trailer and moving with the crowds toward the central fire pit, we can't let Pum just walk along with us. The mob around us shouts and shoves and shoot arrows into the sky, into each other. Whether The Fury around us flat out doesn't care who we are or just aren't looking for infiltrators, I have no clue, but in the wild energy of the dragging, we blend effortlessly.

Garrett and I have the rope between us that disguises the binding box and makes me look like Garrett's captured me. I hang onto the rope as if I'm broken and being led, but when we stop in the thick part of the crowd, a man reaches for me, barking close to my ear and I freeze.

"You a dog too, aren't ya, sweetheart?" The crazy man barks at me again. "How about a kiss for this hound dog?"

The barking man crouches, slipping his shoulder between my thighs and tries to lift me, but Garrett feels the tug on the rope as I move to strike. Garrett doesn't hesitate. He hammers the guy right in the face. The guy falls to his knees, gripping his temple. I land flat on my feet, but I wheel around and kick the man in the face. His whole body rocks backward and he lands, unconscious, in the dirt. We move on and The Fury whoop and shoot arrows and fight all around us. What I did was hardly a blip on the radar.

We walk into the wide ring at the center of the camp. Remnants of the fire from last night are obvious, the charred frame of a couch stuck in the middle of the ashes. There have been bigger fires too. The burnt streaks of ground stretching away from the pit prove it, like rays of a deadly sun.

"Nice one," Zane shouts to one of The Fury. He's got Pum by the wrist, dragging him to the right side of the circle. Pum's head flops on his shoulder, but the way Zane drags him, the little Veritas is as protected as he can be. A woman steps in and gives Pum a kick that flips the little Veritas onto his back with a painful shriek.

"Nobody touches my Veritas!" Robin shouts. She is on the woman in a snap. Garrett and I step in front of the two of them, blocking Robin as she drops the woman to the dirt, just like I did to the barking man. At first, the blocking seems unnecessary. No one seems to care, even as Robin kicks the woman over and over, rolling her unconscious body with each kick, to the outer edge of the ring. Garrett and I sit down on the log and Zane sits beside us, hauling Pum to sit on the ground between his and Garrett's legs--a clear sign for no one else to muscle in on their Veritas.

But another woman jumps the log and tries to fire a kick at Pum. Mark and Brandon are the first to spin on the woman, but she's yanked backward, butt first over the top of the log.

"I'll kill it! Let me kill it!" She's nearly foaming at the mouth, her hair a matted mess. She looks right at me. There's nothing in her gaze but animal. A crazed animal that wants off her leash.

A man stands beside her, a rope in his hand. Just like mine and Garrett's. Mark freezes as he stares at the man and when I get a look, I'm almost paralyzed too. I trace the rope up to find Trig on the other end of it.

He's staring at us with a grim frown. Masha remains crumpled on the ground beside him. She gapes and her mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. She raises a finger, pointing at us, but still no words escape her. She slaps her hand against her throat, motioning at The Fury pouring into the circle around her, but no one seems interested. Someone knees her out of their way. Someone else steps on her hand, but again, the scream that should come out of her mouth never makes it.

She eyes Mark and Brandon as if she's a needle and they are balloons. It makes me twitchy. Garrett too. But I'm sure Trig's got a good hold on the rope.

I'm wrong.

Masha dives at Mark, her fingers bent like bear claws. She grabs for his feet before Trig can yank her back or Brandon can knock her away. Her nails sink into Mark's field and he screams, stumbling backward into Brandon's arms.

I focus. There is a hole in Mark's field. A gash. A flapping wound of energy, right near his feet.

I feel the blood drain from my face. Robin is beside Mark in a heartbeat and I know exactly what's happened and how. Mark was so busy trying to help Brandon thin out his field, he hadn't gotten under his own feet after all.

Zane jumps up, shouting at Robin.

"Don't be a baby," he says. "Go fix yourself up! You're embarrassing us!"

"The kid can't hold his booze! Get him outta here!" Garrett adds. Laughter bubbles up as Brandon and Robin drag Mark away. Garrett watches them go, never getting up from the log, his elbows remaining on his knees. He rubs the knuckles of his clasped hands hard enough that the nail beds turn white.

Trig reaches down and yanks Masha to her feet. He looks as white as Garrett. He glares at me as he pulls Masha close and shouts into her ear, "You're trash! Maybe I should just throw you away!"

Trig's eyes move around the fire pit, to the outer ring of logs that sit in the shadows. I follow Trig's hazel stare and stumble on what I'm sure I'm supposed to see. The real live Larson is sitting there--not the one made of candle wax, but the one made of flesh and unscrambled brains. Larsy's propped on a log, with a young boy perched on his knee. When I meet Larson's eyes, he winks and points to Pum.

"See there, Junior? That's how you treat a Veritas!"

The boy looks a little worried when he sees Pum, but then the boy looks up at Larson with something like admiration. Then the boy on Larson's knee looks back at me and he winks too. My instinct is to keep my attention off him. But then I remember again: duh. Nok can hear every thought. If that's you, Nok, cough twice.

Nok sputters on Larson's lap, two hard coughs and he follows it up with a nose wipe for effect. It sends off a string of thoughts on my end, and coughing replies on his, which would lead anyone who was paying attention to think that the kid had a nasty case of whooping cough.

One cough no, two is yes, okay?

Two coughs.

Are you here to keep an eye on Pum?

A pause. One cough.

Are you here for us?

Two coughs.

You want us to do something?

Two coughs.

What?

No coughs. Duh. I have to ask yes and no questions. I glance around the fire, cruising my eyes past Larson and Nok. They look disinterested in everything.

Something with Trig?

Pause. Two hesitant coughs.

Ugh. I don't know what to ask. What's Trig doing here? Nope, only yes and no answers.

Are there are more of us in the crowd?

Two coughs.

Are they here to keep an eye on us?

One cough.

Something to do with Trig, though.

Two coughs that move his chest like he's going to burst. Larson pounds Junior Nok's back.

Trig. Trig's with Masha. He said he was going to throw her away. He was going to let her burn out. Maybe he's with her for revenge.

One cough.

Ugh. I stink at bronchial charades. Something to do with why she can't talk?

One cough.

I get frustrated trying to sort all the answers into a pile that can point me in the direction Nok wants me to go.

Can you just show me?

Two coughs and then Junior Nok leaps off Larson's leg and runs toward me. He stops short and kicks dirt up in my face before high tailing it out of the circle, screaming as if we're playing tag. The dirt stings my eyes as The Fury, seated on the logs around us, laugh. Robin and Zane laugh too.

"Hey!" Larson shouts as he takes off after Junior Nok.

"I'm going to kill that kid!" I shout. The second I'm on my feet, Garrett's on his too and we tear out of the circle after Larson and Junior Nok.

I follow their shadows in the dark, or more like, Junior Nok's coughing, just as I get disoriented and think I lost them. We race through the camp, bashing into The Fury, knocking them over, and racing away before they even know what hit them. A trail of fights break out in our wake.

We run across the camp, all the way to the front. We run until we reach the dumpster. Larson and Junior Nok duck behind it and I think I know exactly where we're headed. We're at the end of the line, which is right at the start of it.

There are no hellos. We duck into the tiny opening in the dumpster, the stink like an ether hanky that suffocates, but doesn't knock me out. Larson hands us Abiego berries as Nok pulls two Move Suits from a pack left on the floor.

"They're here, everybody's here," Larson says. Nok moves around us, stretching and sealing us into the suits. "It's time to send you two in."

"Who's here?" I ask. Adrenaline is pounding through me so hard, I can feel the blood vessels in my nose.

"Everybody. Garrett's whole family, Milo and Deeta, everybody from our Cura. The traitors. Gotta say, this wasn't the way we planned it, but the last of them got bussed in here a few minutes ago, so it's go time."

"Go where?" I say. Wherever we're going, Nok must want to tow us there fast.

"Not tow," Nok says the second I've finished my thought in my head. Garrett flashes me the question mark eyebrow.

"If you're not towing us," I say, "how are we getting where we need to go in these? You saw that we couldn't work them before."

"Learn," Nok says.

Larson adds, "Fast."

"Fat chance," I say, already slipping on the bearings under the foot Nok seals up. "Seriously, you're not sending us in there like this!"

Larsy waves his hands for me to calm down. "Listen up. Van's waiting on Fiskers to show. He's got all the other Cornerstones up there in the mountain, up in the top. That's where they need to be, to work. But he's waitin' on one more. We're sendin' up the troops as soon as we can get them, but we need to keep as many as we can get down here, so The Fury don't pour in on you. If they get up there, who knows what'll happen, so it's best for us to keep 'em out. Nok thinks you two are the best pick for going up and I don't have a better answer, so you're it. Figured it's best for you two to keep an eye out, since most of 'em up there is your family anyway."

It wouldn't matter if it was the Ianua's cats. We'd watch out for them.

"Is the Addo up there?" Garrett asks.

"Don't know. We're flying blind here. We don't know who's where, but we think Van's got your mom up there, Garrett, maybe Iris too. They're not in danger right now, at least as far as we know. Like I said, they're waiting on Fiskers for the last Cornerstone."

"What about Zane's dad and Freddie? Where are they at?"

"Don't ask," Larson says. He wipes his face. "Go on and tell 'em how to work the suits, Nok. Tell 'em as good as you can."

Don't ask.

Don't even think about it.

I take a breath and tell myself that maybe they've got broken bones or got locked up someplace--something, anything, that isn't fatal. I push the idea of any more death into the furthest corner of my mind's root cellar. Stuff like that can be packed away, like funeral clothes, until it is absolutely necessary to take them out.

"All parts roll...remember?" Nok says. Garrett and I nod. I try to focus, but I end up listen so carefully that I'm almost climbing into his syllables and trying to squeeze some second meaning out of them. Everything else drifts into the pauses in between Nok's instruction. What happened to Freddie and Ash Middleditch; whether or not Mrs. Reese and Iris are safe; where The Fury are keeping the rest of our Cura; if the Addo is up there; if Mark's field is permanently damaged. The last one goes round and round in my head like a marble. This might be the moment when I bust open my and Garrett's own double field like some amateur skateboarder trying to pull off a gazelle flip.

Addo was counting on me being his last hope and I'm 100% not sure I can pull this one off.

"Go flat in tubes." Nok holds up sandwich fingers to illustrate. "Bowls--they like hollow balls--in bowl, you ride edges. To go up, spiral flat up sides. To go down, stand or squat."

Nok stretches out flat on the stinking ground, his arms at his sides in a perfect plank. He flops onto his side and then his stomach, all arrow straight. Then, shows us the proper ways to stand and squat.

I keep my hysteria anchored in my gut. We can't do much but wobble and fall in the Move Suits, so it's nuts to think we can stand or squat.

"You go to top," Nok says. "Follow arrows. Seven bowls up. Top one dangerous, near mouth. More Fury there, but Fury no good moving. Not in tunnels. No Move Suits. Go left, left, left. All left take you to top. You more quiet there."

I still want to know how we're going to do any of this when I can't control the direction my arms and legs are going.

"Just follow arrow. You get hang of it," Nok answers me. Garrett gives a short nod full of so much confidence, I wish I could lick his skin just to get a drop of it in me.

"We'll get the hang of it," he says. I lock my limbs against the panicky shiver.

"At top, stay in coil. You understand when get there," Nok says. He smiles at me. I'm sure he means to give me the confidence that I can't seem to drag up. He corrects himself, "You will understand when you get there."

Proper English is not a relief.

And when you get there isn't much of a confidence builder either.

"Flat," Nok instructs. "And," he adds, putting a finger over his lips.

Great. No talking.

He points to the entrance of the tiny tunnel he pulled us through when we first came. He kicks something beneath the dark opening and the tunnel grits. Another tunnel cycles counter-clockwise into place, the way an Ophthalmologist's machine switches lenses. This tunnel is deep blue on the inside.

Nok motions for me to go in like Superman, belly down, arms up like I'm firing myself at the sky instead of into a tube. But, since Garrett is going in first, he's got to keep his bound arm down.

"We might need to cut the binding," Larson says. He follows it with a little shake of his head and a click of disappointment from the corner of his mouth.

"We're not cutting anything," Garrett says.

"You might have to," Larson says. "I gotta say, I don't know how you're going to get through all the mountain intestines like that. Or fight if you need to. What do you think, Nok?"

Nok measures the distance of the cable with skeptical eyes. I pull away from Garrett, stretching the cable to its maximum length, like that's going to help plead our case. But it doesn't even matter how much or how little we have, because Garrett reaches out his bound hand to me. At first, I think he's trying to give me more distance, but then I see it in his eyes, in his open upturned hand. The cable slides into the box as I move close and put my hand in his.

"We aren't cutting anything," he says.

"Look, I gotta say it," Larson rubs the back of his neck. "This deal is bigger than a relationship. It's bigger than the sum of all our individual parts. Shoot, it's bigger than all of us tied up together and multiplied times ten. What's at stake here is every single human being.

"Look, if the time comes, you ain't gonna be able to just saw through that cable and there's no telling what can happen. Worst case, one of you gets killed and then what? How you going to drag the other one around and still do what you need to do?"

I don't mention our double field and how if one of us dies, the other one will die too. That there won't be anyone left to drag. But the small thought sparkles like the serrated edge of a hunter's knife--if we're not joined by the cable, Garrett might have a better chance. I'd like to think that I have one, but he's trained and he's faster, stronger. What if we blow the mission because he's still hanging onto me?

The blade wiggles in my thoughts, flipping to the other side, and there's a thought there too: what if I just get lucky? What if something happens to Garrett and my death is delayed enough that I have the chance to do what needs to be done? What if I can't do it because we're attached?

The horrible thought surfaces: this is bigger than what we want.

Bigger than love, at least our little corner of it. This mission is for the love of our entire race. It's past, it's future. And it's all going to be decided right now.

With our present.

It's a gift I don't want to give and one I know isn't right to keep to myself.

"That binding's a liability and you've got a no-going-back kind of cable set up there, except that there is a key." Larson reaches into his pocket and takes out a key. It's a short key with a circle on the end, like a ring that would fit on my pinky finger. He reaches for the binding box, but Garrett pulls away.

"No," he says.

"Garrett," I say. "We've got to. It might be the only way."

"We don't know that. We might be able to have it all."

"Are you willing to risk everything for maybe?"

"Yes," he says, but his gaze flits away from mine. I move closer to him, putting my hand over the top of his. I can hardly stand the words I'm going to say.

"I'm not."

I put my hand out for Larson's key, but as Larsy goes to hand it over, Garrett swipes it. He slips it into his front pocket. Larson starts squawking about being reasonable, about our dismal chances, about selfishness.

"We're in this together, right?" he says, totally ignoring Larsy.

"Yeah," I say.

"Then have faith in this. That we're supposed to be together and that's why we'll make it together."

"Seems a little..."

"Faithful," Garrett finishes softly for me. His beautiful grin trembles on his lips.

It is better than a kiss. His smile makes the ground beneath me seem solid. It stops all the flutters and the fear. There might just be enough of this feeling between us to save us all. I return his smile.

Solidly.

"Yeah, faithful," I say. Larson groans, wiping his hand over his face.

"It sounds like a gul darn death wish to me. Do you two get how important this is?"

"Completely," Garrett says, his eyes drifting from my lips. "Ready?"

"Yes," I say and we slide into the tunnel, one after another, shooting away as if this deep blue passage is connected to the sky and we're free falling through it.