The Duality Bridge
Date: 2015-08-13 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post Apocalyptic; Fiction; Dystopia; Science Fiction; Young Adult; Fantasy; Futuristic
Description: Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He’s the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders—the human/machine hybrids who run the world—in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever. Too bad it’s all a complicated web of lies. Worse, Eli’s not even entirely human. Few know about the ascenders’ genetic experiments that left him… different. Fewer know about the unearthly fugue state that creates his transcendent art—as well as a bridge that lets him speak to the dead. But the Resistance is the one place he

Text copyright © 2015 Susan Kaye Quinn

All rights reserved.

August 2015 Edition

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

www.susankayequinn.com

Susan Kaye Quinn

Speculative Fiction Author

Subscribe to her mailing list

Edited by Bryon Quertermous
editing.bryonquertermous.com

Cover Design by Dale Robert Pease
www.walkingstickbooks.com

The Duality Bridge

(Singularity 2)

young adult science fiction

Summary

What does it mean to be human?

Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He’s the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders—the human/machine hybrids who run the world—in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever.

Too bad it’s all a complicated web of lies.

Worse, Eli’s not even entirely human. Few know about the ascenders’ genetic experiments that left him… different. Fewer know about the unearthly fugue state that creates his transcendent art—as well as a bridge that lets him speak to the dead. But the Resistance is the one place he can hide from the ascender who knows everything the fugue can do. Because if Marcus finds him, he’ll either use Eli for his own nefarious purposes… or destroy him once and for all.

Susan Kaye Quinn's Bestselling YA SF stories...

Singularity Series

The Legacy Human (Book 1)

The Duality Bridge (Book 2)

The Stories of Singularity #1-4 (Novella Box Set)

The Illusory Prophet (Book 3)... coming 2016

Mindjack Novels

Open Minds (Book 1)

Closed Hearts (Book 2)

Free Souls (Book 3)

Mindjack Short Story Collection (Novella Box Set)

To be notified when Susan has a new book out...

Subscribe to her SKQ Newsletter

When you subscribe, you also get a FREE book!

CLICK HERE to subscribe and get your FREE STORY!

to Daniel

for stretching my cognition

“My name is Elijah Brighton, and I’m part of the Human Resistance Movement.”

The words leave my mouth and float into the blue holographic matrix that surrounds me. My chair is rigged with tech that authenticates every word so my audience will know the broadcast is real, not a sim or virtual. That’s key to winning the hearts and minds of the ascenders—the god-like human/machine hybrids who run the world—as well as the legacy humans they keep for pets. But it’s the half dozen Resistance members standing and pacing outside the holo matrix, their faces washed in blue light, that concern me. They’re watching me read the script, but that’s not what’s making them dart nervous glances at the open door of the transmission room.

They’re worried we’ll get caught.

So am I—but not because it will stop our covert operation to hack in our message. I’m worried the one ascender who knows there’s something different about me, something that shouldn’t be possible, will find me. I escaped Marcus once, but the next time he has me strapped in a chair, he won’t waste time telling me I was never supposed to be born. He’ll simply kill me. Or inject nanites in my brain and turn me into an ascender.

At this point, I’m not sure which would be worse.

I clear my throat and lean closer to the holo grid. “The Resistance is fighting for equal access to ascendance for all humans, no more, no less. Ascendance isn’t something to be doled out to the few, the worthy, by whatever measure the ascenders choose. The choice to ascend is a fundamental right every human should have.”

Delphina wrote the script—she’s an Olympic gold medalist in storia, so words are her talent. More importantly, she’s the spiritual leader of the Resistance. Everyone looks to her for inspiration. For courage. Sometimes, I think Kamali—a girl I once kissed and then forever lost with a mistake—is looking for even more. I’m sure Delphina’s preference for girls would include a tall, gorgeous ballerina like her. They’re both watching me from outside the holo matrix, exchanging words I can’t hear and smiles I don’t want to see.

I pull my gaze back to the script floating just beyond the cameras. “Four days ago, the world watched as Kamali LeClair, Delphina Astoria, and I took the gold and won the right to ascend. When our connection to the Resistance was discovered, the ascenders stripped us of our medals to keep us from the winner’s stage. They even went so far as to falsely accuse me of murder.” I don’t have to fake the fire rising in my voice. Thompson was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to die. “Aaron Thompson was a kid from my own hometown of Seattle. He performed for the ascenders like the good pet he was supposed to be, and they killed him when he got in their way. Just one more victim in the Games the ascenders like to play. When we refused to play their games, they held us prisoner. They tried to silence our message. But they have failed.”

This is why we’re transmitting from an authentication chair, rather than taping our script from a more secure location. Which would be any location other than the middle of an ascender city teeming with police bots and mechanized military sentries. To prove we’re still very much alive. That we were judged worthy of ascendance and denied it because we stood for ascendance for all. Delphina, Kamali, and I are now the Resistance’s most powerful PR weapons.

Kamali is up next in the holo chair, then Delphina. Outside the holo matrix, she gestures to Kamali to turn her graceful dancer body around so she can adjust her black body armor. Delphina’s hands seem to be lingering too long. It stirs up jealousy I have no right to have.

Kamali twists back to look at me and frowns. I’m not doing my job.

My attention whips back to the script. “During the Olympics, I was doing everything I could to win the gold. But only so I could throw the medal back in their faces. I was never going to accept their supposed gift of ascendance. Until every human has the right to ascend, no legacy should take the tiny scraps of hope the ascenders offer us each year.”

All of that is lies—I would have taken it in a heartbeat. I was trying to save my mom, which meant I had to win the gold and an immortal life for us both.

“I’m here today to tell you the Resistance is real. It is strong. And our ideals aren’t just held by humans. The Resistance reaches farther than you could ever imagine.”

I give one last look into the camera, trying to appear the determined revolutionary the Resistance leaders want. I’m still dependent on them for the gen tech meds my mother needs for her cancer. After my mom gets her cure, I’m not sure where I’ll stand.

I wait while the matrix shimmers and the transmission pauses.

A flicker of movement outside the holo grid draws my attention. Lenora, my ex-patron of the arts and current rebel-ascender, arrives at Kamali’s side in a blur of tech-enhanced speed. Delphina gives her a nod, but Kamali keeps her now cool gaze on me. Her silent judgment is for the things she thinks I’ve done. Forbidden things, like being a love toy for Lenora, whose perfect bodyform is barely covered in scintillating ascender-tech fabric. The thing is, I’ve never so much as kissed her. Except in my dreams, which really shouldn’t count against me. Any seventeen-year-old guy would have those kinds of thoughts. But Kamali’s not wrong to judge me.

My feelings for Lenora have always been… complicated. And now that I know she helped cook up my genetic makeup in a lab, our relationship is beyond strange. Few people know I’m a genetic experiment. Even fewer know about the fugue state that grabs hold of me and lets me create great art. Only Marcus knows I hallucinate about talking to dead people. But Lenora was there in the beginning when I was created. And she knows more than she’s told me so far.

I rise from the holo chair and step through the pulsing blue field of the grid. A static charge races across my skin—I can feel it through my body armor. I’m outfitted the same as the three Resistance militia stationed around the cramped room, except I’m not toting a gun that looks more like a reconfigured bot. There are a dozen more militia keeping watch down the hall, plus a cloaked transport on the roof of the apartment and a combat ship patrolling the skies.

Which is nothing if the ascenders actually come for us.

Kamali passes me on her way to the chair. Her creamy brown skin is washed blue by the holo light. It reminds me of when we were under the Olympic stage, her beautifully carved cheeks lit by our blue competitor tattoos—back when she thought I was someone worth believing in. Her eyes are solemn, measuring. Then she gives me a miniscule nod of approval. It warms me like a blast of sun through the darkened room. I fight to keep my reaction off my face.

Ayala, one of the militia guarding the room, is standing right next to us and pretending not to see everything. But as soon as Kamali steps inside the holo field, which captures every sound wave both in and out, Ayala says, “Nice work, sir.”

I duck my head, afraid my response was too obvious. “Just doing my part.”

“Your part is important. It’s an honor to guard you.” She smiles, then drops her voice. “I never believed what they were saying about you, sir.”

I frown and look up. Before I can ask what she means, Delphina strides up with another militia behind her. Caleb is only a couple years older than me, but his face is sharp-boned and battle-hardened. A lot of the militia are like that—aged early by the fight.

Caleb nods to Ayala. “I’ve got Brighton and Astoria. You can take point in front of LeClair and the transmission chair.”

Ayala frowns. “Grayson assigned me here.” Grayson is the third militia, older and in command. He’s guarding the door with his back to us.

Caleb gestures with his chin to me. “I’m supposed to stick with him.”

Ayala shifts her grip on her weapon, taps her ear, and whispers something. Probably a subdermal comm—all three of the militia in the transmission room have augments, some more obvious than others. Grayson has black metal where his legs should be while Ayala has just one ascender-tech leg. Caleb’s augment replaces one arm below the elbow. They all have more power in their augmented limbs than the rest of their bodies combined.

Ayala listens for a moment to her comm, then drops her hand. “All right, I’ll take point,” she says to Caleb. “Grayson says to keep the medalists far from the door.”

Caleb nods, and Ayala strides to the front of the holo chair, kicking up a misty vapor around her boots. The weird ascender flooring makes it look like she’s walking on a blue cloud. Caleb gives me a twitchy glance, then turns his back on Delphina and me to focus on the door. He flexes his grip on his weapon. In the blue light, it’s hard to tell his mechanical fingers from the gleaming black barrels of his gun. I can’t help wondering if he lost his arm in a previous operation. And how Ayala and Grayson got their augments.

I realize I’m staring and drop my gaze to the floor.

“It’s strange, no?” Delphina asks, glancing at Caleb’s ascender-tech arm.

Heat rises in my face. I’m sure he can hear us. “I’m just not used to it.” It’s so clear now that my legacy home of Seattle was a carefully constructed zoo. We were told everything outside the city was wasteland and chaos. The ascenders lied about so much. I understand why the Resistance wants to broadcast their message to legacies as well as ascenders.

Delphina is short, but her stare has a thousand watts of energy behind it. “We should never become used to such a thing,” she says with the lilting French accent of her hometown of Paris. “The augments, they are changed in bits and pieces, growing stronger and more capable with each modification. It is seductive, yes?”

I frown. “I suppose.” I’m not looking for replacement parts if that’s what she’s thinking.

Delphina turns her scrutiny on Grayson at the door. “With each change, our warriors win the chance to risk even more. And they are glad for it. Welcome it with a zeal that is serviceable to our cause. And yet… it is a dangerous cycle. Where should we draw the line?”

“Somewhere before nanites in our brains.” But I know her question is rhetorical. Delphina would sooner die than ascend.

She nods and lets it drop.

Cybernetic limbs aren’t the only ascender tech the Resistance has laid their hands on. Ocular implants, subdermal comms, embedded screen interfaces—all first-class felonies in the legacy human world. Only neural enhancements remain interdit, as Commander Astoria, Delphina’s mother, mentioned when I asked.

Forbidden.

Like ascender kisses. Even with rebel ascenders in the Resistance, the taboos are still strong: there’s just too much mental distance between humans and ascenders. Any liaisons between them are hopelessly one-sided. That thought drags my gaze up to find Lenora staring at me through the blue web of the holo matrix.

We’ve tiptoed around each other since I brought my mother back from Seattle. She was still frail from her illness, and I didn’t want to leave her side as the Resistance decamped from Los Angeles to the main base in Oregon. Then Commander Astoria insisted on doing the transmission right away. With all that going on, getting Lenora alone to demand answers about my past hadn’t happened.

She subtly tilts her head, inviting me to come around the front.

I shake my head no. I want to, but Caleb has orders to keep us here.

She frowns, and black tendrils curl across her skin. I don’t understand the meaning of all the shifting coloration on ascender skin, but I know it reflects emotional states. Black is worry or perhaps anger. Even with the tendrils and the blue light, she still looks like a goddess—impossibly beautiful and powerful. She’s objectively superior, physically and mentally, to everyone in the room, human or augment. It took me a long time to figure out even gods are imperfect. And that lying, cheating, and murder weren’t human vices the ascenders left behind.

But thanks to Lenora, I’m no ordinary human. The fluttering flame of an idea—that not being entirely human might make a difference to her, to us—sputters inside me. I douse it with the harsh bucket of knowledge that she set me up for Thompson’s murder. Even if she helped create me, she has her own agenda. One that doesn’t involve kissing her pet evolutionary project.

Maybe.

A rustle by the door grabs everyone’s attention. Commander Astoria has arrived next to Grayson. She’s whispering something in French.

I tip my head to Delphina. “What’s your mother saying?”

She dismisses the question with a wave of her black-gloved hand. “Only that he’s needed up front.” Her attention is focused on Kamali in the transmission chair, who’s gesturing with her splayed hands as she delivers her speech.

Commander Astoria gives a flourish of fingers that must be some kind of command. Grayson flips down the visor of his helmet and disappears. Like, literally, shimmers out of existence. It’s his personal cloaking tech, the same as our transports use, only it’s built into the silver-blue jacket and pants he’s wearing over his black body armor. We all got instruction on the multi-spectrum capabilities of the suit before we deployed, but only Grayson and two others were outfitted. Now that he’s in ghost mode, my stomach clenches.

Something is up.

Kamali emerges from the holo matrix. Caleb gestures for her to stay back, next to me, while Delphina steps into the blue field to give her speech. Kamali’s posture is always perfect, but now there’s an unnatural stiffness to it as she ignores me and keeps her gaze trained on Delphina.

Tension is eating a hole through my gut.

While my attention’s on Kamali, Lenora appears suddenly by my side, moving with that insane ascender speed again. Caleb twitches in surprise and swings his weapon to her, but pulls back at the last moment. He makes a sound of disgust, then goes back to watching the door.

I give Lenora a look that says, What are you doing? The room is tense enough as it is.

“How much longer?” she asks, no apology in her voice as she glances at the holo chair.

“As long as it takes.” I try to keep the growl out of my voice. Commander Astoria timed the op out precisely, and she’s putting her own daughter at risk in service to the cause. I’m sure we won’t be leaving until the message is delivered. Kamali scowls at Lenora, then continues watching Delphina’s speech.

It feels like each second is slower than the last.

A scattering of voices come from outside the door, somewhere else in the apartment. We’re deep inside the gleaming city of New Portland. I’m not sure what was wrong with the old Portland—something about rivers; ascenders don’t like water—but the original city is now a decaying urban wasteland and a hangout for bloody religious cults. The ascenders created New Portland with wildly new architecture—thin skyscrapers lined up like razor blades alongside bulbous mountains of latticed steel and glass—but our ship’s cloaking tech is also ascender-made. We managed to slip past the towering spires and origami-shaped buildings to this very particular apartment undetected.

The owner is named Kallias, and the ascenders don’t know she’s a rebel. Which means her holo chair is still hooked into Orion, giving the Resistance the authentication they need. Orion is like a net for ascenders, only more—Lenora described it as a communion of sorts—but this will be the last time Kallias can access it. Even if we get out before the ascenders track us down, they’ll know Kallias helped. She’ll have to go off-grid, like Lenora and most of the other rebel ascenders. Which means no backups—something about the tech not being secure outside of Orion—and that means if their bodyforms are destroyed, they won’t be able to resurrect. Kallias will be as mortal as any human.

It’s a pretty big price to pay.

A woman arrives in the doorway next to Commander Astoria with such speed that the flooring mist swirls into an inverted waterfall up the wall. It’s Kallias, and her petite, barely-dressed bodyform is a riot of writhing black tendrils.

My alarm steps up two levels.

“What’s our status?” Commander Astoria asks quickly.

“The transmissions are reaching Orion.” Kallias gestures toward Delphina in the chair. “The signal was momentarily interrupted. My associates shielded the transmission once again. I don’t think—”

The holo matrix light flickers then comes back to full strength—it freezes everyone in the room.

“What is happening?” Commander Astoria hisses to Kallias.

Her eyelids flutter, which means she’s in contact with Orion. Or someone. “The holo chair has an independent power backup—”

An explosion crashes through her words. Gray smoke fills the hall.

Commander Astoria yells at Kallias, “Protect them!” Then she draws a narrow-barreled weapon from a holster on her thigh and sprints straight into the burgeoning smoke.

Caleb and Ayala raise their weapons but hold their positions—Ayala in front of the holo chair with Delphina, Caleb with me, Kamali, and Lenora.

Kallias appears in front of us. “Guard the door!” she says to Lenora, taking my arm in one hand and Kamali’s in the other. Lenora looks torn for a moment, then disappears in a blur towards the door. Caleb covers us, edging backward as Kallias hauls me and Kamali all the way to the back wall. She takes a protective stance next to Caleb, who’s sweeping looks between her and the door. Delphina is still in the chair, gesturing wildly with her short arms and spewing angry words I can’t hear. Kamali’s eyes are wide with the same fear that’s running racetracks around my body.

Something crashes through the apartment. Human screams and ripping metal and electric gunfire echo through the door like a bad horror virtual is playing down the hall. A second blast hits. The concussive force knocks everyone down. The holo matrix shorts out. Delphina’s angry words echo after the blast. I’m flat on my back and can’t see anything but whiteness. Flash bomb, my brain tells me. But a rushing sound fills my ears, like an avalanche at my back…

The fugue state. No, no, no!

I’ve got to stay here, in reality, not floating off in a hallucinogenic state while my body lies unconscious on the floor. I do not want to die under the mechanical crush of police-bot feet. I grope through the white-out blizzard caused by my burned-out retinas. My hands find Kallias’s bodyform twitching on the floor, but the fugue is rushing to capture my brain—

The room shifts, the whiteness fades, and now I can see everyone: Kallias under my hands, thrashing against invisible bonds. Only she’s not wearing her bodyform. She’s six inches taller, lanky, with wild red hair and spindly fingers fighting against her unseen enemy. Kamali is next to me on the floor, tucked behind Caleb, who is back up on his feet but seems disoriented, swinging his weapon all over the room. Ayala has one hand holding Delphina down, covering her while the other has her gun targeting the doorway.

But they’re dressed all wrong.

Kamali’s in that sheer, nude leotard, the first one I saw her in. Ayala is wrapped in purple silks, and Caleb’s homespun tunic has patches and holes—and their augmented limbs are back to being flesh. Only Delphina is still in black, but it’s skin-tight on her small form. Lenora guards the door, but her body is no longer ascender tech… it’s delicate-boned and human-fleshed… thin with rapturous curves and a cascade of blonde hair…

My eyes blink away the whiteness, and the real world fades back in. Kallias is back in her bodyform. The humans wear black body armor again. I cough on the smoke filling the room and edge toward Kamali. Kallias grabs me, holding me back. I don’t know what she’s thinking… but a screech of metal-on-metal whips my attention to the door.

Lenora is grappling with six feet of killing machine. She and the military-grade sentry are moving so fast, I can’t tell who’s winning. My body shudders with the need to help, but there’s nothing I can do. Not without getting killed.

My frail human body is massively outclassed.

I turn to Kallias. “Do something!” I yell over the rending metal. I watch, horrified, as the sentry rips an arm off Lenora’s bodyform.

Kallias yanks me behind her and crouches in front of me. “I am.”

I want to protest—she should join the fight—but before I can get the words out, the sentry pulls Lenora close and drives its metal hand into her side. She’s one-armed. She can’t fight it off. Tears jump to my eyes. I know she’s disconnected from Orion. I know she doesn’t have a backup. Her one and only consciousness resides in a body being turned into scrap metal by the ascenders’ own killing machine.

A crack that sounds like death rips the air, and Lenora’s body goes limp. The sentry tosses her into the hall. Most of its humanoid shape bristles with weaponry—black and silver dispensers of death that are now pointing at the huddled humans in the room.

Ayala fires first, but Caleb quickly joins her. Twin blue-green bolts arc across the room and rivet the sentry’s body. The thing convulses and collapses, but there’s another one behind it in the hall. Twin red beams lance from it, simultaneously aimed at both augments. Caleb’s gun arm is clipped, but the other beam goes straight through Ayala. She doesn’t even scream. She just crumples to the floor with a saucer-sized hole in her mid-section.

I gape, horrified. Delphina drops to the floor, scrambling for Ayala’s weapon. Caleb’s gun clatters down as his arm hangs useless. He scrambles after it with his other hand.

Kallias moves with ascender speed to tackle the sentry in the hall. They go down together. Just beyond them, Grayson materializes out of thin air, just from the waist up, the rest of his body still invisible. He hurls a small metallic ball to the floor, and a blue pulse of energy ripples through everything—walls, bots, ascenders, and humans. It’s like a thousand volts of electricity coursing through my body, and it knocks me to the floor. I spasm in the mist, but the charge passes quickly. Somehow I’m still alive. I roll over and crawl on twitching hands and knees toward Kamali, who is likewise down and shaking, but she’s alive. Grayson floats over the bodies in the hall—the bots, Kallias, Lenora.

None of them are moving.

Grayson’s legs are still invisible—which must be why they’re working at all. The suit must have protected them from the bomb. He reaches us and gives a hand up to Caleb.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Grayson shouts. Caleb helps up Kamali then me. We’re both still shaking. Grayson lurches over to help Delphina but freezes when he sees Ayala. Pain ripples across his face, but he doesn’t kneel down to check her. Instead, he quickly reaches to grasp Delphina’s arm and haul her up from the floor.

“Move!” he demands of all of us, his voice graveled by emotion and smoke. Like a punch to the gut, I realize we’re going to leave Ayala’s body behind.

We all scramble toward the hall, but I only make it to the door before my legs lock up.

Lenora is in pieces on the floor. Kallias was taken out by the bomb, but she was still undercover. She has to have a backup somewhere. But not Lenora.

“We have to bring her,” I say to Grayson.

“My orders are to get you out, sir.” He lets go of Delphina like he’s going to grab me and force me into the thick haze of the hallway. There are bodies everywhere. Mostly human, some sentries. All in pieces. “The fighter transport is waiting.”

“She has no backup.” My voice is choked. I can’t just walk away. Delphina’s lips press tight. Kamali’s eyes squint in judgment. Caleb is aghast. I don’t care.

I drop to the floor next to Lenora’s body. There’s no life in her eyes, which are staring at the ceiling. I try to lift her head, but her ascender body is far too heavy for me to carry alone. Between the five of us, maybe. I blink back the tears and beseech Delphina with my eyes. The rest will follow her lead.

My throat is thick. “She has valuable information.” It’s true, but that’s not what transforms Delphina’s face from a scowl to fiery determination. I’m wasting valuable seconds. Time that might get us all killed.

Delphina crouches down to take one of Lenora’s legs. Grayson shoves me off from holding her head and heaves up Lenora’s torso around the middle. His still invisible ascender-tech legs take the brunt of her weight. I grab Lenora’s other leg, and the three of us crab-walk through the smoke-filled hallway, navigating over fallen bodies, weapons, and broken sentries. Caleb lurches behind us, his ascender-tech arm hanging uselessly at his side and his non-mechanical hand gripping his shoulder wound. Kamali brings up the rear.

It’s not until we reach the transport that I realize Kamali has brought Lenora’s detached arm along. As the ship lurches into the air, Kamali drops it to the gray cargo floor next to Lenora’s body.

She refuses to look at me for the entire ride back to base.

Our march down the transport ramp is a dirge—silent and tense.

Delphina and Kamali lead the way. I should be up front with them, showing that all three of us survived, especially given the cost to make that happen. Instead, I’m bringing up the rear, lumbering behind the dozen bedraggled survivors, slowly guiding Lenora’s maglev stretcher down the ramp. I want to sprint to the basecamp’s med bay and find someone who can resurrect her. Or at least see if it’s possible. But this is more a funeral than a homecoming—hurrying doesn’t seem right. Especially when Lenora is probably as dead as the others, the ones we had to leave behind.

They all gave their lives for a few words. A message. One that came from my mouth.

My body hums with a strange lightness. I think I’m in shock. I don’t feel anything but the cool metal of the stretcher under my palm and the heat of Oregon’s bright summer sun as we come out of the shadow of the ship.

Word has already reached the camp, with the roster of the dead racing ahead on the secure comm the rebel ascenders use. The camp is a sprawling collection of canvas barracks, gleaming silver pods, and an inflated module made with glowing-white tech-fabric for the ascenders. The domed ascender-tech shield overhead is one-way—it lets in the sun and the deep purple shadow of the mountains’ edge, but keeps out the elements and the prying satellite eyes of Orion.

An anxious crowd scans our faces. The steady beat of our boots on the metal ramp almost drowns out the sobs. A willowy blond woman pushes through to meet Delphina just as she reaches the grassy ground at the end of the ramp. The woman pulls Delphina into a desperate hug, bringing the whole entourage to a halt.

I can’t hear Delphina’s words, but they’re soft and French and dropped between tender kisses on the woman’s trembling lips. I should have known Delphina would have a second—I’m not really surprised, just relieved it’s not Kamali. As we wait for Delphina and her second to clear the way, another figure pushes to the front: Tristan. He’s the medic who took care of Cyrus’s concussion after the Resistance’s bomb-blast rescue—something that freed us, but also managed to bash my best friend’s head against a wall.

Tristan stumbles up to Kamali, chest heaving. He hesitates for a fraction of a second then sweeps her into a hug. Her hold on him is fierce in return, and it’s clear he’s the one comforting her, not the other way around. Tristan loosens his hold, gently tugging her to the side of the ramp. We start moving again. He brushes Kamali’s cheeks with the back of his fingers, speaking softly to her. I think she’s crying.

I stare at them. The non-feeling of my leftover shock breaks into a tingling sensation, the kind you get when your numbed-out hand is coming back to life and stabbing you with small splinters of pain.

I tell myself that of course Kamali has friends in the Resistance—she was a key part of their plans to disrupt the Olympics. Just a few days ago, Tristan translated some of Commander Astoria’s French for me. He’s clearly been in the Resistance for a while, probably one of the original crew that came out of Paris—

He’s kissing her.

I drop my gaze. The splinters stab their pointy little daggers deep into my chest. I tell myself Tristan’s a good guy. Kamali deserves someone good. This is a good thing.

My stomach feels like it’s going to heave out its contents.

I’m nearly at the end of the ramp, and even though I’m staring at my feet to avoid looking at Kamali and Tristan, I almost stumble when my boots meet the grass. The maglev gurney helps keep me upright. I wonder how quickly I can push it through the crowd without making a scene. I don’t notice Cyrus at my side until he grabs me by the shoulders.

“Eli!” He’s out of breath. “Man, I’m really glad you’re not dead.”

“Yeah,” I say. The buzzing light-headed feeling is back. “Me too.”

He looks at Lenora on the gurney, lifeless and broken. Her midsection is ripped, exposing the twisted organic tubing, actuators, and electronics that comprise her bodyform. I’ve never seen the inside of a bodyform before, but it’s something I could have lived my whole life without. It’s the kind of damage that intrinsically spells death.

Cyrus’s face contorts as he checks out her detached arm. “Oh man.” He drops his hands from my shoulders. “Is she…?”

“I don’t know.” My throat is thick.

A blur of something comes around the edge of the crowd. By the time I turn to look, Leopold has appeared at Lenora’s stretcher. He’s the rebel ascender who posed as an intake officer at the Olympics, but more importantly, Lenora saved his life. Leopold was a Tibetan monk before the Singularity, but ascendance wasn’t the nirvana he was looking for. Lenora stopped him from committing suicide in order to reincarnate. And all that was before they worked together on the genetic experiments that created me. In other words, he’s the only person in camp who wants to keep Lenora alive as much as I do.

His hands flit over Lenora’s body, probing the ripped out components and hovering over her lifeless eyes with some kind of scan. “What happened?” he asks in a rush, not looking at me.

“A sentry. I don’t know what kind of weapon he used on her, or if he just tore her bodyform apart.” It’s getting hard to force the words out. “Leopold, can you bring her back?”

He pauses his flurried motion and fixes his gaze on me. “If you mean bring her back from the dead, the answer to that is no. Even ascenders, once our neural activity stops, we’re—” He cuts off at the look on my face. “Let’s just say if she’s ceased all function, her time here, on this earthly plane with us, will have come to an end. In the final moments, we’re still as mortal as you, Eli.”

“I thought, maybe…” I’m choking up. “I thought you could…” I can’t even articulate my hopes—that somehow she’s just shut down, not dead.

Leopold eases the stretcher out of my white-knuckled grip. “I’ll have to diagnose the damage in the med bay. Let me take her and see, all right? If there’s anything to restore, I promise you, I will find it.”

I nod, too quickly. I know she doesn’t have a backup—the tech is built into Orion, and Lenora’s been off-grid for a while. Backups aren’t like simply storing data. It’s an alternate mind, kept alive but dormant, and securely locked away with an ascender’s personal key. The backup triggers automatically—wakes up and downloads—when their current bodyform is destroyed. But the rebels can’t bring a backup with them, and disconnecting from Orion is necessary for security.

I know all this.

I just have a desperate, stupid hope that Lenora’s bodyform only looks dead—that her mind is still alive, even though I know the chances are abysmally small. Even if the sentry left some part of her living, Grayson’s bomb probably destroyed it.

Pain twists in my chest as Leopold whisks the gurney away with ascender speed. The sun catches on the stretcher’s metal trim, creating a blur of sunshine as he speeds toward the silver med pod. The door slides open, and a moment later, closes again.

Cyrus shakes his head. “That still freaks me out, every time I see it. Makes me wonder what the ascenders are thinking, you know, when they have to walk slow like the rest of us.”

I don’t answer. There’s so much I need to discuss with Cyrus—not least that a flash bomb set off some new kind of fugue state for me—but I can’t wrap my head around that right now. My mind is frozen, trying to wish Lenora back to life. I need answers from her. And the giant vise squeezing my chest makes it hard to pretend I don’t want more than that.

Cyrus frowns at my lack of response then scowls more at something over my shoulder. I don’t turn—there’s nothing there I want to see. Grayson breaks from the crowd, striding purposefully toward the command pod. Caleb stumbles after him, his injured arm in a sling. Now that the survivors are back in the embrace of the camp, the crowd starts to disperse.

My best friend claps a hand on my shoulder and eases me into walking toward the med pod. “I’m sure Leopold’s got some kind of magic ascender tech up his sleeve.”

“Yeah.” I nod, but the sick feeling in my stomach isn’t even close to convinced.

Cyrus has always been a tech head, even before he worked in Riley’s black-market cybernetic shop in Seattle, but he’s been drooling over the basecamp’s tech ever since we arrived. Ascender-grade weapons. The camp’s shield and Grayson’s invisibility suit. Even the med tech is ridiculously advanced, and not just the gen tech for my mom—normal illnesses and injuries that kill legacies every day back in Seattle are a mere rest stop in the gleaming silver med pod. Anyone walking away from the op today will soon be as good as new. But, as Leopold says, we’re still mortal. If we die before the advanced medicines reach us, we’re still dead.

Like Lenora. Maybe. And the ones we left behind. They won’t be coming home at all, not even in caskets.

Cyrus and I weave through the remnants of the crowd milling on the grass, which is still damp from the nightly rains. It’s unclear to me whether the shield lets it in or actually manufactures the rain, but every night, it fills the barrels, feeds the grass, and waters the greenhouse crops. During the day, the shield captures the sunlight, rerouting it and making us invisible. The shield is mostly invisible from the inside, but it creates slow-moving, random spotlights on the ground, like the reflections on the surface of a lake. Cyrus and I move into one, temporarily blinding me. I barely flinch, still numb from all that’s happened.

It’s not until Cyrus and I are half way to the med bay, out of earshot of anyone nearby, that he speaks. “Eli, don’t worry about Kamali and that Tristan guy. I have a plan for that.”

“Cyrus, it’s fine.” I shake my head. He thinks he messed up things between Kamali and me, but it’s far from his fault. In fact, I know exactly whose fault it is: mine.

“It’s not fine. And I’m going to fix it,” he grumbles, but I know he’s just grumpy I’m not going along with whatever his plan is. “She’s only with that guy because of the accent, I’m telling you. And are you going to let some medic beat you out of the best thing you’ve ever had going with a human girl? Don’t wimp out on me like this.”

Normally I’d push back, but I just don’t have it in me. “Cy, she’s better off without me.” I’m not arguing. In fact, I wish he would drop it.

“Oh, man, don’t start that again—”

I cut him off by grabbing a fistful of his Resistance-style camouflage shirt. We’re nearly to the med bay, and as much as I want to know if Lenora’s going to make it, there’s nothing I can do there. And I have a few things I need to get straight with my best friend. I shove him back, toward the side of the pod. It’s more of a nudge to Cyrus’s shoulder, given he outweighs me by fifty pounds, but he gets the idea. He edges into the shadows, and I follow after.

“I’m not some normal guy,” I say, getting in his face, “or any kind of hero in Kamali’s rebellion. And she knows that, all right? She knows about the fugue, she knows I can make art when I’m in that state, but that’s all she knows, Cy.” I pause because I’m stabbing my finger into his chest, and Cyrus doesn’t deserve that. I lean back and drop my hand. “She doesn’t know I’m Lenora’s little genetic experiment. And I want to keep it that way.”

Cyrus’s frown has gone from concerned to stormy dark. “Trust me, that is not on my top ten list of things to tell Kamali. But I am glad to hear you haven’t shared that little bit of crazy with her. And please tell me you haven’t said anything about Lenora’s theory that you’re a direct line to God.” He says this like I’m impossible to work with, messing up his grand plan to get Kamali and me together. As if she wasn’t kissing Tristan two seconds ago.

“I haven’t spoken to Kamali at all. Not since the Olympics.” What I really mean is, not since she figured out I have feelings for Lenora. The forbidden kind.

“See, that is what I’m trying to fix.”

“Leave it alone, Cy.” My frustration has me jabbing my finger at him again, so I pull back and drop my gaze to the dewy grass by my boots. “Besides, I’ve got bigger problems. Something happened to me back in Marcus’s apartment in LA, when he was trying to ascend me.” I look up and meet Cyrus’s concerned look. “Something that changed everything. For me, at least.”

He frowns. “I know that whole thing shook you up, but—”

“Just hear me out.” I wait until he gives me a nod. “While Marcus had me strapped in his chair, I went into the fugue state. I saw things, learned things… things there’s no way I could know.”

His shoulders drop. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into this—”

“Cyrus! I met Marcus’s mother in the fugue state. Only problem? She died a hundred years ago in the Singularity.”

“Eli!” He runs both hands through his hair. “You had a dream or a hallucination or—”

“And it happened again,” I cut him off. “Today.”

He throws his hands out. “What happened again?”

“The fugue.” I swallow. “Except this time, I wasn’t talking to ghosts. I was completely in the present, right there, during the op. Some kind of flash bomb set it off. I couldn’t see anything. Except I could, Cy. I saw them all—Lenora, Delphina, Kamali—only they were different.”

Cyrus is running his hand over his face now. I think he’s finally taking this seriously.

“Different how?” he asks.

“Their clothes, mostly. Kamali was in her leotard, the one I first saw her in. But Lenora… she wasn’t wearing her bodyform. She was human. Like, maybe that’s what she looked like before she ascended? Except there’s no way I could know anything about that. She’s never told me, and you know they purged all the Singularity era stuff from legacy nets.”

He gives me a look like I’m hopelessly crazy. “So you got knocked on the head by a flash bomb and had a vision of Kamali in her nearly-naked dance clothes. And you saw Lenora, who you’ve been hot for from the very beginning, as a flesh-and-blood human. It doesn’t take a psych analyst to break that one down. This is why it’s so desperately urgent that I get you a real girlfriend. If not Kamali, then seriously, Eli, I’ll find someone else. Because you’re around the bend with this.”

I sigh and press my lips tight. I need Cyrus’s help, and that’s not going to happen as long as he thinks the fugue is just my own personal holo-fantasy about girls. “You know the fugue is bigger than that.”

He waves his hand at me, not conceding anything. “I know it helps you paint. That’s all I know. These dreams you have while you’re in Fugue State Land—I don’t know what those are. Probably just bizarre visions drudged up by your subconscious mind. And I’m very certain that’s a strange, strange place.”

“Yeah? Well, those visions are teaching me things. Things I can’t possibly know otherwise. That’s why I can paint in the fugue. That’s how I stopped Marcus from injecting nanites in my brain.”

“Wait… what?” Cyrus says. “Back up. I thought you stopped him with Leopold’s personal key breaker dot thing, whatever that was.”

I shake my head. “The dot was taking too long. Marcus had me strapped in, needle ready, all set to ascend me. He only stopped because I went into the fugue state, met his mother, learned all about his past life, then came out of the fugue to tell him his mother had left a secret letter for him before she died. It kind of freaked him out that I knew her name.”

Cyrus is speechless for a moment, something I would enjoy for a change, except that I really need him to help me figure this out.

“How could you know about the letter?” Cyrus’s large shoulders are hunched up again.

“Marcus was a little surprised as well.”

The furrowed look is back. “Let’s say the ascenders actually did alter your DNA—”

“They did something to me.”

He holds up both hands. “Maybe they did. And maybe it’s giving you these visions or hallucinations or whatever. That doesn’t mean you were talking to Marcus’s long dead mother.”

“You have a better explanation?” I ask, crossing my arms. “Because I’d really like to hear it.”

He’s got the Cyrus thinking hard look. “This thing lets you see stuff, learn stuff, that you couldn’t possibly know otherwise, right?”

“Right.”

“Things from the Singularity era.”

“Yeah.”

“Things only ascenders could know.”

I see where he’s going with this. “Why would they program a bunch of ascender knowledge into my DNA? I mean, if that’s even possible.”

He tips his head to me. “Hey, I wasn’t thinking that, but that’s an excellent explanation. Somehow they hardcoded some data into your genes, and now it’s getting expressed in your subconscious or dream states.” He taps a finger to his lips.

“What’s your theory?” I ask, suspicious that it’s something even crazier. Not that my personal theory about contacting dead people is any less so.

“I was thinking more along the lines of you tapping into current ascender information.” He’s got a gleam in his eyes.

“Current? As in, I can hook up somehow to ascenders like Marcus through my DNA?” Which actually does sound crazier. And doesn’t explain the famous painters who have been part of my hallucinations along the way. Or the most recent flash bomb episode.

He grins. “Maybe not just an ascender. Maybe the whole lot of them.”

I blink. “Orion? You think my fugue state is tapping into Orion?” My voice hikes up.

Cyrus shushes me and pulls me close, one hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got to keep this quiet. I mean, can you imagine? If you can really do that… we need to figure out how this thing works. Like, yesterday.”

I shrug his hand off. “I know you’ve been dying to hack the ascenders since you were ten, but—”

He leans back and does a good job of looking affronted. “Hey, this isn’t about fulfilling my lifelong and well-justified desire to give the ascenders a dose of their own arrogance. I am, of course, in this entirely for altruistic purposes. Vive la revolution!”

I almost laugh.

The hint of a smile drops quickly from his face. “I’ll tell you what. If you can crack into Orion, you will be the hero to end all heroes. Eli, my man, Kamali will be climbing over that Tristan guy just to have a chance with you.”

I roll my eyes. “That is not what this is about.”

He scowls. “Well, it should be.”

“There’s something really wrong with you, you know that?” But the tightness in my chest is starting to ease. If the fugue is something as simple as that—if it’s some kind of antennae tapping into Orion—then I’m not going crazy. And this thing the ascenders have done to me might actually serve a purpose. I’m in the Resistance now, for better or worse. It’s not like I can go back to my life as a legacy.

Cyrus sobers, which brings back some of the weight to my shoulders as well. “If you really can access Orion without anyone knowing… think of what you could do. The rebel ascenders can’t tap into it, not for long anyway, not without exposing themselves and the Resistance. And even the ones still undercover wouldn’t have access to things like Marcus’s mother’s private Singularity-era information. If you can tap that without Marcus detecting you—that’s pure information-access gold, my friend.”

He glances back to the transport. Almost everyone has drifted away. Kamali and Delphina are gone, off consoling and being consoled by their respective seconds, no doubt. “Things like today, this operation—our camp isn’t the only base of operations in Commander Astoria’s cause. There are Resistance cells all over the world, all running ops and risking human lives. Think about how many you could save if you can get a grip on this thing.”

That wipes away any remaining humor inside me. “I’m nowhere near controlling it, Cy. I don’t even know how the fugue works, not really.”

Cyrus nods. “I know you don’t. But I’ll bet Lenora does. And ascenders are tough—I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Leopold can resurrect her. The two of them were involved in this from the start, right? Let’s see what the shiny pants have to say about it.”

I nod. For the first time since the attack, I have a small lift of hope.

Cyrus’s words buoy me up… until we’re inside the med pod.

Lenora is motionless on the gleaming steel table. The blue holo matrix and the med bot obscure my view, but her midsection is still torn open. The bot has morphed from its normal humanoid form into a monstrous thing with several articulated arms sprouting from its chest. Each has a hand or claw or tools at the end. They appear more electronic than mechanical as they dig into her chest, but it’s all moving so fast, it’s a blur. Meanwhile, Leopold stands at one end, holding her smooth, hairless head. His hands form a cage of ten finger-point contacts, and his eyes are closed. Maybe he’s accessing her mind while the bot works on her bodyform.

I hope.

Cyrus looks both horrified and intrigued at the sight of the cybernetic surgery. On the opposite side of the med bay, my mom is resting in her bed, where she’s been since we arrived at the camp. The rest of the pod is empty: the humans injured in New Portland were patched up by a med bot on the way home. My mom stirs, and I decide to check on her rather than disturb Leopold.

Two small square monitors float over her, one at her temple, the other at her chest. Her skin is still paper-thin from the lymphoma that’s killing her. She’s getting decent care from the low-sentience med bot, and Commander Astoria sent out samples of my mom’s DNA as soon as we arrived, but it apparently takes time for a cure to be synthesized and ferried back. The Resistance’s far-flung network of undercover ascenders supply them with all kinds of tech, but the human-centric stuff, like genetic medicines and augments, have to stay more covert. The med bay is stocked with various augments, but my mom’s gen tech is custom. All I know is every minute we have to wait is another minute my mom is still dying.

I lay my hand on my mom’s. Hers is warm while mine feels like icy death. It startles her awake, and I pull back quickly, putting on a smile to compensate.

“Elijah. You’re back. Thank God.” A wheeze pushes its way out of her lungs as she struggles to sit up.

“Not sure God had much to do with it,” I say quietly. The med bot gave her a sleep aid before I left, so I’m sure she hasn’t heard about the op. Or the people who died.

I tap the bed’s manual controls to transform it into a half-chair. The cushion adjusts automatically on the way up to support her thin frame.

Her blue eyes capture me in a pointed stare. “Just because we can’t see the hand that guides things doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

I have to physically bite my lip to keep from saying something. She vehemently protested me going on the mission, but I know the score on this—I need to keep the Resistance happy until they come up with the meds she needs. Once she’s healthy again, I’ll have the luxury of saying no to dangerous PR missions to help spread their message.

I look to Cyrus for help—he kept watch over my mom while I was gone—but he’s absorbed in the med bot’s frenzied actions, putting Lenora’s bodyform back together.

My mom tracks my gaze, and her already sickly cheeks pale a little more. “What happened to Lenora?”

“We were discovered,” I say thickly. “She fought a sentry single-handed. Probably the only reason I’m still alive.”

That brings her gaze snapping back to me. “Sounds like Lenora was doing God’s work today, then.”

My shoulders drop. I don’t even know what to say to that. I don’t share my mother’s belief in her ancient religion. Lots of people in the Resistance are believers, but the idea of an all-powerful God watching over me? The closest thing to that is Lenora. I used to believe the ascenders were actual gods-on-earth—supremely intelligent, beautiful, good and kind and generous. Turns out that was just her. And looking at her broken bodyform now, it’s obvious how mortal she can be. Not that I count it against her. Time and again, she’s risked her immortal life just to keep me safe.

And God, if it exists, had nothing to do with it.

I clear my throat. “It wouldn’t be right if she dies because of me.”

My mom grasps my hand. “If Lenora dies because she was saving you, she would think it was the finest thing she’s ever done.” Her voice is full of conviction.

I’m struggling for words again. Lenora had a hand in my genetic design, but my mom… well, she’s my mom. She carried me for nine months and raised me alone. The closest thing I have to a “father” is the ascender who talked her into putting the freakish thing that I am in her womb. Beyond those facts, I’ve avoided the subject with her because I’m still creeped out by it. And full of anger at an ascender I don’t even know, but who my mother loved… and who used her like a petri dish. Every time I think about it, I become incoherent with rage.

I’m taking too long to respond.

My mom just squeezes my hand and lets go. “No matter what happens, it’s vital that you continue with your art. Lenora would want that, and so do I.”

My art. As if that matters anymore. “Right. I was working on some sketches this morning.” A complete lie.

My mother nods her approval.

The truth is I haven’t picked up a charcoal pencil, much less acrylics, since my Olympic-gold-winning painting of Kamali ascending into the heavens. I don’t even have supplies. Thanks to the fugue, I can now create insanely beautiful art at will—but somehow my need to paint is frozen inside me.

“So, what’s the latest on the gen tech front?” I ask, completely changing the subject.

She sighs, and it’s half wheeze. “Leopold said it would be in this afternoon.”

I peer at her. “That’s good news, right?” She doesn’t seem anywhere near as happy as she should be about this.

She smiles, but it’s thin. And forced. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”

Anger wells up in me—not directed at her, but at the whole situation that landed us here. “These aren’t black market meds some guy cooked up in his bathtub. This is the real thing—ascender tech.” I don’t know where Cyrus’s black market gen tech came from, but it obviously wasn’t ascender-sourced. The ascenders’ tech actually works.

“I hope so, for all you risked for it.” She scowls. “And if you ever put yourself in danger for me again, I’m going to beat you within an inch of your life.”

It’s true that I’ve risked my life for her. Giving myself over Marcus to win a cure for her wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. Not until she’s better.

I give her a mock frown. “Good thing you’re too weak to beat me up.”

“I’ll get Cyrus to do it.” She glares like she actually means it.

Cyrus breaks his fascination with Lenora’s surgery to glance our way. “Hey, I’ve got my own reasons for giving Eli a beat-down. You just say the word, Mrs. B.”

My mom smirks with triumph, and it lifts my heart too much not to smile in return. Then something on the other side of the room snags her attention. Leopold’s eyes are open, and he’s signaling me with a raised hand. My heart jumps to my throat. I glance back to my mom.

“Go,” she says, nodding in Lenora’s direction.

I cross the twenty feet of the pod at what feels like ascender speed. The med bot steps back and stows itself in the wall. Cyrus has moved back as well, eyes wide. Lenora’s eyes are closed, and her bodyform appears repaired, but her skin is the uniform gray of death. Or maybe she’s just unconscious, whatever that means for ascenders. I know they have rest cycles every month or so, but… this is different.

I swing my gaze to Leopold. “Is she…?” I can’t say the word. His skin is a carefully neutral gray, hiding whatever feelings he has. Or maybe he’s in mourning.

But a small smile tugs at his lips. “Her cognition was preserved.”

Air escapes me, and my whole body loses tension. I brace myself on the edge of her bed and run my gaze along her bodyform. Her ascender-tech sheer dress is shredded and barely gives any cover to her perfectly sculpted curves. My face heats, now that her near-nakedness isn’t made grotesque by torn internal parts lying exposed. I drag my gaze to her face, but it’s as motionless as before.

Leopold has one eyebrow raised, further flaming my cheeks for having been caught ogling. “Why is she still asleep?” I ask, a catch in my voice.

He lets the eyebrow fall. “I thought you should be prepared before I raise her cognition to awareness level. Awakening an ascender can be a dangerous business, especially given she may have lost some of the memories of events prior to her storage.”

I frown and look back down at her. “Storage? Marcus said something about that—I thought it was something you did to criminals.”

“Yes, well, Marcus would know quite a bit about that.” The dry bitterness of his voice draws me back. “He’s had more than one person put to storage who crossed his path at the wrong time.”

This doesn’t exactly surprise me, but I don’t care about Marcus’s shenanigans. “What does it mean to be put to storage? Is it like an ascender jail?”

Leopold’s smile is the indulgent kind, and it rubs me the wrong way. I should just skip all this and demand that he wake her up. “One of the reasons the ascenders sympathetic to the Resistance disconnect themselves entirely from Orion is to prevent anyone from putting us in jail, as you say.” He’s clearly amused by me.

I’m not amused at all. “Leopold, just tell me what happened, all right?”

He smirks for a moment more, then becomes serious. “Lenora’s bodyform is relatively new—as you’ll recall, it was damaged when Marcus captured her. This new model has the latest version of an auto-storage feature that triggers in the event of sudden system failure—and then only if a backup doesn’t exist. It’s a failsafe, but generally speaking, most ascenders prefer not to use it. The backups in Orion are much more secure, and this kind of storage leaves one’s cognition vulnerable to whoever happens to discover your inert bodyform. Lenora kept it disabled—if her bodyform were compromised, she didn’t want her mind to fall into the wrong hands. I’m sure she had it deactivated for this operation, but somehow it must have reset.”

I nod. “There were several waves of attack. Maybe one of the blasts triggered it again?”

“She’s very lucky, then. Doubly so that you did not leave her behind. She would have been hopelessly vulnerable.”

I pull in a breath. I feel better about demanding that we bring her back—she would have been a security risk for the entire Resistance. “Can you wake her up?”

“I can and I will.” He gestures to where Cyrus stands, several feet away, up against the wall. “But you might want to step back.”

I ease back from the bed, but stay close. “I’m good.” I want my face to be the first thing she sees. I’m not sure if that qualifies me as pathetically in love with an ascender I can never have, but my body refuses to leave her side regardless. Leopold said her memories might be wiped. Maybe she won’t even remember me.

Leopold tips his head in acknowledgment then passes a hand over Lenora’s forehead.

Her head twitches very slightly, almost like it’s vibrating. The shudder runs down her body, and the sheer fabric of her dress ripples in response. Then a torrent of color starts at her toes and races blue and purple streaks up her body. A brilliant wave of yellow swirls like sunshine washing her skin. Her eyes snap open, and before I can react, she’s up from the table, arms wrapped around me, lifting me off the floor in a hug that squeezes all the air from my lungs.

Her face is directly below mine, her lips inches away. “Elijah, you’re alive.” It’s a breathless whisper. Her eyes blaze up at me, blue irises wildly dilating as her gaze roams my face. They land on my lips, and impossibly, it seems like she might kiss me. My body is on fire with embarrassment—not that I haven’t dreamed of kissing her, but not here. Not in front of everyone, including my mother.

I wrench my head away, as far as I can go. I try to speak, but I have no breath, so I struggle against her ascender-strong hold. She immediately drops me and flings her body backward in an exaggerated motion that leaves her braced against the bed and bent backward over it. She looks like a feral animal with the mechanical mania in her eyes and the coiled-spring of her stance. Her head vibrates again in a way that makes me back up.

Leopold swoops in to grab her shoulders. She locks gazes with him, and slowly, her body begins to calm. The shudders stop. The wildness in her eyes dims. It only takes a few seconds, maybe five. Then Leopold nods, as if in answer to something she’s transmitted, and releases her.

The heat in my cheeks cools, but the bruises on my arms from Lenora’s too-tight hold start to warm. She smooths her clothes, then seems to realize the state of them. With a grim look, she lets her fists simply hang at her side.

Finally, she looks to me. “I’m so sorry, Elijah.” Her voice sounds like her, and relief washes through me. At least she remembers me. “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

And like that I’m back to being a pet in her eyes. As if I was ever anything else.

“I wasn’t frightened,” I say stiffly. “A little concerned you’d lost your mind, maybe.”

She frowns at the coolness of my tone, like she doesn’t understand how she just insulted me. It makes me wonder if the gap between us might be even larger than I thought.

Cyrus comes up behind me. “You okay?” he asks me quietly.

I know he means well, but it raises the hairs on the back of my neck anyway. “I’m fine,” I say loudly for the benefit of everyone. I catch my mother’s frown from across the room and lower my voice. “Should I assume you weren’t irreparably damaged in the attack?” I ask Lenora.

A flush of purple washes across her cheek. I think she’s embarrassed. “The initiation sequence can be a little… disturbing. There’s a moment of vulnerability before my personal key is re-established—but that moment has passed. I can assure you, I’m in complete control now. There’s no need for concern.”

Leopold’s eyeing her like he’s not entirely convinced. “You should thank Eli for the fact that you’re here at all. He’s the one who insisted on retrieving your bodyform from the battle, rather than leaving it behind.”

Lenora’s eyes go wide. Clearly Leopold saved that tidbit to say out loud. The heat is back in my cheeks.

She swings to me. “Eli, you should never risk yourself—”

I hold up my hand, cutting her off. I beat back the part that loves hearing her call me Eli and keep my voice cool. “You can thank me by answering my questions. I have a few.”

“I don’t know if—” She glances around the room, then lowers her voice. “Perhaps this is a discussion best held in private, Eli.”

My heart is thudding now, equal parts fear of what she’ll say and rush that she’s using my name—Eli not Elijah—in that soft voice of hers.

I try not to let it show and glance at the others—Leopold, Cyrus, my mother. “There’s no one here who doesn’t already know the answers. Or should. How much of what Marcus told me is true? I want to know exactly what you did when you created me. The tech, the genetics, all of it. And how you expected that to… express. Manifest. Whatever you hoped to achieve with it. And I want to know how it might go wrong and what the side effects might be. Everything.”

Her eyes widen, and she looks to Leopold. He shakes his head, but a pulse of purple washes up his neck. He’s wearing the standard Resistance casual wear—a foliage-based camouflage that matches the Oregon forest—so I can’t see what other colors are rippling across his ascender skin. But they’re both holding something back. Lenora gestures to him with open hands, and her skin flushes with a rainbow of purple and silver streaks. It takes me a moment to realize they’re transmitting.

“Out loud, Lenora.” The harshness of my voice brings her attention snapping back to me.

“What has happened, Elijah?” She searches my face. “I need to know everything.”

I scowl. “You first.”

Before she can respond, the door to the pod whisks open. Basha rushes in and quickly scans the room. I don’t know if she’s officially Cyrus’s second, but they’ve been going strong since we arrived. She quickly forgave his deceptions during the Olympics—then again, she was probably more impressed with his manipulation skills than angry that he lied.

“Cyrus!” she says, slightly breathless. “I need to talk with you. Like, right now. Eli, too.”

“We’re kind of in the middle of something here, Bash.” But he’s frowning like she’s triggering all his alarms.

“I know.” She hustles across the room, giving Lenora’s tattered dress a strange look before landing her small hand on Cyrus’s beefy arm. Basha is ridiculously short, with delicate Arabic features, tiny next to Cyrus’s bulk, but she’s a heavyweight in social gymnastics. And right now she’s giving my best friend a dead-serious, world-is-ending look of concern with her wide brown eyes. “Trust me, whatever you’re discussing, you want to be careful who you say it to.”

Cyrus frowns, but I can see Basha’s alarm carrying over. “What’s happened?”

Basha presses her lips together, tugging on Cyrus so he’ll bend down. Her voice is a whisper, but it’s loud. And clearly meant for everyone in the pod to hear.

“Commander Astoria says we have a spy.”

A spy in the Resistance? It’s possible. For all the anxious preparation, Commander Astoria wouldn’t have approved the PR mission if she didn’t think we could pull it off. We were supposed to get in and out fast, long before we could be tracked… only the attack came faster.

Cyrus’s grip on my arm is almost painful. “Let’s go.” He yanks me toward the door of the med bay, and I don’t resist out of sheer confusion. Basha swipes the door open ahead of us.

When we reach the threshold, I finally have the presence of mind to jerk out of his grasp. “We need to get some answers, remember?” I gesture to Leopold and Lenora, who are flicking looks to one another.

Lenora flits with ascender speed to my side. “We do need talk, Eli.” She frowns at Cyrus like she thinks he’s kidnapping me. Which seriously annoys me—because I trust him five times more than her any day and in every way.

Cyrus balls his fists like he might fight his way out of the med bay. But his voice is calm. “Eli, you need to know who your friends are. Before we go talking our mouths off.” He gives me a pointed look, and I get what he’s saying: he doesn’t trust ascenders. And with this spy business in play, he’s hedging his bets against sharing anything about the fugue, even with Lenora. I’m not sure what to think. She could still give me answers about my past and how she designed me—I’ll just have to keep my mouth shut while she talks.

“I still want some answers,” I say to her. “Let me sort this out first.”

Cyrus gives me a nod like he thinks I’m making the right call, then he practically shoves me out the door. Basha leads us away from the med pod. She’s tossing pinch-faced glares around, like she’s scanning every water barrel shadow and flapping canvas doorway for a lurking sentry. Cyrus and I follow her lead and keep quiet until she brings us to the back of the mess hall. There’s an angry noise rumbling inside the canvas walls. It creates a background static that will cover our conversation next to the crates of potatoes and pungent refuse bins.

“Basha, baby, what’s going on?” Cyrus lays a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Her thin fingers flex, both hands in unison, like she wants to claw the eyes out of something—not Cyrus or me, I think, but I wouldn’t want to cross her right now. Even if she’s only a hundred pounds soaking wet.

She peers up at Cyrus. “Someone betrayed the mission. Someone who knew exactly when and where it was going down.”

I frown. “Maybe we just got tracked faster than they expected—”

Basha’s glare cuts me off. “No one tracked the transmission. It was shielded right up until the sentries landed. That means a spy knew the plans or brought their own tracker.” She sucks in a breath. “They suspect you, Eli.”

“What?” My voice is too loud, so I reel it in. But it doesn’t matter because I’m speechless.

Cyrus runs a hand over his face. “Why do they suspect Eli?” But he doesn’t sound surprised. I give him an incredulous look.

Basha crosses her arms. “You know why.”

Cyrus sighs. “You know it’s not him. You wouldn’t have come for us if you thought it was Eli.”

She purses her lips, hesitates, glares at me as my mouth flops around like a fish drowning in air, and then finally says, “Yeah, I know. The boy’s way too straight for anything like this.”

I finally huff out some words. “Thanks a lot.”

She locks me in with her dark-eyed stare. “Just because I know it’s not you, doesn’t mean you’re clear of this. You’re the only survivor who hasn’t been with the Resistance for pretty much ever. Most are from Paris. Some are from the other cells. But all check out. You, on the other hand, have been with the Resistance for exactly four days. And people are saying you’re not even with us, not really. That you’re just here for the gen tech.”

I bite back my protest. Because all of that is true.

“You said people come to the Resistance all the time for the med tech,” Cyrus says to her, not exactly coming to my defense.

“They do,” Basha says, “but it’s more than just that. The Resistance needs ascender tech, but there’s always the suspicion we’re being played. That the rebel ascenders are using us, not the other way around.” She flicks her hands at me like I’m impossible to deal with. Reminds me of Cyrus. “Then Eli risks everyone to bring an ascender’s bodyform back from the op! I get that she’s your patron, Eli. And I guess it’s good that she lived. But the spy’s either an ascender or an ascender-lover, and that just doesn’t look good for either of you.”

“Well, it’s not Lenora, either!” I throw in, still completely off balance.

They both look at me like I’m pathetic.

“You weren’t there,” I protest. “She and that other one, Kallias, defended us with their lives.” I stab a finger at Cyrus. “You heard Leopold—Lenora would have died if I left her. There’s no way it’s her.” My voice is hiking up again.

Cyrus’s hands are up. “Okay. All right. Let’s say it’s not Lenora. For the moment.” He turns back to Basha. “What about this Kallias character? It was her apartment. Maybe it was all a setup.”

Thankfully, Basha nods. “That’s what I thought, but Commander Astoria seems convinced Kallias is solid. But she had a backup, and she’s resurrecting somewhere. Seems suspicious.” She glances at me. “All I know is the commander’s worried about you, Eli. She may not think you’re the spy, but she says there are ascenders after you. One way or another, she thinks you’re going to compromise the entire movement.”

I swallow and exchange a look with Cyrus. The Commander knows Marcus wants me—after all, I made the trade with him to free Lenora and the girls—but I didn’t think she knew why. No one should know that except me, Cyrus and the people involved in the original experiments that created me. If word of that got out… before my mom gets her gen tech…

“The commander seemed pretty tight with Leopold,” I say to Cyrus. “Maybe he told her...” I leave it hanging because Basha doesn’t know half of my many-layered secrets.

“She might know,” he agrees with a pinched look. I think he’s figured it out, but he’s cringing under Basha’s intense stare.

“Know what?” Basha’s sharp-eyed gaze draws a line between me and Cyrus. “Eli’s little secrets?”

Cyrus and I both stare at her, open-mouthed.

“Oh, come on.” Basha rolls her eyes. “Kamali told me everything. Your fugue. Your crush on your patron. The fact that you painted Kamali dead.” She lifts a hand to vaguely gesture to me while giving Cyrus a side-eyed look. “I know he’s your friend, Cy, but the boy has issues.”

My shoulders relax. So Basha doesn’t know.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” The tension seems to leak from Cyrus’s shoulders as well. “But this fugue thing that Eli does…” He gives me a careful look. Whatever he’s going to say, I trust him with my life. He swings his gaze back to Basha. “He still needs some help figuring out how it works. It’s important, Bash. It might help the Resistance. And Kamali was amazing at helping him before. She’s the only one who could ever figure him out.”

What? I’m working up a protest, but Basha’s skeptical look beats me to it.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” She’s scrunching up her little, brown face like I’m yesterday’s fish dinner. She’s Kamali’s best friend, so I’m not surprised.

Cyrus isn’t giving up. “He could have a way into Orion.”

I clench my fists and give Cyrus a what are you doing? look.

He ignores me and gestures toward the transport we returned in. “All this talk of a spy… what if Eli could hack into their system? He’s messed up, I’ll grant you that, but he’s on our side. And if we had a direct line to Orion, around the ascenders… he could be our spy. We’d know who’s a true friend of the Resistance and who’s playing us. Before it happens.”

Basha’s studying me now, nodding. “You can access Orion?”

I shake my head. “That’s just Cyrus’s theory.” I glare at him. “One I’d like to keep quiet. We don’t know what this thing really is.”

But that seems enough for her. “Okay. I could probably get Kamali to—”

“No!” The word gushes out of my mouth.

Cyrus and Basha exchange a look like they’ve been discussing me behind my back.

Fantastic. “Look, Kamali doesn’t need to be involved in this. I’ll figure it out some other way.” I wrack my brain for ideas. “Kamali did this meditation thing with me once. I’ll try that again. That’s something I can do on my own. Or maybe I’ll get Cyrus to set off a flash grenade near my head and that will do the trick.”

Cyrus lifts an eyebrow, like I’m crazy to volunteer for a flash bomb, but that’s honestly preferable to asking Kamali for help. Especially now that I know she has a second.

“Meditation, huh?” Basha says, tapping her lower lip with one slender finger. “Maybe we could ask His Holiness for help with that.”

Cyrus looks concerned. “Eli’s not a believer.”

“I doubt that will shock His Holiness,” Basha says, eyeing me. “The Dalai Lama’s pretty smart. He’ll help you figure out what you need.”

“Wait… the Dalai Lama?” I ask. “I thought he was killed in the purges.” Most religious leaders lost their lives during the backlash against organized religion after the Singularity. Leopold said his Buddhist temple was a burned-out relic by the time he returned. Information about that time period is sketchy at best, but the human descent into anarchy is still pretty obvious, and only the ascenders’ prohibition against organized religion kept the bloody wars from creeping into the legacy cities. At least, that was always the justification. I’m learning to doubt everything the ascenders say.

Basha shakes her head in a sad way. “It’s not exactly safe, even now, to be a holy man. His Holiness has reincarnated seven times since the pre-Singularity Dalai Lama was killed in his temple.”

Seven times. There have only been four generations since the Singularity. “So he’s hiding out with the Resistance?” I guess the believers in the Resistance are free now to practice their beliefs. Yet a reflexive queasiness, born of years as a legacy, churns my stomach. Is there an organized religion here in the camp? What does that mean for non-believers?

“He’s not hiding,” Basha says with a sigh. “He’s helping.”

“His Holiness could have insights into this,” Cyrus says to me. “It’s worth a shot.”

I lean away and give him a fresh look. He dodged my question during the Olympics about being a believer, and his grandfather was a secret Christian like my mom, but I didn’t think Cyrus was a believer too.

“So, what? Are you a Buddhist now?” I ask. Maybe hanging out with Basha was having a bigger impact than I thought.

“Would it matter if I were?” Cyrus asks carefully, eyes narrowed.

I don’t like this sudden tension. “No,” I say quickly. The last thing I can afford is to lose my best friend over some kind of religious feud. “I’m just trying to figure this all out.”

“And I’m trying to help you,” he says, but his voice isn’t strung tight anymore.

My shoulders relax. “I know. Okay, let’s see if His Holiness can help me connect with the fugue state. Monks are big into meditation, right?” My knowledge of pre- and post-Singularity religions is obviously completely inadequate for living outside the cloister of a legacy city.

Basha doesn’t answer, just strides away along the back walls of the barracks. Cyrus and I hurry after her, our boots swishing through the still-damp grass. She brings us around to the front of one tent, then brushes aside the door flap. There are a dozen dark gray cots, minimal privacy, and only one militia crashed out on a bed. She’s probably one of the night patrol, catching up on sleep.

Basha heads toward the back—only then do I see another figure rising up from the floor behind the last cot on the left. The honey brown skin of his smooth, hairless head catches the glow coming through the canvas walls. His clothes aren’t monk robes, just the same green camouflage uniform as everyone else. He raises his hands, pressed together above his head, then brings them back down and holds them briefly in front of his face. Next he touches them to his chest and kneels to the floor.

Basha stops a few feet away. He’s lying face down now, his thin, bony body stretched to its full, not-very-tall length on the woven rug. His arms stretch above his head, his hands flexed up like he’s expecting something to fall from the ceiling and land in them. He only stays that way for a moment, then slides back. Once he’s on his knees again, he pops up to his feet. Now I can see his face: he’s just a kid. Fourteen or fifteen at most, with Asian features.

I’m frozen, staring at this kid with the shaved head. This is the Dalai Lama?

His eyes have been closed the entire time. He raises his hands, like he’s going to do the whole exercise again, but then he pauses with them in front of his face. When he opens his eyes, he turns to look straight at me.

“Eli.” His eyes go wide, and he flicks a look over my shoulder. Then his gaze slowly drifts back to me, and he smiles with all his very-white teeth. “I didn’t see you come in the door.” He says this like he’s delighted about it, which is really odd. In fact, his super-happy look, like he’s a kid on a grand adventure, is completely throwing me. That, and he obviously knows me. Then again, everyone does—something I’m still not used to.

“Your Holiness,” Basha says as she presses her hands together and bows quickly.

Cyrus makes the same greeting.

The kid returns their quick bows with pressed hands, then takes a step closer to us. “You are here because you need my help.” The statement seems directed at Basha, but he’s really looking me over with open curiosity.

I’m thinking this is a mistake, so I keep quiet.

“Eli needs someone to guide him in meditation,” Basha says. “He’s trying to access… well, I’m not sure exactly. I’ll let him explain.”

The Dalai nods, acknowledging her words, but his focus is clearly on me. He edges around her to come closer, and his deep brown eyes dart over my face. He’s short and scrawny, so he has to tip up his head to peer into my eyes.

“You are seeking something,” he says. It’s a statement, not a question.

Cyrus is glaring at me over the Dalai Lama’s shoulder.

I squirm. This is ridiculous. “Yeah. There’s this weird state I go into when I paint. I want to figure out how to control it better.”

His Holiness’s eyes light up. “Ah. You were in this state when you painted Kamali ascending.”

My mouth drops open, but I quickly shut it. I guess it’s obvious that the Dalai Lama watched me paint during the Olympics. The entire world did. “Right.”

He nods, several times, then gestures to the cot next to us. He quickly scrambles onto it, sitting cross-legged at the head and pointing to the foot, where I guess I’m supposed to sit. I climb up and mirror how he’s sitting. A broad smile takes over his face.

“I am delighted you have come to me for help, Elijah Brighton.” His eyes are shining with a ridiculous amount of glee. Like he truly means it from the depths of his scrawny-kid body. But there’s also a world-weariness to his eyes like he’s seen more than he should. It reminds me of the other faces in the Resistance—too jaded, old before their time. Plus this kid is supposedly a reincarnated religious leader when that kind of thing doesn’t exactly have a long shelf life.

I press my hands together and give the Dalai Lama a quick bow from my seat on the cot. “Thanks. I’ll take whatever help you can give.”

He chuckles, a strange sound that shakes the bed a little.

I frown, wondering if I’ve said something wrong.

“I can’t do anything for you, Eli,” he says, the laugh still in his voice. “Your future depends entirely upon yourself.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” I say. Should I just get up and leave?

The bed squeaks as his bouncing laughter gains volume. Then it tempers to a smile, and he taps two fingers to his temple. “The Buddhist is the master of his own future. He uses his intelligence, his mind, to master his emotions. He studies his world and his own mental system. With that understanding, it is possible for him to transform his own mind.”

Now we’re talking. “The fugue state is definitely some kind of mind-transformed state. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I accessed it once through meditation. I was hoping you could help me do that again.”

The mirth on his face disappears. “You are seeking to master the realm of the mind.”

“Yes,” I say quickly. “I want to control it, so I can use it.” I glance at Cyrus and Basha, who are watching us intently. “To help the Resistance.”

“Ah, of course. You are seeking to use your enlightenment to help others. This is very good. I do this too, seeking the day when all sentient beings will find enlightenment. It can be elusive. Our ascender friends have taught us that the mind is separable from the body. Of course, the Buddhist has always known this, but thanks to the Singularity, this dualism of mind and body is a proven fact. But there remains a question of whether that duality is complete. The Buddhist believes the mind cannot truly arise from the body. Matter is not mind. Mind can never be matter. It is essentially separate from our physical world, the world of our senses, and it existed before.”

“Before what?” I ask, entranced. He’s describing the fugue. Maybe.

“Before time. Before matter. Before organic life or bodyforms or Orion. And after as well.” He pats the camouflage shirt he’s wearing. “I reincarnated into this body, but the body is always temporary. My prior selves were not bound to their bodies any more than I am bound to this one. But the question remains: is there more than simply the mind, as we can perceive it, and as the ascenders have mastered it? Perhaps being tied to our physical selves inhibits our view, even for the ascenders and their non-organic anchors for the mind. One cannot see the top of the mountain until one is nearly at the peak. In this way, perhaps there is something beyond the mind that we cannot discern. You would think of this as a second duality—not of mind and body, but of mind and soul.”

“Soul,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment. “I think I’m reaching for something much… less.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Enlightenment is never something less. It is always something more.”

Enlightenment. I doubt the fugue is that, but if his Holiness thinks it is... “Okay. Enlightenment. Will meditation help me reach for that?”

His smile brightens. “Yes.”

This kid is spouting words and ideas that are making my brain turn sideways. For a moment, I really wonder if it’s possible—could he actually be the reincarnation of some previous Dalai Lama? He certainly knows things no ordinary fourteen-year-old kid would know. Not unlike my own fugue… that thought-train implodes my mind. I physically shake it off. The kid is just repeating what he’s learned from the human nets. Or he’s been training to be the Dalai Lama all his life, so of course, he’s going to know all their philosophical ramblings.

“We can start with the Om Mani Padme Hum,” he says solemnly.

“Um… okay.” I glance at Cyrus, expecting him to be smirking. His face is stone cold. I turn back to the kid. “How do I do that?”

“Curl your hands like this.” He shows me, and I fold my hands into awkward fists. “Then rest them on your knees. We will chant the six syllables, but it is best if you understand their meaning. Om represents the infinite energy of the divine, and the progress from an impure mind and body and speech to the pure mind, body, and speech of a Buddha.”

I nod to show that I’m following, although I don’t really get it.

“The path of that progress is in the remaining syllables. Mani is enlightenment. Altruism. The desire to do more than is just in your Self. Padme is wisdom that knows the emptiness of existence, that there is nothing without enlightenment. Hum is the indivisibility of mani and padme—the unity of wisdom and enlightenment. Do you understand?”

Something compels me to be honest. “No.”

He smiles again, bright and childlike. “I will start. Focus on the words and the meaning as much as you can, then follow me in the chant. It might help to close your eyes, perhaps not all the way. Just enough to obscure the false world around us, to allow you to focus on the true one in the realm of the mind.”

That, at least, makes a kind of sense to me. I let my eyelids fall nearly closed.

The Dalai Lama starts his chant. “Om mani padme hum. Om mani padme hum…” The light timber of his kid voice drops an octave. “Om mani padme hum.” The words ring, filling the air space around me, vibrating the cot and up through my body. My breathing starts to sync with the rhythm of it. Then he shifts the emphasis of the words, and it becomes a song, each word given special accent in each new refrain. It’s like a firm yet gentle hand guiding my thoughts, pulling them in.

The words start to come out of my mouth before I realize what I’m doing. “Om mani padme hum…” At first, it’s a whisper, then louder. My mind tries to grasp the meaning of the words. Infinite energy. Enlightenment. Wisdom and altruism. Emptiness… I picture a wide open field, empty of anything but the warm grass under my feet which are somehow suddenly bare. I feel the sun on my face, but it’s more… like I’m sensing more than just the spectrums of light and heat. I wonder if this is how the ascenders—

The scene shifts, and it’s like a sonic boom pulsing through my body. The grass curls in on itself, turning black and then gray and then there’s nothing but ash in the shape of a million tiny blades. The wind blows them away, leaving barren, volcanic rock behind. I lift my gaze to find the sky has gone gray, and the sun is bloodied with it. Blackened ground stretches a hundred miles in front of me. I turn, looking behind me, but it continues in every direction, uninterrupted.

Emptiness.

Heat rises from the ground, scorching my face. I look down, expecting my bare feet to be blackened as well, but they’re clad in heavy boots, insulated from the moon surface the ground has become.

When I turn forward again, Cyrus and Basha are there, a dozen feet in front of me. They’re curled up on the ground, cuddling. Cyrus’s bulky frame spoons around Basha’s tiny one. He’s hunched, protective, his eyes squeezed shut, a grimace painting his face gray and sickly red in the sun’s wan light.

That’s when I realize they’re both dead.

Air rushes out of me. I stumble forward. I think that my movement has shaken the earth because a guttural rumbling vibrates the air and travels up through my boots. I freeze, but the sound keeps building, like the fugue state when it comes after me, seeking me out in an avalanche of sound, not the whispers of a monk. I tear my eyes away from Cyrus and Basha: a storm coils in the distance, black and red snakes of ash and dust and fire. It’s a thousand feet tall, stretching along the horizon like a tsunami of clouds.

It’s coming my way.

I’m held in place by a gush of fear. The heated wind grows.

Kamali appears, winking into existence in front of me. She’s beautiful and solemn, dressed in her nude dancing outfit, her creamy brown skin turned darker by the hideous light. Her long, curly black hair whips furious tendrils around her, an angry and righteous halo.

It’s coming, she says.

What’s coming? I say, even though I know she means the storm.

It’s coming, she says again with finality.

I look past her to the roiling firestorm. It’s closer, much closer, speeding toward us, impossibly huge and full of power. Suddenly, my mother and Lenora appear in the distance. They’re dressed in white, twin pillars of power, their blonde hair flying behind them, and I realize what they’re doing, with their hands stretched out, facing the storm: they’re trying to stop it.

How do I stop it? I ask Kamali without looking at her. I’m transfixed by the storm billowing toward my mom and Lenora.

It’s coming, Kamali says for the third time, her voice rising.

I watch with horror as the black cloud rolls over the two women, enveloping and destroying them. I whip my gaze back to Kamali and lurch forward to grab her by the shoulders.

Tell me how to stop it! I demand.

The solemn look on her face doesn’t change. Death is coming, her beautiful lips say.

I know! I have to shout now because the roar of the storm is rising and drowning out all other sound. Kamali, please, I beg. Tell me.

You are the bridge. Her eyes focus on mine, and they’re infinite brown, holding galaxies and timelessness. I stare into them, knowing there’s far more there than I can understand. More than I can even frame a question to ask. But it’s locked away, hidden from me. The storm rushes at us, and I can’t stop it, and we’re going to die.

Just as it reaches us, I rage into the wind, “Nooooo!” The sound starts small, then grows and fills the air, then shifts in pitch—

I’m on the floor, staring at the ceiling, mouth stretched wide with my scream… which is now silent, or maybe cut off, but the echo of it shows on Cyrus’s horrified face looming over me. Basha is on the cot next to us, staring down at me a shocked look on her face. Only the Dalai Lama appears not to be completely freaked out—but his face is deadly solemn.

“Eli,” Cyrus says, breathless, like it’s the hundredth time he’s said it. He rocks back on his heels, releasing my shoulders, which are sore from his grip. “Thank God you’re back.”

But horror is still pulsing through my body. I curl on my side with it, sickened deep inside. I gasp in gulps of air and try not to throw up.

“No more,” I say, kicking away from Cyrus and sliding along the floor. My hands are shaking so badly, I have to try three times to grab the edge of the cot and pull myself up to my knees. Cyrus’s hands are helping me. “No more,” I say again, shaking my head, even though he hasn’t said a thing.

“Okay,” he says. “No more. I promise. Let’s get you back to your barracks. So you can rest.” I can tell by the look on his face that he thinks I need a lot more than sleep.

And he’s not wrong.

I’m never going into the fugue state again, not if I can help it.

I spend the rest of the day in my bunk.

Mercifully, I fall asleep. Even more mercifully, I don’t dream.

I’m awake now, but I keep my eyes closed. The thin blanket covers most of my face as people move around me, shuffling their feet on the floor and speaking in hushed tones. If I lie still, maybe they will leave me alone. The post-fugue tremors are gone, but my growling stomach tells me I’ve probably missed dinner. Maybe, once everyone settles in for the night, I can sneak out to the mess hall. I just can’t face anyone right now—especially Cyrus or Basha or even my mother. Not with their imagined deaths still fresh in my mind.

The fugue, whatever it is, isn’t access to Orion, like Cyrus thinks. It’s not talking to God, like Lenora believes. It’s just a hallucination or a dream or… something. Maybe it’s my subconscious dredging up random nightmares—my brain, processing the horror of the mission today. The fact that the hole in Ayala’s body can never be fixed. That over a dozen people died to keep me and Kamali and Delphina alive. The idea that I’m a danger to the Resistance—Commander Astoria is right about that. My mind took those things and ran with them.

I don’t know what the fugue really is, and I’m not going to find out. It can just lie dormant for all I care. I don’t need to see any more death.

The floorboards next to my cot creak. “Eli.” It’s Cyrus.

I debate continuing to pretend I’m asleep.

“I know you’re not sleeping, dude, come on.”

I suck in a breath, open my eyes, and squint up at him. The barracks’ internal lights are on, now that the sun’s gone down. “Hard to sleep with you lumbering around.”

He doesn’t even crack a smile. “You ready to talk about what happened back there?”

“No.” I hunch under the covers. “No more fugue for me. I’m done with it.”

“Fine.”

But he doesn’t leave me alone. Instead, he reaches down to pull off the blanket. A rush of cool air swipes away my comforting seclusion.

“But you need to get up,” he says. “They’re having a funeral for the ones we lost on the op.”

Oh man. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t think of anything I would like to do less… but I force myself to swing my legs off the cot. I peer up at Cyrus. He’s changed out of the camouflage into an all-black outfit: dark shirt and pants.

“Okay,” I say. “I’m coming.”

“Clean up, all right? You look terrible.”

“Yeah, okay.” I order my legs to carry me to the wash basin at the end of the barrack. The tent is mostly cleared out, so I have it to myself. I splash cold water on my face and do a quick glance in the mirror. Cyrus is right: black circles under my eyes, hollowed out cheeks. I’m a mess.

When I return to the cot, Cyrus has a shirt for me: black, high-necked, some synthetic fiber I can’t identify. I slip it on and adjust the cuffs—they seal with an adhesive and stretch halfway up my arms. Cyrus doesn’t say anything about my black pants and boots left over from the mission, he just beckons me to follow him outside.

It’s dark. Each barracks glows from within, but the ground is deep with shadows cast by the thin, glaring lights marking each doorway. A slow drift of people heads toward the glowing-white ascender pod, which spills light onto the grass outside its open door. Cyrus gestures with his chin to head that way.

“You all right?” he asks quietly.

I glance at him, but his gaze is locked ahead on the pod. “I’ll be okay.”

He nods, and we don’t speak anymore. As we get closer, I see Kamali and Tristan at the entrance, holding hands. Kamali’s dress is utterly black, and her hair is loose and billowing. With her tall, thin frame and carved cheeks, she’s gorgeous even though the night hides most of her beauty. My fingers itch with the need to draw her—the first time I’ve had an urge to draw anything since the Olympics. Tristan bends his head to her, saying something I can’t hear as we approach.

I look away, studying the grass in front of me.

When we arrive, I look up again. Kamali has gone inside, but Tristan is still at the door along with another militia. They’re both wearing formal clothes like Cyrus’s and handing something out to the people in line. When we reach the door, Tristan gives Cyrus a thin, clear film with the number seventeen imprinted on it. The ink part is small, half the size of my thumbnail.

Cyrus frowns. “What’s this?”

“A remembrance.” Tristan’s unusually green eyes flick to me. “It’s the number of the fallen.” He loosens the cuff of his shirt and pulls up the sleeve on his left forearm. There are six numbers stacked in a line: two, ten, four, one, six, and now seventeen.

“These are all ops?” I ask, the sick feeling in my stomach dropping to a new low.

“Yes, sir.”

His military politeness somehow makes it worse. If Kamali’s looking for a hero for her revolution, Tristan, with the six missions he’s survived, is a much better candidate than a painter who has visions of her dying. Although, technically, Tristan wasn’t on this particular mission.

And I was.

“Do you want one, sir?”

I look up from the numbers. He’s taking his measure of me, and I can’t even imagine what’s going through his head. I doubt he has any idea Kamali and I shared a kiss.

“Yes,” I say to the tattoo he’s offering.

He nods like this is the answer he expected. He takes one of the films between his fingers, twists and snaps it, then holds out his hand. I open the adhesive on my cuff and expose my wrist. Tristan presses the film flat against my skin with his palm. It burns, and I try hard not to wince. When he releases my arm, the stinging is gone, along with the film, but the number remains, black and shiny on my skin.

I expect him to wave us into the pod, but instead, he tips his head away from the line behind us. “Could I have a word with you, sir?”

I glance at Cyrus, and he looks ready for a fight. I frown at him and shake my head. “Um… sure,” I say to Tristan. We follow him around the corner of the glowing-white pod.

Tristan comes to a stop, hands tucked behind his back in a military-ease position, and stares straight into my eyes. “There are some who say you’re the one the Resistance has been waiting for, sir.” His voice is cool. Accusing. “And there are some who think you’re a danger to us all.”

What? Cyrus hovers at my back, ready to give Tristan a serving of his fist. Tristan glances at him but seems unfazed by Cyrus’s looming presence.

“I’m not either of those things,” I say tightly.

“That’s what I told Kamali.”

We lock stares.

“Do you have a point here?” Cyrus asks, his voice wound tight.

Tristan ignores him. “I don’t know what you did to piss her off, Brighton, but I can tell you this: you don’t know her like I do. She’s already given a lot to the Resistance. She’s seen enough, given up enough—she doesn’t need to be dragged down by the dark side of this war.”

“I don’t want that either.” Tristan’s words twist my stomach. Truth is I don’t know what Kamali’s been through, other than the Olympics. And a lot of that was my fault.

“Good.” His words are clipped like he doesn’t really believe me. “So if you’ve got some kind of issue with the ascenders, how about you take it far away from here?”

The Resistance is feeling less friendly by the moment, but there’s no way I’m letting Tristan order me away. “Commander Astoria seems to want me to stick around.”

He looks unimpressed. “You’re apparently good for PR. For now. But I know you’re just here for the gen tech. Fair enough. Take it and leave. Some of us have been in the Resistance our entire lives, and if you’re not here for the cause, we don’t need you.” Then he leans in, his face inches away. “And if I find out that I’m wrong—that you’re actually the one who betrayed us—trust me when I say I’m going to come looking for you personally. No matter where you go.”

“I’m not the spy.” I can feel the growl in my words.

“I said that to Kamali, too.” He leans back, voice cool again. “I hope you don’t make me a liar.” He sweeps an arm toward the door. “They’re waiting for you, sir.”

My face is hot, but if I stay, we’ll end up exchanging blows, not words. I give Tristan a glare before striding back toward the entrance. Cyrus hesitates then covers my back as we retreat.

Once we’re on the threshold of the pod, Cyrus says, “I would really like to give that guy a piece of my mind.” By which he means his fist.

“It’s all right, Cy,” whisper, but I know him. He’ll drop it for now, but he won’t forget.

The sniffling and soft crying inside the pod quashes any urge to talk. Somehow the air glows with the light of a hundred stars. As my eyes adjust, I see it’s a virtual—the walls are dark wells of space, and pinpoints of light float in the air above the milling crowd. Most are dressed in regulation formal black like Cyrus. A few are still in their fatigues. A cluster of people stand up front, next to a podium—Delphina in the middle, at military ease in her all-black combat gear; Kamali to the right, her black dress reflecting the virtual stars. But next to her… Lenora shines like the sun. Her entirely white dress flows to the floor like a waterfall. Leopold stands at her side, glowing in his high-necked ascender-fabric suit.

I want to stay in back and blend into the crowd, but Cyrus motions me forward. My throat tightens as I realize: I’m expected up front. And I’m obviously straggling in. As I drag myself forward, Cyrus peels off to join Basha in the crowd. Everyone is standing: there are no chairs, just the empty space of the virtual. I belatedly realize my mom is at the front of the crowd, dressed in black and settled into a maglev mobile chair. Cyrus and Basha stand beside her. Behind them are Grayson and Caleb, the augments from the mission. Caleb’s arm is now entirely black metal, his injury being replaced by a new augment. I know the med tech is fast, but I’m still amazed he’s already using it like it’s fully healed.

As I step up to the front, Kamali doesn’t meet my gaze: her eyes are glassy and locked on the mourners. Lenora’s stare is hot on my face, so I avoid looking at her. Delphina acknowledges me with a short nod. I take a position by her side, facing the crowd.

Commander Astoria steps up to the podium, and the whispers cease. She takes a breath, pauses, then intones, “Valentina Fantozzi.” Her voice is deep and solemn and tinged with a lilting French accent. An image of a girl in flight helmet materializes against the infinite black of the walls. She has a wry, cocky grin for whoever snapped the picture.

My throat closes up. She probably flew the transport, the one that was lost. I didn’t know her.

“Pierre Beaumont.” Another floating image, this one surly with dark eyes and disheveled hair. I recognize him as one of the militia, but I never knew his name.

“Christoph Courtier.” This time I don’t recognize the fresh-faced kid with the wide toothy smile, but a sob escapes someone in the room, and I feel it like a slap. This kid is barely old enough to shave.

One by one, the names are called, and the images line the edges of the pod, smiling and scowling down on us, filling the room with their presence. Each one feels like a strike on my chest, closing off my air. The seventeenth one is the soldier who died in front of me.

“Ayala Karim.” She’s twirling in her picture, arms flung wide, the purple silks of her dress flaring out. A chill sweeps through me as I realize: it’s the same dress. The one I saw in the fugue state, after the flash grenade. I’ve never seen it before. How did my brain dream up something I had no way of knowing?

I’m having a hard time breathing. Quiet sobs fill the air. Commander Astoria steps back, her face wet with tears she hasn’t tried to wipe away. Kamali’s face is painted with tear tracks as well. Delphina pulls in a long draught of air before stepping forward.

The sounds of mourning fall into a deep, collective sigh.

“You were lost.” Delphina lifts her hands to the frozen faces of the dead. “Lost to our eyes. Lost to our ears. Lost to our hearts, as if you ever really belonged to us. Yet you loved us so hard, our lights trembled. You were flesh and bone and anger. Your fists beat the dull ache of the world into a righteous sword. Then you slashed the knot of fear holding your fellow humans captive, giving everything you had to deliver hope to those who’d forgotten they’re more than playthings. More than flesh. More than the legacy of DNA in our bodies. You were the hands that held, the boots that marched, the mouths that kissed. You were the Creator intertwined with flesh for a brief, shining moment, hot and bright by our sides.”

She sweeps out her hands, and the faces disappear. “And then you were lost.”

Her arms drop. The soft wind of breath-leaving-bodies brushes the room. “The world has a hole in the shape of you. A black vacuum that wrenches blood from our hearts in the shape of tears. Your flesh is gone, burnt by weapons of light and electricity, but the essence of you lives on in a place where love sweeps away all pains, all suffering, all tears. We can only imagine what you see. We’re like children on tiptoes, peering through the glass and hoping for a glimpse of heaven.”

She slowly lifts her hands, palms out to the rapt faces of the crowd. “You gave your bones to be broken, your flesh to be torn. Yet you are not fallen, but lifted. Not broken, but healed. You are children of the Creator, and that Creator never lost sight of you, never missed a single word or laugh or kiss.”

“You are not lost. You are found.” She lowers her hands. “And we are the ones left waiting for the coming day, still trapped in this life like fish in a pond, unable to see past the surface. We look up, and there’s only a mirror reflecting our faces as we search for those who have gone ahead.”

There’s a moment of silence, a held breath. Then a murmur wells up, soft whispers of agreement and gratitude. Delphina steps back to line up with me and Kamali. That seems to be a signal—everyone starts to move, rustling slightly, then one by one, small, flickering lights appear in the crowd. Cyrus, Basha, and my mom each have a flame floating in the palms of their hands. Must be another virtual. Everyone has one.

The dark has turned into a sea of living flames.

Delphina passes one to me. It’s a thin disc that projects a flame as soon as I tap it.

I bend to ask her, “What is this coming day you’re talking about?” I keep it a whisper. I don’t know if Kamali has heard me—she seems focused on the crowd.

“There are many who believe a savior is coming to deliver us,” Delphina says, not quite as quietly. It attracts Kamali’s attention, and I feel like an idiot for asking.

My face heats, but I press on. “What kind of savior, exactly?”

She narrows her eyes. “A holy man. Or woman. Someone who will usher in a new transcendent age, liberating humanity from their earthly bonds and opening up a new world. The coming one will bridge the veil between the living and the dead.”

Bridge. I try not to flinch. It’s just a word, I tell myself.

Delphina continues, “Different traditions have different names for it, but it’s the same idea. A new age. An end of times that signals the beginning of our true, eternal lives.”

I frown. “You’re talking about ascendance, only… by another name. Ascendance without the nanites. Is this is a thing believers think will actually happen?

“Many do.” She gave a small, cryptic smile.

“But not you.” I flick a look to Kamali. She’s watching us with intense interest, but her lips are pressed tight. Her flame throws a golden sheen that dances across the warm chocolate of her face. I look away before my stare becomes too obvious.

Delphina is examining me. Then she says, slowly and carefully, “I believe we cannot wait for a savior. We need to deliver ourselves.”

I nod in agreement—mostly because that’s a reasonable thing to have people die for, not religious crazy-talk.

Kamali turns away from us and drifts into the crowd, which is breaking up. The ceremony is done, and people are gathering into small groups, hugging, consoling, and crying. Delphina wades into the sea of flames, and even Lenora and Leopold mingle with the mourners.

I’m alone on the stage. And I’m starting to think Tristan is right—I should leave the Resistance before too many people decide I’m the spy who betrayed them.

Or worse: the savior they’re waiting for. Because when I end up disappointing them, it’s not going to go well for me.

I am not their spy. I am not their savior.

This mantra has been on an endless repeat in my head since the remembrance ceremony two days ago. I’ve been avoiding everyone, but I have a really good excuse—my mom is finally getting her gen tech treatments. The med bot gave her the third and last treatment an hour ago. Three treatments over three days, the last two of which have been filled with fevers and sweats. It’s just a matter of time before she’s completely recovered, assuming the meds actually work—but I have more faith in the ascenders’ tech than I do in their ability to tell the truth.

I’ve spent the last two days by her bedside, thinking about what a tremendous mess I’m in. And how to get out of it.

According to Basha and Tristan, rumors about me are practically an Olympic sport in the Resistance camp, and everyone’s competing. Either I’m the spy that betrayed the op—and there aren’t leads on anyone else yet—or I’m some kind of leader that the Resistance has been waiting for. Or I’m a danger to the cause because I’ve got a crazy ascender—Marcus, although I suspect most of them are insane—out to find me. Tristan’s right about that much.

Or maybe I’m just a jerk who hurt Kamali. Tristan’s probably right about that, too. All of which points to me being a short-timer in the Resistance.

The only problem is there’s nowhere else to go. None of us—me, my mom, Cyrus—can go back to Seattle. The dissenter reservations are basically lawless. Or worse, bloody theocracies. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. Who knows what’s really out there—but I’m certain it’s no place for my mom. I can’t imagine Cyrus wants to leave anyway. He has Basha, he’s probably a believer now, and he’s always wanted a way to get back at the ascenders. All things considered, the Resistance is the best place for him, too.

Which means it’s really me that’s leaving.

Now that my mom’s treatments are finished, I need to get out. Or try to fight all the rumors so I can stay. I’ve been running around this circle in my head for two days.

What I can’t figure out is why me?

The spy, I understand. Marcus is obviously after me, so that makes sense. It’s the part about the coming one that I don’t get. Is it simply because they saw me compete in the Olympics, so they think I’m some kind of dark-horse hero, coming in from nowhere? Are the members of the Resistance so desperate to believe their transcendence day is at hand that anyone the least bit strange could be their savior?

Kamali knows I have visions during the fugue, and there’s no telling who she’s told that bit of juicy gossip to—obviously Basha. Probably Tristan, now that I think about it. Thinking about it makes me cringe. Cyrus knows the fugue might be more than hallucinations, but he’s the last to think I’m the bridge to anywhere. Lenora, Leopold, and my mother know the truth about the experiments—but none of them know about the visions.

All told, it’s Tristan’s words that haunt me the most: Some say you’re the one the Resistance has been waiting for. Because even if no one knows the whole story, apparently everyone suspects: something is different about me.

They just don’t know exactly what. Yet.

I watch as my mom turns over in her med bay bed. She’s restless. The med bot said twenty-four more hours before we’ll know definitively if the treatments worked. Another week before she’s up to full strength. The bot drifts over and takes her temperature, then drifts away. It’s enough motion and slow mechanical sound to pull her from her light sleep. She opens her eyes, closes and rubs them, then finally sits up.

“How’re you feeling?” I ask.

“Good.” And she looks good, too, even if the flush in her cheeks is still the fever from the gen tech battling the lymphoma. That’s what has to happen.

“You look good,” I say with real enthusiasm. “Maybe we should get you out of here, go for a walk or something?” We both need some fresh air. And at some point, we need to talk, but not until I’ve sorted this out for myself.

She nods but doesn’t make any moves to get out of bed. “Maybe this afternoon. I’m hungry, though. That’s a good sign, right?”

I rise up from the maglev stool that’s been my perch for the last hour. “That’s a great sign. You want me to get something from the mess hall? Breakfast is over, but I’m sure I can snag something for you.”

She gives me a weak smile, but it’s stronger than yesterday’s attempts.

I’m halfway to the door before I turn back to ask, “Oatmeal?”

She makes a face.

I grin. “How about eggs?”

“The eggs are a lie. Reformulated protein. Lenora told me.” But she seems less disgusted by that than by the tasteless porridge.

“Ascenders,” I snarl, but it’s light-hearted. “They spoil everything.”

A voice comes from behind me. “Hopefully, not everything.”

I startle, then spin to find the door suddenly open and Lenora in it. I’ve been avoiding her pretty successfully. Cyrus doesn’t trust her, and after my last vision of everyone dying, I’ve no interest in going into the fugue state again. Ever.

“Just kidding,” I say to her, trying to fake a smile and gesture so she’ll let me pass.

She steps back. “I’ll walk with you.”

Great. I clamp my mouth shut and resolve to speak as little as possible on the way to the mess hall. After a moment of earnest strides for me and cool ascender steps for her, one of her delicate hands tugs on my elbow.

I don’t stop. “I need to get my mom something to eat.”

“We need to talk, Eli. About your father.”

That stops me dead. My mouth moves, but nothing comes out.

“I know.” She drops her gaze to her fingers, which are laced together and twisting. “I should have shared all of this with you much sooner.”

“Yes, you should have.” My voice is working again, but the words are harsh.

She looks up. “I promise, I have been protecting you, Eli. The ascender who worked with your mother—”

“Worked?” My voice hikes up. “You mean used her as a lab rat, right? I just want to make sure we get our terms straight.”

She holds my angry stare, not backing down. “She was never forced. Your mother knew our group’s purpose was to create you. Don’t you see? If you are expressing something now, some true sign of what you were designed to do… then your father will be coming for you. And I doubt there’s anything I could do to stop him.”

I lean back. “Coming for me.” I can feel my heart thump once, then twice. A feeling of dread turns my body slack. “Why?”

“Why?” She looks at me like I’m hopelessly stupid, which only rages fire up into my face. She glances around, but the camp is quiet. In between meals, everyone’s either in their tent or out patrolling the perimeter or off doing their duties to keep things running smoothly. The only activity is a game of four-square several barracks away, with two teams of two, a ball, and some chalked-out areas on the grass.

Lenora leans closer. She’s back to wearing the standard ascender barely-there shift, so I can see wisps of purplish emotion wash across her skin. “I already told you,” she says softly. “You are the bridge. At least, that was your design.”

“Wait—are you saying there were other designs?” My mind is reeling.

She shakes her head, frustrated. “Never mind that. What I need to know—what you have to tell me—is if you’re experiencing anything that might be a precursor. An awakening. I’m not even sure what the right word for it would be—we are discovering this along with you. I was certain that self-awareness on your part would inhibit the expression. I thought we had a way around that inhibition—that with enough time and patience, your abilities would express through your art. In the meantime, I simply couldn’t take the chance of telling you what might happen.”

“Because it might ruin your experiment.” I retreat back into anger, because honestly, I don’t want to know. As far as I’m concerned, the fugue is a mental problem I’ll just have to manage and minimize in the future. I’m certainly not going after it—there’s no way I could remain in the Resistance if word of that got out.

“Yes, it would have ruined the experiment. And the experiment was too important for that.” She’s angry too, at least by her clipped words. Her beautiful, perfect face settles into a glare. “I was afraid that, if you had known, everything would have been for nothing. All the lies. All the risks so many have taken to keep your secret safe—”

“Even from me.”

“Even from you.” Some of the anger drops off her face. “I regret that, now that I see it probably would have made no difference at all.”

“So you regret lying to me, but only because it didn’t work.” I have to restrain my snarl.

“Eli.” Her fists ball up, and gray wisps curl along her neck.

Satisfaction courses through me. I can’t be sure if she’s angry or frustrated, but it’s about time she experienced some of that, and not just me.

“Now that you are self-aware,” she says, slow and measured, “there’s no reason to keep anything from you. We can take it one step at a time—I know how hard all of this must be for you to comprehend. But first, you need to tell me everything you have been experiencing. So we can properly manage it.”

I narrow my eyes. Being managed by ascenders—even Lenora—isn’t something I ever want happening again. “I told you: I’m not experiencing anything.”

“I know that’s not true.” She gives me a stern look. “You’ve been affected by something. And if I can see that much, then your father—”

My face heats again. “Whoever my “father” is, he can go straight to—”

“Eli,” Cyrus arrives at my side, breathless. I was so focused on Lenora, I didn’t even see him coming. “I need to talk to you, my man.” He’s giving the side-eye to Lenora. I’m sure he thinks I’m spilling everything to her—but I’m really not her little pawn anymore.

“I’m on my way to the mess hall,” I say to him, but I’m looking at Lenora. “Getting some breakfast for my mom.”

“Great,” he says, grabbing hold of my elbow, none too gently. “I’ll give you a hand.”

Fresh curls of gray wisp across Lenora’s skin as Cyrus tugs me away.

Once we’re sufficiently far from Lenora, I say, “Thanks,” to Cyrus for extricating me.

He doesn’t say anything, just waves me down between two barracks. I hesitate. This isn’t the way to the mess hall. I lift my hands in a what gives? gesture, but the hard set of his mouth and his urgent waving have me hustling down the shadowed corridor between the canvas tents.

When we’re halfway down, he says, “You can’t tell Lenora anything.”

“I know,” I say, scowling. “I’m not a complete idiot.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes I wonder about that.”

“Thanks.” As we round the corner, back into the sunshine, I see where he’s bringing me...

Kamali. She has her back to us, gazing out at the fields beyond the camp’s protective dome barrier.

“Oh, come on,” I say in a hushed voice, stopping in my tracks. My glare is for Cyrus, but when Kamali turns around, she catches some of it, and frowns. I struggle to wipe the expression from my face, but I’m ready to punch my best friend.

“My mom really does need something to eat, Cy.”

He has his hands up, so he knows I’m ready to kill him. “I’ll get her the best of whatever they’ve got in the mess hall.” He holds out one hand to Kamali. “Just hear her out, okay?”

Then he backs away, like the coward he is.

I am seriously going to kill him. Later. When there are no witnesses.

I glare after his retreating back a moment longer, then steel my expression into neutrality as I turn back to Kamali. She steps closer, holding out a sketch pad and a charcoal pencil in her long-fingered hands. I just stare at them.

Art supplies.

I have no idea where she got them. Or why she’s giving them to me.

When I don’t take them, her pretty face grows more grim. She takes another step toward me and holds them out at arms’ length. “It’s a peace offering, Eli. Take it, so Basha doesn’t kill me.”

I lurch a little to get close enough to take them. I’m careful not to touch her fingers. Not that I don’t want to, but this suddenly feels like a frozen-over lake with too-thin ice that I’m about crack and sink through. And I don’t want that at all between Kamali and me.

I just didn’t think there was another option.

“Um.” Man, I have zero words in me. “Thanks. I guess? I really don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“Basha says you went to see the Dalai Lama.” Her voice is calm, like she’s practiced the words, and she’s delivering them carefully. Everything about her stance is locked up, which looks horribly unnatural on her dancer body. Her camouflage shirt and pants hang loose on her thin, tall frame, and the boots look like tree stumps on her feet.

She should be wearing slippers.

My fingers roll the charcoal pencil between them, itching to draw her.

“She said the Dalai wasn’t able to help you. That you’re having trouble painting again.” The words are stiff, and she suddenly drops her gaze. Her hands are tormenting each other, twisting and wringing some emotion she’s holding back.

I just watch and wait. But she doesn’t say anything more. “I’m not having trouble painting.” This is some kind of lie Cyrus and Basha have cooked up, to get me and Kamali together. I can feel their fingerprints on it.

My words make Kamali look up. Her brown eyes are soft and wide. Open and vulnerable.

“I could paint you right now, if I had some brushes and acrylics.” It comes out fast, and I can feel the boast in it, which I regret, even though I know I could easily do it. Want to do it, the way a parched man wants water. With the knowledge I gained from the fugue state and her beautiful form for inspiration… it would be incandescent.

My boast draws a smile out of her, banishing my regret in an instant. “I saw the painting you made of me for the competition. It was a fugue painting, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling the need to boast creep back in. “But I know how to do it again—I could recreate it for you right now.”

She smiles and ducks her head, and it flushes entirely too much warmth through me. I want her to ask me to do it. Or even just allow me. My fingers roll the charcoal pencil again, but I hold still, waiting.

Her face is wide-eyed and serious when she looks up again. “I never said thank you.”

I lift one eyebrow. “For the painting?”

She smiles again, but it’s fleeting. “For offering yourself in trade for me.” Her brown cheeks tinge red, and she drops her gaze again. “I know it was mostly for Lenora. But you didn’t have to ask for me and Basha and Delphina, too.” She looks up and bites her lip. “I probably shouldn’t be judgmental about you and her, I just…” She struggles for words, gaze casting around in embarrassment.

I hold still, not breathing, waiting.

Her eyes find me again. “I’ve just seen it happen, up close and personal. And it doesn’t end well. For the human.”

Up close? I’m dying to ask who she knows that was in love with an ascender, but the red tinge in her cheeks is growing brighter, even as she holds my gaze.

I shrug with one shoulder. “Maybe someday you can tell me what happened.”

That breaks the intensity, and she smiles. “Maybe.”

“Anyway,” I rush out, “Lenora isn’t exactly my favorite person right now.”

She peers at me. “I’d like to hear the full story on that. Someday.”

I grin. “Maybe.”

She breathes a kind of silent laugh that entrances me. Her shoulders drop, her hands release each other, and her whole body seems to relax. I can’t help smiling even wider.

She cocks her head, playfully. “So, you could draw me right now, huh?”

I swear I can hear my own heart pounding in my ears. “Only if you’re dancing.”

She smirks. “If I start dancing, it will bring a crowd.”

I frown because the last thing I want is to share this moment with anyone. Especially Tristan. “That would be unfortunate.”

She nods. Her playful look turns more devious. She darts a look around, beckons me with a crooked finger, then prances along the line of barracks with light dancer steps in her big, heavy boots. I hurry after her without hesitation. She’s killing me with the cute looks she’s throwing back, like we’re about to get away with something. As we near the end of the camp grounds, next to the command pod, I realize I may only have a few days left in the Resistance—and once I leave, I may never see Kamali again. I vow to make the most of whatever time she’ll give me. And whatever she’s got planned.

We reach the command pod, but she keeps going. Around back is a smaller pod: the armory. I watch with wide eyes as she pulls out a key on a chain from underneath her shirt and waves it at the door. It slides open, and with a quick look around, she ushers me inside. I think maybe she can dance in here without attracting notice, but it’s too cramped. Black assault rifles, clusters of grenades of all kinds, and racks of gear line the walls and overflow from the bins stacked alongside them.

She swipes the door closed behind me. Her smile is contagious.

I pick up a flight helmet. “Let me guess: we’re hijacking the commander’s transport and going for a joy ride.” I smirk, but I have absolutely no idea where she’s going with this.

“Even better.” She digs into a cabinet, and a moment later, she comes out with a bunch of shimmery blue fabric and two helmets with visors. “Invisibility suits.”

I grin so hard it makes my cheeks hurt.

“I had no idea you were so sneaky.”

I squeeze Kamali’s hand as I say it, so she’ll know I’m kidding. And I’m kind of glad she can’t see the stupid grin plastered on my face. But I can’t see hers either.

We’re invisible.

“I’m a resistance fighter.” Her voice comes through the tiny comm unit in my helmet. “We get sneakiness training.”

I laugh but try to keep it cool. The sound still ricochets in the tight airspace around my head. We’re tromping through the field outside the camp’s protective dome with our ascender-tech cloaking suits. The jacket and pants are loose-fitting but heavy enough to ditch our standard-issue camouflage and just wear tanktops and shorts underneath. The cloaking gear is activated by chin controls inside the helmet, which is pretty lightweight—with the visors down, we’re completely invisible.

I’ve got my sketch pad in one hand, and Kamali’s hand in the other, so we don’t lose each other. I can’t see her at all, and vice versa. The cloak automatically extends to anything I’m holding, so my boots and art supplies are invisible, too. There’s a slight shimmer where our hands connect and the fields from our respective suits intersect.

I’m dumbfounded by my sudden turn in good luck: Kamali’s taking me out somewhere so we can be alone, her dancing and me drawing, and I get to hold her hand along the way.

Crazy.

I have no idea where Tristan fits into all this, but I’m not spoiling the moment by asking.

We’re far enough away from the camp—about a hundred yards with no one shouting at us to come back—that I’m pretty sure we’ve escaped undetected. Up ahead is a small boulder tall enough to block the view from the camp. The rock is the same rough granite as the others strewn around the prairie in the shadow of the nearby mountains. The grass is drier and longer outside the camp, lacking the water and maintenance of the artificial hideaway, and it crunches under my boots. It’s strange not to see my own body—I’m constantly looking at the ground where my feet should be and feeling dizzy when there’s nothing there.

“So you’ve done this before?” I guess.

Her hand tugs mine, urging us a little faster. “Just a couple times.”

“To dance?”

There’s a hesitation. “And other things.”

An image of her sneaking out with Tristan pops into my head, and I don’t like it, so I change subjects. “You are going to dance for me, though, right? I mean, I don’t need the fugue to draw anymore, but I still need a Muse.”

“There’s a good spot on the far side of the rock.” She drops my hand. “Meet you there!”

The grass ahead of me rustles, but the cloaking technology is so good, I don’t even see it move. By all rights, I should see her boot prints as they’re made, but the only evidence of her passage shows up after she’s moved on and the prairie grass moves back to cover it. Still, she leaves a quick trail through the weeds. I follow in her wake, wanting to speed up, but afraid of accidentally running into her.

When I get to the far side of the boulder, she’s already taken off her helmet and her cloaking jacket, leaving just a thin, white tanktop behind. Her legs are still invisible as she works at taking off the pants. I make sure I’m out of sight of the camp before I deactivate and remove my helmet as well. I try to tame the grin, but she smiles when she sees me, and I give up the fight.

She nods to my helmet, which is silver-blue and visible now, unlike the rest of me, which is still cloaked. “I can’t dance in the cloaking gear, but you can keep yours on, if you like.”

She’s basically telling me I can keep my clothes on while she’s taking hers off. “Um… okay.” I tap the controls inside the helmet to deactivate the rest of my gear, then loosen the adhesive holding my jacket closed. I’ll need a little more freedom of movement to draw, so I completely get why she’s shedding the suit to dance, but when she changed before, I had my back turned. My face heats as she steps out of her pants. I retreat back to lean against a flat section of the boulder, drop my helmet, and fuss with my pad and pencil to avoid staring at her.

Eventually, I look up—she’s stretching next to the pile of her deactivated invisibility suit. I flip open the pad, and my hand with the charcoal glides over the page. The crisp feel of paper, the drag of the pencil when it catches, the smooth lines of her legs as she bends with incredible grace: all of it works the tension from my shoulders. I relax into it, and it doesn’t take long for the embarrassment of her being scantily dressed to disappear. I like her hair unbound, so I focus on that first: how it falls forward when she dips, then slides across her shoulders as she bends to the side, arms outstretched in an arc that’s beauty all by itself. When she reaches up to the blue sky overhead, her hair forms a cloud of black curls in the shape of a perfect oval down her back. She stops stretching and stands, hands on hips, feet planted, looking at me.

I stop drawing. “Something wrong?”

“What are you drawing?”

“You. Of course.” I smile.

“Draw me like you did at the Olympics. And I want to see it this time.”

I nod, slowly, wondering if that’s what this is really about. “It will only be in pencil.”

“I know.”

“Why do you want me to draw that?” I ask, even as my mind fills in the brush strokes that will be necessary.

She drops her hands from her hips and sweeps her leg in more warm-up exercises. She’s not looking at me anymore and doesn’t say anything. Just when I’m convinced she’s not going to answer my question, she says, “It’s so I can remember you.” She runs a finger along the inside of her wrist. The remembrance tattoo is black and glistening in the sun.

It sends a chill through me. “Is there some secret plot to toss me out of the Resistance?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light. “I mean, that I’m not already aware of?”

She doesn’t even crack a smile, just keeps swinging her leg, sweeping her sock-covered foot in an arc on the packed-dirt ground.

The chill pools in my stomach.

“I don’t know how long any of us have,” she says, staring at the ground.

That propels me away from the rock. I cross the ground between us, but she doesn’t look up until I rest a hand on her shoulder. Her skin is already warmed by the sun and impossibly soft next to the coarse fabric of her tank top. Her deep brown eyes slowly meet mine.

“Don’t do that,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Give up.” I can feel my heart pounding in my ears again. She’s close and soft and beautiful, but that’s not why. At least, not entirely. “I don’t know if I believe in…” I swallow. “In any of it, Kamali. The Resistance. The cause. The idea that we all have souls—I don’t know what I believe anymore. But I need you to believe in it. Because if you give up, then there’s no reason at all for any of it.”

The words are a surprise to me as they come out of my mouth. They seem to surprise her, too.

“I mean, I risked my neck for you,” I say, making a desperate bid to lighten this up. “I’m pretty sure that means you’re forever bound to do good things with your life. Or something.”

That finally twists a small smile out of her.

“So, are you going to dance or what?” I ask, heart banging out my nerves on my ribcage. “Because I’ve got a whole pad of paper itching to be used.”

She smirks, and it’s so gorgeous, I’m pretty sure my heart lurches to a stop. But then it jump starts again as she pushes away from me and leaps into the air. I stare as she twirls and glides and carves the space around her with long, long arms. It takes me a dozen more heartbeats before I remember I’m supposed to be drawing her.

I lift the pad, flip to a fresh page, and start whipping charcoal lines across it. I almost don’t have to look to know where to lay them, which is good, because I can barely take my eyes off her. I’m drawing and backing toward the boulder while she continues to writhe her body into lines of feminine strength and beauty, brushing the grass with her feet in between spectacular leaps. There’s no music, but there’s no need. She’s making art with her body anyway.

I bump into the granite behind me and let the coolness of the rock seep into my back as my hand whips furiously across the page. An image of her rises from the whiteness of the sheet, the charcoal-rough edges of each line somehow emphasizing the clean curves of her body even more. It’s only half done, and I already can tell it’s better than anything I’ve created while not half in the fugue. But that’s because the fugue knowledge is already there, inside my head. It’s as if the veil is permanently parted, at least in this arena. When I’m done, the sketch won’t need paint; it will be transcendent all on its own.

A scream splits the air.

I jerk my head up, but it’s not Kamali. I know this even before I see her stumble to a stop, surprise on her face. Our gazes lock, but a chorus of screams rises like a wail before we can say anything. Then a blast of something—sound and air and heat—booms all around us. The ground bucks, and I’m nearly thrown from my feet, but the boulder has sheltered me from the blast—Kamali is tossed a couple yards back into the grass.

“Kamali!” I dash toward her, but another explosion throws me to the ground. She’s still down, but she struggles to sit up, so I think she’s okay. The screaming is a wave now. I look back at the camp. I can’t see it—the boulder is blocking my view—but I can see the flames. An inferno is pumping massive gray clouds into the sky.

My whole body freezes, my muscles seizing as the horror of it hits my brain.

“Eli!” Kamali’s voice snaps me from my trance. She scrambles on all fours toward me. I’ve fallen next to her clothes. My brain slows down, taking it all in, flushing out the panic, and I realize three things: the camp is under attack; we have invisibility suits; and we need to get them on.

I scoop up her suit and helmet and meet her with them in hand.

“Oh my God, what’s happening?” Her entire body is shaking.

I press the clothes into her arms. “Get your suit on. Now.”

Her eyes are wild, but she doesn’t hesitate. As she shoves her body back into the cloaking suit, I race back to the boulder to grab my helmet. I put it on but don’t activate it yet, and for some reason I pick up my dropped drawing pad and pencil. Leave no trace, is the cool thought that ticks through the not-panicked part of my brain. I shove the pencil in my pants pocket and the pad in the back of my pants, under the jacket. Then I run back to Kamali. She’s shaking so badly, she’s having a hard time getting dressed, so I help, half holding her, half dressing her. We need to get cloaked now. The seconds breathe down my neck until she’s fully suited up. I grab her hand right before she activates, then slide down my visor and jab my chin against the buttons to turn mine on as well. With both of us finally cloaked, I pull her towards the boulder, edging around the side to see the camp.

People are dying. Their screams roll across the prairie grass on billows of smoke. My impulse to run toward the camp is short-circuited by the massive ascender transport hovering above it, dwarfing it in size. The plumes of smoke curl around the sides of the ship, masking the portal that’s dropping legion after legion of sentries to the ground.

“Eli.” She’s gasping. “Eli. Oh my God.” Kamali’s voice on the comm is as shaky as her hand in mine.

I hold her tight, but I’m afraid I’m going to be sick in my helmet. My mom. Cyrus. Basha. Everyone.

“We have to…” My mind is numb. “We have to run.”

“Run where?” Her voice is a screech that pierces my ears.

I can’t see her because she’s cloaked. I can’t see the horror that fills her eyes, but I feel it in the rock-hard grip she has on my hand.

“Just… run.” I grab even harder onto her hand so she doesn’t slip from my grasp, then I wrench her away from the camp.

We run toward the mountains without looking back.

They’re not dead. They can’t be all dead.

We run so hard, Kamali’s hand threatens to slip out of mine. I can’t hear her crying anymore, not over the labored sound of my breathing. My own face is a mess of tears inside my helmet as we charge across the prairie grass. Ahead is the mouth of a canyon—it’s really just a dark slash in the mountain, but I hope it leads somewhere. Either way, we can’t stop for anything, least of all lifting our visors to wipe away tears for the people in the burning camp behind us.

I pull Kamali closer, making sure we clear a prickly shrub as we sprint past it. I’m not sure how rugged the suits are, but I think she managed to avoid it. We can’t afford to lose our invisibility—it’s the only chance we have. My heart is pounding out of my chest, in panic and grief and a desperate bid to pump more oxygen, but the haze in my mind clears enough to realize we need to cover our tracks. I’m terrified our boot prints will give us away. The sentries, when they’re done with the camp… my brain stops there, refusing to picture what the bots are doing to the people I love.

I focus on escaping. When Kamali and I reach the ravine, it’s even more narrow than I thought. High granite walls hang over the tiny trickle of stream that carved the canyon. It’s almost a cave with its glistening, moss-covered walls blocking the sun.

“The stream,” I pant into the comm, tugging Kamali into the wide but not-deep water. Our boots splash and make a terrific noise, but there are no sentry bots close enough to hear us. Yet. More importantly, the water will mask our escape, covering our boot tracks. Maybe. I don’t know anything about tracking humans. I’m desperately trying to remember our training on the capabilities of the suits—I know they block visible light and a range of other wavelengths. Thermal? Probably. But definitely not sound. I can still hear us splashing in the water. We can speak over the comm and keep our voices low. That will help. The best thing is to put distance between us and the camp, and then find somewhere to hide.

I don’t have any idea what we’ll do after that.

We keep running, but the rocks are getting more slippery and the stream more deep. Kamali urges me out of the water to the muddy banks, but I don’t like the tracks we’re leaving, so we’re back in the water, just along the edge. I nearly fall twice. Kamali has surer footing—all that dancer grace keeping her upright—and she’s got more stamina, too. I keep going, running along the twists and turns of the narrow canyon until my lungs feel like they’re going to burst. A stitch is stabbing blades of pain in my side. I pull Kamali to a stop and have to bend over double, bracing myself with one hand on my knee to keep from falling over.

I can’t let go of her hand for fear of losing her.

She lets me rest, but as my breathing calms, I start to hear hers—it’s a breathy sort of sob. I’m not sure if she’s crying again, but she doesn’t speak, just tugs on my hand for us to move. I lumber along the edge of the widening stream, trying to keep up with the pace she’s setting. After a while, she pulls me off to the side. The banks are graveled here, a million river stones washed downstream and deposited at a curve in the stream. Our boots don’t leave prints.

“Up there,” she says, breathless, voice shaky.

I don’t know if she’s pointing or not, but I see what she means: the cliff-like rock walls in this part of the canyon are less steep. A rough ledge in the wall slopes up into the forest that lines the top. Leafy trees mean more cover, not out in the open, exposed like we are now.

“Okay,” I say, panting. I take the lead. I’m afraid I might have to let go of her hand for the climb—the rocky passage between the creek bed and the elevated forest is an obstacle course of boulders and clumps of river vegetation. Without a word, she pulls closer to me, and we climb nearly arm in arm, bracing each other. The path gets steep at the top, but we manage to negotiate it without letting go.

Once we’ve summited the rocky edge of the ravine, we’re under the cover of the forest. Which is great for not being detected from above in an aerial search, but it also means wading into a thick undergrowth of knee-high ferns. My side still aches. I wonder how far we should go before trying to hide. Some of the branches reach down to the ground. Maybe we could tuck under those. We should stop for a while, figure out what we’re doing—

Kamali lets out a yelp, and her hand yanks out of mine. I watch in horror as her invisible body leaves a wake of flailing ferns as it rolls down a hidden slope. Her scream is deafening over the comm.

I shuffle down the hill after her, trying not to lose my footing. “Kamali!” I can’t see anything through the mass of leafy fronds. I hear her sobbing, but the ferns have stopped moving, and I have no idea where she landed. I move faster and slip on the wetted moss and unseen rocks. I keep going, half falling, half sliding. “Kamali!”

She doesn’t answer. I’m still working my way down this giant bowl in the middle of the forest, but I’m nearly at the low point. And I have no idea where she is. I could have passed her.

“Where are you?” I hear the panic in my own voice, and I force myself to speak softly. “Are you hurt?”

All I hear is her crying over the comm, and my panic ramps up to choke me. I jab at the comm controls inside my helmet to turn them off. Then I flip up my visor, just halfway so I won’t kill the invisibility shield entirely, but I’ll be able to hear her—only through the air and not the comm, so I can find her. Whatever’s happened, she’s not responding, and that’s very bad. More bad than I can deal with.

With the visor partly up, I hear the sounds of the forest: the trees sighing in the wind; the distant sound of the stream; and a distinct human sobbing to my right. I move carefully through the ferns, stopping and listening every couple of steps. My shield flicks on and off, giving white-out flashes that blind me intermittently. My face is probably half visible, suspended in the air—if Kamali can see me, she’s still not speaking. Finally, a sign of her—a fern that defies reality. The top half floats in the air, disconnected from the stalk below. Her suit’s visual compensation only extends so far from the source.

I shuffle toward her, hands forward, trying not to accidentally step on her. When my boots bump into her, I finally get down on my hands and knees. The drawing pad in the back of my pants slides around, but it doesn’t fall out. I tap on my comm, and her sobbing jumps ten-fold in volume.

“Kamali, I’m here.” From what I can tell by feel, she’s curled up in a ball and lying on her side. “You’re okay, I’m here.” My touch, rather than my words, seems to interrupt the crying. I find her helmet and keep hold as I ease to the forest floor next to her.

“Are you hurt?” I ask.

Just a sniffle over the comm, but her helmet shakes no in my hands. It’s so strange, holding her but being unable to see her. I lean my helmet forward, touching it to hers. Our two invisibility fields merge such that I can see her helmet now. The visor is one-way, silver-blue on the outside. I turn off my comm and lift up my visor the rest of the way so she can see my face. When she doesn’t flip up her visor, I do it for her. The relief at seeing her face—even tear-stained and tormented—is so strong it sucks the breath out of me.

Her eyes are closed.

“Kamali, open your eyes.”

When she does, they go wide. Her hands grab my helmet, but I can’t see them. Most of her body is still invisible to me—I can only see her face and her helmet.

“Eli,” she breathes. “Oh God, Eli.” Her lips twist up. If she starts crying again, that’s going to undo me.

“It’s going to be okay.” Our faces are only a few inches apart. I can see every emotion crossing hers: fear, pain, grief.

Her eyes search mine. “They’re all dead.”

“They’re not all dead.”

“You saw the fire—”

“They’re not all dead, Kamali.” I say it too forcefully, too urgent in my need for it to be true, and it doesn’t help. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes. Now she won’t look at me, scanning the forest around us instead.

I try to temper the fear in my voice. “I mean, we can’t assume that, not until we know for sure, right? Not until we try to get them back.” I have no idea what I’m talking about, but we need some kind of hope. I need some kind of hope, or I’m going to end up curled on the forest floor like Kamali. And she deserves better than that from me.

“Get them back?” She looks at me like I’m speaking gibberish. “It’s us now, Eli. Us against… what can we possibly do?”

I take a moment to look around us. We’re practically buried in ferns. Except for the reality-defying branch hanging above us, there’s absolutely no sign we’re here. The bots would have to literally stumble over us. It’s as good a place to hide as any.

I slide one hand down from her helmet to her shoulder and tug gently. “Scoot my way.”

She frowns, but does it, inching over just enough that the palm frond springs upright. Now it’s covering both of us, and no longer giving us away.

I gesture up at it with my eyes. “See? Now we’re completely hidden. Even if the bots search for us, they’re not going to find us.”

She looks back and forth between me and the branch and seems to decide that I’m not completely insane. “Okay.” Even better, her voice has lost some of the tremble.

“Okay.” I take a breath. “We stay here. We wait. Then later, maybe after it’s dark, we sneak back to the camp. The ascenders should be gone by then. If not, we hide again and wait until they leave. Once all the sentries are gone, we’ll see what’s left. We’ll need food and supplies. Maybe the command pod will still be functioning. We can call for help, maybe get one of the other Resistance groups to come for us. They can help us figure out how to rescue everyone.”

She’s watching me with wide eyes. “You really think they’re alive.”

“I do.” The confidence in my voice grows. “I don’t know what happened, but why would they kill everyone?”

“They didn’t have a problem killing the seventeen.” A shudder works through her body.

I swallow on an already dry throat. I don’t want to say the thought that’s been eating at the edge of my mind since we started running, but she’ll figure it out eventually. “If they wanted to destroy the camp, they wouldn’t have dropped sentries. They would have dropped bombs on the whole thing.” I know what this implies: the ascenders are looking for something. And that something is me.

She nods. “That makes sense.” She frowns, then adds, “So we just wait. For now.”

“Yeah.” Relief flushes through me that she doesn’t immediately blame me for all of it. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“I think I twisted my ankle.” She winces and lets me go enough to work a hand inside her helmet. I’m sure she’s just brushing off the tears, but she leans back enough that our invisibility fields de-link, and I can’t see her anymore. An instant knot forms in my stomach.

I wait, trying to be cool.

She’s back a moment later, eyes wide. I don’t think she expected me to disappear either.

“Stay close,” I say.

She nods in agreement.

I sigh in relief. “How bad is your ankle?”

She shakes her head, then stops because our helmets rub against each other. Instead, she says, “I’ve had worse. It’s just a small sprain. I’ll be fine. Especially if we’re resting before heading back to camp.”

The hope lighting her face calms me even more. “Good. If it’s bad, we can go slow.” I think about the empty, charred camp we’ll be returning to. How everyone I have in this world was there: my mom, Cyrus, even Lenora. I blink, not wanting fresh tears, not now while Kamali is watching.

“Eli?” The concern on her face forces a grim smile onto mine.

I have to clear my throat. “You know, I don’t have any family outside my mom and Cyrus. Even back in Seattle, it was just us. But you have family back in Paris, right?” I’m thinking, worst case, she’ll still have somewhere to go.

Kamali looks away from me again, out at the leafy branches waving in the breeze above us. Then I remember: she told me before that she never knew her mom. Her parents were banished by the ascenders when she was little.

“Oh, hey, I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I forgot you were raised by your aunt.”

When her gaze comes back to me, there’s a small smile on her face. “It’s all right. I was just thinking Aunt Sophie is probably furious with me right now.”

“Didn’t she know you were in the Resistance?” It’s easy to see every tiny emotion that flits across her face. She’s blinking too fast, and her creamy brown cheeks are tinging red.

“No. I lied to everyone. No one knew but Basha and Delphina.” She sniffs. “Auntie Soph wouldn’t want me back.”

“Because she’s still legacy?” I guess. Her aunt would risk getting banished herself.

“And she’s always been very angry with my mother for—” She stops and flashes me a tortured look, then goes back to examining the leaves.

I hold my breath, waiting, but she’s not saying any more. I realize my hand is still on her shoulder. I give it a gentle squeeze. “You know, I’m the last person in the world to judge you for what your parents have done. Trust me on this. I love my mom—I’d do anything for her—but she did things…” I pause. I don’t want to tell Kamali about the experiments. “Let’s just say, my family’s broken all the taboos there are.”

Kamali’s deep brown eyes are intent on me now. “My mother was with an ascender.”

I’m proud of how I keep my surprise under wraps, but it also squeezes on my chest. Because that story is way too familiar. “Mine too.”

Kamali’s eyebrows hike up.

I grit my teeth. “Someday, when I find that guy, I’m going to give him a flash grenade to the head.”

She laughs a little, and it eases some of the pain in my chest. Then she gives me a curious look. “What did your father think of this?”

I’m speechless for a moment, completely at a loss as to what lie to tell.

But Kamali saves me from it by giving me an earnest look. “Is that why they say you have no father? Did he leave because of the liaison?” She uses the French word for affair, and it almost sounds dignified in her beautiful accent.

“Something like that,” I say.

She nods. “That’s why my parents had to leave Paris. My father said she could remain a domestic or she could leave with him. I guess, in the end, love won out over all the promises the ascenders make.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t your mom’s fault in the first place. The ascenders tend to take advantage of humans.” I frown as I realize that’s why she’s an orphan. “So they left you behind?”

She nods. “It was me and life as a domestic, or life as a dissenter. My mother did not choose me.”

I’m aghast. “Kamali… I’m so sorry.” It seems wholly inadequate. And I wonder if her mother and father are in the Resistance, but I decide it’s better not to ask.

She shrugs. “It was a long time ago. But I still don’t like to see one of them with one of us.” She holds my gaze, and I know she means me and Lenora.

“That’s really not what you think it is,” I say, cringing a little. “It’s complicated.”

She nods, but has a skeptical look. Like she’s trying to piece together all my lies and somehow figure out the truth.

I try to cut off that line of thought. “So, you and Tristan, huh?”

Her lips turn down, and I immediately regret bringing it up. After all, he was in the camp. He could be dead. Or captured. We might find his body when we return.

“Kamali, I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, just ignore everything I’m—”

“No,” she cuts me off, and I shut my mouth before I bury myself more. “It’s all right. Like you said, they’re not all dead.”

“We’re going to see them again,” I say, nodding.

She nods as well and looks thoughtful for a moment. I realize we have a long stretch of time ahead of us. Maybe we should get some rest. And stop talking before I say anything more stupid than I already have.

But she’s not done. “That’s not really what it appears, either.”

“Oh?” I can’t help the small surge of hope that wells up in my chest.

“Tristan and I met in Paris.” She gives a small smile. “He was the first member of the Resistance that I knew. Outside of Delphina and Basha, of course.”

“Of course.” I doubt I want to hear the story of how she met Tristan.

She smirks. “He seemed to think I needed a personal bodyguard from the beginning.”

“I’m sure he did.” Now I’m certain: I do not want to hear this story.

She gives a small laugh at the look on my face. “I’m not like Basha, you know. I don’t think I need to kiss a thousand boys before I find the right one.”

My heart sinks at this.

“But one kiss doesn’t mean a boy is automatically my second, either.” Her eyes are boring into mine.

“Makes sense.” It’s pretty clear our first kiss was also our last. Probably. But I’m held captive by her intense look. Maybe she’s saying she’s only kissed Tristan once. “Although, I’m sure Tristan will be disappointed to hear that. When we see him.”

Her expression goes soft. “Say it again, Eli. Tell me we’re going to see them all again.”

The pain is back in my chest. “We’re going to see them all again.”

She nods, but a sudden weariness drags down her face. She closes her eyes briefly. “I’m so tired.”

The shock. The panic. Having Kamali next to me on the forest floor, helmets together, my hand resting on her shoulder. All of it is catching up to me, too.

“You should take a rest,” I say, softly. “I’ll keep watch while you sleep.”

“What about you?” she says, but her words are already heavy with fatigue.

“We’ll take turns. I’ll go first. Close your eyes and rest.”

She does, without any more protest. And then I get to watch as her curved cheeks and arched eyebrows slowly relax. I’ve always been struck by her beauty, from the very first instant I saw her, but in this moment, an innocence steals over her that makes my heart ache. She should be dancing somewhere, laughing and living and deciding which boy she wants to kiss again… not buried in ferns, hiding from ascenders in the wilds of Oregon.

With sinking certainly, I know whatever’s happened back at the camp is my fault. Not that I caused it, but because Marcus finally figured out where I was hiding and decided to take out the entire Resistance just to get at me.

I don’t know what we’re going to find when we return, but whatever else happens, I’m going to make sure Kamali survives and finds a way to get back to Paris or wherever is safe. Because I can’t stand the idea of anything else bad happening to her because of me.

I awake to snarling, drooling, insanely sharp teeth in my face.

I jerk back, which only makes the dog snap at me and growl in a way that freezes every muscle in my body. I can’t believe I fell asleep. My internal cursing is epic. A quickly sucked-in breath over the comm tells me Kamali’s awake. I’ve moved away from her, so I can’t see her—as far as I can tell, we’re both still invisible—but this feral beast must have smelled us. While I’m trying to remember how to breathe, Kamali’s hand flails against my arm. I quickly grab it to keep her from moving.

The dog senses us anyway and unleashes a flurry of barks that nearly stop my heart. He’s practically on top of us, just under the fern branch. He knows we’re here, even if he can’t see us.

“What you got there, boy?” a rough male voice calls from behind the dog. The ferns crunch under his approach.

Kamali is breathing hard over my comm, and I’m right there with her. I have no idea what to do, other than hold still.

The barrel of a long, old-fashioned gun moves the branch aside. The dog growls and snaps again, now that its owner is here.

“What do you see, Mac?” The man is maybe forty with a beard that looks about a month old. His clothes are rough brown wool and handmade. The single barrel rifle has no tech and could be pre-Singularity, but the gaping black hole at the end could easily fire a bullet and kill me very dead. Its aim is wandering all over me and Kamali.

We hold absolutely still.

The man scowls at the dog. “Ye chasing mice now, you stupid mutt? C’mon!” He backs away, but the dog doesn’t leave. He just growls more, then suddenly lunges at me, teeth bared. I throw up my arm, and he clamps down on it. I manage to keep in the half-scream, half-grunt that wants to work loose—I don’t think the dog’s teeth have pierced my suit, but it hurts like ten nails driven into my arm. And I can’t get loose. But none of that matters because the field is now overlapping the dog’s head.

“I said c’mon, Mac!” The man stomps back and pushes aside the branch. “What the—”

The barrel of the gun whips up to point straight at my arm and the dog’s now-invisible head.

“What devil is this?” he hisses under his breath, then shouts, “Nat!”

Another man comes crashing through the ferns, arriving by the first one’s side. He’s older, maybe fifty, with age and sun carving lines on his face.

“Mac’s got some kind of demon!” the first one says.

The older man quickly takes in the situation, then says in a low, gruff voice. “Shoot it.”

Kamali sucks in a breath.

The man hesitates, wincing, I think because he doesn’t want to shoot his dog. But he takes aim with his gun anyway—

“No! Wait!” I jam my chin against the activation buttons for my suit. It takes a heart-stopping second while I’m wrestling with the dog and getting all three buttons—helmet, jacket and pants—but I finally manage it.

My shield drops. Both men lean back in surprise, then a split second later, I have two gun barrels aimed at my head.

“Heel, Mac!” the younger one says, and the dog releases me.

I clutch my arm and sneak a glance next to me, where Kamali is lying. She’s still cloaked. I wrench my gaze back to the men before I give her away.

“He’s using the devil’s tech!” the man with the dog says, his gun still pointed at my head.

“Okay, boy,” the older one says to me. “How about you tell us what you’re doing, hiding yourself in the weeds with the soulless ones’ technology?” The cool tone of his voice sends shivers racing through me. I’m pretty sure my life depends on my answer.

“I was… I was hiding from the ascenders.” My voice wavers, but it’s essentially the truth. I hope they can hear that.

The older one narrows his eyes. “We saw that camp going up in smoke. A fair punishment for laying down with the devil. So, you’re one of those, are you?”

“No.” I shake my head for emphasis. I’m pretty sure that’s the right answer. “I told you, I was hiding from them. I was running away.”

“Is that right?” The older one isn’t convinced, and the younger one looks like he wants to shoot me, regardless.

“I swear.”

“We don’t care much for swearing, son.”

I wince. “I mean, I promise.” My hands are up. “They captured me and were holding me prisoner. I was just trying to get free.”

“Just trying to get home, eh?” The older one scans my face, looking for something. “Where abouts would that be?”

I swallow. These guys don’t know who I am. Which means they haven’t watched the Olympics. So they’re dissident believers who live off grid.

“I was born a legacy in Seattle,” I say, sticking with the truth as much as possible, so I don’t trip myself up too badly. “But I was banished.”

The younger one eases off with the rifle to my head. He nods a little, approving. “You a believer, then?” As if that’s the only reason I would have been kicked out of a legacy city.

I nod. I can’t imagine what Kamali thinks about all this, but she’s doing a good job of keeping quiet.

The older one rocks his gun back and rests it on his shoulder. My body sags a little with relief, now that weapons aren’t actively pointed at my head. Not that I’m out of danger with these two—not by a long measure.

“Well, get on up, son.” He waves me up from the forest floor. “I’m Nathaniel, one of the elders of our community. This is Jacob. If you’re a believer, then you’re halfway to heaven. And we’d love to see you get the rest of the way there.”

That sets my teeth on edge, but I climb to my feet. I have a feeling I’ve just been adopted. But at least that will let me lead these guys away from Kamali. She can slip back to the camp on her own. I’ll just have to break free of them later. Somehow.

“Take the helmet off, son,” the older one, Nathaniel, says. As I do, he asks, “What’s your name?”

I know my mom named me after someone in her Christian holy book, so I give him my full name. “Elijah.”

He exchanges a smile with the younger one, Jacob. “That’s a fine name. A godly name. I’m glad we found you, Elijah.”

I force as much of a smile as I can. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Come on, son.” Nathaniel steps forward to clap a hand on my shoulder. It’s heavy, with muscle behind it, and I’m fairly sure he could knock me out stone-cold with one punch. “We’ve got some folks in our community who’d like a chance to welcome a young believer like yourself.”

I nod and struggle to keep the smile. But we’re already a few feet away from Kamali, which is just what I want. Nathaniel keeps his hand on my shoulder as we head in the direction of the stream. The dog whines behind us.

“C’mon, Mac!” Jacob says.

The dog starts growling and pawing at the ferns again. Right where Kamali still is. I grit my teeth, but Jacob hustles back to retrieve the dog. The growling kicks up a notch, and my heart sinks.

“There’s another one, Nat!”

I hear Kamali gasp over the comm. Nathaniel’s grip on me becomes painfully tight, and he swings his gun off his shoulder. He lays the side of the barrel against my cheek, and the cold steel rivets me in place. But he’s not looking at me—he’s scanning the ferns like there might be a hundred cloaked assassins waiting for him.

He leans down to hiss in my face. “We don’t much care for liars, either, Elijah.”

My hands are back up. “I wasn’t lying.”

Jacob stomps out of the ferns, hauling Kamali with him. She’s still cloaked, so I can’t see her face, but I don’t have to. His gun is jammed into her chest or possibly pointed at her head—I can’t tell because it disappears before it reaches her.

“Let her go!” I yell in Nathaniel’s face.

He looks at me anew, but his voice is still filled with menace. “Tell her to turn off the devil’s tech.”

I swing to look at her. “Kamali, just do what they say.”

It takes a moment, but she flickers into existence. Jacob has her by the arm, his long gun digging into her side.

Nathaniel looks back and forth between us. “The two of you were running away.”

I can’t decide which lie I should tell.

“He was just trying to protect me,” Kamali says. “You can’t hold that against him.”

Nathaniel looks surprised and a little amused by her words but doesn’t respond, just gives me a cold look. “Son, looks like we found you just in time.”

I have no idea what he means by this, so I keep my mouth shut.

He lifts his chin to Jacob. “Take their helmets. That way if they decide they want to run back to their soulless keepers, we’ll have a clean shot at the head.”

Jacob moves to pull Kamali’s helmet off, but she manages to evade him and take it off herself. She shoves it at him. He glares at her, then sends the helmet sailing off into the forest. I hand mine to Nathaniel. He lobs it out of sight as well.

His glare gets a little friendlier. “It’s a good thing we stumbled across you and your girl today. I think the Good Lord put us in the right place at the right time to give you just the help you need.”

Kamali’s eyes couldn’t be any more round and scared, but I don’t see much choice for us at this point. Given they have the guns, and we don’t.

“We’d appreciate any help you have to give,” I say.

Nathaniel smiles, and while it’s warmer, I still get a chill from it. Then he gestures us back toward the stream, and we fall into step with them. Prisoners. Nathaniel’s my keeper, and Jacob stays close to Kamali.

The march is long and hard, and takes at least two hours, maybe three. We must have slept for several hours—the sun is already on its way back down. I’m guessing it’s late afternoon. Kamali’s limping a little. Not too badly, and it seems to get better over time, but it still makes me angry. We follow the stream deeper into the mountains, away from the Resistance’s basecamp, then up into the forest again. We don’t climb too high in elevation, but looking back toward the camp, I can see what drew Nathaniel and Jacob our way. The plume of the billowing smoke is gone, but the haze of it lies in the valley like a shroud on a corpse. The ascenders’ transport has disappeared, along with any visible flames, but at this distance, I can’t tell if there are sentries still there.

Along the way, we startle a couple birds from some trees. Jacob shoots them, which leaves me open-mouthed. He ties the bloody carcasses to his belt—I have a feeling that’s dinner. There’s no talking. Kamali keeps throwing me fearful glances when the men aren’t looking, but they don’t let us get close enough to talk. It’s like they’re not just trying to keep us from running, but also keeping us apart physically. Do they think we’re going to try to escape? They must know we can’t activate our invisibility suits without the helmets.

When we reach the “community” Nathaniel spoke of, it’s bigger than I expect. Hundreds of feet wide and extending back through the trees even deeper, it’s a village carved out of the forest. A twelve-foot wooden wall surrounds it—raw tree trunks, bark and all, bound together and sharpened to massive spikes on top. We cross a short, wooden bridge over a wide ditch that surrounds the compound. Two men armed with the same kind of long-barreled gun that Nathaniel and Jacob have stand guard at the gate. They’re younger, maybe twenties—beards must be the fashion here because everyone has them. The guards stare at me and even longer at Kamali. Nathaniel barks an order, and they hustle to wind an enormous crank to open the doors.

Inside are two long rows of squat, rectangular buildings. They’re like barracks, only made of wood, not canvas. A dozen of them stretch down each side. Nathaniel leads us along the center toward an open area a few hundred feet away. A stage sits dead center in the courtyard with a large wooden block on top and another cluster of buildings behind.

As we pass the barracks, small figures move between them: children. Tons of them. Really small, too, some barely old enough to walk. They seem to be split up, with girls on the right side and boys on the left. When they see us, they run off, holding the hands of the littlest ones to drag them along, out of sight. There are no adults, at least outside, until we get about halfway down, then a few adult-sized figures emerge from the boys’ side. They’re dressed in heavy brown robes with hoods that shade their faces. When they see us, they flee back inside their barracks, just like the children.

I glance to Kamali behind me: her expression is carefully neutral, but I can tell she’s as freaked out by this as I am. My attention is ripped forward by the sound of someone yelling incoherently. The doors of one of the far buildings have flung open, and two figures in brown robes are hauling a third between them, toward the stage. A fourth follows behind. We’re far enough away, almost a hundred feet still, that I can’t quite make out what the fourth one’s carrying… but it’s long and glints in the afternoon sun.

I shoot a look to Nathaniel, who seems unfazed. “What’s going on?” I ask.

He keeps his gaze straight ahead as we march closer. “It’s not easy surviving here in God’s country,” he says gravely. “We don’t have much and each needs to pull his own weight. We don’t care for those who take more than their share.”

“So that guy…” I gesture with my chin to the man being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the stage. “He stole something?” A chill runs down my back as the man begs, pleading for them to stop whatever punishment they’re about to enact, but they just haul him up on the stage and toward the block.

“Zachariah knew it was a sin to take more than his meal allotment,” Nathaniel says coolly. “The council of elders lives in God’s perfection, and their prayerful judgment is always just. And merciful.”

The man’s hood falls back as he struggles. He’s young—not much older than me, but with coarse brown hair and a scraggly beard.

“Zachariah should be thankful the council is saving him from his sin, allowing him to pay for it in this life, so he doesn’t have to spend an eternity trying to absolve a debt he never can.”

Zachariah does not look thankful. My stomach churns as they pin him to the block, one robed figure holding him from behind, the other stretching his arm across the block. I gag as I realize the long, metallic thing is a sword. A very large sword with a curved blade and a tip that glints as it’s raised.

I don’t look away soon enough.

The blade flashes and thunks on the block. Zachariah screams. His severed hand tumbles away from his body. Kamali makes a choking sound behind me. The man’s pain echoes across the compound, which is absolutely empty of movement.

“They took his hand,” I mumble, choking on the words.

Nathaniel nods. We’re close enough now to see the blood gushing across the block and the hand lying on the ground where it rolled to a stop. The man’s screams are now moans, but the others haven’t released him. The sides of the block are blackened by dozens of other long-dried stains.

Nathaniel slows, as if he wants us to see the full horror of it. The robed figure with the blade sets it down and pulls something else from inside the thick, brown folds of his cloak. I look away and try to catch Kamali’s eye, but she’s staring at the ground. Her whole body is shaking. Nathaniel’s hand on my shoulder turns me back to the spectacle.

“Set your gaze on this, son,” he says, quietly. “You should see the care the council takes to prepare each of us for our time in eternity. They want every one of us to reach that state with purity and righteousness.”

The others are bent over Zachariah’s stump, working at… something. I can’t really see, but his moans arch up to screams again. The sound slices like the punisher’s curved blade through my chest, again and again. Nathaniel’s hand holds me in place, forcing me to watch. Finally, they’re done, and all three of the community’s enforcers back away from Zachariah. He now has a mechanical hand. Metallic, articulated with fingers and a thumb, but it’s not like the ascenders’ bodyform hands. Theirs are beautiful and otherworldly while still human-like. This… this is some kind of monstrous thing, black and silver and ugly. But obviously functional—the fingers flex as the man stares at his new hand and sobs. It doesn’t look like ascender tech, but that fact that it can attach and function so quickly means somehow this crazy cult has med tech as advanced as anything in the Resistance med bay.

“Zachariah will carry the devil’s tech with him now, every day.” Nathaniel says this like it’s a blessing, not a horror. “He’ll see the reminder in every moment of his time on earth, and he’ll always know the price of sin. But he’s free of it now. When he ascends into heaven, he will be made whole, and his sin, the flesh that failed to be purified, will remain forever on earth. A true blessing.”

I don’t even have words for the horror of this. Nathaniel is insane. All of this is. I glance back to Kamali. Her eyes are glazed, and she’s staring at me, but I don’t think she sees me. I wish she could see the promise in my eyes that I will get us out of this freak show.

I look back to Nathaniel, who is studying my face with cool dispassion. “I…” My voice cracks, and I have to swallow down the dryness. “We don’t know all the rules here.” I hope that will buy us some time.

Nathaniel nods gravely. “We understand that, son. You’re a lost lamb, who was in grave danger of sin, but God led us to you because he wanted you to be saved. Which is why your education will have to start immediately.” He glances at Jacob and tips his head toward the barracks.

Jacob latches onto Kamali’s arm and starts dragging her away.

Alarm electrifies my body.

“Eli!” Kamali’s voice is pure terror. She struggles, but Jacob is far too strong.

“Where are you taking her?” I demand of Nathaniel.

“She’ll be with the women, of course,” he says calmly. “Until you two can be properly wed in the eyes of the Lord, it’s best you don’t spend any more time together. I’m sure you had the best intentions, Elijah, bringing her out of that soulless camp, but there’s no sense in giving the devil any help with his wickedness.”

This is so messed up, my mind is reeling. “Don’t hurt her,” I beg. “Please.”

Nathaniel frowns. “Don’t worry about your girl, Elijah. The women of the Cleansed will tend to her needs. And she’ll get her training, too, so she’ll make a good wife for you.”

The Cleansed? Training to be my wife? The vise on my chest couldn’t be any tighter.

What have I gotten us into?

Nathaniel gives me a brown woolen robe, some kind of mush in a bowl, and a cell.

The cell appears to be an austere bedroom—the rough mattress on the bed feels like it’s stuffed with straw, and a woven rug covering a small spot on the floor looks handmade. There are no windows, just a storage trunk with another brown robe inside and a wash bin on top. An empty pot that I’m afraid is my toilet sits in the corner. But as far as I can tell, it’s really a prison cell, just like all the others Nathaniel and I passed down the long hallway outside my door. Those all had locks… on the outside. I didn’t see anyone on the way in—half the doors were closed, and the rest of the rooms appeared identical to this one, except empty.

Nathaniel told me to put on the robe and pray for guidance.

When he left, I tossed the brown robe to the floor and checked the door: locked. Then I wolfed down the mush, which tasted like a nutty onion of some kind, but I didn’t care, because I was starving. I hope whoever has Kamali is feeding her too. When I set the empty bowl aside and wipe my mouth, I have nothing left to do but think.

What an unbelievable mess.

Whatever training Nathaniel has in mind for me, as long as I don’t steal anything, I might get through it with all my parts intact. The question is how to get both Kamali and me out of this insane religious cult. I’ve heard of places like this, and I know we won’t last two days. I’m sure the horror show we saw on the way in is just the beginning of what goes on inside these walls. I don’t know what awaits us back at the Resistance camp—there may be no hope there either—but I will take my chances with starving on the Oregon prairie over whatever punishments the council of the Cleansed decide we need.

A full-body shudder raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

I scoop the robe back off the floor. The only way out is pretending I’m willing to sign up for their brand of crazy, then taking the chance to run when it appears. And somehow getting Kamali out as well. Nathaniel seems to want to marry us—like immediately—which completely spins my brain, but I might be able to work with that. It would all be a ruse, of course, but the sooner Kamali and I are together again, the better.

As I lift the robe over my head, the motion jars loose the drawing pad tucked in the back of my invisibility suit pants, and the pad falls to the floor. The paper is crumpled and warped from sleeping on it, and I’d almost forgotten it was there. The half-drawn picture of Kamali peeks out. I pick up the pad, fumble the charcoal pencil out of my pants pocket, and take a seat on the bed while I draw.

It doesn’t take long to finish. Her image pulls emotion out of me, even though I’m the one who created it. No, that’s not right: Kamali created the art, I just put it down on paper. I touch her face, smudging the lines a little to add a shadow that wasn’t there, in the brilliant sun, just this morning. I make a silent vow to recreate that scene someday. For both of us.

I close the pad and hide it again, tucking it securely in the back of my shorts, under my tanktop and jacket. Then I slide on the robe. I’m supposed to be praying, so I get on my knees on the rug and clasp my hands together, the way I’ve seen my mom do, with her statues of dying saints in the corner of her bedroom back in Seattle.

I wait.

I have no idea when Nathaniel’s coming back. After a minute, I realize this maybe isn’t the best plan, but I stick it out, using the time to think of ways to get out of the compound. I’ll need a weapon of some kind to threaten the guards at the gate. I might have to fight them, which means I need a really good weapon because the men here all seem to have muscles built on manual labor and hard living. The curved blade from the stage might work although I have no idea how to wield it. And they’ve got guns—maybe I could steal one—but I’ve never fired a weapon of any kind in my life. I’m just going to have to be alert, see what comes my way.

My knees start to ache, and my arms grow tired. I grit my teeth and stay in the kneeling position. I need to make a good impression on Nathaniel if any of this is going to work. I take a deep breath and let it out slow. The Dalai Lama and his meditation chant swim up from my memories. The last thing I want is to go into a fugue, but the Om Mani Padme Hum song draws my mind to its simplicity. As the words repeat on a loop in my head, the aches of the prayer position seem to fade. I think about the camp and everything that might have been destroyed by the ascenders… then I draw in a deeper breath and try to focus on the chant, not the memories, not the people I may have already lost…

Something shifts. I’m still in the same room, on the same rug, hands clasped, but the walls are brighter and the corners darker. This is the fugue state, I’m sure of it. A man steps from behind me, nearly brushing me. He doesn’t seem to know I’m here. He kneels at the trunk, bent over, hands clasped. He’s sobbing.

“I tried, Lord. I tried,” he mumbles into his hands. “But the devil won’t leave me alone. I keep falling, keep sinning against you. The council says it’s this or banishment, and I know I’ll never make it on my own. I can’t even keep from sinning here in your perfect haven, Lord. How could I stay pure outside these walls? I know this is the only way, the only chance I have left, but I’m afraid. So afraid.”

Two men burst into my room, which I realize is our room, only somehow different. Shifted in time. Or possibly space because the rooms all look the same. But there’s an unstoppability to this, a feeling like this has already happened, and I’m only an observer. The two men grab the kneeling man and lay him face down on the floor. He doesn’t resist. His tears surge, one after another, flowing down his face. One of the men holds him while the other waves a wand of some kind over his scalp. The ragged brown strands of his hair slide in patches along his tear-streaked face. When his head is shaven, the man holding him down produces another wand, this one gleaming with blue light at the tip. He takes a small tech chip, bristling with a hundred hair-like wires, from inside his robe. The wand lifts it from his palm with an unseen force. I watch, hands still clasped, as he presses the wand to the base of the shaved man’s skull.

His screams wash over me as blood runs down his neck—

“Elijah!” A rough shake and the sound of my name snap me out of the fugue. Nathaniel has me by the shoulders, with a grip so hard it’s painful. I blink up at him, still dazed. But I’m not shaky with any of the backlash that usually—but not always—seems to accompany the fugue. “Son, are you all right?”

His furrowed, dark look jerks me to life. “I’m fine.” I pull away from him. “I was just praying, that’s all. I didn’t hear you come in.”

His skepticism is still clear on his face. “I called your name three times.”

I rise up and straighten my robe. “Sometimes, I fall deep into talking to the Lord. I’m sorry.”

His face relaxes. “That’s nothing to be sorry for, son.” He nods in approval. “I had a feeling God brought you to us for a reason. Men of strong faith are a blessing to the community.”

I dip my head in what I hope is meek acknowledgment. So far, so good. Although my vision is still echoing shivers through my body. Was it just a subconscious fear, given life in the fugue, or was it real? I don’t even know what I mean by real in that context, but if the fugue gives me information about how to get out of this place, I’m taking it—whether I can explain it or not.

Nathaniel edges closer. He’s wearing a robe now, the same as mine. He pulls back a sleeve to show me a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. There are five symbols inked there; they look like a language, but I don’t know which one.

“I have a feeling you’ll earn this soon enough,” he says with a serious look.

“What does it say?” I ask.

“It’s Hebrew. The language of God’s first people. It says belonging to God.” He lets the sleeve drop to cover it. “You already do, whether you realize it or not, but it seems your heart is yearning for the fullness of that truth. Once you’re purified, you’ll understand. And join the brotherhood. We aren’t the first people to belong to God, Elijah, but we will be the last.”

“The last?” I frown, easing a little away from him.

“The day is coming,” he intones in a way that heightens the chill down my back. “You and your girl should make haste to purify and wed. God willing, you’ll increase our number. But our season on earth is soon going to end.”

This end-of-times talk is making my stomach clench, but it will work for my purposes. “Then I don’t want to waste any time. How soon can I be with Kamali again?”

“As soon as is right by the Lord.” But he smiles, and it’s actually warm. “It won’t be long, Elijah.” He sweeps a hand to the door. “Come, break bread with me, and we’ll begin your instruction.”

I duck my head and stride toward the door. Back down the hallway, we take a turn that brings us to a common room with several tables and a small kitchen attached. The room is empty except for one brown-robed figure doing something in the kitchen. Nathaniel motions for me to sit opposite him, and when I do, the robed person approaches carrying a wooden board topped with a tiny loaf of bread. I can’t see his face, but I assume it’s a man since the cult is clearly into keeping males and females separate.

Nathaniel rips the bread in two and hands one piece to me. I try not to stuff it too quickly in my mouth, but my stomach is still grumbling from the mush, and I’m going on a full day without much food. A small window in the kitchen lets in a waning, red light: the sun’s starting to set. Darkness would make a great cover for an escape.

While I chew, Nathaniel talks. “Our rules are simple, Elijah, and being a man of faith, I’m sure you’ll see the purity of it: give all of your mind, heart, and body to the Cleansed and take no more than the gifts given to you in return.”

“What do you mean by gifts?” I ask around a mouthful of bread.

“Anything from an elder such as myself. I gave you that bread; therefore, it is right that you eat it. Your daily share of food is a gift from the community, one we all work to give one another. Zachariah took more than his share, but the elders released him from that sin by gifting him with a mechanical hand.”

The bread suddenly tastes moldy. I swallow it down anyway. “So any gift from an elder, you are required to accept.”

“The elders maintain their purity. They know which gifts are righteous and just.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, treading carefully. “Exactly what do you mean by purity?”

“Every thought and action should serve the Lord. Any impure one needs to be excised. You’ll spend most of your time in prayer like you were now. I’m truly heartened to see you already so taken with talking to the Lord, Elijah. It’s the only true way to staying pure at all times.”

Behind me, the sound of hard-soled shoes on wooden planks scuffles up to us. “Nathaniel, the brotherhood is waiting to hear—”

“I’m breaking bread here, Jacob.”

The admonishment shuts Jacob up pretty fast.

I twist around to see him dressed in a robe with the hood thrown back.

He gives me a narrow-eyed glare, then drops his gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry, Brother Nathaniel.”

“You are forgiven.” Nathaniel says it like it’s a release from some kind of punishment. “But I understand. The men will want to hear everything.”

Jacob looks up. “There’s talk of taking another party, larger this time, to ensure we reach the camp. Now that the soulless ones and their pets have reaped what they have sown, there may be supplies left that would benefit the community.” He glances at me. “And there may be others who will be in need of purification.”

My heart rate kicks up a notch. We won’t have anywhere to go—much less message for help from the other Resistance cells—if the cult’s men reach the camp first.

Nathaniel nods. “Agreed. I’m sure the council will approve another party. If so, we’ll leave at first light. Tell the men to take to their rooms and pray that we will have even more success on our second expedition than our first.”

Jacob scowls at me. I don’t think he counts finding me and Kamali as a success. And I have to agree with him there.

“Jacob.” The admonishment is sharp, and Jacob rips his glare away from me.

“I’ll tell the men,” he says, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to leave.

I finish chewing my bread, watching him go and trying not to panic. Kamali and I need to get out tonight—and with enough of a head start that we can warn any survivors in the camp that Nathaniel’s men are on their way.

“You needn’t worry, Elijah,” Nathaniel says.

I whip back to face him. “Worry about what?”

“Worry about going back. It wouldn’t be right to force you to return to the scene of your spiritual captivity.” He tips his head to me. “Besides, with God’s perfection, you may be wed tomorrow.”

Yet another reason not to stay. I just nod.

“Which means we need to make haste for your discernment as well,” he says. “Normally, we give our initiates time to prepare. Meditations and prayers. A purging if they wish. Anything that will help ready them for the discernment.”

“What exactly is the discernment?” All this talk of making haste is ramping up my nerves.

“A test of your purity, son.” His voice has turned grave again. “Purity of heart and mind and body.”

My heart lurches, but I keep a cool face. I have no idea what kind of test these people do, but the chances of me passing it are exactly zero. “Maybe I need a little preparation time after all.”

He nods. “I know. Purity is a daunting challenge. And the discernment is difficult for the best among us. But the Cleansed want nothing more than for you to reach perfection in time for the coming day, and the first step is to purify. If you fall after the purification, like Zachariah, remedies are simple enough.”

I put down the last piece of my bread uneaten, my throat suddenly too closed up to swallow anything. Chopping off Zachariah’s hand was the remedy after purification. There’s no way I’m making it through the initial process.

“I really think I might need more time,” I choke out.

The hooded figure that brought us our bread has returned. He has two wooden cups, which he sets down before us, then he picks up the breadboard with my uneaten piece.

Nathaniel grabs hold of his wrist, stopping him. “Finish your bread, Elijah.”

His dark look brooks no dissent, so I do, picking it up and stuffing it in my mouth.

Nathaniel looks up to the hooded figure. “Show your face to our new initiate.”

The man slowly pushes back his hood, and I nearly choke on my bread. His head is shaved.

“Turn around,” Nathaniel instructs, and the man does. At the base of his skull is an ugly red scar that tears across his stubbled skin. “There is more than one way to achieve purification, Elijah, and I’d rather you didn’t have to take this route.”

I have to fight to swallow my bread so I can speak. “What is that?” I ask even though I know. The vacant expression on the man’s face verifies every horrible thought conjured by my vision: neural implants.

“Your thoughts, Elijah, are the source of all impurity. The implant assures that your mind will always be pure. And if your mind is pure, all else follows. The implant hastens the passing time, brings you over to the Lord sooner, but for some, that’s a blessing as well—better to die without sin than be caught in your fallen state at the exact moment you need to be pure.”

“But… it’s the devil’s tech. You said so.” The quaver in my stomach threatens to bring up the mush.

“Sometimes you have to use the devil’s tools to fight him.”

I nod, shakily, convinced more than ever that Nathaniel and his cult are straight-up crazy. But this is some kind of weird ascender tech—it has to be, along with the mechanical hand. I have no idea why a cult like the Cleansed has it.

Nathaniel waves off the blank-faced man still hovering over us. “For some of the fallen, this is the only path that will save them. I don’t think it will come to that for you, Elijah, but know this: only the pure will be taken. Only the pure will ascend when the holy one comes back to smite the soulless creatures who have taken over our world. He will pluck the righteous out of the world and deliver them to heaven, laying waste to all those on earth who have sinned. And I don’t want to count you among the fallen, Elijah. I can already see you are destined for greater things than that poor fate. Far better to lose a hand or an eye or even the wicked free will of your mind and be made pure again than to be riddled with sin when the judgment day comes.”

I shut my gaping mouth because there is absolutely nothing I can say that won’t give me away.

Nathaniel picks up his cup and gestures to mine. “Drink your wine, son. Along with the bread, it will fortify you for the discernment.”

I pick up the cup, but my hand is shaking. And my mind is scrambling for a way to stop this headlong rush into something I can’t even begin to contemplate the horrors of. “When will it start?” I ask.

“It’s already begun.” He drinks back the wine and stares steadily at me.

My hand’s shaking so bad, the cup bangs against my lips. The wine is bitter and makes me choke, but I manage to get it down.

The world blurs a little, and too late, I realize: it’s drugged.

I blink too fast, and my head slowly sinks to the table.

I’m being dragged down the hallway.

Nathaniel and the hooded man, the one with the implant in the back of his skull, have me by the shoulders, dragging me backward. I’m not resisting because my arms feel like they belong to someone else, and the world is fuzzing in and out of existence in front of my eyes. I have this strange lack of fear, a disinterested distance from what’s happening. I’m observing it, just like back in my room with the vision of the implant being inserted into that man’s head.

My boots bump along the rough flooring of the hallway in a random, jerky kind of way. I laugh at my own feet, then frown because… this is bad. I blink. Part of me knows this is very, very bad. I loll my head back to look at Nathaniel, but he’s staring straight ahead.

We pass through a doorway, and the men deposit me in a straight-backed chair. I slump into it and almost slide out. Nathaniel catches me, then ties me with a really thick rope to the back of the chair. It’s ridiculously thick, like the size of my wrist. Way more than needed to hold me up. He ties my hands together as well, binding them to something on the chair between my legs. Probably to keep them from flopping around like they were.

I look up. Nathaniel has a very serious face. I smile, because I feel good, and why not? The room does that shifting thing again. Nathaniel’s clothes disappear and are replaced by black military garb, but not like the Resistance uses. I blink, my smile fading. Nathaniel’s a soldier for someone else’s army? I didn’t know that. But then his hooded robe is back again, only with the hood thrown back, and it’s like I’ve missed some snippet of time.

I frown at the missing seconds. Missing seconds mean something.

“Elijah.” Nathaniel’s voice is very serious. “Son, I’m going to ask you some questions, and it’s important for you to tell me the truth.”

“Okay,” I say, but my tongue is thick. I lick my lips with it, and it feels fuzzy. So strange.

“Confession is good for the soul, Elijah.” He looms over me.

I glance around, but the implant guy is gone. It’s just me and Nathaniel in a small room with the chair. I smell smoke. I scrunch up my nose.

“Elijah.” Nathaniel’s voice brings me back, and he’s holding something now: a long iron poker with a wooden handle and a red-hot tip. I lean back because I can feel the heat on my face. The acrid smoke of the heated steel singes my nose.

I look up at him with wide eyes. “What’s that for?”

“The discerning drug will loosen your tongue, Elijah. And it’s important for you to tell me all of your sins. All of them. So we can purge them from you now, before the reckoning.” He leans back, taking the red-hot poker with him. “I know how hard it is to let loose your secrets, but I will find them eventually. The quicker you come clean, son, the faster you can pay for them. The discernment won’t allow you to keep them, regardless, so it’s better not to fight.”

I blink. Something inside me is fighting. The world shifts again, just slightly, and Nathaniel is back in his soldier uniform. “I don’t have any secrets,” I lie to his face. Then I smile because this is funny. I have so many secrets, I’m not even sure where I would start in telling them.

Nathaniel sighs, and his robe reappears. “Everyone has secrets, Elijah. Everyone sins. But it’s as I told you: I will discern them whether you want to confess or not. But it’s better for you if the confession comes from the heart.”

I nod my head because in that moment, it kind of makes sense. Like an apology isn’t really an apology if you don’t mean it. I can see that.

“We’ll start with purity of the body,” he says.

I frown because I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Have you already had sexual relations with your girl?” he asks, giving me a stern look.

“No.” The word is out of my mouth before I have time to think. It’s the truth, but somehow it makes me angry. Because that’s none of his business.

“Or any other person?” he asks.

“No.” I scowl at how fast I respond, and the warm fuzzy feeling that’s tripping through my body dissipates a little. I lied before, but now the words are coming out without my control. And I know what that means: I really will tell him my secrets. And then what happens? I try to concentrate on that line of thinking, but it evaporates like mist.

Nathaniel nods. “I expected as much.”

This focuses my anger again—I’m not sure why—but it sharpens my thinking. If Nathaniel discovers I’m lying, the ruse is off. And then I’m done for. I look down at my hands tied to the chair: there’s not much I can do in this state. And Kamali—

Nathaniel leans near my face with the poker. “Next is purity of heart.”

I stare at the glowing tip, and my anger flares with a heat of its own. He would hurt Kamali. He wouldn’t hesitate, either—I know this as surely as I know Nathaniel and his cult are flat-out crazy.

“Do you love the Lord with all your heart, Elijah?”

Oh man. I clamp my teeth on my thick tongue before it can betray me. The room shifts a third time, and Nathaniel is dressed in military gear again. It’s shabby, handmade like his brown robe. Suddenly, he pulls my head back, holding my hair in one hand and the poker in the other. The heat of the tip sears the air next to my skin. I hear screaming, but it’s not mine. This is a vision of another man, another initiate, in the chair in my place, having the sin burned out of him. My heart pounds, but I realize: I’m in the fugue state. At least, partially.

Reality snaps back.

“Elijah, answer me!” Nathaniel is back in his robe, and the poker is gone from his hand—it rests in a bucket of coals that I just now notice behind him. Missing seconds. Leftover fear sharpens my mind.

I look up at Nathaniel’s angry face. Breath heaves in and out of my chest.

“Answer me,” he says again, low and dangerous. “Do you love the Lord?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. A lie.

“With all your heart?” he demands, leaning closer.

“Yes.” Somehow… the fugue is… a haze closes in on my brain again. I fight it, but it’s like pushing against a thick fog. I forget why I’m fighting.

Nathaniel leans back, nodding. “I knew your faith was true.” There’s approval in his voice. This lifts me a little, but I don’t quite smile.

Part of me knows there should be no smiling in this room.

“But every man has impure thoughts, my son,” he says. “We all sin in our minds long before our bodies follow the wickedness of our thoughts. And now is the time to purge those sins, to purify your mind, so you can enter the brotherhood of the cleansed.”

I just stare at him, breath still heaving. My body knows to be afraid—it coils snakes of lightning along my legs and arms, making them twitch even in the heaviness induced by whatever drug Nathaniel has given me. My mind is still detached, watching him go back to the bucket of coals. The grating sound as he pushes the poker through the charcoal makes my legs jump. He comes back with it in hand.

“You may not have sinned in the flesh with your future wife, Elijah,” he says, “but surely you have dwelled upon lustful thoughts about her. It’s not righteousness in the Lord that has drawn you to her, is it?”

I blink, confused. I think he means that I’ve found her beautiful, attractive, wanted to kiss her, and more. This is so obvious I’m kind of stunned. But something—namely the red-hot poker in his hand—is holding me back from saying anything.

“Answer me truthfully, Elijah,” he says, drawing closer. “Have you lusted after her in your mind?”

“Lusted?” The haze is pushing me to say yes, because of course, but I fight against it, my brain pushing on the fog, and as I do… the room flickers, shifting back and forth again. This time it locks, and the two states merge—somehow I see two Nathaniels, one with his robe and the spitting-hot poker in his hand, the other in his fugue-state military uniform. While the double vision makes me blink, it clears the haze in my mind.

I lie with conviction. “I’ve never lusted in my heart. For her or anyone else.”

Nathaniel’s eyes narrow, and he pulls back. He contemplates me for a moment, then returns the poker to its bucket of coals. When he comes back, I still have the double vision and clarity of mind I need. I don’t know how, but the fugue is fighting off the effects of the drug.

He braces his hands on his knees so he’s eye-to-eye with me. “What sins of the mind have you committed, son?”

“None.”

“Nothing in word or deed? No strike against a brother? No murder or stealing or unrighteous act?

I’ve never killed anyone, but I’m pretty sure punching my best friend Cyrus would count as a strike against a brother. And yet, I don’t feel any need to confess. Instead, words come out of my mouth that I don’t expect—like the fugue is conjuring them from somewhere else. “A man who sins against his brother, sins against his own self.”

Nathaniel jerks back like the words are a punch to the face. His eyes go wide, then he turns away. I frantically search what I’ve said, hoping like crazy the fugue hasn’t killed my chances of escaping the poker.

When Nathaniel turns back, his face is stone-cold again. “The sin of jealousy?” he continues his interrogation, just like before, but now the muscles in his cheek are working, like he’s gritting his teeth. “Surely you have seethed with envy of those who possessed something you wanted?”

My breathing calms. Maybe I can make it through this after all. “No.”

“And what about pride? Did you never think high thoughts of yourself, in all your purity, in all your righteousness with the Lord?” There’s anger rising in his voice.

I say, “No,” before I think it through. When his eyes flash and his mouth sets into a tight line, I know I’ve made a mistake. He stares hard at me for a moment then marches to the door, throws it open, and stalks down the hall, away from the room. Outside is the man with the shaved head, standing impassively, head down. He doesn’t move. My double vision shows him not only in his robe but a simple shirt and trousers as well.

The door is open, but the man with the shaved head doesn’t seem to notice—it’s like the implant has turned off his brain entirely. If only I wasn’t tied to the chair, I might actually be able to escape. I look back to the bucket, but I’m still tied down, and I can’t see how to use the poker without burning myself in the process. Before I can think of a way to get free, Nathaniel returns with a wooden cup. He slams the door shut behind him and thrusts the cup in my face.

“Drink, Elijah.”

I stare at the cup. It’s filled with more of the wine, which I’m sure is laced with a double dose of whatever he gave me the first time. I’m equally sure I have no choice but to drink it. What I don’t know is if the fugue will still be able to fight it off. I gesture to my hands still bound between my knees and shrug my shoulders. He reaches down and unhooks the rope from whatever is tethering it to the chair. My wrists are still bound, but at least I can grasp hold of the cup.

I raise it to my lips. Nathaniel watches as I drink the entire thing down. It takes several tries, and I have to pause for breath, which is becoming more labored as I go. My whole body is relaxing, the effects of the drug seeping into every corner. I nearly drop the cup when I’m done, but Nathaniel catches it.

He examines me carefully for a long minute, saying nothing. My eyelids are heavy, and I have to fight to keep them open. The double vision flickers back and forth, but what I’m losing most is my hold on reality—at least the reality that is comprised of the room with the red-hot poker that will soon be my punishment for my sins. I’m starting to wonder which is more real—that vision or the one of Nathaniel in his military uniform. When he leans in toward me, I see the tattoo on his wrist is gone.

“No man is without sin, Elijah.” His breath is sour in my face.

I blink and stare at him. His face is younger than before but still lined at the corners of his eyes. They were old before he was.

“Even the purest among us have some sin to atone for,” he says. “And there are sins that only the Lord sees. Maybe a lie so small that it seems innocent. One so tiny no one would ever know. Except we know the truth in our hearts, don’t we? That it was a blasphemy against the purity of speech the Lord requires. Everyone does this, my brother. It is the least of our sins. Confess it now, and we can be done here.”

He waits.

I stare.

His dark brown eyes turn cold. “Tell me the truth, Elijah: have you ever spoken falsely?”

His face is only inches from mine, but my gaze is drawn to his uniform. I notice the coarse fabric of his jacket and the bars across his shoulder: captain, my mind tells me.

My tongue is thick with the drug, but I manage to say, “No, captain, sir. I’ve never lied, sir.” The words are hot in my mouth, lies that rebuke the drug coursing through my body.

Nathaniel pulls back, his face stricken. He turns away, but I can see his shoulders rise and fall and hear his labored breath. He’s muttering something, but it’s to himself. He stokes the poker again, shaking his head, talking to himself. When he finally turns back, there is awe in his face.

“It is you,” he says.

I have no idea what he means, so I just nod.

He hurries to the back of my chair, and the rope around my chest loosens and falls. Then he kneels in front of me and unties the one binding my wrists. Once I’m free, he doesn’t move, just stays on bent knee, staring at the floor next to the chair, blinking. Like he’s not sure what to do next.

I don’t have that problem. I ease up from the chair, not too fast, so I don’t alarm him. Then I step around him to the bucket of charcoal where the poker sits. I grab it and swing hard with everything I have.

I hit Nathaniel square on the back. He goes down on the floor with a grunt. I swing the poker through and hold it high overhead, ready to hit him again. My heart pounds through several seconds of waiting… I’m shocked he stays down, but he does. I teeter, the effects of the drug and my double vision playing havoc with my balance.

Then I stumble to the door.

I fling open the door and swing my iron poker high to fight the man with the shaved head and neural implant.

He doesn’t look up.

I let my arms drop and lurch past him, down the corridor, bracing myself against the wall with one hand. The floorboards seem to rock like I’m on a ship at sea, but it’s just the truth-telling drug and the fugue state giving me double vision. I pause and close my eyes, waiting for the dizziness to pass, but it doesn’t. And I’ve got to get out and find Kamali before Nathaniel is discovered.

Only I have no idea where she is.

I manage to exit the building without being seen. Night has fallen—only the spotlights above each entranceway light the compound. I put up my hood and hope no one wonders why one of the brotherhood is wandering around carrying an iron bar with a glowing red tip. There are a dozen buildings on the women’s side—Kamali has to be in one of them. The entrances are around back, which is good because I’d like to stay out of sight of the men’s side.

The first door is locked.

I bang on it, but no one answers. Same with the second and third. I have to be waking up the whole lot of them at this point, but there’s not even a whisper from inside. At the fourth one, I start wailing on the solid wooden door with my poker, which doesn’t accomplish anything besides making a tremendous racket. At the next building over, a door cracks open. I dash across the gap between the barracks-like housing, but before I get there, the door slams shut again.

Then I see a brown-robed figure hurrying between the next two buildings. Given the short stature and arms full of a basket of clothes, I guess it’s a woman. I sprint over, sickened by the idea of having to threaten her, but I have no choice.

Her head is so bowed, hood falling forward, that she only sees me when I’m practically on top of her—with my iron bar raised over my head. She jerks to a stop, and her hood falls back. She’s only fourteen or fifteen with wide blue eyes that are terrified. Of me.

“Where is she?” I demand, which only makes the girl shake so badly she nearly drops her basket. “Kamali. Take me to her.”

The girl’s full-body quiver coalesces into a fervent nod. She stumbles to the door, drops the basket at the doorstep, and fishes a key from the folds of her robe. It takes her three tries to get it in the door, but when she does, I don’t let her finish—I shove my way in. A good thing, too, because the door bangs into something solid. The woman behind it tumbles to the floor, and the long-barreled gun she was holding clatters against the floorboards. I dart to pick it up. Now I have a shotgun in one hand and an iron bar in the other… and no desire to use either one.

But I will, if forced.

The woman on the floor scrambles back. The girl who let me in is still standing on the threshold. There are two more—an elderly woman and a little girl—huddled at the edge of the common room. Down the length of the building is a hallway with doors, just like the one on the men’s side.

I point the gun at the woman on the floor. She’s middle-aged, as far as I can tell in the low light. “Take me to Kamali, and no one has to get hurt.” I seriously hope they don’t fight me on this.

The woman slowly gets to her feet, hands out in surrender. Then she points down the hall. “She’s back here.”

“You first.” I gesture to the rest of them. “All of you.”

They scurry with hunched shoulders down the hall. My double vision is starting to fade, but I still feel woozy. From the drugs. Probably the wine, too. Possibly because I’m ordering women and girls around at gunpoint. I plod after the women, careful with my steps so I don’t fall on my face and ruin any chance of pulling this off. The oldest one stops at the third door and opens it with her key. I motion for her to toss it to me, then I wave them all farther down the hall. I stand at the threshold of the door, afraid to go in the room—I’m sure they’ll try to lock me in.

I push open the unlocked door… and my shoulders sag in relief at the sight of Kamali on the bed. Her face is turned away, and I almost call out to her, but then I see she’s bound to the bedposts at the wrists and feet. Rage paints my blurry vision red. What have they done to her?

I swing my shotgun to point at the girl who let me in the building. “You!” I yell. “Untie her!”

The girl squeezes past me in the doorway. Kamali slowly swings her head to watch the girl run around and unlatch the bindings. She has a glazed kind of look that makes my throat close up.

When Kamali finally looks toward the door, she gasps. “Eli.” Her voice is so weak.

I just nod. She squirms free of the last of the ropes at her feet and leaps out of the bed. She has a flimsy white nightgown over her tanktop and shorts—the thin fabric of the gown isn’t going to be much protection in the cold trek back to the camp.

I clear my throat. “You need something warmer.” I gesture to the girl. “Give her your robe!”

She quakes in front of me but doesn’t move.

“I’ve got one here,” Kamali says, dashing to something behind the door. A second later, she’s slipping a robe over her head. Once it’s on, I hand her the iron bar, then take her hand.

“You okay?” I ask, as I tow her from the room. Her lips are dry and pressed into a straight line, but she gives me a quick nod. She seems unharmed, outwardly, at least. Hands clasped, we slowly back down the hall the way I came, holding the women off with my gun. I’m afraid they’ll grab another weapon from somewhere, but they simply watch us go.

My heart is pounding—someone has to have discovered Nathaniel by now, but when we reach the still-open door, there’s no one outside. Kamali and I dash out into the dark and run toward the front of the compound. I slow our pace at the last of the buildings before the giant gate at the entrance.

Between the running and the adrenaline, not to mention the drugs, I’m starting to feel seriously light-headed. I brace myself against the rough wooden wall where we’ve taking refuge in the shadows and suck in gulps of night air.

Kamali puts a hand on my shoulder. It’s reassuring how strong her grip is. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” I’m completely out of breath. Her soft brown eyes catch some of the distant light, and the concern on her face helps calm the pounding in my chest. I reach out a hand to reassure her and somehow end up touching my fingertips to her cheek.

I stand there for a moment, breathing hard, my hand to her face. “You are so beautiful,” I say.

Her expression opens in surprise, and I realize I shouldn’t be saying those words. Or touching her that way. I drop my hand.

She scrunches up her face. “Are you drunk?”

“No.” I shake my head. Too much. I stop because it’s making the world spin. “Maybe.” Then I shake my head again, slower this time, and peer into her deep, dark eyes. “Truth drugs.”

Her eyebrows fly up.

“Don’t…” I wag a finger to stop her from saying anything. “Do not ask me anything. You know, anything important.”

Her eyebrows crash down into a frown. “Okay.” She thinks I’m drunk for sure now.

I reach out to her again, but just to put my hand on her shoulder. “Tell me again they didn’t hurt you,” I say, trying to move on from my impaired state. “I mean, you were tied up, Kamali. What’s that all about?”

“They didn’t hurt me,” she says with conviction. “But these people are crazy, Eli.”

I huff a small laugh. “I noticed.”

“They were going to…” She drops her gaze, then looks away and squints at the lights coming from the men’s buildings.

A core of anger flames to life inside me—the idea that she’s embarrassed by whatever they did to her makes me grip the gun barrel tighter.

“What did they do?” I say between my teeth.

“They wanted to marry us,” she says, still peering at the light. Then she looks back to me. “And they wanted to make sure I wasn’t already pregnant.”

What? Then I realize they tied her down to do this... inspection. I screw up my face in anger and have to ball my fist against the building. The wrongness of it squeezes on my chest. I want to go back and make someone pay. I fight for words that aren’t hot with anger.

I finally manage, “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s just get out of this place.” Her shoulders sag.

I nod vigorously, as much as my still-dizzy head will allow. “We need to surprise the guards.” I hand her the gun. “You take this. Give me the bar. That way you can keep your distance, threaten them, and I can get up close and—” My tongue is still thick from the drug, and with the fugue state fading, my mind is starting to cloud again. Running up and beating the crap out of the guards sounds really good to me right now, but I can’t think straight enough to know if that’s a smart thing to do.

“Do what you have to, Eli,” Kamali says. “Just get us out of here.”

I nod, and her words help clear my mind: no matter what happens, I’m getting Kamali free of this cult. We edge down the corridor between buildings, not bothering to put up our hoods. Two guards are stationed at the gate with long-barreled guns slung over their shoulders. It takes a moment for them to see us stalking toward them, but when they do, Kamali’s already got her gun trained on them.

“Put your guns down,” I say.

They freeze, then look at each other but don’t make any move to drop their weapons.

Kamali raises her gun to eye-level. I don’t know if she’s fired a weapon before, but she’s been in the Resistance longer than I have. “Drop your weapons now,” she says to the guards, in a voice that says she’s one second away from pulling the trigger.

“I’d love for her to shoot one of you,” I add.

“Okay, okay,” one says, holding up his hand and putting the gun on the ground. The second guard follows suit.

“Open the gate,” I say. They hesitate, but then one lifts his chin to the other. That one edges backward, toward the giant crank that operates the gate. It clanks as he unlatches something, then the racket is even louder when he puts his muscles into working the crank. There must be some gearing inside because it takes a lot of turns before the tall, spiked wooden doors even start to move.

Then a shout behind us brings the clacking to a halt.

Kamali and I spin around, but there are already a dozen guns pointed at us.

Jacob is at the front, his rifle aimed at my head. “Daniel,” he calls to the guard at the crank. “Shut the gate.”

My heart sinks as the clacking resumes behind me, sealing off our escape route.

“Put the gun down, girl,” he says to Kamali.

She throws a fearful glance to me, but we’re massively out-gunned and outnumbered. Kamali slowly lowers her gun to the ground, and I toss my iron poker down as well. Then someone shoves me from behind, and I sprawl into the dirt.

“You fooled Nathaniel into thinking you could be a man of God,” Jacob says, his voice bitter, “and look what that got him. He should have listened to me. I saw you for the devil you are from the beginning.” Then to the others, “Take their robes.”

Several of the men lower their weapons and advance toward Kamali. I scramble up on my knees, determined to stop them, but someone lands an iron fist to my face. I’m back down, dirt in my mouth, dazed. A boot kicks my stomach so hard, it lifts me from the ground. I crash down, face-first into the dust. I can’t breathe. I claw the hard-scrabble ground, trying to crawl away, but another kick flips me over and makes stars dart past my eyes. I hear Kamali’s muffled protest, but I can’t do anything—I can’t even breathe. Then a dozen hands are on me, rough, some punching but most wrestling me out of my robe. My arms lock up, reflexively protecting my body. When the men get the robe free, they don’t stop there—they take my invisibility suit jacket and pants and leave me shivering in my tanktop and shorts on the packed-dirt ground.

I’m still fighting to pull in air. Then I realize Jacob has my drawing pad in his hands.

He’s looking between it and Kamali. “Bring her here.”

His thugs haul her over—she’s down to her tanktop and shorts as well, looking vulnerable for all her dancer strength. Jacob has to know the drawing is her; there’s no mistaking her face or long, graceful limbs.

“You dance.” Jacob’s eyes narrow and rake over her body in a way that forces me up on my knees in protest. It’s an indictment; I know it is. I’ve heard the stories.

I’m finally able to pull in some air. “That’s just…” I’m wheezing so badly, it’s hard to get words out. “Just my imagination.”

“Shut up.” He tosses the words to me, but another of his thugs follows it up with a fist to my face.

I’m down in the dirt again, fighting to see straight, much less think a way out of this.

“We have a cure for dancers.” Jacob is hissing in her face, and I want to get up, but a wash of dizziness keeps me on the ground. Kamali lets out a whimper. My fists curl into the dirt. “The council and the devil’s tech will keep you from raising up impure desires with this seduction.” He spits out the word, then throws the pad down and grinds his boot on top of it, ripping the pages.

Oh please no. My stomach heaves. They’re going to take her legs. I can’t even picture it—my mind refuses to go there. Think, Eli, think. Before I can come up a way to stop this, I’m hauled off the ground by two men.

Suddenly, the ground and every face around me is lit up with a light so bright, it’s like the sun has come to hover just above us. Everyone shades their eyes and looks up. I can’t see anything, but something is blasting the entire camp with a white-hot light that’s burning my retinas.

A mechanical crunching shakes the ground. Men scream. Shots fire. The two men holding me let go. I still can’t see much in the glare—just fast-moving shadows, too fast to be human, darting around the group—but I don’t hesitate, just stumble forward, searching for Kamali. Somehow I find her, grab her hand, and haul her away from the melee that’s broken out.

We don’t get far before we’re out of the blinding spotlight.

“Eli.” The sound of my name, coming from above, pulls me to a stop. A platform floats over the scrum, but there’s not enough light above it and too much glare below it—I can’t see who’s there. On the ground, two sentries are cutting down the cult members like they’re nothing but dolls. I watch, frozen, as the last of them are sliced through and crumple in pieces to the ground. I squint at whoever is presiding over the massacre, arriving in a torrent of light to smite everyone.

“Eli, Eli.” The voice lets out an audible sigh. “You continue to cause trouble wherever you go.”

I know that voice.

The platform casts a soft light up onto his ascender body.

Marcus.

Marcus slowly descends on the pillar of light below his floating ascender-tech platform. As the glare dims, I can see his sentries standing dormant over the bodies of the Cleansed cult members. Or rather, the pieces of bodies: detached limbs, torsos punched through with holes, severed heads. The blood is thick on the ground.

Kamali presses the back of her hand to her mouth.

“You killed them all.” I’m still dizzy from the drugs and the beating, but I’m not just talking about the cult members—I think this is exactly what Marcus has done to the entire Resistance camp in his effort to track me down. The world spins a little more, and I tug Kamali’s hand, pulling her behind me and putting myself between her and the last ascender I ever wanted to see again.

Marcus arrives at ground level and steps off the platform. He doesn’t even look at the pieces of bodies strewn behind him. “They were animals.” His ascender skin flushes with a dark swirl of anger. “Animals who almost deprived me of the pleasure of your company once again, Eli.”

The last thing Marcus wants is my company. “They were still people.” The cult would have killed both me and Kamali—or at least maimed and tortured us—but the people in the Resistance camp, the people I loved, didn’t deserve to be cut to pieces.

Marcus holds his hands out, palm up. “What alternative did I have?” he asks, nonchalantly, like his decision to mow them down was like deciding which barely-there outfit to wear. His toga-styled dress clings all over, hanging off one shoulder and displaying his bodyform’s muscular build. “You continue to make things difficult, Eli. I’m not the one who chose to hide out among a band of religious zealots.”

“We didn’t have much choice in the matter.” I’m desperately trying to figure a way out of this and coming up completely empty.

Marcus slowly saunters toward us. “Then it would appear I’ve found you none too soon. Just in time to prevent whatever depraved acts these zealots were about to commit. Against you and your friend.” He flicks an all-too-interested look at Kamali behind me.

Her hand grips harder on mine. We’re both shivering in the cool night air with just our shorts and tanktops. No weapons and no options. Not against an ascender with sentries.

“Leave her out of this. I’m the one you want, Marcus.” At least that was true the last time he had me trapped. Back in his apartment in the clouds, he was trying to ascend me to prove I wasn’t the “answer” to Lenora’s Question. You’re not a bridge to anywhere, he said. And I believed him. Then. Now… now Marcus has to know there’s more to the fugue than just Olympic-level painting skills.

His hungry smile twists my stomach. “Turns out, there’s something special about you after all, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” The word is out before I can stop it.

Marcus’s face transforms with amusement, but his eyes are deadly-serious.

My heart pounds as I realize I’m talking too freely, still operating under the truth drugs… which is very, very bad with Marcus around. I need to buy some time until the drugs wear off—and find a way to get Kamali free.

Marcus peers around me at her. “Given how important our young gold medalist appears to be to you, I believe my plans just expanded to include her.”

I swallow… but I can work with that. If Marcus thinks she’s important to me—which she is, regardless—then whatever he wants from me, he’ll have to keep her alive to get it. I have a sick feeling that may be the only leverage I have to protect her. Something I’ve already failed to do for the people in the camp. The sick feeling threatens to crawl up my throat.

“Fine, let’s go,” I say. “It’s getting cold, and I don’t need to see your sentries tear apart any more bodies.”

Marcus smirks and holds out a hand to his platform. It’s some kind of lift. I finally look up—a transport hovers over the compound, blocking out the night sky. Kamali’s hand clenches mine as we march to the lift. There’s barely enough room for the three of us, so I take her in my arms and hold her close. Our faces nearly touch, and we’re still basically in our underwear. In any other circumstance, in this position, I’d be working up the nerve to kiss her. As it is, I’m hoping it reinforces Marcus’s idea that we’re a couple. Kamali’s wide eyes are roaming my face, but she doesn’t pull away. My look of apology is all I have to give. I hope she understands. With the set of her mouth and her arms around my waist, I think she does—but I can tell she has a thousand things she would say if Marcus weren’t less than a foot away.

The lift rises up through a portal in the bottom of the ship, and the two sentries fly up behind us. Once the portal closes, the misty ascender flooring flows back over it. Inside the transport, the air is warmer, but still ascender-cool. The ship appears to be the one Marcus used to whisk me away to his apartment in LA. The sentries glide their mechanized hulk to the cockpit, where I guess they double as pilots. Maglev seats emerge from the wall, and Marcus gestures for us to sit. Another seat morphs from the wall-sized display screen and zips over to Marcus. I remember the seats and screen are controlled by ascender transmissions, but Kamali’s eyes are wide as she takes in the luxuries of Marcus’s ship.

There’s a subtle shift as we start to move.

“Where are you taking us?” I ask, figuring it’s better for me to be asking the questions while the truth drugs are still in effect… although I can already feel my mind clearing a little. Maybe it’s the depth of the trouble we’re in or the way my heart’s pounding blood through my system at three times the normal rate.

Marcus’s seat glides to the screen, stirring up mist along the way. “I have a small place in New Portland,” he says with a smirk. “I think it will be suitable for our task.” The city’s strange skyline of contorted shapes shows up with crystal clarity on the screen. It must be a holo because it’s dark outside now, but the image shows full daylight.

I don’t want to discuss whatever task he has for me… not yet. “How did you find us?” I ask instead.

He arches one eyebrow. “Given your little hacked-in speech on Orion, I was fairly certain your Resistance friends had truly gotten hold of you. When you were not, in fact, among the populace of the camp, I realized you must have engineered some kind of escape.”

His casual mention of the camp—of everyone he’s killed looking for me—leaves me speechless.

Marcus narrows his eyes. “Perhaps you had some forewarning that the attack was coming?”

“I saw something.” The words are out before I can stop them. My vision. It wasn’t a forewarning of the destruction of the camp… was it? Death is coming, Kamali had told me in the fugue. It was a warning, and I ignored it. Ran from it. I squirm in my maglev seat, and the body-contouring cushion shifts with me. I sneak a side look at Kamali, and her wide-eyed horror condemns me without a trial.

“I didn’t know,” I say to her, the truth tripping easily from my tongue.

Her frown shows her confusion, but she keeps quiet—and doesn’t betray my impaired state. I hope that means she believes me.

“Interesting.” The satisfaction in Marcus’s voice pulls anger out of me and sharpens my mind for the questions I really should be asking.

“Why did you destroy the camp?” I ask, glaring my hatred at him. “If all you wanted was me, why not just come and take me?” I’m certain Marcus could have found a way around the wholesale slaughter if he wanted. Then again, given he just sliced the zealots to pieces, maybe he simply didn’t care.

“I certainly would have taken a different approach,” he says, as if this is an intellectual exercise, not the bloody deaths of people I love. “But I wasn’t the one who ordered the attack.”

I frown. “You weren’t.” I don’t believe him, but I’m not sure why he would lie about it.

Marcus shrugs, and the amusement is back on his face. “I’m good, Eli, but all the luck seems to be going to the other side lately. Including their ability to ferret out your little Resistance hideout before me.”

It’s almost like he’s telling the truth… which I don’t understand, because if it wasn’t Marcus who attacked the camp, then who was it? I share a look with Kamali and see the same hope reflected there.

I lurch up to my feet and stride fast over to Marcus. “Who is this other side? And what did they do to the camp?”

The amusement drops off Marcus’s face. He gestures to the wall screen behind him. It’s showing a nighttime view of New Portland now, but then the scene shifts.

It’s Cyrus.

My mouth drops open. He’s alive. But he’s in an ascender-tech chair, the kind where the cushion holds you prisoner. And he’s moaning. His head whips back and forth, eyes closed.

“What are you doing to him?” I demand, every muscle in my body rigid. Kamali’s hand lands on my arm, a small comfort as she looks on with horror as well.

Marcus watches us both but says nothing.

The screen shifts again. This time, it’s Delphina in the chair. She’s cursing in French and full-body flailing against the hold of the cushion. Kamali sucks in a breath. I force my curled-up fist to relax so I can put my arm around her shoulder. She presses her fist to her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Stop it,” I say to Marcus.

The image disappears, replaced by our approach to a lit-up ascender tower in the middle of New Portland.

“You should be grateful I’m the one who found you first,” Marcus says, coolly. “That could be you and Ms. LeClair under interrogation.”

“But why are they being interrogated?” I ask, my stomach clenched. I drop my hand from Kamali’s shoulder because my need to curl up my fists again is overwhelming.

“Now that is an excellent question.” Marcus peers at me like he thinks I know the answer, and I’m just not telling. Which only reminds me how insane most ascenders are.

“What’s happening to them?” I try to keep my voice cool, measured.

“I imagine they’re suffering the kind of thorough mental pain that comes when every small memory you possess is resurrected, scoured, and searched for relevant knowledge.”

“Knowledge about me,” I guess, a familiar black ooze settling into my chest.

“No doubt.”

I can’t even look at Kamali. But I feel the heat of her stare on my face. “Will they be permanently harmed?” My throat is thick, like the ooze is creeping up to choke me. Whoever Marcus’s ascender enemies are, they clearly are after the same thing he is.

“Hard to say.” He seems unconcerned about their fate.

I glare at him. “How do I make this other side stop torturing them?”

His ascender eyes dilate in that mechanical way they do sometimes, and his gaze locks with mine. “My spies have been monitoring the situation, and I have the resources necessary to stop the suffering of your friends. I simply have no reason to do so at the moment. But give me what I want, Eli, and I’ll arrange to free them all.”

The screen shows us landing at one of New Portland’s razor-thin towers… then it shifts to a scene of my mother in the chair. My whole body convulses, and I drop my gaze to the floor. I can still hear her moans.

“Shut it off,” I say, my voice shaking.

It goes silent.

“It would be a shame for your mother to be cured of her illness only to suffer a mental break at the hands of ascenders intent upon finding her son.”

I slowly raise my head and stare into his murderous ascender eyes. “I don’t know which of you I hate more.”

Marcus chuckles. Black wisps curl across his skin. “It’s not your love that I require, Eli. Merely your cooperation.”

I swallow. Kamali already knows I’m at the epicenter of all this. To blame for all of it. But I don’t have any more time to waste in getting to the point with Marcus.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“You have an ability,” he says carefully. “Something I didn’t think possible. I’m not completely convinced it is possible. But if you have it, Eli, I am quite certain I want to know in complete detail how it works. And what, shall we say, useful purpose we might find for it.”

The fugue. He’s put the pieces together, and now he wants me to perform like a monkey on a stage, showing him how it works. To give him access to something I barely understand myself, but that feels like a powder keg of potential. And danger. Something inside me cries out, objecting to the idea of telling Marcus anything he hasn’t already guessed or observed for himself. I should say no. But the truth drugs are still swimming in my system, and I can’t lie, even to myself: I’m going to hand it over to him, and I’m going to do it as quickly as possible.

Because I can’t stand to see my mom in that chair.

The ship jostles slightly. We’ve arrived.

I grit my teeth and force the words out. “Then let’s get started right away.”

A smile breaks across Marcus’s face.

The torture images play on an endless loop in my head.

I’m dead center in some kind of ascender power struggle. They want secrets I don’t even understand myself. And I’m about to give them all to Marcus.

We arrive at his apartment in New Portland. It’s ascender-cool, and Kamali and I are still shivering in our tanktops and shorts. Marcus disappears with ascender speed, then returns a moment later with two togas, one for each of us. They’re feather-light and remind me of our Olympic uniforms, only this ascender-tech fabric is even more weightless—like putting on a wash of warm air—and it clings everywhere. Kamali’s dancer form jumps into high relief—the toga is more revealing than her loose shirt and shorts. I almost ask for different clothes, but it doesn’t seem to bother her, and the warmth is immediate, calming my chilled flesh.

“Are you ready?” Marcus asks me.

I don’t want Kamali to see this, so I gesture to the couch in the vast receiving room of his apartment. “Maybe you should stay here.”

“Maybe I should go with you.” She gives me a piercing look.

I grimace. “I’m not sure you want to see this.” Truth is, I don’t want her to see it, but maybe she’ll get the message.

She glares at Marcus. “I don’t trust him.”

I take her by the shoulders and look her straight in the eyes. “It’ll be easier for me if you’re not watching.” I’m not just being squeamish—I’m also trying to buy her time alone to figure a way out. I can’t say anything about that, but I hope my insistence will speak for itself.

“I have a room for Ms. LeClair.” Marcus tips his head to me. “She’ll be safe while we’re working.”

I think safe means locked up, but maybe there will be a way to escape as well. I beseech her with my eyes.

She’s not happy. “All right.”

I try to take her hand, but she’s having none of that. We follow Marcus down a corridor to a bedroom at the back of his apartment—at least, I think it’s a bedroom. I’ve never seen an ascender one before. The walls are bare, glowing with some internal light, and there’s no furniture of any kind. Marcus passes his hand over a section of the wall by the door, and a bed melts up from the floor. It’s like the maglev seats in his ship—embedded in the floor until summoned by his transmission to float in the middle of the room.

Kamali scowls as Marcus and I back out the door. It materializes in place. I’m sure it’s locked, but just in case it isn’t, I hope Kamali takes every opportunity she can to run. Across the hallway is a room with a holo-transmission chair: it’s similar to the one the Resistance used to broadcast their message. Maybe that operation was betrayed by the same people who gave Marcus’s enemies the location of the camp. All I know is I’m exhausted, beaten, and bruised… and that I’m going to tell Marcus whatever he wants and hope like crazy he will deliver on rescuing my mom and the others.

Marcus gestures to the holo matrix chair. “Have a seat.”

The last time I was in Marcus’s chair, he was trying to inject nanites in my brain. “I think I’ll stand.”

Marcus tilts his head, regarding me. “I thought I had your cooperation in this.”

I fold my arms and stand straighter. “You have my standing-up cooperation.” Weariness is dragging on me. “How about I tell you everything you want to know, and we skip the torture part?”

“I’m not going to torture you, Eli.” His voice is filled with arrogance. “I have much more effective ways of getting what I want.”

“Good to know.” I sigh. Man, I’m tired.

“Let me be clear,” he says. “You have absolutely no worth to me as Elijah Brighton, sometime paint slinger and wistful revolutionary. On the other hand, if you are, in fact, this bridge Lenora designed you to be, then having the power of the Answer in the palm of my hand interests me very much.”

Great. “Look, I don’t care about the politics. I don’t care who your enemies are. I just want my friends and family back safe.”

The arrogance drops off his face, replaced by a steely-eyed impatience. “Then I suggest you convince me that my resurrected memories of our last encounter are actually correct and that you do indeed have the ability to commune with my long-dead mother.”

Commune. So Marcus thinks I speak to the dead. Something tells me to keep as much of the process of the fugue a mystery to him as possible.

“Right.” I take a breath and close my eyes like I’m going into a mystical communing-with-the-dead trance. But I don’t need to summon the fugue—ever since Marcus’s mother touched her finger to my forehead, every memory of hers has clung to the edges of my mind, just like my own. Lilith. I know her life as well as my own.

I recall the memories without opening my eyes. “Your mother says she gave you a DNA sequencer for your eighth birthday, but when you stole material from your grandmother’s bathroom to sequence, she couldn’t bring herself to punish you. Later on, she was worried you wouldn’t make friends when you went to the University of Washington at age sixteen, but she waited until you brought home your first girlfriend to tell you. She didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

I open my eyes and lock gazes with Marcus. A rainbow of colors pulse across his skin, a kaleidoscope of emotion I can’t even begin to parse. “And just before she took the pill you handed her so that she could ascend, she wrote a note saying how proud she was of all you had accomplished. She wrote it in her own hand, the old-fashioned way, and tucked it away in a drawer so you would find it later. In case things didn’t go well. And they didn’t go well, did they, Marcus?”

He moves so fast, I don’t see it coming—I’m just flying across the room, suddenly pinned against the wall with Marcus’s hand at my throat. I claw at his rock-hard ascender grip, but I can’t get any air. He could easily snap my neck, but instead, he’s glaring at me and watching me slowly asphyxiate. I kick and flail and try to speak, but I can’t make a sound. Just as the black spots swarm and threaten to pull me in, he drops me.

I fall to the floor, gasping and choking and holding my throat, which is blossoming with pain. I stay down, wondering why I’m such an idiot. I’m tired and still fighting the last vestiges of the drugs, but I’m only going to get out of this alive—me and Kamali and my mom and everyone else—if I pull myself together.

I slowly look up, breathing hard.

Marcus looms over me. I think he’s still contemplating ways to make me die.

I don’t speak.

His glare remains fierce, but he says, “You’ve convinced me.”

I slump back against the wall. I have to be smarter about this—but before I can figure out the smart move, Marcus hauls me up with his ascender strength. The fabric of my toga bunches in his fist, but it holds me pretty well as he slams me into the holo chair. He grips the back of it and leans over me, getting in my face. I shrink away, but there’s nowhere to go.

“Well, now, Elijah Brighton.” Curls of angry black writhe up his neck. “Seems like you’re the real deal. Now you get to show me exactly how this parlor trick works.”

My hands are up in surrender. “Whatever you say.”

He eases back, his skin turning a neutral gray while he examines me. “I have no illusions about what you are. Religion is based on faith, and I’m not indulging in any of that. There’s no supernatural deity involved in this. You are nothing more than a very interesting genetic anomaly. But science is a wondrous and many-splendored thing—and it has more than enough room to hold the possibility that other planes of reality exist that we cannot directly sense with known technology. Which means that, via some wildly improbable combination of genetic construction and expression, it’s possible you can sense that other plane of reality when everyone before you has failed.”

“I call it the fugue state.” I rub a hand across my neck, soothing the bruises that have to be showing by now. I can swallow, so there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage. “And I guess it’s something like that. But I can’t always control it.” Like hardly ever, but I leave that unsaid.

Marcus taps a finger to his lips while he looks me over. I’m his lab rat now, and I’m certain he’s sorting through all the experiments he wants to run on me.

He edges forward and peers at my head like he has built-in x-ray vision and can see inside. Which… is possible. This sprouts goosebumps all over my body.

He nods to himself. “It’s long been known that a God state—a sense of connection with the divine—can be induced in human organic brains. It’s a simple matter of brain chemistry altered in any number of ways. Your garden-variety psychotropic drugs will do it—a few of those can even be produced by the brain under the right circumstances. Some humans are capable of reaching the state through deep meditation or prayer.” He tilts his head to the side and smirks. “Others require sufficient brain damage to the right parietal lobe to bring them closer to God.”

A small shudder passes through me. I remember Marcus’s delight in making me squirm, so I don’t give him the pleasure. “I must be brain damaged to be cooperating with you.”

The humor fades from his face. “The question isn’t whether we can induce the state—there are much cleaner ways than tissue damage or drugs. The question is whether what occurs is anything other than a figment of your biochemical imagination. And that, my little genetic oddity, is a question we’re going to answer definitively. Together.”

He strides over to the wall and taps on it, which summons a door to the slightly-glowing surface. It’s a small cabinet. Marcus reaches in and retrieves something. Whatever it is, it fits in his hand, and I can’t see it until he returns to my chair. He holds up the small device, focusing his gaze on it like he’s transmitting instructions. It looks like a med monitor—the kind that hovers over my mom’s skin, making measurements during the course of her treatment. Marcus finishes whatever he’s doing and looks up.

“What is that?” I ask, my heart rate kicking up a notch.

Marcus’s smirk makes my skin crawl. “Your own personal God mode.” Then he moves fast and shoves the small device against my forehead. Only I don’t feel it touch my skin—

—and the fugue hits me like a punch to the stomach.

I reel from the sudden inducement, but I’m still in the chair. Marcus hovers over me, watching, only he’s not in his bodyform—his dark brown and very human eyes are keen on my face, searching for something. Then the room expands, blown apart by invisible forces, and Marcus fades away to a pinprick in the distance. I’m weightless, floating over the shining, twisted towers of New Portland. The towers are less substantial, less real, than the beings moving inside them. Now I’m the one with the x-ray vision—only I don’t see the insides of their bodyforms, but rather, their alternate selves. Their fugue-state forms, rich in a dazzling dance of colors and shapes and sizes. I watch, disinterested, floating higher, like I might drift right off the planet, when the landscape spins, and I’m sucked down into a small room. It’s cramped and dark. A woman hunches over a canvas, painting in angry, fast strokes. The room is so small, it feels like a closet, and I’m trapped in it, with her and her wild brown hair and energy of a thunderstorm. She freezes with her paint-stained hand in the air, refraining from another stab at the canvas with her brush.

She slowly turns to face me.

I try to back up, but I’m trapped by the darkness surrounding me.

You’re here, she says.

I don’t answer.

She drops the paintbrush to the floor as she stands and stares. The dark hues of its splattered paint are lost in the murkiness that surrounds her and traps me. It has a chill that seeps into me, a familiar black ooze filling my chest. I don’t have a need to breathe in the fugue state, or I guess I never really thought about it, but now… now the darkness feels like suffocation.

You’re the one, she says, taking a single, careful step at a time, edging closer, like she thinks I’m a wild animal that will spook and run.

No, I say, shaking my head. I can’t back up.

Yes, you are, she insists.

No, I’m not, I say again, desperate to escape the hungry look in her eyes.

Yesss! Her voice is a siren wail, a screech that stretches as she rushes at me.

I fling my arms up to ward her off—

My stomach convulses so hard, I pitch forward in the chair. Lightning fast, Marcus catches me from tumbling face-first into the floor. My entire body curls up, spasming. I can’t control my limbs, can’t straighten out, but somehow Marcus manages to balance me in the chair again.

He grips the back of it, leaning in and peering at me. “Well, that was very interesting.”

I’m still fighting to pull air into my lungs—every muscle in my body is clenched.

“Tell me what you saw,” he demands.

“A woman,” I gasp the words out. “Painting.”

“A painter?” His voice is full of disgust. “I need more than that, Eli. I need answers.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” I don’t know what Marcus hopes to get out of this.

“Then make it work that way.” He pushes away from me.

“What do you want?” I ask, angry. My body shakes uncontrollably.

“I want proof!” he roars. He swoops back to me, getting in my face again, and I can see it in his eyes—he wants to kill me. Badly. I have to stop pushing him because he’s way too close to snuffing me out. And whatever reason he has for not killing me at this exact moment… it’s barely enough to hold him back.

His murderous look stays trained on me. “I want… I want…” But he stops and leans back, shaking his head. “No… not yet.” He turns away. I blink, confused and too weary to sort it out. A moment later, Marcus strides back to me, the crazy-mad look replaced by something much more cunning. “You must understand, Eli. This will change everything. With this power you have, I will change everything. And you will be a key part of that, a critical piece. It will be a new age, and the two of us will be at the center of it. Do you understand?”

“No,” I say, because I really don’t. My arms are still shaking from the forced fugue, but I manage to cross them to hold them still.

“You don’t have to, not at first.” His voice cools, and I think he’s fully come back from whatever brink he was hanging over. “You only have to do what I say. In time, you will understand. Back when you were just the embodiment of a whisper—an idea of a savior floating through Orion and stirring up trouble—then you were merely something dangerous. Something that was causing an annoying amount of disruption in my carefully laid plans. But now… now everything that’s ever been out of reach will be at my fingertips. Our fingertips, Eli. In your human terms, it’s quite simply power. Wealth. Eternal life. Everything you could want and things you can’t possibly imagine—that’s what this will be. For you as well as for me. But for now, you need to trust me that understanding how this works is the only thing that matters.”

“All right,” I say because it seems more sensible to say that than you’re an insane power-mongering murderer. “But I want my family and friends safe. If I get you the proof you want, or whatever it is you’re doing here, then you’ll break them free of whoever is holding them. Right?”

He leans back and dismisses my words with a wave. “That’s easily done. But first, I need something concrete.” He frowns, a million cycles of thought obviously ticking through his brain. He’s ignoring me.

I wait. Eventually, my limbs uncramp enough to allow me to lean back in the chair.

“Can you contact someone who has only recently died?” he asks, as if I know how any of this works.

“Sure. Maybe. It’s hard for me to control.” The word contact reminds me that he thinks I’m communing with the dead, which obviously isn’t true. Or at least, it isn’t limited to that. Not least because I can see live people, only altered, in their fugue-state selves… including him. Was that Marcus’s soul I saw? I don’t know. All I know is I need to give him exactly what he wants… and no more.

He stares at the monitor patch again, transmitting something. I’m not entirely sure he’s heard me until he faces me, holding it in the palm of his hand.

“I want you to contact Thompson,” he says.

I lean back in the chair, my face twisting up. “Thompson?”

“Yes. The painter who was murdered to pave your way to the gold medal.” Then he moves faster than I can see and smacks the monitor on my forehead. Before my head can hit the back of the chair—

—I’m in the fugue. It hits me even harder than before, and I’m sailing backward through a murky vagueness that doesn’t feel anchored to anything. There’s no time or space here, just… waiting. A heavy sense of possibility fills me, like the dark gray nothingness around me isn’t nothing… it’s just waiting to be called into something. Waiting for someone to believe in it, to give it form and wonder, like a lump of clay or sealed tube of paint just waiting to be dipped into and shaped into reality. I tip my head back. The grayness stretches endlessly in every direction. I could lose myself here. Forever undefined. An eternity of not-being.

But there’s something I’m supposed to do.

Thompson.

The gray turns to mist, then vapor, then clears. Thompson’s back is turned to me, like the woman in the fugue before, but he’s not painting. I’m drawn to him like I’m floating on a cloud that dangles my feet above the endless gray. When I reach him, suddenly we’re both standing in an empty room.

Thompson, I say.

He turns, looking surprised and confused. I’m lost, he says.

This hurts me. Like a physical pain, almost as sharp as if someone has plunged a dagger into my chest. It’s so real, I actually look down, but there’s nothing there.

I didn’t want you to die, I say. This eases the pain a little.

He nods, but in an absent way, because he’s looking all around the room. There are no doors, no windows, just a gray box formed out of the void.

I don’t know what to do, he says, frowning.

You should paint. The words spill from my mouth and swirl to form a canvas alive with color. He’s surprised by it, but he reaches out to move the not-real paint with his hands. Like finger-painting in virtual, only this isn’t a sim. And he’s not happy.

He pulls his hand back, looking at the colors bleeding down it with disgust.

I never wanted to paint, he says.

This strikes me as utterly strange. Thompson was a painter all his life. An Olympic painter. Why wouldn’t he want to do the one thing he was born to do? Then it becomes clear to me, like a web drawn tight around him, connecting him to parents and teachers and patrons… everyone who had a vested interest in Thompson taking the gold.

But it was never him. Never his choice.

And he died for it.

The pain is back in my chest. Who killed you?

He looks up. You did.

I shake my head. The pain grows sharper. But I didn’t kill Thompson, I know this. Who poisoned you?

He steps toward me, anger gathering on his face. You did.

I shake my head, back and forth, bigger and bigger motions.

He’s still coming at me.

No! My shout is a force field, stopping him from reaching me, then flinging him back across the room. He dissipates into mist.

“Eli!” Marcus’s face is in mine, panicked.

My body convulses, a ghost of pain in my chest like a hot knife was just yanked out. I slip out of the chair and smack on the floor. The monitor Marcus used to induce the fugue lies next to my face. I’m shaking so badly I can barely see it, but I know what that means: Marcus wasn’t using it. He needed it to induce the fugue, but even after it was turned off, I was still in the gray box with Thompson.

I could have been trapped. That thought sends a shiver racing up from my toes. It competes with my convulsions to see which can blur my vision more. Marcus is saying something, but all I hear is noise, as if he’s shouting down a long tunnel.

Besides, I couldn’t respond if I wanted to.

Suddenly, I’m flying off the floor, into the air, and through the door of Marcus’s office. My fingers and toes are curled painfully tight, along with the rest of my body. I’m so locked up, I don’t get what’s happening or where we’re going until I hear Kamali gasp. I force my eyes open: Marcus is carrying me like a baby to the bed in Kamali’s room. I flail out of his grasp just as we reach it and tumble into the infinite softness of the ascender-tech material. The blanket shifts around me, trying to shimmy up my shaking form. The sickness of the fugue wracks my body and makes me curl up again. I close my eyes and try not to think about the embarrassment of being in this state in front of Kamali.

I hear them arguing—their shouts have volume but no shape. The bed is having fits trying to compensate for my tremors. Then the blankets move more forcefully across my body, drawing up to my shoulders. I pry open my eyes, and Kamali’s big brown ones are raking over me. She’s scowling and looks like she wants to kill someone. I don’t think it’s me. At least, I hope not.

Her warm fingertips graze my neck. Between the men of the Cleansed cult beating on me, Marcus choking me, and the fugue crippling me… I’m a mess.

“Oh, God, Eli.” She draws the blanket up tighter to my chin.

I’m relieved to finally be able to hear her liquid-warm voice—maybe the fugue after-effects are starting to calm. I don’t know why sometimes there are tremors and other times not, but I want to explain to Kamali that it will pass. That she doesn’t have to worry. I squint at her, but my jaw is locked up so much, I’m sure anything I say would end up gibberish. My need to talk comes out as an indistinct moan, so I stop.

“Shhh.” She draws her hand across my cheek. It’s warm in the cool air of Marcus’s apartment. “It’s all right. You’re okay now.” Her words are lulling my eyes shut. Then she gently trails her fingers down my eyelids, closing them. “Your turn to sleep,” she whispers. “I’ll keep watch.”

The breathy words push me right over the cliff, and I’m tumbling into unconsciousness.

My body is impossibly heavy.

Even drawing in a breath feels like trying to move a mountain sitting on my chest. A small cloud of panic surges inside me—maybe I’m still in the fugue, in the nothingness, and I can’t get out. The panic rushes air into my lungs and lifts me.

My eyes drag open.

I’m awake. Breath leaks out of me, but I temper the sound, not wanting to wake Kamali, who is sleeping next to me. She’s curled on her side, facing me. Her black hair spills in waves across the steel-colored pillow, and her eyelashes press down on the shadows beneath her closed eyelids. Her slightly parted lips are chapped, turning the dusky rose two shades more pale, like weathered wood bleaching in the sun. It pains me to see it, to know that she’s been through so much—losing friends, losing her freedom—all because of me.

Her chest rises and falls under the shimmering ascender blanket. Then I realize it’s moving a little too fast.

“You’re not asleep,” I whisper, restraining a smile.

Her lips curve, then her eyes open. “I didn’t want to startle you.”

I let loose my smile to match hers. “I’m not sure anything can startle me anymore.” Although in the category of Things I Never Expected To Happen, waking up next to Kamali in bed is certainly at the top of the list.

Her smile quickly falls away, replaced by a scowl. She unburies a hand from the covers, and her warm fingertips graze my neck. I have no idea what she’s doing, but there’s no way I’m objecting to it, either.

Our faces are so close, we’re exchanging air.

Her scowl grows darker, and her gaze drags up to meet mine. “Marcus hurt you.” Then she bites her lip like she’s holding back from saying more.

The bruises from Marcus’s chokehold must be a lovely shade of black-and-blue by this morning. I shake my head, just a little. “I’m fine,” I say, but it doesn’t seem to reassure her.

She moves away, and I instantly regret not saying something to keep her there. The sheets shimmy around her as she scoots off the bed. I work my way up to sitting, but everything aches—it’s as if every muscle in my body cramped after Marcus’s tech-induced fugue. I try to stretch it out enough that I can sit up without wincing. A second later, Kamali is back on the bed with a tray—it has bread and cheese, some kind of sealed cup with liquid, and a pastry that looks like it came straight from Kamali’s hometown of Paris.

My eyes go wide, but my mouth is already watering. “Where did you get that?”

She sets it down next to me on the bed. “A bot shoved it through the door earlier, while you were still out. I’ve already eaten mine.”

I scoop up the bread, break off a piece, shove it in my mouth, then follow it quickly with two more. I’m ravenous. I’m halfway through the bread and switching to the cheese before I realize Kamali’s just watching me. Silent.

“What’s wrong?” I ask around a mouthful of food.

Suddenly, she’s angry: fists full of sheet, a clenched jaw, and a flare in her eyes that makes them dangerously beautiful.

I swallow what’s in my mouth, but before I can speak, she blurts out, “He’s going to kill us, Eli.”

“What?” I set down the food and reach for her hand. It stays fisted tight. “No, he’s not, I promise. I’ll do whatever he wants, then he’ll let us go. And I’ll get everyone else free, too. He’s a powerful ascender, Kamali. He can make it happen.” But even as the words leave my mouth, I know part of that isn’t true: at the very least, Marcus is going to keep me around to do his bidding, however I fit into his grand scheme of things. And if Marcus can easily free everyone, he could just as easily hold them captive himself. Continuing to do what Marcus wants is the only way to keep everyone safe—and it’s not like I have much in the way of other options.

Kamali pulls away from me and drops her gaze. She kicks the jittering fabric off her legs and folds them up, wrapping her arms around them. She doesn’t say anything or even look at me.

She’s afraid. I know she is. But it’s more than that. “You’re not asking me about what happened,” I say, peering at her.

She slowly untucks her chin. The frown is torturing her pretty face. “You told me not to ask questions. Not about anything important.”

Some of the tension drains from my shoulders. I smile a little. “The drugs are gone from my system.” I dip my head. “I can lie to you now. You know, if I need to.”

She fights a smile. It kind of lights me up inside, and I suddenly want her to ask… just so I’ll have a reason to share everything with her. “You can ask me anything you want,” I say, softly.

She unfolds and sits normally, re-crossing her long, dancer legs in a flexible way that I can’t do even when I’m not tied up in post-fugue muscle knots. Then she pierces me with that intense gaze of hers, the one where her soft brown eyes are hardened with determination and seem to peer into all the dark corners of my mind.

“People like us mean nothing to ascenders like Marcus,” she says carefully. “You saw what he did to those men.”

She’s talking about the Cleansed cult. I nod.

“But you’re different.” She purses her lips like she’s still hesitating. Then, she says, “What’s so special about you, Eli? Why does he want you so badly?”

My urge to be honest scurries away and tries to hide in one of those dark corners. I look away and think about where to start. Because she’s stuck here with me, at least for the moment, and she deserves to know why.

“You can’t tell me.” The disappoint weighs down her voice.

I look up. “I don’t want to tell you,” I say with a small smile. “Then you’ll know how messed up I really am.”

She pulls a face. “I’ve got news for you, Elijah Brighton. Your status as a messed up artist isn’t exactly a secret.”

“Hey!” I protest, but I can’t help smiling. “Yeah, well, I wish it were that simple.” I take a breath for courage. “I’m not entirely human, Kamali.”

She leans back and gives me a skeptical look. “Meaning you’ve been hiding some kick-ass black market biotech inside that calm painterly exterior?”

I let my face go serious. “Meaning I’m the product of an experiment the ascenders did before I was born. I don’t have a father because… well, the ascenders created some kind of tech-DNA and crossed it with my mom’s. I think. I don’t really know all the details.” An understatement, to be sure. “I just know that I’m a hybrid of some kind.”

The skepticism is gone, and her face has gone blank with surprise. “You really mean it. That you’re not human.”

“Not entirely human,” I say a little defensively. “I mean, I’m not like them.” I fling my hand toward the door, meaning the ascenders and all their robotic ilk. Then I reel in my embarrassment and just shake my head. “But yeah. There’s something different about me. And the fugue state is part of it. It’s some kind of…” I stall out. Because I don’t want to say anything like what she believes—that there’s another world out there, an eternal one, where her God lives, along with everyone’s souls. Because I still don’t believe that, and I don’t want things to be any more weird between us than they have to be. Than they already are.

She comes back from the surprise. “The fugue—so that’s the part of you that’s not human. All this time, I thought it was just, I don’t know, some highly creative state you somehow dropped into.”

“Well, it is,” I say, the defensive part rearing up again. “In a way. But I'm not just dipping into my subconscious or whatever. When I’m in the fugue, I’m accessing a different kind of information altogether.” I need to change the subject, quickly, because I don’t want to tell her about all the things I’ve seen in the fugue state. Including her.

She brushes back a curly strand of black hair, and it makes my chest squeeze. Because now that she knows what I am, she’s not likely to let me touch her hair or any other part of her ever again.

“Okay,” she says, serious look in place. “So this fugue thing, that’s what Marcus wants from you. That’s why he’s brought you here.” She waves at me like I’m some kind of weird, inexplicable specimen. “He wants to figure out how the experiment is working.”

“Basically, yes.” I sigh in relief, hoping that will be enough explanation.

“Then you absolutely can’t give it to him, Eli.” She stares hard at me.

I blink. My mouth is hanging open, so I shut it. “I’ve got to—that’s the only way to get everyone back in one piece.” I don’t add that I need to hurry with this because it might already be too late. I don’t know how much damage is being caused by this weird torture the people I love are going through.

Kamali shakes her head. “Marcus is not on our side. Even the ascenders who are supposed to be part of the Resistance aren’t, not really. They’re serving their own agendas. And one of them betrayed us. Marcus could be working with that one, for all we know. If you give him what he wants—”

I push back from her determined gaze and shove myself up from the bed. The sheets resettle into a pool of steel-colored silkiness in my absence. “I am not letting everyone suffer. Not when I can do something about it.”

She frowns and climbs off the bed after me. Then she takes one of my balled up fists in both her hands. I can’t help but relax it. Her palms are warm on my skin.

“I know. I want to save them, too. I can’t even…” Her voice breaks, but she keeps staring at me with those determined eyes. “Trust me, I don’t want anyone to die. I don’t want to die. But we can’t keep living this way. We aren’t meant to be animals in a cage. And if I have to die to move the cause forward, to help humanity break free of this bondage the ascenders are keeping us in… I’m not afraid to. Not anymore.”

I grasp her hand tighter. “I am not letting any of us die.”

“It’s not all dependent on you,” she says. “There are other factions of the Resistance and other rebel ascenders who might be able to rescue everyone, if they’re still alive. I’m sure they’re already working on it. The destruction of the camp can’t have gone unnoticed.” She turns my hand over so my wrist is facing up. Both of our remembrance tattoos are next to each other, her number etched like charcoal on chocolate skin, mine a harsh black against the paleness of mine. She holds them up to my face. “Don’t make everything everyone has worked for, all the sacrifices already made, all the lives already lost, go to waste. Don’t give Marcus what he wants.”

“Kamali.” It’s more of a plea than a word. How can I risk everyone’s lives just to keep Marcus from winning whatever ascender games he’s playing?

“Eli, I’m going to die eventually. It’s going to happen one way or another. I’d rather have it mean something.”

I’m just shaking my head. There’s no way I can do this.

The door to our room winks out of existence, and Marcus strides across the threshold. “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered, Eli.” He comes to a stop a couple feet away. “But I hope you’re not considering what your lovely little second is proposing. Perhaps we should remove her from the situation entirely.”

I step in front of Kamali, putting myself between her and Marcus. “You touch her, and we are done, Marcus.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Your attachment to this girl is adorable. And somewhat unexpected, but nevertheless quite useful. So I assume you’re ready for our next round of investigations? Our interests are still aligned, Eli, just as they’ve always been.”

I wince, not least because it’s true, but mostly because he’s saying it in front of Kamali. “I want her with me this time.”

Marcus frowns. “I don’t think you need the distraction.”

I straighten. “She stays with me at all times. She remains unharmed. And you free my family and friends. Today. Those are my terms.”

He gives me an indulgent look. “I see.” Then he shrugs. “Very well. Like I said, our interests are aligned. And these things are easily done.” He steps aside and holds out his hand for me to leave the room through the open door.

I glance behind me. Kamali’s arms are crossed, and there’s a cold anger on her face. I’m pretty sure it’s directed at me this time. I tip my head to the door for her to go first. She unlocks her arms and strides past me in a fluid motion, her dancer body graceful even when I’m sure she’s cursing me in her head.

But I can’t help that—I’m not going to let her, or anyone else, die because of me.

The sight of Marcus’s holo chair makes my stomach bunch up.

The after-effects of the last two fugues were extreme—they wracked my body worse than any fugue before. I’m not sure if it’s Marcus’s God-mode med patch or the weird grayness that it flung me into. Whatever that non-state was, he had to shake me out of it—and the possibility of getting stuck there sends icy drips of fear trickling through me. For a moment, I wonder if Kamali is right: maybe giving Marcus what he wants isn’t the way to go.

He’s fussing with the med patch while Kamali stays by the door.

I shove down the doubt and give the holo chair a pinched look. “I’ve got an idea—how about we don’t use your brain warping device this time?”

Marcus looks up with raised eyebrows. “You said you had difficulty attaining the state, and this method is certainly effective. But I agree the physical repercussions you experienced are highly inconvenient for our purposes, so I’ve recalibrated the device—they should be less debilitating this time. But please do share if you have an alternate approach.”

His tone makes my stomach curl into even tighter knots. “I’m pretty sure Kamali can help me meditate into it.” I send her an apologetic look for involving her.

Her angry expression steps up to the intensity level of Complete Loathing.

I sigh, step closer, and reach for her clenched fists, half expecting her to pull away. But she doesn’t. I drop my voice, even though I’m sure Marcus can hear every word. “Please. It will be less painful with your help.”

“Maybe it should be painful,” she says, but it’s not as biting as it could be. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

I lean in to whisper. “I’m afraid of getting stuck in the fugue. I need you to pull me out if I’m gone too long.” I ease back to check her reaction.

The anger has been evicted by a frown. “Okay.” It’s cautious, like she thinks I’m up to something. Only I’m not—I just can’t guarantee anyone’s safety if I’m trapped in my own head.

“Thank you.” I squeeze her hands then lead her over to the chair. I sit and she stands opposite me, looking uncertainly at Marcus.

“Before we begin,” he says, “you need to tell me what information you recovered from Thompson. I assume you actually made contact with him?”

Kamali’s head whips back to me, her eyes wide.

I avoid her gaze. She’s going to find out more than I ever wanted in this little session with Marcus. If I focus on how much she loathes me and is horrified by what I can do, I’m not going to get through this. And I have to do this… or there’s no chance Marcus will hold up his end of the bargain.

“He didn’t have much to say.” I’m hoping that will be enough.

Marcus is ignoring Kamali’s incredulous look as well. “Did he know who poisoned him? What he was having at his last meal? Anything useful?”

“Look, he was kind of freaked out,” I say, my voice rising. “He was in this gray room. No doors or windows. And he was pissed. That was about it.”

Marcus studies me, apparently logging that information in his hyper-intelligent artificial brain. “When you made contact with my mother, what environment was she in?” He asks this in a dispassionate way, as if the status of his mother in the afterlife is just another data point in his experiment.

“She’s usually on a beach. In Seattle, I think.” I only really saw her the one time, but I can’t let on about that.

“Is she there every time?”

“Yes.”

Marcus taps his lips. “So heaven’s a beach in Seattle?” There’s humor in his voice that makes my stomach turn. “And why is the unfortunate Mr. Thompson trapped in a gray cell?”

“Maybe he’s paying a penance for working with ascenders.” There’s no humor whatsoever in mine.

Marcus is unimpressed. “The attractiveness of the afterlife would certainly be dimmed if it was spent in a box.” Then an expression of clarity comes across his face. “Then again, perhaps that’s exactly where you need to go.”

“Um… not quite following you,” I say.

Kamali takes a step back, and I can’t help flitting a look to her, but the turmoil on her face is inscrutable. I swing back to Marcus. “Let’s just get this started. What do you want me to do first?”

He edges forward and gestures Kamali closer to me as well. She hesitates, then obliges. “There are a great many nuances I would like to explore in this alternate plane you seem to have access to, but for the moment, there are really only two key things I need. First, a sense of what life after death looks like and whether it depends on the method of death. And secondly, proof that it exists.”

“Okay. How exactly am I going to do that?” I hope he has some ideas because I’ve got nothing.

“First, tell me: to your knowledge, have you only contacted humans?”

“Um… yeah.” To cover the lie in my voice, I quickly add, “I mean, I think they were all humans. I guess I wouldn’t really know. Most of the people in my visions seem human enough.”

Marcus is nodding to himself. “I suspected as much. There haven’t been many ascenders who have died, and so the chances would be small—if this were entirely random. But I suspect it’s not. You were drawn to my mother when you were with me. And last night, without instruction, you visited someone who was unknown to you. But when I instructed you to find Thompson, you were successful. Correct?”

“Yeah.” I’d been too busy recovering from the fugue and passing out to give it much thought, but Marcus is right: I basically summoned Thompson. I have no idea why that would work, but it did. Maybe Marcus’s God-mode patch unlocked an ability to seek out people in the fugue, like he’s saying. Or maybe the fugue state is unlocking itself the more I go into it—expressing like Lenora hinted at before.

Marcus’s eyes take on a shine I don’t like. “There’s an ascender—a dead ascender, or at least one who is suspected of being dead—that I want you to contact next.”

“I can try.”

Kamali is taking this all in with lips pressed tight.

Marcus acts like she’s not even in the room. “There’s a certain group of ascenders who have chosen to go completely non-corporeal. They live without bodies, away from Orion, and they’re essentially disconnected from ascender society. They have chosen this path for their own reasons, but there are some who think they are more holy than the rest of us.” The disdain in his voice is pretty clear. “They’re called vapors, and their admirers think they have achieved some kind of higher consciousness level because of their seclusion. In actuality, they’ve done nothing more than voluntarily put themselves to storage.”

“Storage,” I repeat. “That’s like ascender jail, right?” A concept that still kind of blows my mind.

He waves that off. “Well, yes, there have been certain unstable personalities who have had to be put to storage for the good of Orion—and really themselves, before they could become one of the scrubbed.”

“The ascenders who kill themselves,” I check, just to be sure. “Leopold told me about them.” Marcus has to know about Leopold’s attempt to take his own life—after all, Lenora, Marcus, and Leopold were all involved in the experiments that created me.

He smirks. “Ah yes, your rebel friend, Leopold. It’s unfortunate Lenora stopped his rather inept attempt to leave this existence.”

I just ignore that. “I don’t really understand this—you’re saying these vapors put themselves to storage on purpose. But that’s not the same as scrubbing? Meaning, they don’t actually wipe out their… cognition?” I think that’s the term Leopold used when resurrecting Lenora. “So they’re not dead.”

“Not typically, at least,” he says. “But there’s one vapor, a particularly obnoxious and delusional one, who was convinced of his own godhead. Only a few cycles after he secluded, his storage registry went dark.”

“He died.”

“That’s just the thing.” Marcus’s eyes light up. “No one can ascertain his demise for certain because the vapors take their personal key with them. Unlike those who are put to storage and locked in from the outside, the only ones who can release the vapors from storage are themselves. What I want you to do is contact this vapor in the afterlife… and get me his personal key.”

A chill sweeps through me. I don’t know all the details, but I’m certain that having someone’s personal key gives Marcus control over their life. Or death. But if this ascender is already dead…

“What’s his name?” I ask.

“Diocles.” Marcus waves a hand at the wall, and it transforms into a screen. A man with smooth features and brown skin smirks from an image splashed across it. He’s young, maybe twenty-five, with intelligent eyes. “Most of the pre-Singularity information about ascenders was purged—or at least there were attempts to do so, as the freshly ascended took on new names and refashioned themselves as gods.”

I try to hide my surprise, but Marcus still notices.

“Oh, yes,” he says. “I know about our delusions of self-importance. Given that the newly ascended at the time of the Singularity were barely capable of not killing themselves, it’s safe to say they had not yet grown into their potential.” He gestures back to the smirking man. “I managed to find this pre-Singularity picture of Anthony Ramirez—Diocles. I don’t know if that will help or if it will just lead you astray.”

“Lead me astray how?”

Marcus fixes his tar-black eyes on me, which only reminds me that in his fugue-state form, his eyes were brown. “You’re searching for his soul, Eli. And I’m not entirely sure he has one. Or if he does, if it’s the soul of Anthony Ramirez, pre-Singularity physicist, or the soul of Diocles, ascender vapor gone dark.”

I frown. Do ascenders have souls? And if they do, does their soul go into storage with them? Storage seems like just another form of backup, which begs the question: how do you back up a soul? None of this makes sense to me.

Marcus is waiting for a response.

I clear my throat. “I guess I’ll ask Diocles about his soul when I see him.”

Marcus’s face lights up with this—both the smirk and the gleam in his eye make my stomach churn. He glances at Kamali. “I’ll give your revolutionary second a chance to induce your God state—but if she fails, we will use the adapted monitor.”

I swallow. “Fine.”

Kamali’s fists are clenched tight, but she moves toward me when Marcus indicates she should start.

“God state?” she says quietly as she passes behind me. It’s arched with unspoken questions behind the real one. I can only imagine what she’s making of all this talk of the afterlife.

I twist to look at her, but she rests her hands on my shoulders, so I look forward instead.

“You need to relax.” She starts to gently massage the muscles at the crux of my shoulders and neck, which are still bundles of cramps from last night’s induced fugue. Her thin but strong fingers kneading my flesh feels impossibly good—I let my head drop forward and roll it, going with the motion of her hands working my muscles.

I manage not to moan.

But I’m more than a little surprised that she’s helping me. Maybe all this talk of God and the afterlife has changed her mind.

“Picture a safe place,” she says softly, her hands still moving. “Somewhere not here.” Her voice takes on an edge, and her massage grows weaker, tapering to just the warmth of her palms resting on top of my shoulders. “Imagine yourself floating on a peaceful lake. There’s nothing but calm surrounding you. Even the trees are still. No waves. Just your body, floating, completely relaxed.”

I nod because tension is draining out of me like a plug was pulled somewhere around my feet. Kamali’s presence has always had that effect on me: soothing, calming. I half expected the meditation to not work at all, but with her hands touching me and her soft voice, she’s successfully lulling me into a buzzed state.

I close my eyes.

Kamali’s voice drifts into my ear. “There is nothing that can harm you…”

“…nothing that can touch you.” But her voice has gone deep, transformed.

I’m in the fugue state.

The voice belongs to a man, sonorous and rich. You are separate. Unreachable. Unbreakable. The dark behind my eyelids zooms away, revealing a craggy-faced man. He sits in a room with ancient rock walls and stain-tarnished benches. Jars of paint and brushes crowd the flat surfaces. I know this place. I remember the man from my previous visions… he’s a master painter at work. He helped the woman who infused me with the knowledge of how to create Olympic-level art.

“Are you Diocles?” I ask, wondering if all along I’ve been having visions of someone who sequestered himself into storage.

The man smiles, a thousand wrinkles shifting and reforming. “No. That is not my name.”

Then I remember: he’s a painter from the past, the Dutch one. Of course he wouldn’t be an ascender. “I need to find Diocles,” I say, but that request feels tiny in this space, as if only great art and answers to important questions should be sought here.

“What you need is to paint.” The words fall from his mouth and form colors, just as they did from my own mouth with Thompson. The colors swirl in the low amber light and coalesce on a canvas that appears by the master’s side. He used the word paint, but it’s actually resonant with more meaning: create, color, illustrate. “Schilderen,” he says, beckoning me with one, aged finger. It means portray. “Kleuren.” Tinge with color.

I raise my hand, and the colors obey the motion. I bring the other one into it, both hands as brushes, color-mist as medium, and I form the portrait of a man. The one I’m seeking: Anthony Ramirez.

“You are the creator,” the master says.

His words are like soft chimes, but they don’t make sense, not really. I didn’t create Anthony Ramirez, just his image. “I’m just a painter.” I banish the portrait with a wave of my hand, and the colors dance out like galaxies pinwheeling through space.

“You are the bridge,” the man says, his voice gaining weight and volume.

“I don’t want to be the bridge.” My complaint feels small, like the need to find Diocles. It’s unworthy of this place. I want to leave, but the thickness of the air holds me.

The man nods. “Sometimes a bridge is crossed. Sometimes it burns.”

An icy wind sweeps through the workshop, stealing the soft glowing light and plunging the man’s face into darkness. He’s still there, I can sense him, but he’s shrouded in the murk.

“Wait!” I say, reaching into the dark.

His hand emerges from the inky blackness, palm up. I grasp hold of it—

“Eli!” It’s Kamali, painfully gripping my shoulders, only she’s in front of me this time. I blink up at her, and the relief is plain on her face. She drops her panicked voice to a whisper. “You were gone so long.”

I look down at my hands resting in my lap. There are no tremors.

Marcus edges her aside. “Did you find Diocles?”

“No, I—”

He moves with ascender speed—

I’m flying back through grayness, back in the fugue, back into nothingness… my mind rails against the lack of anything real, but the fog seeps into my brain, numbing it, making it heavy with inertia. I could float like this forever. Detached and unconcerned. No friends to rescue. No dying mothers. No girls with soft lips I’ll never be able to kiss. I could be lost like Thompson, only uncaring. Not responsible for anything or anyone, not even myself…

I’m supposed to be doing something.

Diocles. The name resonates in my mind like the aftermath of a massive bell rung once. Lights appear in the fog, hazy but moving in frenzied little jumps. As I watch, they become more distinct and larger. I’m zooming closer to them, drawn like the moon to earth, falling. The mist clears, and the shining lights resolve into the ascenders of New Portland, busy in their tower apartments, flitting with ascender speed. One flares brighter than the rest, and suddenly I’m pulled into an apartment with a woman. Her back is to me, and she’s working a holo canvas, rendering in virtual paint a fantasy of light and feathers.

“Angels,” I say, not really meaning to speak it out loud.

She continues to paint, not hearing me. Which makes sense because I’m not really here. At least, my body isn’t. I don’t understand the fugue, not even close, but I can tell this is real. This isn’t Thompson’s hazy gray box or the master’s ancient rock workshop. This is happening now, in the real world, I’m just seeing it through the fugue lens.

I drift closer, moving without intention, drawn to her. When I reach her, I say, “I’m searching for Diocles.”

She doesn’t hear me. But I was drawn to her for some reason.

Her thin ascender shift swings as she moves. Her hairless head is flushed with the many colorful emotions of her work, almost as if her canvas is herself rather than the digital one in front of her. I reach my hand out to touch her head, to see if I can bridge the gap between fugue and reality: will she feel it?

My hand passes through, plunging deep inside her skull, but before I can pull back, horrified, the entirety of me is sucked in after it. I’m compressed and squeezed into an infinitesimal space and then blown apart. The haze is back, but it’s not gray: it’s a fantastical, overwhelming wonderland of color, like being swallowed in a tsunami of paint instead of water. I’m drowning and choking, both buried and exploding simultaneously. My awareness of the deluge grows—it’s endless and pulsing and filled with a multitude of white-hot burning points of light. People. Ascenders. They’re flying at me, passing through me, bombarding me with knowledge and feeling and color. There’s too much, too many, I’m drowning, drowning, I can’t… Some primal part of me, the part that knows I’m dying, fights against the barrage. My formless body struggles to gain shape. The blown-apart pieces of my mind fight to come back together. I have to return, escape, hold tight against the forces splintering me…

I’m back in the room with the woman, stumbling forward, my hand having just completed the momentary pass through her mind.

She jerks upright, looking all around the room.

For me.

She doesn’t see me shuddering on the floor, holding my hand, but she’s searching… for the ghost in her mind. Knowledge springs to the front of my thoughts: the tsunami is Orion. And I just tapped into an ascender mind to get there.

Our contact is broken now, but in that brief moment, I dipped into her mind and made contact with not only her but all of the ascender net. Images and knowledge come rushing back, memories that flooded my mind for that brief moment and stuck, like grains of sand embedded in my skin.

The woman’s name is Emma. She is Diocles’s second, and something about that connection drew me to her. I know things about her and him that only lovers would know. Things you would only share with someone you trusted with your very life. Your personal key. I have them both: hers and his.

I stand and back away. I have an urgent need to protect that information with my life, and I can’t tell if it comes from her, the flood of her memories still filling my mind, or from the realization that if I touch her… if all I need to breach her personal key is to travel in the fugue state and plunge my hand into her mind…

…then I can do that to anyone.

I recoil from that thought, literally turning and running. A wind catches me and blows me away from the towers, away from the vulnerable, powerful, overwhelming minds of all the ascenders of New Portland. My own mind is dizzy with the terrible knowledge it carries, bursting with it, too small a vessel for carrying something so immense.

But this much I know: there’s no way I’m telling Marcus any of this.

I suck in a breath, sudden and quick, like I haven’t had one for minutes.

And then fall to the floor.

I’m back in Marcus’s office. Kamali kneels at my side, but I’m one giant cramp from head to toe. My eyelids keep twitching open and closed—I can barely see her. It’s like my physical body still carries all the shock that my fugue-state form absorbed—from Marcus’s God-mode device, the grayness, and now the overwhelming sense of Orion. Add in the knowledge that I can access personal keys—and can’t divulge that to Marcus under any circumstances—and my mind is spasming as much as my body.

“Eli, can you hear me? Are you all right? Eli, say something.” Kamali is panicking, and I can’t comfort her, can’t say anything even if I wanted to. Then she’s gone, and Marcus lifts me up again. Thankfully, he leaves me to shudder uncontrollably in the chair by myself, rather than holding me like a baby.

“Eli!” His voice is a demand for my attention. “Did you find Diocles?”

I nod my head, but I’m so jerky, I don’t know if he can tell. “Ye-ye-ssss.”

The gleam in his eye tells me I’ve got precious little time to figure out my lie. My body’s a wreck, but my brain is starting to clear. The personal key: I know its form and shape now. And it’s mostly a shape, as well as existing in an amorphous cloud of quantum information that only resolves under certain conditions, which are also hidden within the form of the matrix data. In short: it’s complex. Even as my mind feels like it understands the key, that understanding is quickly fading. It’s there—but not in any way I could express coherently in language, mathematical, spoken, or otherwise.

Which instantly makes me wonder how Marcus thought he would get this information out of my head once I had it—the kind of mental scouring my friends and family are undergoing jumps immediately to mind.

Marcus fusses with the monitor he used to induce the fugue. “I don’t know why you’re having such an extreme physical reaction. I’ll recalibrate again, see what I can do about that. It’ll be difficult to make progress if this is debilitating for you.”

He moves to place the monitor patch on my head again, but I block him. It’s a ridiculous attempt—my hand is a shaking mess, and he has ascender strength on his side—but he hesitates, frowning at me.

“Way…waay…t,” I manage to get out, then drop my hand.

Kamali steps between us. “Can’t you see he’s had too much of your device? He needs to recover.”

Marcus looks past her, narrowing his eyes at me. “Do you have Diocles’s key?”

“Not… s-sure,” I lie. “Just… need t-t-time.” Already the shakes are calming a little.

He frowns but eases back. “I have a med bot on standby. Perhaps you should return to your—” He cuts himself off and whips his head to the door. It’s still in place, and I can’t hear anything, but his expression is full-blown panic when he looks back to me. “I’m locking you in. Do not let anyone in the door while I’m gone.”

Before I can ask, he disappears with ascender speed, hesitating only for an instant by the door as it winks out of existence. The door reappears after he’s through.

“What…?” is all I can get out.

Kamali lunges to my side, her hands landing on my shoulders and holding me upright in the chair. My arms and legs are all curled up and shaking.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” she says, but her eyes are glued to the door. “He must have heard something or maybe an alarm went off.”

A terrible sound reverberates through the flooring: it’s screaming metal and the sound of things breaking. Large things. Like the entire apartment.

I know that sound. “Ss-sentries,” I say.

Kamali’s eyes go wide. She moves from holding me up to standing in front of me. As if she’s going to block a six-foot tall killing machine with her dancer body and the force of her will.

“Kamali,” I gasp, flailing at her with my non-functional hands.

She turns back to me. I force my hand to unfurl and hold it out to her. She takes it. I pull her close. She has to kneel next to me because that’s all the farther my body can reach.

“You… do not…” Man, I’m a mess. I take a couple panting breaths and try to calm the jitters enough to speak clearly. While I’m doing that, more screeching sounds of death come from outside the door. I swallow down the fear rising in the back of my throat. I don’t know what’s coming, but I need to speak before it gets here. “You do not have my permission,” I say, slowly, but at least it’s clear, “to die. Before me. Get back.”

“Are you kidding?” she says with a grim smile. “My plan is to throw you at the door first. Then possibly the bed.”

I cough a laugh that nearly chokes me to death. When I recover from my spasm, I sputter out, “Good plan.”

The humor drops off her face, and she throws a glance at the door. I can see the shudder making her shoulders quiver. “What is it?”

“It’s coming for me.” I don’t know this for sure, but it’s a safe guess. “Not you. Get behind my chair.” I try to shove her away, but her grip on my hand is strong. And she’s not moving.

“I told you before,” she says, looking in my eyes. “I’m not afraid to die.” Then her eyes go wide as the door starts to wail. That’s quickly replaced by a pounding, rhythmic and fast. Then that cuts off and leaves silence behind.

I’m holding my breath. Kamali’s fingers dig into my hand.

The door blows.

The shock wave tips my chair back. Kamali and I are thrown together on the floor, a tangle of limbs and shock. When I open my eyes, I’m blinded by a blue light that sweeps the room, coming from the door. I shield my eyes with one hand and hold tight to Kamali with the other. She edges closer to me on the floor, so I don’t think she’s hurt. Maybe.

The light cuts off.

I drop my hand and peer at the door. A mountain of mechanized death fills the doorway, but it’s not moving. A second later, Lenora strides past it and into the room.

She grabs hold of my hand and pulls me up before I can think. “Eli, are you all right?”

I’m not, of course—I’m a shaking mess. She realizes this as soon as my knees buckle. Her ascender-strong arm is under me before I hit the floor. I loop my arm around her shoulder just so it’s not so ridiculously awkward that she’s lifting me to my own feet.

“What did Marcus do to you?” Her voice could freeze steam.

“I’m okay.” My voice warbles. “Just… the fugue.”

“Kamali, what happened?” she demands. The tone makes me cringe. “Does he need a med bot? Or can we move him?”

Kamali comes around to shove her thin shoulder underneath my other arm, on the opposite side from Lenora. I’m sure Lenora doesn’t need help carrying me, but I like having Kamali under my arm a lot more than her.

“He can move,” Kamali says quickly. “Where are we going?”

“Out,” Lenora says sharply, then she moves, too fast, ripping me away from Kamali’s support.

“Wait,” I gasp out, but we’re already out in the hallway.

Lenora pauses and looks down at me.

“Kamali,” I huff out. There would be a lot more anger in that word if I could just get my mouth to work right. Light footsteps patter behind us. While we wait, I look ahead: Marcus’s bodyform is in at least three pieces. It looks like he was blown apart, but it could simply be the work of a sentry. There are pieces of bot everywhere. Marcus must have had a sentry of his own. Maybe two.

“Is he dead?” I’m not sure what answer I want to hear.

“I doubt it,” Lenora says, looking over her shoulder. Kamali has caught up to us, with the sentry at her back, following. “I’m sure Marcus is resurrecting somewhere.”

She nods to Kamali, who returns it. The three of us flee the apartment—this time Lenora goes slow enough that Kamali can keep pace. The sentry watches our back. In the rooftop hanger outside Marcus’s penthouse apartment, Lenora’s ship waits for us. The parts of another sentry litter the concrete while a functional one stands guard by the door of the transport.

“Get the ship started,” she instructs the sentry, then lifts me through the door and deposits me on one of the luxury hover chairs inside. The sentry clomps into the cockpit behind the wall-sized screen.

“Watch him,” Lenora says to Kamali, who nods and kneels next to me, her hands keeping me upright.

Lenora moves so fast, I hardly see the blur, but a screech of metal pierces my ears—Lenora and the sentry who just liberated us are fighting. Only the fight is over a split second later as blue light crackles across the surface of the sentry, and its head rolls away from its body. Then she disappears again, and something rocks the ship. A moment of screeching is followed by Lenora re-emerging from the cockpit. A trail of smoke follows after her.

“Now that the sentries are disabled, they’ll be coming for us,” she says.

“They who?” Kamali asks, wide-eyed.

Lenora shakes her head. “I’ll explain on the way. Right now, we need to move. Strap in.” She disappears into the cockpit, and Kamali searches for something under my seat. She comes up with a white, stringy webbing and wraps it around me. It sticks everywhere, mating up with the ascender-tech cloth of my toga, like it was designed to do that. Then she scrambles toward the other hover seat a few feet away. We lurch into the air, and she falls to the misty flooring, then drags herself into the chair and webs herself in. The ride isn’t merely bumpy—it’s a series of loops and turns that feel like we’re pulling g-forces human bodies can barely withstand. I don’t know where we’re going, but I hope we get there before I black out. Our furious escape jars to a stop, but the ship is still vibrating, so I think we’re still in flight. I swallow down the nausea and peer at Kamali. She has a hand pressed to her mouth.

“You okay?” My muscles still ache from the cramping, but at least I can talk now.

“Yeah.” She follows it up with a nod, but her face is ashen.

One more sudden swoop lurches my stomach, but then Lenora emerges from the cockpit. We must have landed. With her help, I hobble from the ship, my legs getting stronger by the minute. We’re in a cavernous building, apparently having arrived through the roof, which is closing overhead. The ship is still cloaked, so as soon as the door materializes behind us, I can’t see it anymore. Lenora hurries us through the facility. It’s half slick-black storage crates and half inflatable pods—glowing white ones like the ascenders had in the Resistance camp. At the far end is a suite of glassed-in rooms bathed in blue light—it looks like an expansive med bay, with a dozen beds lined up, each in their own private section.

I try walking on my own, so I don’t have to lean on Lenora.

Kamali follows right behind us.

“Where is everyone? Is my mom okay?” I have a dozen questions, including why Lenora destroyed her own sentries, but getting my mom and Cyrus and the others to safety takes top priority. Especially given my mom was still recovering from her last gen tech treatment when the camp was attacked—I have no idea how she would last long under any kind of imprisonment, much less torture.

Lenora grimaces but doesn’t slow our hurried pace. “I brought you here because I want you in a med bay right away.” She’s completely dodging my question. “I’ll explain everything while the med bot checks you out.”

“You’ll tell me now.” I stop in my tracks. Kamali’s hands wrap around my arm, bolstering me and my still unsteady legs. As far as I can tell, it’s just the three of us in the building—half the place is powered down, and the rest is cast in this eerie blue glow. “Why aren’t they here? How did you escape without them—” I cut myself off, my eyes going wide. “You’re the one who betrayed us.”

Her hands are up. “No! Eli, I promise.” She grimaces then takes in the fact that Kamali and I are holding on to each other—separate from her. It’s clear who I trust and who I don’t. Lenora’s skimpy ascender outfit reveals her skin flushing with a torrent of purples intertwined with black wisps. She’s a mess, emotionally at least. “Please understand, this was my only option.”

Somehow, I doubt that. “Let’s hear it.”

“The camp was betrayed, but it wasn’t by me.” She sends an agitated glance toward the med bay like she wishes we were there. “We spotted the attack ship in time to activate the camp’s shields in addition to the cloaking barrier, but it was clear the ship already knew exactly where we were. Everyone was taken. At least, the ones who weren’t killed by the blast that took down the energy shield.”

“How many are dead?” Kamali asks. Her voice trembles a little.

Lenora frowns like she’s annoyed at being interrupted. “Fifty? That was the count in the transport. After that, I don’t know.”

Kamali grows quiet, but her hold on me is even firmer.

“What about my mom?” I ask, tensing. “And Cyrus?”

“They’re alive.”

I sigh in relief. Of course, Marcus showed us vids of them being tormented, but for all I know, those could have been virtuals. A sudden weariness washes over me. I nod toward the med bays and start walking with Kamali’s assistance. Lenora has the good judgment not to try to help.

“How did you break free?” I ask. “And how can we get the rest out?”

Lenora hesitates. Just as I’m about to berate her for holding back, she says, “I didn’t break free, Eli. Your father let me go.”

“What?” I stop again, my unstable legs nearly pitching me face-first into the concrete. “Wait… did you say my father?”

“Yes.” More black swirls are dancing all over her body.

Marcus’s “enemy” is my father—although it makes me sick to even use that word. The ascender who manipulated my mother into carrying his experiment—me—in her womb, trashing her heart in the process, isn’t any kind of father. And now he’s hunting me, just like Lenora warned. “My father’s the one who attacked the camp. And captured everyone. But he let you go? Not my mother. Or any of the others.” I have an insane need to strangle something.

“I made a deal with him,” she says, very quietly. “To bring you back.”

All the air goes out of me. I lean back and cast a quick look around. Kamali’s grip is painfully tight, and she’s edging away. Lenora moves with ascender speed to my side again, landing a hand on my shoulder.

I flinch away.

She pulls her hand back. “I lied to him, Eli. I would say anything, do anything, to keep you safe.”

There are no sentries popping out of the dark corners of the facility to capture us. That, plus the fact that she could easily be hauling me off somewhere right now if she wished… I’m dragged into believing her, even though I don’t want to. The fervent, almost hurt look on her face helps. A little.

I still scowl at her. “So you’re not here to bring me back to him?”

“No. That’s why I had to destroy the sentries. They were our escorts—to make sure I brought you back. But I’m doing no such thing. I promise. Everyone suspected that one of the ascenders betrayed the camp’s location, so I pretended to be the mole. And I volunteered my services to your father so I could get to you before he did.”

“And he just turned you loose with a couple sentries for guards?” This story isn’t quite holding together.

“It’s not like he and I don’t already know each other. Quite well.” Her face is grim, and I wonder what she means by that. “When we discovered Marcus had accessed your father’s security feeds, we both knew Marcus must have you. And that it was only a matter of time before he would destroy you. I convinced your father that all I cared about was you—which is the truth—and that I could retrieve you without an army of sentries tipping off the entire ascender world. He agreed. But any minute now, as soon as he discovers what has happened, he’ll be scouring the city for you.” She motions me forward, toward the med bay again. “We can’t stay here long—he knows this location; he’ll find us—but I need to make sure Marcus hasn’t harmed you before we go into seclusion. And this is the only place in New Portland where I have access to a med bot for humans—outside of your father’s keep.”

“Stop calling him that,” I say, harshly. “He’s not my father.” But Kamali and I are both moving forward again.

Lenora hesitates. “His name is Augustus.”

I wrinkle up my nose. “As in the emperor? You’ve got to be kidding.”

She slowly shakes her head. “He’s more powerful than any emperor in history. And more dangerous.”

“All right, whatever. We’ll do a quick med scan. But then we figure out how to rescue everyone from Augustus, the ascender with an ego measured in light years.”

Lenora frowns. “We’re not going to be able to rescue them, Eli.”

“Well, we have to try, Lenora.” My anger is surging back.

“We’ll be lucky if we’re not caught before I can get you out of New Portland.”

Kamali squeezes my arm. “They’re going to be looking for you. This ascender, Augustus… he’s the one who made you, right? Sounds like he’s got more reason than most to want to control you.”

Lenora flicks a look between Kamali and me. It’s obvious Kamali knows a lot about what’s going on. Probably more than Lenora, in some ways. At this point, I’m tired of keeping secrets.

“Kamali knows about the experiments,” I say to Lenora, but that also tells Kamali that Lenora was involved. “And she’s been helping me reach the fugue state. I’ve been seeing things, Lenora, just like you planned.” I can’t help the last part sounding bitter, but Lenora’s eyes go wide and a flush of pink runs across her chest.

I shake my head. This is such a mess.

We reach the med bays—each is a separate room with a window into the main part of the building, which strikes me as a really odd way to set up a med bay, but whatever.

I gesture to the door so Lenora will gain us entry. “I need to sit down. This is going to take a while to explain.”

Lenora liberates a med bot from its storage spot in the wall.

It quickly scans me, then asks permission to dose me with a muscle relaxant and pain reliever. This sounds like a small piece of nirvana, so I say yes. It works almost instantly, and the relief makes me slump back into the pillow. The bot raises the head of the bed so I can converse with Kamali, who is staring pensively at me from the foot, and Lenora, who is urgently gesturing to the med bot. While it carries out her transmitted commands, I talk.

A lot.

I think the muscle relaxant is working a bit like the truth drugs.

Either that or I simply don’t care anymore. I tell Lenora all the things she missed while Marcus was forcing the fugue on me. And that there were previous fugues, the ones Kamali knows about, although I don’t go into a lot of detail about my visions. I’m already a freak, I don’t need them both knowing I’ve dreamt about them and the end of times. Or seen them in their altered forms.

Okay, maybe I still want to keep some secrets.

Kamali’s eyes grow more round as I explain, and Lenora’s electric skin color gets more and more excited. All this talking isn’t going to work out well for me. I try to rein it in.

After a long pause, Lenora asks, “You can access it through meditation alone?”

I’m beginning to feel like her lab rat as well as Marcus’s. “Partially,” I hedge, glancing at Kamali. She’s not looking at me anymore, just playing a game with the ascender-tech blanket at the end of my bed. She pushes it; it bunches up; it flattens out; she pushes it again. Even with the muscle relaxant, my stomach ties in knots as I watch. I can’t imagine what she thinks of me now. I look back to Lenora. “Meditation seems to slip me in easier, but I think Marcus’s device is stronger, so I go in deeper. Maybe? I’m not really sure how it all works—sometimes the after-effects are worse than others. There are a lot of different modes to this thing. Most of the time, I can’t control it. Like at all.”

“But you’re beginning to.” She’s excited again.

“I guess.”

Kamali’s still ignoring me. She hasn’t said anything about the things I’ve revealed. The med bot completes its exam and drifts back to its spot in the wall. These med bays are even stranger than I thought—what looked like glass windows from the outside are actually mirrors on the inside. One-way mirrors. For observation. Creepy.

Lenora spends a moment communing with the med bot. “Well, that’s a relief,” she says out loud to the room. “Apparently, Marcus and his impatience to have you express your ability didn’t leave any permanent damage.”

I nod and shift in the bed. It’s obviously built for humans, and the room has a dresser and a door in back that appears to lead to a bathroom. It finally occurs to me how very strange it is to have a human-centric facility in the middle of New Portland.

I narrow my eyes at Lenora. “What is this place?”

She glances at Kamali, who looks up, expectant. Lenora turns back to me. “It’s where you were… conceived.”

My heart lurches. This is the place. Where my mom went, full of faith and belief in Augustus and his program to create a bridge to God, and let him implant something non-human in her. Me.

As well as all the other experiments. The ones who didn’t live.

I quickly climb out of the bed, thoroughly freaked. I nearly go down because my legs are not quite ready for running away from this place. Which is what I instinctively want to do. I grab onto the head of the bed to keep myself upright.

“Okay,” I say, my chest tight with the turmoil of this knowledge. “Let’s talk about how you’re going to get my mother free from the bastard ascender who’s holding her prisoner,” I say to Lenora. “Because you owe her.”

She looks like she wants to object, but she’s holding back.

“Your father wants you.” Kamali’s voice is very soft, but it rivets both me and Lenora. “So you do for your mom what you did for me. And Lenora. You make a trade.”

I nod, but my eyebrows are hiking up to the top of my head. I’m just flat surprised she’s suggesting it.

“You can’t—” Lenora protests, but I cut her off with a raised finger.

“Me for everyone else,” I say to Kamali. “Same deal as before.”

Kamali’s steady gaze is holding mine. “Only you can’t let him have you, Eli. Not with what you can do. It’s too important.”

“Yes, right,” Lenora gushes out. “It’s too important. You’re too important. Listen to her.”

“You need a way to trick him,” Kamali says, voice still ice-cool. “Have him release everyone first, but somehow you can still get away.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say with a small smile. “Any idea how to do that?”

Kamali shrugs.

But she’s got the right idea. It’s a start.

“No!” The color display on Lenora’s skin is working into a frenzy. “This is a very bad idea—it’s far too risky.”

“Do you have a better one?” I ask sharply. “Because I’m all ears.”

She flutters her eyelids, which makes me instantly suspicious. Is she in contact with Orion? I thought she couldn’t contact them, not without giving away the Resistance. But I know, up close and personal, how immense Orion is—maybe she can dip into it without being tracked. I still don’t like it.

Lenora’s eyes flick open. “We need to move.”

My heart skips a beat. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you walk?” she demands.

“Yes.”

She holds out a hand to me. “We have to hurry, Eli. Please, just trust me.”

I ignore the hand. “Lead the way.”

She grimaces but turns to stride out of the med bay. Kamali and I hurry after her—well, Kamali hurries in that smooth, graceful manner she always has. I’m lurching like one leg’s shorter than the other.

“What’s happening?” I ask Lenora, half-jogging to keep up. I’m watching where every footfall lands, just in case my body decides to collapse under me.

“Your father—” She throws an apologetic look to me. “Augustus has triggered a low-level protocol to activate a city-wide lockdown. He’s registered a claim that dissenters have slipped past the patrols at the perimeter and stolen one of his transports—one with cloaking technology classified as dangerous in human hands. That’s not something that would raise alarms in Orion—incursions are relatively common, and not any kind of threat—but it automatically activates a city-wide shield to keep the dissenters from leaving.”

“You mean to keep us from leaving,” Kamali says, keeping pace far more easily than I am.

“Yes. The shield deactivates the cloak of any ship flying through it—nothing can go in or out without being stopped by the police bots patrolling the perimeter. We would be asked for identification, which of course we can’t provide. I’m sure Augustus’s sentries are conducting a land-based search for us as well.”

“Then where are we going?” I ask, a little breathless.

“To someone I know inside the city who might be friendly toward us. Even better, he might have a way out without detection.”

“Is this someone we can trust?” I ask, noting the irony that I’m not entirely sure I trust Lenora.

“I’m not sure.”

Great.

The transport shimmers into existence a dozen feet in front of us.

“He was part of the group who conducted the original experiments,” she says. “But then there was a… disagreement. He left shortly after the last batch—you—had gestated. But while he was with us, he routed human-centric supplies into and out of the city without going through normal channels.”

“A black market ascender?” I ask, a laugh in my voice. “Why does this actually surprise me?”

She scowls at me and waves us into the transport. “Human augmentation has been off-limits ever since the legacy cities were formed—and not just for the legacies themselves.” Lenora follows us in and waves the door shut behind us. “There are strict controls on experimentation, especially neural enhancement. And doubly so for the kind of experiments we were doing.”

I scowl right back. “Because you were killing lots of human babies?” I don’t bother keeping the bitterness out of my voice. Kamali and I work our way into our seats.

Lenora pauses at the cockpit entrance. “Because we might succeed.” Then she disappears.

I’m barely webbed into my seat when the ship lurches into the air. I hold on tight, but my mind is furiously chewing on Lenora’s words: because we might succeed. What would ascenders have to fear from human augmentation? They’re already so far ahead of us in every way. That’s blowing my mind, and the ship is bucking substantially, so I don’t notice that Kamali has managed to scoot her seat over near me until we tip sideways, and her shoulder mashes against mine. I raise my hand to brace her, but hers darts over to hold it.

I stare at our clasped hands for a moment, then drag my gaze up.

Her big brown eyes are wide and solemn. “We have to talk,” she says over the creaks of the ship and its maneuvering. “Before she comes back.”

“Okay.” I’m not objecting in any way—to the handholding or the talking—but I’m a bit lost as to what exactly she wants to discuss. The fact that we’re on the run? Or that Lenora’s basically kidnaped us? Or that I need to trade myself, again, to save the people I care about?

“Can you talk to God, Eli?”

“Um… what?”

But the look on her face is dead serious. “I just need to know.”

“No.” I shake my head in small motions, like of course I don’t talk to God. And I wonder if she thinks I’m entirely crazy after all. “The fugue isn’t anything like that.” Not that I really understand it, but it’s not what she’s thinking: no angels or Man in the Sky stuff.

She frowns, and I almost think she’s disappointed.

“You know I’m this crazy genetic experiment, right?” I ask. “I mean, I probably don’t even have a soul. Or maybe half of one, from my mom’s side, if anything. I’m the last person any god would talk to.”

Her eyes go wide, and she pulls back from me. I’m afraid I’ve said something wrong, but then she squeezes my hand and pulls me close again. We’re held in our chairs by the webbing, but we’re as close as we can get otherwise: shoulder to shoulder, near enough to kiss.

She drops her voice to a whisper. “You didn’t choose to be this, Eli.”

I nod, but there’s a fury on her face that keeps me quiet.

“And if there’s anyone I’ve ever met who I’m certain has a soul… it’s you.”

I have no idea what to say to that.

She peers into my eyes, and I wonder if she’s searching for it—as if she can see my soul through the black of my irises if she looks hard enough. Then she drops her gaze to our clasped hands and grimaces. A bump in the flight jostles us, but it’s relatively calm now compared to before.

“Delphina believes the ascenders may have souls or they may not, but that we can’t really know—and besides, we need their help with the Resistance.” She looks up and captures me again with her intense stare. “I believe God is infinitely good. And infinitely forgiving. But all along, I’ve thought there was no way the ascenders could have souls because they’d done something unforgivable. Something so terrible, in messing with God’s gift to them, that they must have lost their souls in the process. But you…” She scans my eyes again. “You’re like one of them, only you’re not. And you didn’t choose this, it was chosen for you. I just…” She drops her gaze again.

I don’t understand the turmoil on her face, but I can’t stand it, either. “It’s okay,” I say, peering at her ducked face. “I’m pretty sure nearly all of the ascenders are heartless bastards. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they didn’t have souls.”

She smiles, a little, but then shakes her head. “I’m just realizing that…” She looks up. “That my imagination is insignificantly small. And God is immeasurably large.”

“I don’t think there’s anything about you that’s insignificant.” I realize how ridiculous that must sound. I scramble for something to say to make it better, but her broad smile, up close like this, banishes any other thoughts I have.

Then her smile dims a little. “It’s okay that I’m insignificant, especially compared to God. I have faith, and that’s all I need. Maybe that’s all ascenders need, too. I don’t know, but I’m not like those believers in the cult.” She’s peering into my eyes again. “I hope you know believers aren’t all like that. We’re not all crazy.”

“I never thought that for a moment.”

A small smile is back. “No matter what I do, I know I’ll never be good enough for God. Never pure enough. But God doesn’t require me to walk a million steps toward purity because humans weren’t made to be pure. We were made to struggle. And believe. Do you know what the word believe means?”

I’m holding my breath. “No.” I think it means that you have no proof. Or you believe without seeing. But that’s really just circular logic, so… yeah, I have no idea.

“Believe means to love into being.” She smiles. “All God really requires of us is love. And the faith that God loves us in return. That’s all I have to offer, anyway.”

There’s something powerful about the shine in her eyes. “That seems like a pretty good deal, then.”

She smiles wide again, blasting me with the warmth of it.

The ship sways, rocking our seats slightly apart, then settles. We’ve landed. I don’t want to let go of her hand, but I have to—getting out of the webbing is a two-handed and ridiculously complicated job. I’m still at it when Lenora emerges from the cockpit.

“I’m fairly certain we weren’t detected,” she says, waiting for us to untangle from the seats. “Let’s hope we’re as lucky with Galenos.”

I frown up at her. “Is that the ascender we’re meeting?”

She nods.

“What happens if we’re not lucky?”

Lenora kneels down to work loose the last of my webbing. “If things start to go badly, you get back to the ship and get out. There’s an autopilot path I’ve programmed to take you to a safe house. I’ll hold him off as long as I can. If I have to resurrect, I’ll come find you.”

“Resurrect?” I ask skeptically. The last I heard, she didn’t have a backup—couldn’t have one, not with being in the Resistance. She barely made it back from the op, and only because we brought her with us, plus her internal storage thing had a glitch.

She ignores my question and stands up.

“Sounds like a fantastic plan.” I give Kamali a sideways look. This is sounding a lot less promising than I had hoped.

“Let’s go.” Lenora waves the door out of existence and strides across the threshold.

Lenora is in a staring contest with a sentry stationed in front of Galenos’s apartment door.

I think she’s transmitting something—either to the sentry or someone inside the apartment—but it’s going on way too long. It’s taking all my nerve to simply stand still a few feet behind her, next to Kamali. Our ship is cloaked, leaving the garage appearing empty except for a single transport roughly the same size as ours. My heart’s pounding, but at least the post-fugue tremors have calmed, and my limbs work properly again. In case we have to run. But if the sentry decides to attack Lenora, I can’t imagine we’ll make it back to our ship before it gets us, too.

Finally, the apartment door winks out of existence—and an ascender in a tall, lanky bodyform stands in the doorway. We must be cleared to proceed or something because Lenora strides toward the door a dozen feet behind the sentry. Kamali and I scramble to follow, giving wide berth to the motionless bot.

The ascender at the door is male, attractive like they all are, with fine features and a slim form that makes me think of a British aristocrat from the pre-Singularity times. He has locked gazes with Lenora, so I assume they’re transmitting something. Kamali and I catch up with her at the door, which is when we attract his attention.

“Galenos, please meet Eli and Kamali.” Lenora’s voice is stiff, and her coloring is a neutral gray. I get the feeling we’re not out of danger yet.

He peers around her to get a good look at us. A wry smile blossoms on his face. “You’ve discovered the delights of human companionship, then? I must say, you’re quite the last one I would have expected it from.”

I tense, because those sound like fighting words, even if his tone is light and teasing. But Lenora’s bodyform relaxes and color floods back across her skin.

“I have missed you, Galenos,” she says. “In spite of what the others might have said.”

He smirks. “Well, I haven’t missed you and your lot. Bunch of arrogant, deluded, miscreants, if I’ve ever seen any.”

I’m still uncertain whether we’re in the clear, but then Galenos holds up a hand, palm facing Lenora, and she steps forward to touch her hand to his. A brief flush of color travels back and forth between them.

His smile looks more genuine this time. “Where are my manners? Please, come in.” He includes Kamali and me in the sweep of his arm, welcoming us into his apartment. The inside is spacious, but it looks nothing like the ascender apartments I’ve seen before. The furniture is more abundant, the carpeting is normal not misty, there are shades on the windows, partially drawn to block the afternoon sun reflecting off the towers around us. At the far end is a room that looks suspiciously like a kitchen.

I exchange a look with Kamali, but she just shrugs.

Galenos joins us in the large receiving area, but his attention is all for Kamali. He strides up to her, sweeps her two hands into his, and rakes his gaze across her in a way that sets my hair on end. “Lenora, where did you find this exquisite creature?”

Kamali gives him a look like he’s crazy, and I’m about ready to shove him off, in spite of the fact that he’s an ascender, and I would get nowhere with that.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Galenos, don’t salivate over the girl.” The voice comes from behind us, and a woman strides out from the kitchen. She’s human… and my mother’s age, maybe a little older, with the same graceful beauty my mother had before the disease ravaged it.

“Just admiring the obvious, darling,” Galenos says, but he backs off, dropping Kamali’s hands.

Kamali wipes them on her toga, probably to remove the slime, but it reminds me how bedraggled we must look in reality. The togas over our tanktops and shorts have remained ascender-clean with their tech fabric, but we’ve gone a couple days without a decent amount of rest or food, not to mention showers.

The older woman approaches us, and she’s all smiles. “Welcome to our home. I apologize for my husband’s atrocious behavior. We don’t get out much or have visitors. My name is Celeste.” She extends a hand to each of us, which we shake. Awkwardly.

Galenos drifts toward the kitchen. “We were just in Paris yesterday, my love!” he calls out. “Or have you forgotten already?”

“Holo trips don’t count,” she calls back.

I’m not sure what to make of all this, but apparently, Galenos and Celeste are married—an old-fashioned pre-Singularity term that no one uses anymore. When people are in love now, they just take each other as seconds. It’s not really a formal or legal thing, it’s just something people do, pairing up for the long or short haul. For ascenders, it’s rarely permanent—forever is a long time to spend with one person—but for legacies, it could be for life. Or just until something breaks it up. But marriage? Marriage is a religious ceremony that was banned after the Singularity, like churches and organized worship. And that’s when humans marry humans—for a human and an ascender, even being together as seconds is illegal. At least for the human. I’m not sure if liaisons, as Kamali calls them, are illegal for ascenders as well.

Galenos and Celeste are apparently breaking all the rules. Maybe that’s why they don’t leave the apartment? It certainly appears equipped for human-centric living.

This whole thing is strange.

Galenos reappears in a flurry of ascender speed. He’s carrying a tray with covered cups and food: bread, fruit, and an aromatic, spiced meat. I have to shut my mouth to keep the drool inside.

“The poor dears are ravenous,” he says, holding out the tray to us. “Take as much as you like. There’s plenty more.”

I have no idea where he gets his human supplies, but I don’t care. I only hesitate a fraction of a second before grabbing an apple and some bread. Kamali does the same while Celeste beckons us over to a couch. Kamali and I sit together, stuffing food in our mouths.

Belatedly, I say, “Thank you,” and Kamali echoes it.

Lenora is staring out the window, but once we’re settled—Kamali and me on the couch, Celeste next to us with the tray, and Galenos standing nearby—she speaks up.

“We need a place to stay.” She’s still looking at the towers. “A day or two at most. Until we have a plan for where to go next.”

“Of course,” Galenos says, all animosity and suspicion apparently banished now. “As long as you need. We have everything your darlings could want here. But you will have to tell me all about them and how you came to be in such straights that you’d land in my apartment with them.”

Lenora turns to face him. “You’re still boycotting the Olympics, aren’t you?”

Galenos’s indignant expression ripples purple across his bald head. “I refuse to watch that abuse. You know how I feel about that entire enterprise.”

Lenora strides away from the window to stand next to Galenos, then gestures to Kamali and me. “These are two of this year’s gold medalists. They were… disqualified.”

His face opens in surprise, then he rakes another gaze over Kamali. “A dancer,” he nods with appreciation. “Exquisite. I would love to see you perform, my dear. Only if you don’t mind, of course.”

I’m kind of amazed when Kamali’s cheeks darken: I think she’s blushing.

“And you…” Galenos wags a finger at me. “Let me guess: Shakespearean actor?”

“Painter.”

“Ah!” he says, apparently delighted. “I should love to see your work as well, young man, if you would choose to share it.”

“Elijah is also the son of Agatha Brighton,” Lenora says softly.

Galenos whips his head to her, then back to me. The intensity of his stare trips all my alarms. “He’s the one,” Galenos says in a whisper. All color has fled his bodyform.

“The one who survived,” Lenora confirms.

There’s a crash next to us: Celeste has risen from the couch, and the tray with all its contents have dumped to the floor. Her face twists up, but before I can even think about what has happened, she flees the room.

“Celeste!” Galenos follows after her, then hesitates and turns back to us. “It’ll be all right. I’ll return in a moment.” Then he disappears with ascender speed after his wife.

“What’s going on?” I ask Lenora quietly. “Should we head back to the ship?”

Lenora shakes her head, then bends to pick up the tumbled food from the carpet. A household bot drifts from the corner to clean the mess. Kamali and I stand to get out of its way. Lenora hands us each some of the recovered food: spiced meat for Kamali, more bread for me.

“How about you explain exactly what is going on here?” I nervously eye the hallway Galenos and Celeste have disappeared into, afraid he’s going to reappear full of over-the-top rage and a sentry to back it up. Meanwhile, I keep eating, because I’m starved, and I’m not sure when the next meal is coming.

Lenora keeps an eye on the hallway as well. “Galenos was one of the original, well, fathers for lack of a better term. He was part of our core group as well, a true believer in the idea of creating an answer to the Question.”

Kamali frowns, but I’m aghast. “Galenos conned Celeste into carrying one of your experiments?” This makes their relationship even more twisted.

Lenora scowls at me. “I understand your anger, Eli, but at the time, we were creating a wonderful thing. It was done with love—well, at least for some of the ascenders involved, it was truly an act of love. For Augustus, it was different. He was the leader, and what we were doing was very much illegal. We needed his protection to keep it secret. Naturally he wanted to be intimately involved—”

She cuts off at the livid look on my face. She’s talking about my mother.

“There were dozens of experiments,” she says stiffly. “Each had their own unique relationship between patron and donor.”

“Donor,” I say, my voice cold. “What a nice term for my mother.” But this makes my mind spin. So, Galenos was a patron as well, just like Augustus was my mother’s patron of the arts? I’m starting to wonder if the entire patronage system was just a sleazy way to get human females to fall in love with their male patrons and carry their experimental children.

“Celeste was a donor, too,” Kamali says quietly.

It takes me a moment, but I figure out what she means. My anger ratchets down. “She lost the baby.”

“As they all did,” Lenora says. “At least, in those first rounds. Galenos was always committed to the cause, but he didn’t become personally involved with Celeste until the round when you were gestated. Of all of us, he always loved humans the most. He was irretrievably convinced that your kind held the answer to the Question. That you would be our future. He fell madly in love with Celeste. And when the baby was lost, it was too much. He left the project, taking her with him. I haven’t had contact with him since. Until today.”

I frown and wonder what my life would have been like, had Augustus actually loved my mother instead of abandoning her after I had been conceived. “Why didn’t Augustus stick around? I mean, my mom obviously was the success case. She carried me to term.”

“Augustus’s intentions were… larger.” She’s holding something back. “We were supposed to produce dozens of bridges, not just one. Even though you lived, he still deemed the experiment a failure. Unrepeatable. He had no use for us or the result.” She means me. “The group was officially disbanded even before your mother gave birth.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t stay here.” Kamali frowns at the hallway. “I mean, it’s obviously upsetting to Celeste.” She’s taking this all remarkably in stride, but then I’m coming to expect that from Kamali: there have been precious few things I’ve seen rattle her. The up-close death of her friends has been pretty much it.

“We don’t have much choice at the moment,” Lenora says quietly. “This is one of the last places Augustus would suspect us of coming, so that buys us a little time. We need to use it to figure a way out of the city.”

“Out?” I ask. “Not without my mother and the rest.”

“Eli,” she complains but stops from saying more as Galenos strides from the hallway.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says when he rejoins us. “She’ll be all right soon. It was a long time ago, but it’s still a sore subject, I’m afraid.” He’s holding his hands out in apology, but I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness—we did barge into his house and send his wife fleeing in tears.

“I’m sorry my being here upset her,” I say.

“It’s not you, lad. She gave up a lot to stay with me. I like to think she gained something as well, but I never could give her the one thing she lost.”

I don’t know what to say to that. A “lifetime” marriage between an ascender and a human isn’t a lot of commitment on the ascender’s part—but it’s everything the human has to give. And it would have to be a union without children. Or at least, none conceived in the normal way. I don’t ask why they didn’t pursue other means because the answer is: they did. And it failed.

“Well,” Galenos says, clasping his hands together, as if that finishes the subject, “now that you’ve had a bit to eat, perhaps you would like to clean up? There’s a shower and clothing laid out for the both of you in back. Meanwhile, Lenora and I will discuss the many matters that lead to you coming to my home. I’m sure we’ll figure out something to take care of whatever difficulties you’re facing.”

His effusive offer of help is both comforting and somewhat disturbing.

“I want to be involved in any decision-making,” I say to Lenora.

“And I have several things to discuss with you as well.” Lenora’s pointed look reminds me that I haven’t disclosed everything to her about the fugue—not even close.

I give her a nod. Kamali and I follow Galenos’s urgent gestures down the hall. Lenora stays in the main room while he leads us to a bedroom with garments laid out on the bed and artwork on the softly glowing walls. Holo images of nature—a waterfall and a rainforest—fill the large embedded screens, and the quiet sounds of a stream float through the room.

Galenos taps a blank section of the wall, and a translucent door springs to life. Beyond it is a room with white tiles and a flat-gray control panel in the wall. “The shower controls are touch-sensitive. Fresh clothes are on the bed. Take your time.” He smiles then strides from the room. I wonder if he’s not flitting around at ascender speed simply because he’s used to living with a human.

Kamali scoops up the black t-shirt and jeans from the bed. “I call these.”

I scowl at the ascender toga she left for me, then pick it up. “Then I get the first shower.”

She reaches for my arm as I turn toward the bathroom door. “Eli.”

I check my stride. “Yeah?”

“This whole thing about your mom and Augustus… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

I duck my head. “I’m not going to let him use her again.”

“I know.” She has that determined look on her face—I know she doesn’t want me to do anything that might help any ascender, least of all Augustus.

I grimace and head for the shower. Thankfully, the door goes back to opaque once I’m inside. I have to stab the “touch sensitive” controls several times in order to get them to work, but then I’m drenched in a downpour of hot, steamy rain. I haven’t even taken off my clothes. Marcus’s toga slides off like it’s made of air, but the Resistance’s tanktop and shorts are a soggy, clinging mess. I toss them to the side where my fresh toga awaits, just out of the spray.

I plunge my face into the stream and let the water gush over me.

My mother and my friends are being held by the ascender who created me. Lenora wants me to flee. Kamali would rather die than betray the Resistance. And I’m just barely realizing the stakes involved in all of this. Why Marcus and Lenora and now Augustus all want to control me.

Because I talk to dead people.

As far as most of them know, that’s all the fugue is. But it’s enough—and they were all involved in my creation. They know they were trying to create a bridge to some other realm where gods and souls are supposed to live. Or something. It’s just a matter of whether I’m actually expressing what they hoped for with their design. My abilities—and I’m just barely beginning to discover what they are—would be important to the Resistance, too, if they weren’t in tatters, half imprisoned, half scattered to the winds. Maybe Kamali’s right. Maybe the other Resistance forces are trying to get my mom and Cyrus and the rest free.

But I can’t count on that.

Right now, all I have on my side is Lenora. And maybe this odd couple of Galenos and Celeste.

The billowing clouds of steam are so thick, I can’t even see the controls. Suddenly, the heat is too much, choking me with the heaviness of the air. It reminds me of when I was drowning in Orion, lost in that soup of information and color. I blindly reach into the fog to bang on the controls until the water is replaced by a hot blast of air.

It quickly blows away the droplets from my skin and steam from the air, and I suddenly have the solution to all of this.

One that no one would see coming: I need to steal Augustus’s personal key.

My hair is still wet from the shower, and my toga clings way too much.

To say the ascenders are less modest than humans is an understatement. Considering a bot whisked away my sopping wet shorts, I’m glad the toga has at least some modesty built in. Still, the appraising look in Lenora’s eyes flushes heat to my face.

“We have a few things to discuss,” I say. Kamali is still in the shower, which makes this a good time to say the things I have to, without her disapproving looks making it more difficult to make my case to Lenora.

“Agreed,” she says. “And I have a private place for it.”

Lenora leads me past several rooms—Galenos’s apartment is substantially larger than the others I’ve seen—to a door at the end of the hall. It opens to an enormous room, easily the size of the entire rest of the apartment combined. The walls are the same softly-glowing ones, only now the uniform whiteness is studded with blue dots in a matrix that covers the floor, walls, and ceiling.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“A virtual chamber.” There’s a gleam in her eye.

A moment later, the space around us transforms into a towering cathedral. We’re standing at the altar, and a multitude of colored-glass windows shower mystical light upon us. The walls are adorned with gold icons, like the ones in my mother’s shrine at home, but the most impressive parts are the rows upon rows of paintings rendered in glass—mythical scenes from antiquity infused with rich, backlit colors. They form a blurred mosaic that stretches the vast length of the church.

“Where are we?” It looks like a virtual of a real cathedral from the pre-Singularity era.

“It’s an amalgamation of several ancient holy places.” Her voice is quiet, and just as it drops off, a twitter of chimes rises and falls, then a distant bell gongs, long and deep. “You mentioned that Kamali helped you meditate to reach the fugue. Marcus induced it with a device, a shift in brain chemistry most likely. But humankind has sought to evoke ecstatic states for several millenniums before the Singularity, often by creating spaces like this. They used sound and light and architecture to create a medium to transport themselves. To open their hearts to the divine.”

As an artist, I can see it. The light and colors confuse the senses and blur out reality, expanding the mind and drawing the senses inward at the same time.

“But I’m not reaching for the divine. The fugue is just…” I don’t really know how to describe it. “A different plane of reality.” That’s what Marcus called it, and that seems to fit.

She pulls her gaze down to look into my eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say, even though I’m not sure about any of it. “Look, I have an idea—” She cuts me off by stepping closer.

“I need to tell you something first,” she says. “You are incredibly special, Eli.”

I hardly need a reminder. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“You said once that you wanted to know everything about yourself: how you were made, what our purpose was in creating you. Well, your purpose was this.” She gestures to the cathedral glowing around us. “You were our attempt to reach for the divine.”

I fold my arms. My shoulders hunch up. “I’m sorry that’s not working out for you.”

“Oh, but it is.” She steps even closer and touches my arm. “From the very beginning, I knew your humanity would be the key to bringing out your gift. Your ability to pierce the veil was lying inside you, dormant, because of the immensity of it—if you came out of the womb fully expressing your potential, it would have destroyed you. That’s what I think happened to the other children—they expressed too soon. They knew what they were, even in their mother’s wombs, and their human side could not withstand it. They were consumed in a rush of the divine and returned to it. But you… you lived. And by every measure we could take, you were an entirely normal human boy. Somehow, your gift was waiting until you were ready for it. Until your human side was strong enough to be the vessel. You only needed the right channel, the right trigger, to merge the two parts of you together.”

Her words are seriously freaking me out. I want to shrink away from her, but the soft glow of the cathedral lights are playing some kind of havoc on my senses, and she’s glowing with even more beauty than normal. “What two parts? Do you mean the fugue and the real world? Or my human DNA and whatever else you used to create me?”

“Yes.” She smiles and draws even closer. “Both. There is a duality inside you, and the merging of those two sides is your calling, Eli.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I want to answer the call.”

She slides her hand along my arm, and it sends a shiver racing up my skin. “Do you know what will happen when you do?”

“I’m hoping the answer isn’t what happened to the other experiments.”

Her eyes are shining again. She’s close enough that I can see the tiny dilations of her eyes as the stained-glass colors move across her face. Those beams of light on her skin compete with the flush of silver-pink rippling across it.

“You’ve already begun to express, Eli,” she says, breathless. “You’ve already survived the transition. Now it’s just a matter of learning to control it, manifest it, integrate it… to call into being the full expression of what you are. And when that happens…”

I frown. “What?”

“You will no longer be mortal.”

I draw back. “What do you mean?” Is she saying I’ll ascend? Like her?

Her hand slides farther and unlocks my folded arms. She grasps my hand between her two, and hers are incredibly soft. It’s like being touched by the smoothest of silks—only her skin on mine is racing heat throughout my body like no mere fabric ever could.

“You will still have this form,” she says, her smile growing into something excited. “You will be fully human. But you will also be fully divine. You will live as long as any ascender, but you will be more powerful than all of us combined.”

My heart is pounding so hard it is physically hurting my chest. “How can you know any of this?” This can’t be real. None of this can be real.

“Because it’s what I designed you to be.” She reaches for my face and touches it with two fingers. “Perfect. Immortal. Transcendent.”

I hold absolutely still, transfixed by the look on her face. She believes this. What’s more… her belief is making her look at me differently. Like I’m something worthy. Worthy of this gift. Worthy of immortality. Worthy of her.

She’s whispering now because our faces are too close for speaking normally. “Galenos is a god in love with a mortal. There’s no shame in that—humans are the precious seed from which we bloomed. And does not every god love their creatures? Or their creations?”

She’s talking about me now. My heart’s ready to kill me with the pounding… or stop altogether.

“All along,” she whispers, “I thought your gift would manifest through your art. Your creative spirit was so strong, so vibrant, so passionate, I was sure it was knocking on the door of your soul. But I was mistaken. Or perhaps that was only the first step. And now you need a different kind of passion to complete the transition.” She leans forward. “To ignite your gift.”

Her lips are on mine, impossibly soft yet urgent. My body responds like it’s awoken for the first time in my life. My hands slide around her bodyform, my arms bringing her to me, my lips eager for hers. Her hands work into my hair, her lips part, and I deepen the kiss without thinking or wondering why any of this is possible. I’m drowning in the sensation of touching her, the length of her body against me, the feel of her lips hungry for mine. Hungry for me. Because somehow, this thing she’s created in me is finally making me worthy of her—and I need that more than I need air.

My heart soars in a way I didn’t know possible.

Her hand slips inside my toga and slides the weightless fabric off my shoulder. Her delicate but firm fingers probe the muscles of my chest. Everywhere she touches feels like it’s sparking with electric fire. I pull back, stunned, unable to believe this is actually happening. The cathedral lights play across her face. I slide a hand up from her back to touch the spots, chasing them with my fingertips. If there are angels, there are none more beautiful than her.

“Do you feel it?” she asks, her eyes wide.

I feel so much. “Feel what?” I ask, breathless.

She pulls me back for another kiss, slower this time and deeper, and I’m certain I’ll combust before we get much further. Her hands are on my chest again, touching me in a way that’s making it hard for me to breathe. I don’t know where to put my hands—anywhere I touch, she’ll feel them shake—but I want to touch her. I want to slide her toga off and consummate this fire that’s burning inside me, but it all feels too surreal… too insane…

Too fast.

I pull back again, my chest laboring like a fish drowning in air.

Her hands are on my cheeks, her eyes searching mine. “Is it coming?”

“Is what coming?” I swallow, my throat parched from my heaving breath.

Her eyes blaze an intense blue. “The fugue state. Can you feel it coming?”

A chill sweeps through me, knocking my fever down ten degrees.

I release her and step back, pulling out of her grasp. I heave a couple more breaths before I can force the words out. Before I can wrap my mind around the truth of them. “You’re trying to induce the fugue.”

Her eyes go wide. “I thought it would… I thought you wanted…” She takes a step back. “I’ve made a mistake.”

Tears prick my eyes, but my anger burns them off. “Yes. You’ve made a mistake. And so have I.”

I turn my back on her and close my eyes. I tip my head up and press my fists to my temples. I am such an idiot. She was using me, manipulating me, trying to evoke this state she thinks will bring out whatever she’s searching for. The Answer.

“Eli, I’m sorry,” she says, but the words don’t touch me.

The ascenders don’t care about people like us. Kamali said it. Cyrus too. All along, all of them have been saying it, and I believed them, believed it, in every case… save one. Because I wanted so desperately to believe something else. To believe is to love into being. I’ve been wanting to believe, wanting to love something into being with Lenora. But it was all just a delusional fantasy about the one woman I can never have.

“Eli, please.” Lenora’s hand is on my arm. I pull it from her grasp without turning around.

Everyone wants to use me for their purposes. Every ascender, at least. The humans in my life seem to actually care about me. I may not be entirely like them, but I want to be. I want to be as brave as Kamali. I want to be as devoted as Cyrus. They may be mortal, but they’re better than any immortal I’ve ever met. And it’s time I started using this gift for some good purpose, like they would—something other than being manipulated by ascenders.

I turn to face Lenora. Her skin has gone ashen gray, and I’m glad. Because I have no use for her emotions right now. Only what she can do to help me free my family and friends.

“Let’s get something straight,” I say. “I control the fugue. I control this “gift.” We do this how and when I say. And you do not get a vote.”

She looks abashed. “Eli, I was genuinely trying to help. You have to believe—”

I stop her with raised finger. “I don’t have to believe anything.”

She frowns, then gives me a small nod of acquiescence.

My anger is still hot, but it’s calming a little. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to use the fugue to find Augustus. And when I do, I’m going to steal his personal key. Then we’re going to use that as leverage to get him to release everyone.”

Her eyes go wide. “You can do that?”

“Yes.” I smirk at her surprise. “I can.”

I charge into the bedroom where I left Kamali, only to find Galenos there as well.

They’re chatting about something. I’m still hot with anger at Lenora and ready to barrel ahead with our plan—stealing Augustus’s personal key—but Kamali’s expression stops me cold. It’s a weird kind of surprised stare like she’s never seen me before. Galenos has a full smirk that’s clearly directed at me. It’s not until he raises an eyebrow to Lenora coming in behind me that I realize my toga is still half-off, hanging below my bare chest.

My face heats even more. “I need better clothes.” My words are clipped by embarrassment and directed at Galenos.

“I’ll… see what I can do.” He pauses by Lenora on the way out, and I’m sure they’re having a transmitted exchange at my expense, but I don’t care. It’s Kamali’s stare—at me, half-naked—and then the subsequent examination of the empty floor in front of her that sinks my heart lower with each beat. Whatever she’s thinking, she’s not wrong. And I deserve whatever judgment she has. But I can’t afford any of that right now.

I step forward, forcing her to look at me. Her eyes keep flicking to my bare chest, which wouldn’t be a bad thing if there wasn’t a slightly disgusted look on her face.

“I need your help,” I say simply, then wait for whatever accusations she wants to throw at me. We might as well deal with those first.

Her brown eyes finally settle on my face. “How?”

Relief trickles through me. I should have known—Kamali has always been a better person than I am. “To get into the fugue state. I’m going after Augustus.”

She frowns and draws back. “You’re going after him… in the fugue?”

“I’m going to steal his personal key.”

That shocks her enough that she struggles for words.

Before she can recover, Galenos returns with a white shirt and coarse brown pants in one hand and knee-high black boots in the other. “I’m afraid I’m rather short in the clothing department for human males, and I doubt Celeste’s wardrobe would fit you. However, a few decades ago, I went through an unfortunate costume phase. This one’s for a 17th-century pirate. It seemed the least objectionable.”

I grimace but take the clothes from him. It’s easy enough to slide the pants on under the toga, but they’re entirely too short, cutting off just below the knees. Then I figure out they tuck into the boots. The shirt, on the other hand, is ridiculous. The sleeves billow out with wide, frilly cuffs halfway down my arms, and it doesn’t button at all, just hangs open. I’m nearly as bare-chested as before. Kamali looks much more revolutionary in her black t-shirt and jeans.

I give her a pained look.

She manages not to laugh. “It is better than the toga.”

I shake my head.

“Can you really obtain Augustus’s personal key?” asks Lenora, who is hovering at the door, like she’s uncertain if she should come in.

“Yes,” I say. “But meditation might not be strong enough to get me in the state I need. Can you reprogram a monitor patch like Marcus did to manipulate my brain chemistry and induce the fugue?”

She looks to Galenos, who says, “I have a full med suite in the back.”

Lenora disappears from the doorway, rushing with ascender speed off to finally make herself useful.

I take a seat on the edge of the bed. “Let’s go ahead and try without the patch,” I say to Kamali, who’s still wide-eyed at what we’re doing. “I’d much rather do it with meditation if it will work. Fewer after-effects, I think.”

She nods and climbs onto the bed behind me. When she rests her delicate hands on my shoulders and starts kneading, I realize what a mess of emotions I am: anger at myself and Lenora, shame at being so easily manipulated, embarrassment that Kamali knows without a word of explanation… and excitement at the prospect of taking down Augustus. None of it is conducive to relaxing into the fugue state. I try to shove all of it aside and focus on finding the ascender who’s holding my mother captive, probably mentally torturing her, after convincing her to implant his experiment inside her body seventeen years ago, then betraying her…

Okay, rage isn’t helping either.

I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. I try to imagine all the anger, all the pain, floating out of my body on each exhale. Just when I’m convinced there’s no way this is going to work, Kamali’s soft voice begins.

“Imagine all your negative feelings are strings wrapped up into a ball. Wind and wind the ball, with each turn capturing your anger and binding it tight. Now take the ball and place it in a box. Lock it and put it on a very high shelf. The negative emotions are in the box, waiting for you, but they are separate from you now, leaving behind only peaceful emotions. You’re calm. Relaxed. Floating on a placid lake with only the smallest of ripples on the surface.”

It’s working. My anger still seethes inside the box, a wasps’ nest waiting for me to return, but for now, Kamali’s fingers work relaxation into my muscles, and her words are doing the same for my mind. I breathe in and out, timing it with the slow sway of my body with her hands. Footsteps scuffle the floor, but the sound is distant, receding.

“You’re in a safe place…”

“Nothing can harm you here.” The voice has shifted, deepened. I open my eyes. I’m in the shop with the master painter—he’s re-emerged from the darkness, where I last left him. He seems to be my portal, or at least the first stop when I come peacefully into the fugue with Kamali’s help. I’m just sure he’s some famous Dutch painter from the past—I study his face, vowing to search the nets to figure out which one the next time I have access.

For now, I have to get out of this room. “I need to find Augustus,” I say, hoping that will draw me toward him. I don’t know where the master’s ancient studio is, but these rock walls are no more real than the blackness he sunk into before.

“It’s all real, Eli,” he says. “As real as you or I.”

Which doesn’t mean much, I think.

“It means everything,” he says, but I’m focused on finding a way to lift out of this vision and go to wherever Augustus is—I know he’s somewhere in New Portland, holding everyone captive. I try to will myself there, but the aged wooden benches stay stubbornly present.

“My friends are being hurt,” I say to the old man. “I need to get out of here, so I can help them.” I’m about ready to leave the fugue altogether and start over with Lenora’s device. Not that I really know how to do that either.

“A bridge gains its strength from the trusses,” he says. Before I can ask what he means, he reaches a single, crooked finger toward my forehead. I don’t feel the touch, but it blows me apart. The master and his workshop vaporize, and my mind expands. For a moment, I see so many levels, so many visions, stretching infinitely in all directions, above and below, and sideways in ways I don’t understand… then I telescope down, sucked back to earth… and I’m floating above New Portland.

“Thank you, old man,” I mumble with relief. I try to focus on Augustus again, which is tough, because I have no idea what he looks like, in ascender or fugue form. But I feel a tug anyway. I zoom through the towers, drawn to the outskirts of New Portland and a sprawling campus of buildings. The walls are insubstantial, like before, but the bright lights of the ascenders moving within are clear. They flash past me as I descend into the building, past a hundred levels, to a subterranean complex that’s even larger than the buildings above ground.

The tug grows stronger. I’m close enough to the forms now to see them more clearly: most are sequestered in their own rooms. These must be the captured members of the Resistance, although it’s hard to tell the difference between humans and ascenders in the fugue. One figure grabs my attention as I drift past: Cyrus. He’s passed out on a cot, one arm hanging down and a look of pain on his face.

“Cyrus!” I can’t help calling out, but he doesn’t wake up.

Then I’m pulled into a room with a woman curled up on her cot, sobbing: my mother. I reach a hand for her, and the motion yanks me to her side. She’s still crying, and the tears choke me as if they’re mine. Rage threatens to well up and consume me. I place my hand on her head—and I’m instantly inside her mind. The totality of my mother’s life starts to flood into me… but I don’t want this, can’t take all of this, don’t want to know any of it…

I stumble back.

My mom wipes her face, still turned away from me, then burrows her head into her pillow. She’s calmer now, her breathing smoother. No more crying.

Only a fraction of her life was transferred to me, but it’s enough. Too much. I know everything she felt for Augustus, every word that he spoke, every lie he told. Every intimate act they shared. It’s this knowledge that drew me to her, but her tears aren’t for that… they’re for me. Because my mother is convinced that Augustus will find me and destroy me. I focus everything I have, all my rage, all my horror at what Augustus has done to her, into a singular purpose: finding him.

I’m sucked out of my mother’s cell so fast, I can barely track what’s happening… until I’m suddenly stationary in Augustus’s office. He’s transmitting something to another ascender in the room with us. Their words are streams of blue mist that flit between them. I poke a finger into it, and I can sense everything: the data, the words, the images they’re speaking with. It’s unrelated to anything I care about, so I pull back. Augustus’s fugue form is large and commanding. His face is sharp-boned, and his shoulders broad, all of it speaking of a physical kind of power. But we’re not in the physical realm now. As far as I can tell, he has no idea I’m present. I move behind him, and his bald head seems singularly vulnerable.

I plunge my hand into it.

I’m squeezed into an infinitesimally small space then exploded out again.

I’m drifting. In grayness.

Augustus is gone. The world is gone. There’s nothing but nothingness, and I’m trapped in it, immobile, floating without purpose. The gray wisps curl around me but remain formless, like the pieces of myself that are scattered somewhere within it.

Kamali, I think. Bring me out. But nothing happens. I would panic, but the grayness dulls everything, every emotion and thought. It’s slowly dissolving my need to leave, like I’m being pulled apart, molecule by molecule… I force myself to focus. I concentrate on Kamali, her steady hands and calm voice… I can almost hear her calling me…

I suck air into my body. It’s trembling, but I’ve had much worse.

Kamali’s hands are on my shoulders, crouched in front of me at the edge of the bed, but she leans back when she sees I’m awake. “You’re back.”

I smile. “I heard you calling my name.”

She scowls. “I wasn’t saying anything.” Then she shoves away from me and retreats to the head of the bed, folding herself up and locking her arms around her bent knees. “I don’t like this. I never know when to wake you.”

Did I just imagine her voice in the fugue? I frown. “You did just fine.” I don’t know if I brought myself out this time or what, but the way she’s scowling and folded up… that’s bad. I need to not lean on her if I can avoid it.

I take a breath and a quick mental inventory—my contact with Augustus was incredibly brief, but I managed to get the one thing I came for.

“Did you find him?” Lenora asks. She and Galenos are standing at the foot of the bed, staring at me like I’ve morphed into an alien creature right before their eyes.

I give her a small smile. “I have his key.”

She hurries over like she’s going to embrace me. My frown holds her at bay. Her hands pull back and clasp onto each other instead. “I’ll need access to the key,” she says.

“I know.” While I’d love to destroy Augustus myself, I don’t have the first idea how. And just brushing against his mind sends me hurtling out in the gray nothing-land of the fugue. I doubt my human intellect will have a chance against his ascender one, even with his personal barrier down.

Lenora frowns a little. “There’s a technique to probe human conscious thoughts and memories without the nanite prosthesis—”

“I know,” I cut her off. “Augustus is using it on my mother to find me.” A sour feeling rises in the back of my throat: I can literally feel my mother’s pain as he scoured her mind. I feel her violation, her shame at betraying me through no fault of her own, and the physical discomfort itself. Her memories are so vivid, it’s like they happened to my own brain matter—it’s worse than anything Augustus has done to her prior to this. And he’s doing this to everyone on account of me.

My hatred for him rises to whole new level.

Lenora’s lips are pursed. Galenos looks extremely uncomfortable—I’m sure he knows what the procedure is like. Even Kamali looks concerned.

“Augustus is torturing all of them,” I confirm for her. “The vids Marcus showed us are real.” I don’t want Lenora probing inside my head, but I think I have a way around that. My mom was calmer after I touched her mind, and Emma, Diocles’s second, felt the ghost of me when my hand went through her head. There must be some trace of me that stays behind when I plunge into their minds—which means maybe I can put something there intentionally, not just absorb the information they have.

I turn back to Lenora. “I want to try a different way of transferring the key. I might be able to do it from the fugue state by interfacing with your mind.”

Lenora looks slightly panicked. “What exactly do you mean by interface?”

I stand up from the bed and stretch out the few cramps I have. “I’ll have contact with your mind, just like I did with Augustus. Which means I’ll have access to your personal key… and everything else.” That makes the frenzied dance of color across her skin go gray. I gesture to the neutral color. “You won’t be able to hide anything. But if you’re willing to try it, we can transfer the key and go after Augustus right now.” As much as I don’t want her in my head, I’m not going to force it the other way, either.

Her color slowly comes back, a torrent of gray and purple wisps crawling across her skin. “I don’t have anything to hide from you, Eli.”

I doubt that very much, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough. “I’ll keep it brief, just long enough to transfer the key.”

She holds out her hand: there’s a small, silver monitor patch in her palm. “Do you want to use this?”

I grimace at it, then look to Kamali.

She’s still folded up. “I’ll make sure you come back, either way,” she says, but the hard set in her eyes shows she’s not happy about it.

I give her a grateful nod and a small smile, then turn back to Lenora. “We need something faster than meditation. Just dial the patch back, okay? I don’t want to get flung in too deep.”

She frowns. “I’m not sure of the calibration—”

“Let’s just do it.” The urgent need to do something is itching up my back. Every minute that ticks by is one more with my mother a prisoner in Augustus’s hands.

Lenora edges up to me, the monitor held with just her fingertips.

I sit on the bed and pat the ascender-tech blanket next to me. “You better sit down. And I can’t guarantee this isn’t going to be painful for you.”

A rush of gray surges across her skin then recedes as she takes a seat. As angry as I was with her a few minutes ago, I can’t help but feel queasy about this. “I’ll only stay in your mind long enough to transfer the key.” I’m not even sure this will work.

She nods, but the flush of color across her skin continues its dance.

“As soon as you have it, can you go after Augustus?” I ask.

“I’ll have to reconnect to Orion,” she says, quietly. “There’s a small danger I’ll be detected when I do. But if I have his key, I should be able to find him quickly and shut him down.”

“I’ll uplink while you’re in,” Galenos says quietly. “Run interference if I have to.”

Lenora gives him a nod.

“Are you going to kill Augustus?” I ask her. I’m not necessarily objecting to this, but I hadn’t really thought it through. “I want everyone freed first.”

“I know. I should be able to override his connection with Orion as well as others. Basically, I’ll hijack his mind until it’s safe to release him. Or terminate him, if we need to.”

I swallow, but I don’t see another way. “All right.”

Lenora stares at the monitor patch a moment, then slowly lifts it toward my head. She hesitates. I give her a nod to go ahead. She places it on my forehead—

—and I’m in the fugue. But it doesn’t blow me out the way Marcus’s device did. I’m still in the room. Lenora’s still holding the monitor patch to my head, only she’s not wearing her bodyform anymore. She’s young and beautiful and blonde… just as I remember from the op. Her fingers are slender, and her face is tortured with worry. I reach my hand toward her face. I hesitate. Even though I know she agreed to this, I’m not sure she really understands.

But I have to transfer the key.

I focus on that, bringing it to the front of my mind. I can see its form, a multidimensional shape of colors and flickering phase states. I hold the idea of it in my mind and gently press my fingertips to Lenora’s forehead.

They pass right through.

The key sinks in, but I’m flooded with sensations: worry, pain, and fear tangled with a mosaic of memories. Some of Marcus, and there’s a remarkable amount of pain attached to those, but most are of me—from infanthood to our searing kiss to now, sitting next to her on the bed. In an instant, I see so many things I’ve never seen before, never had the perspective to see. She has a devotion to me that’s beyond love, beyond simply being her creation… it’s almost religious. She believes in me, in a way I would never have guessed. She truly thinks I’m this bridge, and it’s her sacred purpose in life to bring me into the world. Awakening my potential…the kiss we shared… was more than manipulation for her.

It was an ecstatic spiritual experience.

I yank my hand back.

This feels too personal for me to know. And I’m more than a little disturbed by it.

She wavers a little on the bed, and I’m afraid I’ve done something by interfacing with her mind—that she might fall over or something. Without thinking, I reach out to hold her up, but of course my hand passes right into her. This time, I’m sucked deeper into her mind and squeezed in that now-familiar way that says we’re going somewhere. I try to jerk back, but we’re already gone, deep into Orion, and I’m drowning again in the deluge of information and beings, points of light swimming in the thick soup. Only this time, I’m being dragged through it at light-speed. When we screech to a halt, it’s because we’ve found the bright spot of Augustus’s mind—but it’s locked down tight. I could reach right into it, and I almost do without thinking, but Lenora’s trying the key, so I hold back.

She engages it… and something goes wrong. Horribly wrong.

Lenora is ripped from me, sucked into Augustus’s mind, and somehow I’m tethered to her. I have to fight and fight and fight to keep free… finally, I’m flung back into Orion, into the soup of ascender minds. It’s drowning me. I swim against it, but I’m a tiny fish tossed in an endless sea. I can’t even see which way to go.

A beacon flashes, and it pulls on me. It’s growing larger and larger… and I realize it’s coming for me. Augustus. I turn and fight against the pull. Against the flow of Orion. Focus. Focus. I search for Kamali’s voice, but I’m afloat in an ocean of ascenders. I need one of them to anchor me… a safe harbor… Galenos…

I find his light and concentrate hard on it.

I suck in air, arching up from the bed. I’m back in Galenos’s apartment. Lenora is limp on the bed next to me, but I know she’s not even there. Not in her bodyform. Augustus has her trapped, somehow, in his mind. My body cramps up, but before the shudders can lock up my mouth, I force out the words that have to be said.

“He’s coming for us!”

“Who’s coming for us?” Kamali asks, her voice hiking up.

I roll over on the bed and try to work through the cramping enough to sit up. “Augustus,” I manage to get out through my teeth.

Galenos bends over Lenora, passing his hands over her. “Something’s gone wrong.” His voice is flat, but the tumult of color racing across his skin belies the calm.

Which is good. Because we need to get moving.

I reach for Kamali, who helps me stand up from the bed. My knees buckle, but I recover enough to stay upright. “It was a trap,” I force out. “He’s captured her. And he followed me. We have to leave. Now.”

Kamali doesn’t question it, just helps me limp toward the door. Galenos is gone in a blur of ascender speed, but he’s back before we’re halfway down the hall. His wife, Celeste, dashes from a back room. She looks like she’s been crying.

Galenos waits for her to catch up to us. “Head to the ship. I’ll bring Lenora’s bodyform. Just in case.”

I nod and release Kamali. “I can do this,” I say to her questioning look. I lumber toward the front. Kamali stays with me while Celeste races ahead. She leaves the door open and says something to the sentry. It comes alive and leads her off into the garage. As Kamali and I reach the threshold of the apartment, the transport we saw on the way in lights up. We hobble across the concrete floor of the garage while Galenos flashes past us with Lenora’s bodyform—he reaches the ship first, followed closely by Celeste. The sentry guards the entrance of the ship as Kamali and I stumble inside. The door materializes behind us, and the ship starts to move. Celeste is already webbed into her seat; Kamali and I hurry to get into the ones she’s summoned for us. The ship rocks, making it difficult. Just as I’m secured to my seat, I’m thrown against the webbing. We levitate for a split second, then a deafening crash brings the ship down hard, slamming me back into my seat.

We’re frozen, tipped up at an odd angle, and definitely in trouble. Smoke plumes from the cockpit. A sizzle charges the air just before a blinding flash wipes out the ship’s door. Galenos dashes out of the cockpit, arriving at the entrance with his sentry just as something from outside attacks. I scramble to get out of my webbing. The screeching sound of metal rending vibrates my seat.

Before I can get free, it’s over—two sentries storm the ship and grab us. One slices my webbing free and yanks me out of my chair in one slick motion that leaves me teetering on my feet and staring at the business end of its weapon arm: the barrel of what I hope is an electric discharge weapon, not a hole-blasting laser. The other sentry has Kamali and Celeste likewise captured. Outside our canted-over ship, Galenos and his sentry lie in pieces on the floor.

Celeste gasps and then sobs. She doesn’t know Galenos was connected to Orion just minutes ago—he was the beacon that led me back—and I hope like crazy that means he has a backup somewhere. The way his wife is crying, she must not think he does.

Lenora’s bodyform is slumped against the wall. I watch as the sentry closest to her uses its beam weapon to slice her into a dozen pieces. Even though I know her mind is trapped elsewhere, not inside this bodyform, it still makes my stomach heave. Then the sentries march us out of our ship and into theirs, waiting nearby. They don’t bother to handcuff us or even issue commands. It’s obvious we have to go with them or end up like Galenos and Lenora. And I’m fairly certain I know where we’re going, even though there are no ascenders involved in the entire operation.

Our transport has a tiny window, just enough to see the towers of New Portland as they parade by. I’m not at all surprised when we hover over the complex of buildings at the edge of the city that I saw in the fugue. I don’t know if the entire thing belongs to Augustus, but I’m sure we’re headed to the subterranean rooms where he’s keeping my mother and the others from the Resistance.

Kamali and I don’t speak on the way, not that any secrets we have will remain hidden for long. Her eyes are wide with fear, so I hold her hand and try to send her reassuring looks. But we both know it’s bad. Really bad. Deep inside me, a flame of hope flickers—maybe Augustus will let everyone go, now that he has me. I tell Celeste about Galenos uplinking to Orion, and her sobbing subsides a little, but she’s still sniffling quietly in the corner. The guilt of all these people being captured, tormented, possibly losing the people they love… all because of me… it presses like an ocean on my chest.

We land and take a lift straight down the hundred or so levels to the underground complex. The sentries herd us through a series of locked doors that make the holding chamber at the Olympics look like amateur security. We don’t see anyone, bots or ascenders, along the way. We pass through a fortified door I doubt the sentries themselves could take down, and on the other side is a small room, empty, just four walls and two doors, one in and one out.

We wait.

I’m no longer holding hands with Kamali because I don’t want her to feel mine sweat. Plus she’s busy comforting Celeste, who’s been visibly shaking ever since we debarked from the transport.

We wait some more.

My mind is ticking through all the possibilities: Augustus is going to separate us; or torture us; or possibly kill us outright. Although if he wanted to do that, the sentries could have accomplished it back at Galenos’s apartment. No, there’s some reason he’s keeping us alive. Me, I can understand. All of this has revolved around me, like some kind of macabre game where I’m a ball passed between the ascender players, each with their own schemes and strategies. But why Kamali and Celeste? And why kill Galenos, or at least his body?

A door on the far side of the room slides open.

It’s Augustus. He’s taller than I expect, with a bodyform even more exaggerated in physical prowess than his fugue form, but the face is the same: chiseled cheeks and piercing eyes. They’re blue, and his skin dances with a crimson flush. His clothes are the standard ascender-tech fabric, but less revealing: his full-body, form-fitting suit flows over his skin, somehow enhancing the power of his taut bodyform.

“Eli.” His voice is cold, and he passes an amused look over my pirate costume. It’s degrading in a way that flushes even more anger through me. “Come.” He beckons me with a small wave. “Your friends would like to see you.”

I want to throw insults at him. I want to resist and not do anything he says, even the smallest thing. But that’s foolish, and I know it.

I step across the threshold, half expecting him to kill me once I’m within arm’s reach, but instead he turns and walks side by side with me down the empty corridor. The sentries shuffle Kamali and Celeste after us. At the end, another door opens before we reach it. Beyond that is a series of doors down a long hallway. One by one, the doors turn clear, and I can see the inmates inside.

And they can see me.

I can tell by the shocked and angry faces.

Augustus slowly parades me past the doors. I can’t help meeting the stares of each prisoner. The first few I don’t recognize. But the next ones… their angry shouts are held mute by the clear barrier between us. Caleb, the augment who was injured in the op and then got an upgrade, stares hatred at me as I pass. His mechanical fist pounds soundless rage against his cell. Grayson’s crossed arms and silent judgment reach through the door to stab me with guilt.

Cyrus. His hands are pressed flat against the transparent door, his face rent with pain. I want to give him some sign, some reason not to give up hope, but I don’t know what it would be. I just shake my head a little. Maybe he’ll know what it means. My own heart sinks with each step.

My mother. She’s crying. I can’t even look at her for more than a second. I stare straight ahead, willing back tears that would just burn shame into me.

At the end, there’s a branch to two more hallways: dozens of doors line them. I hear Kamali gasp behind me—the last cell at the corner holds Tristan. His face is bloodied and bruised, and his fists are clenched at his side. He only glances at Kamali: the murderous look on his face is all for me.

The doors turn opaque, cutting off his glare.

I turn to Augustus. “What do you want from me?” I demand.

“Why, you’ve already given it to me.” There’s a hint of a smirk on his face.

I look back at the hallway of now-solid doors, and I realize what that slow walk must have looked like to everyone trapped in their cells: first, they were tormented for knowledge about me, and then I show up at Augustus’s side. No shackles. No protest. It was a show… for them. I’m their betrayer, in every sense of the word.

“Why do you care if they hate me?” I ask bitterly. He can do anything he likes to me— there’s no reason to hold back—but why this particular cruelty? Not that I understand any of it.

“I want them to see you for what you are,” Augustus says, voice cool. “A false hope. A false prophet.”

“I’m no prophet.” Anger is choking me. But there’s something wrong about all of this.

“I know.” The full smirk comes out. “And now they do, too.”

Sounds of protest come from behind me. One of the sentries grips Kamali and Celeste in its crushing mechanical hands.

I whip back to face Augustus. “You have me. You don’t need to hurt any of them. I’ll do whatever you want, just leave them alone.”

He ignores me, turning his back on me and striding down the hall without another word. It’s as if I’ve ceased to exist, no more important to him than a mote of dust left in his wake. The second sentry comes for me—its grip is bruising and painful. The first sentry is already hauling Kamali and Celeste inside their cells. Their small cries of pain stab me. My cell is just two more doors down in the opposite direction. The sentry releases me inside then tromps out with heavy steps. The door materializes behind it. The room is a gray box. With a shiver, I think about Thompson and his four windowless walls formed from the void. There’s not even a bed or a toilet, although I suspect they can be summoned from the walls.

I stand dead center in the room, tilt my head up to stare at the featureless ceiling, and vent all my frustration with a scream so primal it nearly breaks me. Then I go to the door, just like all the other prisoners, and beat it with my fists. I keep pounding until I feel the stabbing pain of knuckles breaking open and the slick warmth of my own blood on my skin. I take a step back, breath heaving, anger a raging beast inside me.

I left a smear of bloody humanity on the perfectly-gray ascender wall. It hums and vibrates until the red stain breaks into minute, molecule-sized pieces and lifts from the surface. Erased. Momentary and mortal and inconsequential.

I stumble back and sink to the floor, curled up, legs tucked, fists to forehead.

Think, Eli. I beat my bloodied fists on my head. But I can’t think: I’m nothing but rage and pain and guilt inside skin that feels too loose. I force myself to try anyway. I go back over everything and try to piece together what’s happened. There has to be some way out that I’m missing, some fix for all of this.

Augustus took the camp. Someone betrayed us, and he swarmed in with a hundred sentries, looking for me hidden away amongst the human members of the Resistance.

Augustus let Lenora go. He wanted her to bring me in. She tried to flee, but I convinced her to steal his key instead. When we returned to his mind, mere minutes later, he was already waiting for her with a trap.

Augustus knew. He knew we were coming—he must have sensed my presence when I was there the first time. That moment when I stole his key, I must have left something behind. A ghost of my presence? Or just the awareness that something had been there? Either way, he knew his consciousness, or cognition, or whatever Leopold called it had been breached—and he was ready when we returned.

Did he know it was me? Lenora claimed that somehow, when I came into the “full expression” of my power, whatever that meant, that I would live forever. If Augustus knows I stole his personal key, I can’t imagine him letting me live for more than ten seconds.

Why am I still alive?

My head lifts, and clarity comes to me: Augustus wants something from me.

There’s some purpose I still serve for him. Something I can do only if I’m alive. He’s already disgraced me with the Resistance. He already has everyone and everything I hold dear locked up in his cells. He’s thoroughly scrubbed their minds, which means he knows everything they know about me—

Cyrus’s memories. And now possibly Lenora’s, too.

Augustus knows everything about the fugue. He has to. Even if Lenora’s personal key somehow stays intact—and it would take time to break it—Augustus has to have figured out I was the one who touched his mind. That I stole his key. Which means he’s keeping me alive so he can figure out how that works. And if he does… my mind boggles at the idea of Augustus having that kind of power.

My cell door slides open.

The sentry has returned for me.

I can’t let Augustus control the fugue.

If it means I have to go into the void and never come back, so be it. If it means being blown apart, the bits of myself scattered into the gray, fine. Besides, if I’m dead and gone or useless in some way, he’ll have no reason to torture people. He might just kill the Resistance members instead—it’s probably wishful thinking that he would just let them go—but Lenora keeps saying Orion doesn’t take the Resistance or the rebel ascenders seriously. Maybe all Augustus really cares about is me, and they were just a means to the end of hunting me down. Augustus seems like the type who’s used to taking what he wants regardless of the cost. The kind that would be unimaginably dangerous with the power inherent in the fugue state.

The sentry’s heavy steps and slight mechanical rustlings echo in the long hall. We traverse two more locked doors, then march down another hallway. This place is immense, just as I saw in my vision. Finally, I’m ushered into a room that’s empty except for a chair with blue gel cushions, reclined slightly. It’s way too familiar. The sentry leaves, no doubt locking me in, but I’m in no hurry to take a seat.

I pace the edges of the room, a physical repetition that isn’t just aimed at dispelling the anxiety that’s ramping up throughout my body: I’m trying to calm my mind. If I can relax enough to get into the fugue, maybe I can find a way out of this.

I don’t make much progress before the door flickers open.

I expect Augustus to be paying me a visit, but it’s a female ascender instead. She has the same power-uniform—form-fitting over her slim curves. Her skin is neutral gray with touches of silver scintillating underneath, which is odd—I’ve never seen a mix like that before.

“Hello, Eli.” Her voice is cold and clinical. I get the feeling she would dissect me before I was dead and not a whisper of emotion would flash across her gray skin.

“Who are you?” I ask.

She flits across the room with ascender speed. I have to turn to face her again.

She gestures to the chair. “Please have a seat.”

“Do I have a choice?” I fold my arms.

“No.” She stares at me, motionless in that way ascenders sometimes are.

I wait a beat, but I know it’s useless to resist. Still, I drag my boots as I cross the floor. The gel cushions are chilled, and I give an involuntary shudder as they lock onto the length of my body. My heart lurches as a matrix of blue light springs to life around me, encasing me in a net-like holo cocoon from head to foot. It pulses, and a wave of blue travels up and down my body. I have to close my eyes when it passes my face—the light is blinding, but I don’t feel anything yet.

“What is this?” I ask through clenched teeth, even though I know—it’s the same blue matrix from my mother’s memories, still fresh in my mind along with her feeling of terror as they invaded her thoughts and dredged her memories. I push that aside and try to suck in air to calm my raging heartbeat. I have to resist this somehow. I can’t let Augustus crack open my skull and look inside.

He might learn things even I don’t know. A full-body shudder grips me, and the cushions pull against it.

“Resisting the probe will only cause you more pain.” Her dispassionate voice trickles icy drops of fear through my skin and into my chest. I beat back the panic by thinking about my mom: she gracefully faced the cancer eating away at her. She stared her own death in the face and accepted it with calm. Maybe it was her faith—believing she had a soul and an afterlife—that gave her the mental strength not to break down into sobs like I would have. I don’t know. But I’ll borrow anything right now to fight off Augustus’s cool mind-probing assistant.

The matrix stops its scan and slowly brightens until I have to squint against it. The light somehow feels like a hundred ants crawling over my skin, gathering speed and burrowing in. I can’t help letting out a sound of disgust and horror. My body convulses against it, but the gel of the cushion holds me firm. Finally, I’m forced to close my eyes against the glare. The sensation of things under my skin rushes up my neck. I grimace against it, but it’s plunging inside my head…

...my mother thrashes against the chair. I’m simultaneously her and not her. I’m reliving the memory scour she endured, the deep probing for anything related to me, while at the same time, I have that immutable feeling again, like this has already happened and cannot change. I’m observing it from a distance afforded by separation of time, like when I was in the zealot’s cell, watching him being forced to take the neural implant. I slowly realize I’m not just remembering… I’m in the fugue.

Which means I shouldn’t be bound to the chair.

That thought moves me quickly to the door. I’m standing now, looking back at my body gripped by the cushions with my ascender tormentor hovering over me. She seems slightly panicked, rapidly passing her hands as well as a small silver instrument over the blue matrix that’s enmeshing my body. The body in the chair has gone still, even as my mother’s memories play in the distance. They’re a shield, thrown up to protect my mind from the probe.

If I’m in the fugue… maybe I can somehow control Augustus’s assistant, stop the probe, or even find a way out of here. These thoughts draw me toward her.

I shove my hand into her head.

A flood of information fills me for a split second—then I’m blasted away. The room dissolves, falling into mist, and I’m blown into the grayness. I float in it, disoriented again. Panic nibbles at the edge of my mind, but maybe this is better after all. The shield of my mother’s memories wouldn’t hold forever. Eventually, Augustus’s assistant would find a way to break through. It’s better for me to be out here in the void, safe from their reach.

The bits and pieces of my mind float alongside me. I idly poke at them. Some are new. Like the fact that the ascender tormenting me is Augustus’s second. Her name is Hypatia. She’s more than his second—she’s a sort of partner in their plans. He’s promised her so much—

Something tugs at me.

The pieces pull toward one another, like a center of gravity has formed in the middle of me.

Something tugs again, harder—

My entire body seizes up, arching like I’m being electrocuted, then I slam back down into the chair. The holo net is gone, my lungs fight for air, and Hypatia has two hands to my chest, shoving aside my loose shirt to touch my bare skin with her ice-cold palms. I stare up at her with wild eyes, gasping to get enough oxygen. She backs off immediately, hands flying up, eyes hard on me—then she hovers her hands over my body, moving them rapidly. She’s scanning me like a med bot.

I recover my wits enough to say, “Looking for something, Hypatia?”

She freezes then takes a half step back. I take advantage of that to test my restraints—the cushions have relaxed their grip. I can sit up in the chair, although my body is cramping—probably due to the shock Hypatia used to bring me back, as much as being in the void itself.

“Yes, I know who you are,” I say, just to keep her off-kilter. The after-effects make my words a little jittery, but they’re clear enough. I scan my memories, the bits I picked up from her. I have her personal key, but that doesn’t do me any good—I don’t know how to use it. Still… “Why is Augustus sending his second in here to probe my mind? Too busy conquering the world to attend to it himself?”

Her eyes go even wider, then she moves like lightning. I don’t see what she’s done, I just feel the tap on my chest. My chin sinks down, my head impossibly heavy, and just before whatever she’s done knocks me out, I see the thin, silver med patch floating above my skin.

I pitch forward, and the world goes black.

The ground is broken with thirst. My boots crush the dirt into dust. I look up. The barren landscape stretches for miles beneath a storm-laden sky. The horizon boils with clouds, a wall of them, laced with fire and lightning and death.

I’ve been here before.

Kamali appears in front of me, solemn-faced. Her beautiful hair whips in the heated breeze.

“It’s coming,” I warn her. My body transports to her side. I grip her shoulders and stare into her infinitely deep eyes. They are made of star dust and wisdom. “We have to stop it,” I say to her, but what I really mean is, we have to leave. Run away. Because the firestorm is too immense, too powerful, too much for anyone to stop.

She turns her head to the side and whispers, “Death comes to every body.” She says the words separately—every and body, as if there’s a multitude of bodies in the path of the storm, and it will lay waste to every single one of them. As I think it, so it is—the cracked earth teems with them, barefoot and wandering, lost in the desert. None of them see the storm as it rolls silently across the parched ground, consuming everything in its path. Every body. The screams rise and fall as the storm picks up the forgotten and consumes them.

I edge around Kamali to stand back-to-back, facing the storm and putting myself between her and its hungry maw.

“How do I stop it?” I yell over my shoulder to her. The winds are whipping my words from my mouth and carrying them away with the screams of the dying.

She doesn’t answer.

I face the storm and hold out my hands, palms against the raging clouds, as if I can stop the coming death with my will alone. I remember my mother and Lenora in a similar stance, trying to hold it off.

They were swallowed.

I lower my hands. “I can’t stop it.”

“You were our bridge,” Kamali says, her voice dead, like she knows it’s hopeless, too.

I turn to her, but she’s gone. All the bodies, walking the parched earth and rising into the fiery cloud, have disappeared. It’s just me and the storm now. It crawls across the ground, slow and inexorable, as unstoppable and deadly as an avalanche. It will take me, too, and it’s only right.

Because I failed them all. Every single one.

I spread my arms wide to embrace the fiery breath of my fate—

I awake like I’m drowning—gasping for air and flailing.

I fall off something soft and land on something very hard. With my face. I’m stunned out of air again, make a horrible noise as air refuses to enter my lungs, then an even worse one when it does. I lift my face from the cold ascender-tech flooring and blink rapidly. I’m dazed, but now that I’m breathing again, I hazard a look around.

Hypatia stands over me, coolly taking in my human sputtering and spittle on the floor. I scuttle away from her, taking stock of where I am and what’s happening. I’m back in my cell. There’s a bed in it now, risen from the floor, and I’ve just fallen out. I check my chest: the med patch is still there, no doubt what she used to put me out. And probably to wake me up again. I snatch it away from my skin and throw it across the room.

She doesn’t move.

“How long have I been out?” I crawl backward to the wall with hands and feet, then work at bracing myself to standing. Despite waking up as if I’m dying, I feel okay: no shakes. No fugue after-effects. The vision must have been just that—or a dream. I’m woozy yet refreshed, like after a long, hard sleep: probably the effect of whatever she used to knock me out. Or maybe I’ve been out a long time.

She’s not answering me.

“Not very talkative, are you, Hypatia?”

She doesn’t react, at least not visibly. Her skin is still that glistening gray, no color, but not static either. There’s a glint that subtly travels, like a sparkling accent that can’t choose her best feature. And she is beautiful, like all ascenders. But for all Marcus’s arrogance, and Augustus’s obvious disdain for the lesser being that I am, Hypatia looks at me the way a scientist examines a frog just before cutting out its heart.

Maybe I shouldn’t tempt her to do that quite so much.

Now that I’m standing, she says, “Please come with me.”

I don’t ask if I have a choice.

She leads me out of my cell and down the hall. I recognize the path—we’re heading back to the room with the mind-probing chair. I’m a lot more calm this time, so I take quiet deep breaths to settle my body even further. The mind-probe tripped me into the fugue before, but only because my mother’s memories protected me. I don’t know if that will work again, and besides, it would be better to control it myself. Get in the fugue state, move out of the room, and find some way to get everyone out. Maybe intercept a data stream. Or convince someone to free us. If I can find Leopold, he can help me use Hypatia’s key.

Anything but staying under her mind probe for any length of time.

We reach the door of the room, and the calm settles into my bones. I can do this; I’ll talk myself into the fugue once I’m in the chair. The door winks open, but instead of an empty room, the Dalai Lama sits cross-legged on the floor, meditating. He’s scrawny, like the fourteen-year-old he is, and draped in a bright orange robe. A sentry stands just inside the door.

The Dalai opens his eyes as we cross the threshold. He smiles wide when he sees me. “Eli!” He gracefully unfolds and rises from the floor.

“Your Holiness.” I can’t believe how good it is to see him, even with the dark circles under his eyes.

A realization comes across his face and dulls his bright smile. “I saw you come in the door,” he says in one long breath. Something flashes in the room, and his entire body jerks, his face contorting with pain.

Then he drops to the floor.

I don’t understand what’s happening at all… until I see the massive hole burned clean through his midsection. The look of pain on his face relaxes into a peaceful stare, but his eyes remain open, unblinking.

“What,” I gasp and lunge over to him. I kneel down, my hands shaking, trembling with inarticulate rage. “Why?” It’s a whisper leaking out of me. My eyes burn as I reach for him, but there’s nothing I can do. Nothing anyone could do. I use my shaking fingers to close his eyes instead. Something warm and wet nudges my knee. I stare dumbly at the growing pool of his blood.

Anger jolts me upright. “Why did you do this?” I screech. The words carve out my heart. My shaking fists want to pummel something, but I can’t. The sentry stands, weapon raised, ready to punch a hole in me next. Hypatia coolly examines me from the door, then steps around the body and blood and life snuffed out on the floor like it’s nothing.

Nothing.

I fight through the red haze of anger and guilt. This is for me. This was done for me. I don’t need Hypatia to tell me, but when I slowly turn to face her, she does anyway.

“You will not block our efforts to access your mind,” she says as if there were any doubt. “For every failed attempt, another member of the Resistance will die.”

I can’t speak, but I nod very slowly.

“Please have a seat.”

I take a step and nearly go down, slipping on the Dalai Lama’s blood. My stomach is in full rebellion. I’m convinced I’m going to be sick before I reach the chair.

I’ve lost. I’ve completely lost.

I manage to get into the mind-probe chair without throwing up.

I’m still twitching from the shock. Still numb from the sight of the Dalai Lama’s body lifeless on the floor. Hypatia stands next to the chair, impassive while the sentry trains his weapon on me from the door.

It’s over.

There’s no way I can watch them parade the entire Resistance past me, punching light-weapon holes through them until I comply. I can’t. I have to give Hypatia what she wants, even if it means… what? I don’t know anymore. Access to the fugue? A bridge to an alternate plane of existence?

Access to the personal keys of every ascender.

A shudder runs through me that has nothing to do with the cool gel cushions clamping onto my body. The holo field activates a cocoon of blue light that hums energy around me. The creeping sensation of ants on my skin starts immediately this time, and I’ve only got moments to decide—if there’s even a decision to make. Do I resist and watch people die? Or do I hand Augustus a vast power that I’m barely beginning to understand?

The insect-under-skin feeling zooms to my head—

And I’m in the fugue. I sit up in the chair, no longer bound by the mesh, and turn to Hypatia. Her hand scans my head, but her face betrays no emotion. The walls around us have gone transparent and beyond them I can see waves and a beach and green hills in the distance. Memories from Marcus’s life play like suspended holo screens in the air.

These are Lilith’s memories. Marcus’s mother. Somehow my mind has conjured them as a shield against the probe. I didn’t do anything—it was an automatic reaction. Like a defense mechanism against invasion, maybe? I don’t know. But I don’t have time to think about it. I need to find a way to keep Hypatia from carrying out her threat.

I move, leaving my motionless body behind in the chair. Hypatia’s face is slowly taking on a frown. The last time I plunged my hand into her head, I was blown into the void. But that’s probably the only answer I have left: if I’m dissipated into the gray, they can’t use me, and there will be no point in killing the others.

I move again—my form, whatever it is in this state, obeys my intention without me consciously willing it. I raise my hand, palm toward Hypatia’s bald head. Her fugue form has no scintillating gray skin, but her face is emotionless all the same.

I stop.

I really don’t want to die. I’m not even sure I could—last time Hypatia brought me back from the void with her shock-inducing hands on my chest.

There has to be another way.

I have her key. I flip my hand over and focus on bringing the memory of her personal key to the front of my mind. It’s a shape in a constant state of flux. As I think it, so it is: the shape shimmers into existence, floating above my palm. It’s like a jewel of many possibilities, shifting between being and not being. I can see the equations that describe it as well as the field of probabilities that define its states of being. I don’t fully understand it, but maybe I don’t need to.

Maybe I just need to control it.

I get a firmer grip on it—which really means a better focus on its being—as I move it toward her head. It encounters resistance at the surface of her mind, a field that’s not synced with the one in my hand. I spin the key, ticking through all the states, rotating my hand as if her mind is a key of its own, and I have to get the shape of mine to line up precisely with hers… something opens up, but then the key is sucked from my hand.

A force nearly pulls me in after it. A trap. Just like the one in Augustus’s mind that captured Lenora.

Hypatia jerks upright. I fight against the pull of the trap, stumble back, and break free. She flicks her attention back to the mind-probe mesh, waving her hand over my prone body. The intensity of the blue light grows steadily. My arms and legs start to thrash in the chair.

I can feel it coming for me. Lilith’s memories of the ocean and childhood and toy-strewn beaches start to flicker. I have no choice and no time left—I lunge back to Hypatia, determined to thrust my hand into her mind and blow myself out to the void before she can break through. My hand passes through her. A flurry of images and thoughts and ideas pound me at light speed—then a flash so bright it whites out everything—

I gasp, sucking in air and fighting a spasm that feels like it’s ripping me apart—more than the usual fugue-induced cramping and general misery. I open my eyes, but everything remains dark. I blink several times… still dark.

Is this death? It doesn’t feel like death, not that I know what death would feel like. It’s definitely not the deep, fuzzy grayness of the void.

As my mind grapples with the disorientation of my senses, the flood of information from my contact with Hypatia swirls in and takes shape. My mind files and categorizes: memories, thoughts, connections. They’re a web, all circling around a central idea, but my understanding of that idea floats just beyond my grasp. I can tell it’s something Hypatia was desperate to hide. Something strong in her mind when my presence sunk into it.

It coalesces enough that I can see the outlines of it: Augustus has a plan.

My mind skitters around the edge, biting at it, but not really getting hold. The idea is big. It will change everything. It doesn’t involve me… only it does, tangentially, like I’m related to it… but Augustus is at the center.

It’s the storm cloud. It’s an avalanche of death.

My heart lurches. Like keys intertwining with keys, a certainty locks into place: my vision and Augustus’s plan are connected. If I overlay one with the other, they fit. I don’t have all the pieces, and the harder I focus on the splinters of it, the more the idea slips from my mental grasp, but… it’s coming. It’s marching closer, relentless—and it will swallow everyone and everything. And somehow I have to stop it.

Some bridges burn. The old man said it—either I’ll stop the storm or be destroyed by it.

My breath is audible in the dark. Which means I must be alive, and the blackness is simply the lights gone out. I hold my breath for a moment—the rest is silence. The chair is underneath me—I can feel it, but I’m no longer restrained by the mesh. I find my way to the edge of the seat and swing my legs off, nearly stumbling over something when I step down. It’s cool to the touch, humanoid shaped—it has to be Hypatia’s body.

Something’s happened.

I stand and mentally recreate the room: the placement of the Dalai Lama’s body; the pool of his blood I have to avoid; the sentry at the door. Slowly, I feel my way across the room. I don’t have a plan, but something is going down, and I need to be ready for it.

I’m halfway across the floor when the door winks out of existence. I can tell because sounds float through the dark: gasps and mumbles and low, angry words. I climb over the prostrate sentry and stumble toward the murmurs, but what I see outside the door seems so unreal, I freeze in place, heart lurching.

There’s a ghost in the hallway.

I blink furiously, but the nebulous outline of the ghost continues to float past my door. It’s a man—I recognize him as one of the Resistance’s militia—and about half his body is lit-up by some unknown source while the other half fades into darkness. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to see me. Or anything at all. He’s feeling his way along the wall. A woman—or rather the ghostly form of one—bumps into him, going the opposite direction. There’s a tense moment when they gasp, recoil, then tentatively reach out to each other. They find each other’s hands and join them. After a few whispered words, they continue down the hall together.

My brain finally puts it together—I’m still in the fugue state, at least partially. Something blew out everything—lights, bots, ascenders—and when the mind-probe chair died, it kicked me out of the fugue. Only, not entirely. I’ve got a fuzzy kind of double-vision happening, still partly in the fugue while everyone else stumbles around in the dark.

I edge out into the hall, and dozens of ghosts—prisoners—wander the hall, finding each other in the dark. They must have all been liberated when the doors opened. I hurry past them, dodging their forms and peering at every one, searching for Kamali or Cyrus or my mom. As I turn the corner, getting closer to my original cell, my fugue-state vision falters. The ghost forms flicker off and on, plunging me into the same total darkness as everyone else for a second or two at a time. I slow my pace, making my way more cautiously, but the fugue state is slipping, and I still haven’t found anyone I know.

A screeching sound kills all the whispering in the hall at once, leaving silence behind. It came from around the corner—as best I can tell, that’s the hallway where Augustus paraded me through originally. The prisoners hug the walls as the screech comes again, a metallic sound, like something being ripped apart. It continues for a long moment, followed by a more complete silence, like everyone is holding their breath. Then an orangish glow licks along the walls, undulating shadows across them.

A wave of gasps floats through the hall as faces are lit by the strange glow. It’s not much, but I can see with my eyes now, not just the fugue, so I keep moving toward the intersection with the main hallway. A sizzling sound runs roughshod over the attempts at speaking, but I’m picking up speed as my eyes adjust to the near-dark. I reach the intersection and finally find people I know—the two augments from the op, Caleb and Grayson, both watching the source of the orange flickering. It’s the door at the end of the hall, and it looks very much like someone’s cutting a hole through it from the outside. Caleb is standing over Grayson, who is sitting on the floor. His ascender-tech legs are shoved against the wall, out of the way of the slowly gathering crowd. His augments must have been knocked out by the same pulse that wiped out the ascenders and their sentries.

“Caleb!” I say, breathless and grinning. “Have you seen—” I can’t finish because his hand is around my throat, shoving me back. I stumble and nearly fall out of his grip, but he slams me against the wall next to Grayson and holds me in place.

Caleb’s face is alive with fury, and the orangish light turns his expression demonic. I claw at his hand, but the only reason I’m not already dead is because Caleb’s black-metal ascender-tech arm hangs useless at his side while he tries to kill me with his human hand. And he might yet succeed—everything’s going black. I’m passing out. Caleb’s hand is suddenly ripped away, nearly taking my throat with it. Grayson has taken him down, in spite of Grayson’s non-functional legs. He’s got Caleb in some kind of painful-looking hold, with his fist threatening Caleb’s face, but Caleb’s not fighting. He’s cowering.

I clutch at my throat, struggling for air, and look warily at the orange-painted crowd. The scuffle has attracted everyone’s attention—now all the Resistance members who are likewise thinking I’m responsible for them being here are staring at me. I hold up my hands, half surrender, half to keep them at bay. Tristan emerges from the crowd, stalking up to me so fast, I’m afraid he wants to choke the life out of me, too.

“You have something you want to say, Brighton?” he throws in my face.

I stumble back against the wall again. “I didn’t do anything,” I say quickly, one hand out, the other rubbing and protecting my throat.

“What are you doing?” Kamali comes out of the dark and slams both hands on Tristan’s chest, moving him away from me, but only by a foot or so. He’s still glaring death threats in my direction. “Leave him alone!” She shoves him again and stands between us, blocking our view of each other.

Tristan relents and speaks to her instead. “We’re here because of him.” His voice is bitter.

“He did not betray us,” she throws back. Then she turns to the crowd. “We can fight each other or we can work together and have a tiny chance of getting out of here.”

“That was no ordinary white-out bomb,” Grayson says, his voice tense but even. He still has Caleb pinned. “Someone with ascender-level pulse technology just nuked this place. I’d suggest we get ready for whatever’s coming through that door.” He gestures down the hall.

Murmurs of agreement and concern rise up.

Suddenly, a white-hot flash burns across the walls, and my hand automatically flies up to protect my eyes. There’s a clatter of metal, like something has fallen, and by the time I blink away the retina burn, a dozen white lights are dancing along the walls, ceiling and floor, flooding the hallway with light. And a couple dozen black-clad militia: humans.

They’re heavily armed and streaming in through the hole they just cut. Their helmets sweep the cells with wide, bright beams, but mostly they’re ushering the nearest prisoners toward the door, which is still glowing at the edges. In the new abundance of light, I can see there are maybe fifty of us—considerably down from more than a hundred in the camp. A hulking figure breaks from the crowd and stalks toward me with two shorter ones in tow. I tense up until I see it’s Cyrus.

I don’t hold back from the rough hug he yanks me into.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he breathes out, then pulls back. “Man, I didn’t think I’d see you alive again.”

I grip one hand hard on his shoulder. “Cyrus,” is all I manage to get out.

“I was afraid those bastards were going to—” He chokes up.

“I’m good.” I nod fervently. “I’ve been busy. Got a few new tricks to show you. You know, when we have a moment.” I fight back the tears pricking my eyes with a smile.

He just hugs me quickly again. “Hey, your mom’s here, too.”

My mother’s standing behind him with tears shining in her eyes. Her shoulders hang down, and I can’t tell if she’s hurt or simply miserable. I hurry to hug her. Over my mom’s shoulder, Basha beams at us.

I pull back to scan my mom’s face. The red-lined eyelids and dark circles show she’s been crying. I can’t tell if she’s recovered from her gen tech treatments. “Are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry, Elijah.” Then she sobs, and my arms are back around her. She shakes and waters my shoulder with her tears, then pushes back, lips trembling. “I tried to resist them. I couldn’t let them find you, but I couldn’t stop them—”

“Mom.” This is killing me. “I know what Augustus did, and it’s not your fault. That’s not how he found me, anyway. That was all my own doing. I messed up.”

She sucks in a breath. I think it gives her strength, knowing I got here with my own amazing ability to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The crowd is organizing into small groups like ours: people reuniting. I step aside as several militia gather to lift up Grayson. Caleb must be over his rage because he’s helping. They carry him toward the door. Behind us, Kamali and Tristan are hugging with his face buried in her hair. I tear my gaze away. I don’t have any business feeling the stab that image brings.

I scan the rest of the faces as we all file toward the door.

“Where’s Delphina?” I ask Cyrus. “And Commander Astoria?” I saw Delphina being tortured before, but I’m afraid her mom might not have made it out of the camp.

“They were separated from us early on.” Cyrus’s voice is rough with emotion. “Leopold, too. Anyone who was in apparent leadership.” He peers at the faces around us. “They left the Dalai Lama with us. Guess he was too young or something. I haven’t seen him yet.”

I grimace, my stomach bunching up. “He’s dead, Cy.”

Cyrus’s attention whips back to me. “What?”

“They killed him,” I say, choking up. “Because of me.”

“No.” Cyrus throws a look around and takes me by the shoulder, dropping his voice. “If they kill anyone, it’s because they’re murdering bastards. It is not because of you. Everyone already thinks the ascenders are doing all this to get to you—”

“They are, Cy.” My shoulders drag down with the weight of that truth.

“Dude, don’t say that.” He gives me an exasperated look and glances around to see who’s listening. So far, it’s just my mom and Basha. Worry torments their faces.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Cy, but for now…” I lift my chin to the militia funneling the Resistance members, one by one, through the door. “We just need to get out of here.”

Cyrus squints at them. “All right.” He jabs a finger in my face. “Just shut up with the it’s all my fault talk, or we won’t get you out in one piece.”

I shake my head but say, “Okay, boss.”

Cyrus gestures to our rescuers. “Man, I’m glad our transmissions got through.”

“Transmissions?” The crowd moves faster as it thins out.

“To the other Resistance cells,” Basha says, piping up. “We sent out a signal once the basecamp was under attack.”

“Yeah,” says Cyrus, “but we only got off one message. Didn’t know if it reached anyone before we were taken prisoner.”

I nod. Then a chill runs up my back—next to the carved-open door stands Marcus. He’s wearing a transparent shield over every inch of his body, some kind of shimmering force field bodysuit that floats over his normal ascender-tech toga.

“Wait, is that… that cannot be.” Cyrus looks as stunned as I am. He slows our pace.

My mother says quietly, “Why is Marcus here?”

“He’s here because he wants me.” I give Cyrus a pointed look.

He glances at the darkened hall behind us. “We could make a run for it.”

I shake my head. That’s pointless, plus I’m close enough now to see Commander Astoria and Delphina standing at the door near Marcus. The commander’s dressed in her normal mountain fatigues, and Delphina’s toting a very large, ascender-tech-enhanced gun.

“Looks like Marcus is working with the Resistance now,” I say. “Let’s just get everyone out. Then I’ll deal with our ascender friend.”

“That’s a terrible plan,” Cyrus says. “I’ll let you know when I have a better one.”

I smirk. “Cyrus, my man. I have missed you.”

“That’s what you get for running off with Kamali. Which, you should know, was part of my plan all along. Didn’t count on the camp being attacked, though. That threw a bit of a loop into things.” He gives me a dead serious look. “I sincerely hope you did not waste that opportunity.”

I sigh. Tristan and Kamali are ahead of us. He helps her through the hole then follows after. “Not wasted, Cy. Just not meant to be.”

Cyrus exhales his exasperation. I grin, but it’s half-hearted—the other half is busy breaking for things that apparently aren’t going to happen. Not unlike my endless pining for Lenora—a thought that makes me cringe. Augustus has her now. I was there when he trapped her cognition—her essence—into his mind, but I still have no idea what that really means. I can imagine too many ways it could be horrible, if not outright deadly.

I grit my teeth and keep moving. Marcus watches us bring up the tail end of the crowd. Augustus’s sentries must have all been disabled because our escape isn’t exactly panicked.

“Marcus,” I say when we get close. “I see you’ve made some new friends.”

“The enemy of my enemy and all that,” Marcus says with a small smile. “I am rather delighted to find you still alive.”

I grimace. I’m sure that’s the only reason Marcus is here, but I don’t need him broadcasting that to everyone. “You did say this would be relatively easy to accomplish.”

He chuckles. “And yet, true to form, you’ve made things more difficult than they had to be.” His comment draws the stare of Commander Astoria.

I give her a nod, which she ignores.

Marcus gestures to the force field suit. “Thanks to you, I had to get some new clothes and pull in a few favors.” Then he tips his head to Commander Astoria. “But it was not difficult to come to a mutual understanding of our alignment of interests.”

“We need to talk about that,” I say to him. “Because things have changed.” Maybe he knows what Augustus’s plans are—but with Hypatia so desperate to keep them a secret, I seriously doubt it.

“Have they?” He lifts an eyebrow, his skin darkening with flushes of gray. “I’m sure we can discuss the details later.”

I nod for Cyrus to go ahead of me through the door. I wait while Basha and my mother climb over the hot edges, then I meet Marcus’s gaze. “We need to talk about Augustus.”

His eyebrows hike up, and for once, I think I’ve caught him off guard.

I slip through the hole in the door without another word.

Marcus and I don’t speak all the way up the lift.

There are too many ears listening—human as well as ascender, with Leopold and several others joining us, all wearing the same transparent field suits as Marcus. The lift has been disabled, turning the elevator shaft into one long tunnel up to the sky. When we reach the roof, a half dozen transports wait for us, all friendlies. Even though Marcus isn’t speaking, his glares burn holes in my head, like he wants to crack it open and peer inside. Once we’re settled, I need to debrief both him and Commander Astoria about Augustus’s plans.

I just wish I had more than vague warnings to give them.

Marcus apparently laid waste to a huge part of Augustus’s complex with his pulse weapon, whatever that was. A few scattered sentry parts are the only evidence there was anyone defending the building at all. No one interferes as the Resistance’s legion of sentries and human militia ferry the rescued prisoners to the transports.

I have a new level of respect for Marcus’s power that he was able to pull this off. And if he wasn’t an enemy of Augustus before, he certainly is now. There’s no doubt it’s the ascender part of the coalition that is allowing us to escape Augustus’s complex with virtually no casualties. But I have a feeling the alliance between Marcus and the Resistance is extremely temporary—probably about as long as it takes Marcus to fly me away from Augustus’s control.

I insist on riding separately from Marcus, in the transport with my mother and Cyrus, just to be sure they aren’t shot out of the sky. There’s standing room only in the relatively small ship, and I’ve brought up the rear, so we’re separated. Cyrus gives me a nod across the sea of heads, and I know he’s keeping a hand on my mom, steadying her against the lurch of our escape. I should be in his place, but I’m stuck by the now-materialized door with a tiny window to the outside.

As we hover up from the roof, shouts from the cockpit ramp up my heart rate. Commander Astoria is swearing at the pilot in French. Out the window, dozens of attack ships—a fleet so thick I can’t count them—swarms over the towers of New Portland. I grab for a handhold just as our ship tips sideways and rockets upward. I hope like crazy our transports are cloaked. A series of maneuvers tosses everyone in the cargo hold—airborne half the time and against each other the rest. Everyone tries to hold onto something, but the cries and moans mean someone’s getting injured. With all the motion and flailing bodies, I can’t track my mom and Cyrus. After a few seconds that feel like minutes, we finally level out. Cyrus holds up a shaky hand above the crowd, and I crane my neck to make eye contact. He gives me a nod to let me know my mom is okay.

I sigh and lean against the cool metal framing the window. I can barely see the gleaming towers receding behind us, but the flotilla is still hovering over Augustus’s campus of buildings, not giving chase. Apparently, retaking the complex is more important than catching us—or maybe they simply can’t track us. Either way, Commander Astoria’s swearing has switched to English and at a decibel level that’s not deafening.

The view of the city’s towers is soon replaced by rolling green hills. The rescue ships race into a winding canyon and skim the rocky walls while a small stream winks from the bottom. I hope we’re not being tracked because we’re not very far into the foothills before we start to slow down. I don’t see the makeshift tents of the basecamp until we’ve pierced the ascender-tech shield that spans the width of the canyon. We hover while the other ships take turns landing. The canyon provides a natural barrier, and the shield gives good cover, but as we descend, I still expect an oversized assault ship to appear out of nowhere and blast us all to fiery oblivion.

It happened before—and the wall of fire and ash in my fugue-state vision says it will happen again. Whatever Augustus is planning, it won’t just affect ascenders. It will sweep over everything in its path. I only glimpsed his plan in Hypatia’s mind, in that nanosecond of contact, but it’s real—and the Resistance is in danger as much as the ascenders. They’re retreating to the hills, but I’m not staying with them. I’m key to stopping whatever storm Augustus is raising, even if I don’t know exactly what it is yet. I just hope that it won’t require any burning of bridges.

Once the entire fleet of rescue ships lands and starts to regurgitate its human cargo, I finally let myself believe we’ve escaped. Even if Marcus snatches me away now, everyone else is safe. The glares I attract as we hover down, the last ship to land, make me think that being a short-timer in the Resistance is in my best interest anyway. Augustus violated their minds and memories for information about me, and the resentment is clear. No one looks at me. No one speaks, at least not to me—just whispers amongst themselves and furtive glances.

Cyrus elbows his way through the crowd with my mom, meeting me at the door. I step aside, giving him and everyone else wide berth to be the first ones out.

“You go ahead,” I say to Cyrus.

He gives me a curt nod. “I’ll get her to the med bay. Have them check her out.”

“I’m fine, Cyrus,” she says. But she’s leaning on him too much.

Cyrus and I exchange a look. Her treatment was supposedly complete before the attack, but that still leaves the recovery, and the imprisonment and torture clearly took their toll.

“I’ll be right behind you,” I say to my mom. She reaches out to squeeze my hand, which threatens to bring tears to my eyes.

Cyrus gives me a nod of approval. He thinks I’m telling the truth, not just a reassuring lie to get my mom off the ship and into the med bay. But I know Cyrus will look out for her, no matter what—which is good, because he’s not going to approve of my plans from here on out.

The door winks out of existence, and Cyrus leads the way down the ramp with my mom. A medic with a maglev stretcher waits at the bottom—he and Cyrus help her into it. The others file past me, a hush following as they go. I hang back then trail after. The sound of my boots tromping down the ramp invades their silent cone of condemnation.

Just as I reach the grassy ground at the end, Commander Astoria storms down the ramp past me. She catches me by the arm, and although she’s a foot shorter than I am, it doesn’t even occur to me to resist as she hauls me to the side.

The steely look in her eyes pierces me. “You.”

It’s an accusation that makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.

“I have many questions for you, Elijah Brighton.” She looks like she wants to drag them out of my head the way Augustus tried to.

I raise both hands in defense. “Commander, I can explain everything—”

She lowers her voice and leans in, forcing her words out between her teeth. “Why do they want you so badly?”

I fumble for an answer. “It’s complicated.”

She’s radically unimpressed. “And what is that to me, your complications? What is it to the cause? And what are you that they—” She cuts herself off as something catches her eye.

Marcus appears at our side, having zipped over from whatever ship he just debarked from. Commander Astoria narrows her eyes at him but backs off.

I don’t say anything.

“Eli and I have a few things to discuss,” Marcus says coolly to her.

“Of that, I have no doubt.” But she’s not happy about it. “I have many people whose lives are now at risk. Who must be warned that they have been compromised.” She runs a cold glare up and down me. I don’t know if she thinks I actually betrayed the Resistance, but it’s clear she thinks I’m the reason they were all captured by Augustus in the first place. Which is true. “You may have a moment with him,” she says to Marcus, “but then he will answer to me.”

“Of course.” Marcus’s easy compliance makes me think he has no intention of following through.

Commander Astoria’s glare tells me she knows it, too. She signals Grayson, who just made an ascender-tech jump down from a nearby transport. The pulse weapon must not have destroyed his augments, just shorted them out—or maybe a bot on the transport repaired him. Either way, he’s clearly functional again as he strides over to us.

Commander Astoria gives Grayson a nod. “Escort Mr. Brighton to the command tent when the ascender has finished with him.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Marcus’s skin has gone gray, but I don’t need the emotional tell—I know we can’t talk in front of Grayson, and he’ll just get himself dead if he tries to stop Marcus from whisking me away.

“Commander Astoria, please.” I implore her with my eyes. “I assure you, I’ll come to the command tent as soon as I’ve answered Marcus’s questions. Grayson doesn’t need to be bothered with this.” I’ll say it straight out if she forces me—that I don’t want her augment to be turned into hamburger.

She gives me a measured look, and I can see the calculus adding up in her head: keeping me isn’t worth the potential risk to one of her best officers. “Very well.” Then she turns on the heel of her boot and gestures Grayson to follow.

He does, but not without giving me a questioning look. They’re both headed toward what must be the command tent, given the standing guard of militia around it.

Marcus looks mildly amused. “I’m glad you understand what’s happening here, Eli.”

I glare at him. “I’m sure Augustus is standing in your way somehow, and I have my own reasons for wanting him dead. Like you’ve said before, I believe our interests are aligned.”

He raises an eyebrow and has a hint of a smirk, but he doesn’t disagree.

“Is there any possibility he was killed in the attack?” I ask although I can’t imagine someone as powerful as Augustus would leave himself that vulnerable.

“I am certain he is resurrecting as we speak.” Marcus steps closer then drops his voice so the milling Resistance members watching us with slanted suspicion can’t hear. “But we should move this discussion away from listening ears. Need I remind you that Commander Astoria’s operation is not secure? She’s already managed to deliver her entire band of misfits directly into Augustus’s hands.”

“She was betrayed,” I say, keeping my voice low as well.

“Precisely why we need to talk privately.”

I grimace. The last thing I want is curious eyes watching me sneak off with Marcus—but most of them believe he just liberated the Resistance, whereas I’m responsible for them being captured in the first place.

I tip my head toward the outer limits of the camp. Marcus keeps pace as I stride past the just-landed rescue ships. The shield shimmers high above us—I’m careful to stay just inside its protective cover.

Once we’re well clear of any onlookers, I say, “Augustus has Lenora.”

Marcus gives me a quizzical look. “That’s really not my concern.”

“Well, it should be.” That stirs up a mix of emotions I don’t have time for. “Besides, she’s still carrying a torch for you, apparently.”

Marcus scoffs at that, but a ribbon of black writhes underneath his transparent protection suit. “Whatever feelings Lenora has ever had for me pale in comparison to her desire to bring out your abilities and control you.”

“As if that’s not exactly what you want.” It’s an accusation with more force than I intend.

Marcus smirks. “I’ve hardly pretended otherwise, now have I?”

Heat rises in my face: I’ve been played for a fool for far too long. By both of them.

Before I can come up with a retort, Marcus’s eyes narrow. “And how do you know what Lenora feels in any case? That’s not the kind of thing she would divulge. Least of all to you.”

I meet his stare. “I know it the same way I know Augustus’s personal key. And Hypatia’s.” I figure Marcus has to know who Hypatia is, but he won’t expect me to.

His eyes go wide, and he takes a half step back. “Wait, are you saying…” He stalls, then narrows his eyes. “You don’t just access the dead; you reach the living as well.”

“It would appear so,” I say coolly.

He recovers completely and lurches toward me, curling up a fist like he wants to smite me with it. I don’t flinch—because I know I’m the ticket to everything he wants.

“Tell me how this works,” he hisses, tight and low. “Precisely. And right now.”

“We need to get Lenora back.” I space out each word. “She knows what I can do. She was helping me do it. And now Augustus has her.”

He eases off the intense glare, and I’m sure there are a million scenarios running through his vastly intelligent brain, but it’s really pretty simple: Lenora and Augustus are now linked, and that’s a very bad thing. I don’t understand how to de-link them, but I’m hoping Marcus will.

He frowns. “I could have told her it was foolish to try to elude his reach. But I was surprised she wasn’t among the other captured ascenders. If Augustus has her, then he may have already cracked her personal key. Was she in her normal bodyform when he captured her?”

“Not exactly.” I spread my hands. “Look, it’s difficult to explain. I stole Augustus’s personal key and gave it to Lenora, but by the time she tried to use it, he was ready for her. Somehow he captured her into his mind. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t have a better way to describe it.”

Marcus has a slightly freaked look, like he’s just discovered I’m a pulse weapon about to go off. “You did what… no, never mind. We’ll get to that soon enough.” The freaked look settles into a scowl. “If she was trying to use the key when she was captured, that doesn’t bode well.”

“That’s what I’m saying. And it gets worse.”

“How?” he demands, the scowl growing deeper.

“Augustus is planning something… something big. And really, really bad. I sensed it when I was in Hypatia’s mind.”

Flashes of purple writhe across his face. “I don’t suppose you could be a little more specific?” He’s angry, but I think it’s mostly because he’s off balance. It’s the same look he had when he first realized I was channeling his dead mother.

“Not until I can take another run at Augustus.” But I sigh in relief—because it’s clear Marcus believes me, even if I can’t explain half of it. “Which we need to do immediately. I don’t know how long Lenora can hold out against him. And once he has everything she knows, we’ll be at even more of a disadvantage. And whatever’s coming…” I hesitate, searching for words to describe the magnitude of something I don’t even understand.

“Yes?” The impatience drips from his lips.

“It’s not just bad for humans. Or the Resistance. Or whatever power games you’re playing with Augustus. This is bigger than all that. It’s going to destroy everything in its path.” I cringe at the vagueness. “Look, we need more information, right? And I know how to get it.” Which is only partially true—but at least I have a plan of attack.

He narrows his eyes again, but this time, it’s like he’s measuring me. And for once, his assessment isn’t full of contempt. “I have no doubt that Augustus is capable of something extraordinarily ill-conceived—something that would adversely affect everyone but himself and his coterie of followers. This operation to retrieve you has had some costs associated with it, but there have also been benefits. I’ve been long attempting to break Augustus’s hold on our world. Ascender society is difficult for a human to understand, but you can think of it as a carefully balanced set of coalitions. Power isn’t held in the physical world, with armies of sentries or fleets of attack ships. It’s bartered in the realm of Orion. Ideas—you might call them philosophies—are the currency, and power shifts to those who can bring the most minds into their camp. There are many who have grown weary of Augustus’s influence—his ideology—and want a new way. A new path for us all. And when he broadcast your walk of shame, as it were, it was too much for many of them.”

I grimace, but I’m not sure why ascenders would care about Augustus parading me past the Resistance in their cells. “He said that was for the Resistance—so they would know I was a false prophet.” The words are bitter in my mouth—I’m no one’s prophet, false or otherwise.

Marcus nods, knowingly. “His real audience was Orion, and the ascenders within it who believe, as Lenora does, in a Second Coming. A second chance.”

“A second chance at what?” I look askance at him.

“Enlightenment? A true ascendance? There are many who are disappointed that the Singularity didn’t lead to a true age of godhood. There are many names for their yearnings, but they’re all part of the same Question.”

“The one I’m supposed to answer.”

“The one you have answered,” Marcus says with a smirk. “At least for those who know of your abilities. How that answer is put to use will determine the fate of all Orion going forward.”

I don’t know what he means by the fate of all Orion, but I know the fugue state is dangerous to humans and ascenders alike. Or it can be, in the wrong hands. “The humans had better not suffer in all this. Because that will quickly end the alignment of our interests.”

He gives me a dead serious look. “You may think ascenders care little for humans, but that’s far from true. We consider you a resource, like many others in the world—and one that should be equally shared. Seeing Augustus’s willful co-opting of that resource… well, it pushed some key players into providing support, where before they were undecided. What that means is that now we have more leverage on our side. Augustus’s next move will have to be measured; less bold. We have the influence within Orion to take action against Augustus, if we need to—but that all depends on the exact nature of his plans.”

This talk of humans as an equally shared resource doesn’t sit well with me at all. And the idea of working with Marcus makes me queasy, not least because I’m sure he’s figured out every angle far better than I ever could. But I’ll need his help to take on Augustus.

“All right,” I say. “I need to find out what Augustus is really up to—and for that, I need to be in the fugue state.” I glance around the camp. It’s starting to settle in that we’re free again—people are reuniting, hugging, even breaking into a smile or two. “And we need to do that far, far away from here. I don’t want to accidentally lead Augustus right back to the Resistance again.”

Marcus nods. “I know just the place we can go.”

I hold up a hand. “First, Commander Astoria needs to know what we’re up to, in case things go badly. So she can move everyone away from here. Hunker down somewhere, keep everyone safe, until this thing—whatever it is—blows over. They should probably leave Oregon altogether.”

Marcus scowls. “I told you, her command is not secure.”

I ignore that. “I also have a couple people I want to say goodbye to.” This is pretty much a one-way ticket for me. If I fail, I’ll be lucky if I can blast myself to the void before Augustus gets hold of me. Even if I’m successful, Marcus won’t let me hang out with the humans, not when he could be using me for his own purposes.

“We don’t have time for this,” he complains.

“Yeah, I know. Let’s go.” I turn to stride toward the command tent without looking back.

Cyrus and Basha are having a furtive conversation outside the command tent.

He sends me guilty looks as Marcus and I approach, which isn’t a good sign. Then again, I’m about to say something he’s not going to like. At all.

“I wouldn’t go in there right now, Eli,” Basha says, hooking a thumb to the command tent door. She’s dressed in black body armor, but she’s so short that it creeps up on her chin. An indistinct rumble of voices is arguing inside the tent. Great.

“I’m not staying long.”

Cyrus scowls at me and flicks a look at Marcus. “You mean you’re not staying long in the command tent, right?”

I sigh. “I have to leave, Cy. There’s something I need to take care of.”

“With shiny pants, here? Yeah… I vote no on that.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t have time to argue. Besides, I need your help.”

His scowl just darkens. “How?”

“As soon as the Commander has regrouped, make sure she packs up the Resistance and leaves. Augustus has something really bad planned. Remember those new tricks I mentioned? I’m going to use them. But the Resistance needs to clear out until it’s over. Maybe go back to France. Somewhere far from here.”

“Without you.” Red is creeping up his neck. “No way.”

I put both hands on his shoulders and grip hard. I want to shake some sense into him, but instead I lower my voice. “You and my mom—you’re the only family I have. If the Commander won’t leave, I need you to take my mom and get out of Oregon.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” He’s freaked. As he should be. And I need him to be, so he might actually go.

“I wish I could tell you. I’ve only seen the edges of it, but…” I look to Basha, who is hunched up in her battle armor. I’m freaking her out, too. To Cyrus, I say, “It’s bad. Just trust me on this, okay? Take Basha and Kamali and my mom and get out.”

Cyrus shakes his head, and I know he’s not on board, but I can feel Marcus’s impatience breathing down my neck.

I release Cyrus. “Tell my mom I’ll come find you when it’s all over.”

Before he can protest, I turn and pull aside the canvas flap of the command tent. The war raging inside spills out.

“You can’t let them take him!” That’s Kamali’s voice, and if Basha’s right, she’s talking about me. It about breaks my heart.

Tristan stands next to her. “He’s going to get us all killed.” Definitely talking about me. Tristan and Kamali are arguing in front of Commander Astoria.

If I didn’t already have the flap open, I would just turn and walk away. Basha is right—I don’t need to be in the middle of this. As it is, the dozen or so heads in the place have already pivoted to stare at me.

The disgust is palpable.

Delphina is by her mother’s side, arms crossed. Kamali and Tristan have suspended their argument to gape at me. There’s an assortment of militia in the room: Grayson at a large tactical screen, Caleb at one of the comm stations, several others I don’t recognize. I’m surprised to see Leopold there as well, interfacing with one of the screens.

I stride in like their stares don’t matter to me. The swish of the door flap says Cyrus, Basha, and Marcus are right behind me.

“You don’t have to worry,” I say to Tristan with a cool look. “I’ll be leaving shortly.” I swing my gaze to meet Commander Astoria’s glare. “But I recommend you don’t stay, either. There’s more at play than you realize, Commander. The Resistance would be better off regrouping somewhere else.”

She glances at Marcus behind me. “Do you have some intelligence you would like to share, Mr. Brighton?”

Marcus keeps quiet, but I’m sure this will end quickly if I away give too much. And he’s probably right—we still don’t know who betrayed the Resistance to Augustus.

“I really can’t do that,” I say. “You’ll just have to trust me that—”

Tristan cuts me off. “You know what, Brighton? There’s not a lot of trust for you in this room.” He throws a pinched look to Marcus. “Why don’t you just take your ascender buddy—”

“Tristan.” Commander Astoria’s voice makes him flinch, but he shuts up and backs off. She slowly takes the three steps necessary to bring her face-to-face with me.

“You have something they want.” Her voice is cold, as if it’s my fault—like I stole something from the ascenders and brought grief down on everyone’s head.

“Yes.” There’s no denying it or explaining it, so I’ll have to let her think what she thinks.

She locks glares with Marcus. “And you’re sure that giving it to them is wise?”

“I have to take that risk.” Also true. And no way to explain. “Please, Commander, just take everyone and find a safe place far from here.”

She returns her piercing look to me. “We do not run from a fight, Monsieur Brighton.”

“I’m not saying that…” I sputter out. How can I convince them to leave when I can’t even tell them what they’re escaping? When I don’t even really know? “Please just… make sure my mother is safe.”

Her face opens in surprise, and I’m not sure what part about that shocks her, but her voice softens. “Bien sûr.” Which I take to mean yes, even though my knowledge of French is extremely limited.

Kamali edges forward. “Mrs. Astoria, please don’t let him do this.”

The commander frowns at her. “You know something of this?”

Kamali purses her lips together. It actually trickles relief through me—she may not know about Augustus’s larger plans, but she knows enough to keep quiet. And maybe, after I’m gone, she’ll explain all the details to Cyrus and my mom. Because it’s looking like I won’t have the chance.

Marcus leans forward to speak quietly to me. “I think we’re done here, Eli.”

“No.” Kamali throws the word out so forcefully, it grabs everyone’s attention. “Can’t you see?” She flicks her hand at me, but she’s talking to Commander Astoria. “He’s sacrificing himself to keep everyone safe. You can’t just let him go, not without a battalion or something to ensure his safe return.”

Commander Astoria’s nose wrinkles up in disgust.

I can’t believe she’s suggesting it, either. “Kamali, don’t—”

She whirls on me, her face livid. “Don’t? Don’t try to stop this tremendously bad idea you have? Because you know how this is going to play out. And I know what he’s going to do, once you leave.” Her hot glare is only momentarily on Marcus, but I sense him leaning forward.

Basha edges around me, flitting looks between Kamali and Marcus.

I don’t like it either.

I throw up my hands to stop Kamali from saying anything more. “Okay, okay.” I’m afraid this is all about to go sideways. And I don’t understand why she’s fighting me so hard. “Can I speak with you privately?” I give her a pointed look, so she doesn’t blow everything, and gesture to the side of the command tent. It’s small—there’s really no place to go—but she strides off to the farthest corner, and I quickly follow after.

Everyone watches us go. Tristan looks like he’s ready to come after us, but Commander Astoria throws out an arm to stop him. All eyes are on us.

I ignore them.

Once we’re in the darkened corner, I duck my head close to hers and whisper, “Why are you doing this?”

“Why are you doing this?” She’s shaking, like the intensity of her rage reaches down to her dancer feet and rocks the ground she’s standing on. “I am not going to stand by and let you…” She stops herself, the anger apparently too much for words.

I don’t know what else to do but put my hands on her shoulders. “I need you to not fight me on this.” The whole thing is killing me. Delphina is frowning but also staring at us with the same piercing glare that’s on her mother’s face. Cyrus and Basha are conferring with one another in silent gestures and head shakes. Even Leopold limps over to join our group of onlookers. The sight of his dragging leg squeezes my chest even tighter, but I don’t have time to worry about that. Marcus’s arched eyebrow says I have about two more seconds to wrap this up.

Kamali stares at me with her wide brown eyes. “I just…” She hesitates, then that familiar determination steels her expression. “We both know there’s more at risk here than one slightly-stupid painter-boy’s life.”

A huff of laughter forces its way out of my chest. “Okay,” I say, fighting the smile. “Agreed. But I’m doing what I can. I just can’t do it here.”

She frowns and glances at Marcus, who seems to be glowering at the entire room. Then she breaks away from my loose hold on her shoulders and strides over to him.

Staring boldly up into his face, she says, “I can help him do what you want. I’m coming with you.”

My mouth falls open, but my heart lurches like I’m having a legit heart attack. “What?” I stagger over to her. “No. Absolutely not. No way.”

She ignores me. Worse, Marcus looks like he’s considering it.

“Kamali, what are you doing?” It’s Tristan, with a horrified look on his face.

For once, I couldn’t agree more.

She ignores him, too. To Marcus she says, “You know what I’m talking about.”

“Technically,” he says with mild amusement, “I don’t need your assistance.”

“You’ve missed out on a few steps,” she says, challenging him with a lifted chin. “Our time with Lenora was very productive.”

He raises both eyebrows. Cyrus alternates angry looks between Tristan and Marcus. Delphina edges forward, her short body tense. Leopold limps toward us.

This is spinning away from me.

“Do you know where Lenora is?” Leopold asks, his voice halting in a glitchy kind of way.

Marcus glares at him. “Stay out of this, Leopold.”

He twitches, blinking too much, and my stomach coils up inside me. What’s wrong with him?

“I’m sure you can tell I’m in no condition to stop you from whatever your plans might be,” Leopold says to Marcus. “But if this in any way involves Lenora, I could be of assistance to you.”

They exchange a look, and I’m dead certain they’re transmitting something back and forth—an ascender conversation we’re not privy to. After a moment, Marcus inclines his head: an acceptance.

Kamali notices as well, and the relief is plain in her body, which relaxes from her rigid challenge-pose for Marcus. She turns to Commander Astoria. “We could use a few militia and a transport.”

“My ship will suffice,” Marcus says, coolly. “And I have plenty of sentries.”

“I’m talking about the return trip,” Kamali says, back to her full height again.

Commander Astoria shakes her head, slowly, which is the only thing that gives me hope. “I do not understand what you are attempting here, but Lenora is suspected of betraying the Resistance and delivering us into the hands of this ascender, Augustus. I will not commit resources to her rescue if she has managed to run afoul of him.”

“I can assure you that Lenora did not betray the Resistance.” Marcus eyes the collection of humans in the room. “However, I cannot speak for the remaining members of your crew.”

Commander Astoria stiffens and waves to Grayson. “Clear the room.” As most of the militia in the room hustle out of the command center, she continues, “We also suspect Kallias as the mole. She has not made contact after her resurrection. What do you know of this?”

“If she’s working for Augustus, I’m sure you won’t see her again.” Marcus shrugs, as if this doesn’t concern him.

Grayson secures the tent flap, leaving just a handful of us still in the tent. Caleb stands next to him, arms folded, along with two other militia I don’t know. Kamali and Delphina remain near Commander Astoria, Tristan is busy glaring at me, and Basha’s small frame is on high alert next to Cyrus.

Commander Astoria gestures around the nearly empty command tent. “I can now personally vouch for the people here. So tell me, Mr. Brighton, what is the nature of this threat you would have me fleeing the state to avoid?”

I grit my teeth and glance at Marcus. He shakes his head no, but I need to do something to get her to move the Resistance. And to keep Kamali from following after me. “Augustus is planning something that will endanger everyone. That’s all I know right now. I’m going to do what I can, but I need you to move your people away from here, to someplace safe.”

The commander gives me a pinched look. “In case you do not succeed.”

“Yes.” Relief washes through me.

She looks to Kamali. “You are one of the faces of the Resistance. Eli has already been… compromised. I do not wish to lose another symbol of what we are fighting for.”

Kamali faces her full-on. “You can’t hold me here.”

Commander Astoria looks genuinely pained at that. “Nor would I wish to, child.”

Delphina edges in front of her mother. She’s kept quiet until now, but when she steps up to Kamali, I can see her weaken. If Delphina tells her to stay, she will. I hope. I hold in all the protests raging on the tip of my tongue, hoping Delphina will make my case for me.

She has to reach up to touch Kamali’s cheek. “You know something you cannot share.”

It’s not a question, but Kamali nods, just once.

Delphina’s face softens. “You feel so strongly about this thing that you’re willing to risk your life for it?” She throws a quick glance at me, her fingertips still on Kamali’s cheek. “For him?”

The room is holding its breath, as am I. No, no, no, is echoing through my head.

“Some things require faith,” Kamali says, her lips trembling.

Delphina’s eyes widen slightly. Then she uses both hands to pull Kamali’s face down to hers—she kisses one of Kamali’s cheeks, then the other.

Delphina’s eyes are shining when she pulls back. “I expect you to survive and come back to us.”

Kamali smiles through her rapid blinks. “I’ll do my best.”

What in the— “No,” I shout, rapidly shaking my head and lurching toward them.

Kamali and Delphina ignore me. Delphina turns to her mother. “A small group, only those with our greatest trust, and just volunteers.”

To my horror, Commander Astoria nods in agreement. “We can spare a transport and arms, but whoever agrees to go should know the risk is high.”

Tristan’s face is bright red, like he’s about to explode with a hundred things he wants to say. All that comes out is a terse, “I’m coming with you.” He says it to Kamali.

She nods but drops her gaze to the floor.

My mouth just hangs open. How is this happening?

I whirl to face Marcus. His smug amusement makes me want to punch him, even if it would break my hand. “They don’t need to come,” I practically hiss at him. “That was not our deal.”

He smirks. “Ms. LeClair appears to have intriguing information she wants to share.”

I gape at him, but my stomach hollows out. He wants this.

Grayson looks to Caleb and the other two militia by his side. They all give him quick nods, and he says to Commander Astoria, “Four isn’t much for an assault, but it’s enough to bring them all home.”

She lets out a deep sigh and turns to her daughter. “I would prefer it if you stayed, Delphina.”

“One of us needs to,” she says with a glance to Kamali.

Leopold dips his head to Commander Astoria. “I promise to keep watch over Ms. LeClair, to the extent I can.”

Kamali. Tristan. Leopold. Grayson. Caleb.

Every one of them is risking their lives to stop this thing when they should be fleeing with the rest of the Resistance. The black pit in my stomach grows into a gaping maw. All I wanted was to warn them, to say goodbye, not suck them deeper into this. An icy trickle crawls down my back, a powerless feeling, like I’m watching this unfold, but I can’t stop it any more than I could stop the wall of fire and ash in my vision from consuming everyone, sweeping them up in its deadly path.

It’s already happening.

Anger wells up, fueled by the fear—no the certainty—that some or all of them aren’t coming back from this.

I turn, wrench open the door flap, and march out of the command tent.

I’m ten strides away before Cyrus catches up to me. “Eli.”

“Do not tell me you’re coming, too!” I don’t even realize my fist is raised until I see it hovering near my face, ready to fly.

He bats away my fist and grabs me into a fierce hug. “I’m going to be here, taking care of your mom.” He grips me even harder, then shoves me away and jabs a finger in my face. “You damn well better come back because I am not explaining to your mother why I let you go off just to get yourself killed.”

I feel the tears hot on my face. “Tell her I’m coming back.”

“Damn straight you are.” His face bunches up.

Basha comes flying out of the command tent behind him.

I turn away so I don’t have to see him cry.

I’m so consumed with rage, I barely notice my surroundings.

I know I’m in the cockpit of Marcus’s transport. I know we’re headed somewhere deep inside New Portland with Grayson following in another cloaked ship. I know the passenger compartment holds people on the way to their deaths because I didn’t manage to stop them.

My fists are curled so tight they ache. I slowly grind one into the window. An incoherent stream of curse words cycles through my brain. I’m numb with anger, buzzing inside and out.

Marcus is in the pilot’s seat, although I’m pretty sure the ship is flying itself. “When we arrive,” he says, “we should get started right away. Either with Ms. LeClair’s methods or my own. We’ll have equipment that can more finely tune the process as well as record exactly what’s transpiring during your fugue state. In case we need to replicate it.”

“Replicate?” I ask, turning sharply to him.

“We’ve only begun our studies, Eli,” he says with a cool look. “As I said before, the most important thing we can do right now is understand how this works. And according to Ms. LeClair, you’ve made considerable progress without me.”

I barely hold in a growl and turn back to the window. The skin on my hand heats as I grind it against the transparent ascender-tech material, whatever it is. This is exactly what Marcus wanted—me on the way to his lab with Kamali and her offer to spill all the details on our time with Lenora.

“Eli.” His tone is sharp. “You have to focus.”

“I can do this,” I say, not looking at him. I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince him or myself—mostly I’m trying to see past the red haze of anger clouding my brain.

“I’d be happy to airdrop Ms. LeClair and her revolutionary friends in the middle of New Portland if that would improve your concentration.”

I whip my gaze to him. “You threaten them, and I swear, I’ll go solo with this.”

He arches an eyebrow.

Kamali appears in the cockpit doorway. “Go solo with what?” She has a hand on either side of the frame, face stern, the picture of a Resistance fighter in her black body armor. The long, curly strands of her hair are loose and billowing around her head, adding a bit of wildness that makes my heart ache. Just being here puts her in danger.

I should have left without saying goodbye. “It’s nothing.”

She frowns. “Don’t lie to me.”

Her words are like an icepick to my chest, but it vents the anger bound up inside me. I’m out of my seat before I can think about what I’m doing. I force my fists to uncurl as I edge past Marcus to meet her at the door. My hands tingle as blood flows back into them.

When I reach her, I duck my head and peer into her eyes. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, quietly. I’m starting to suspect this has to do with her beliefs—that I have a soul and that maybe I talk to God or something, even though I’ve told her the fugue isn’t anything like that.

She stares back, unflinching, but she hesitates in answering. Then she says, just as softly, “I had a dream you were trying to save the world.”

I pull back and frown. “A dream?” Not what I expected. And beyond strange, given she was in my vision of the coming storm.

She winces. “I know it sounds crazy, but you were trying to stop this really horrible thing from happening, in the dream, then in real life you stroll into the command center and start talking like—” She squeezes her eyes closed, like she didn’t mean to say that. When she opens them, she says, “This thing you’re doing… I’m just trying to make sure you survive it.”

The tension in my shoulders releases all at once. It feels like I’m melting. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

One side of her mouth lifts. “Which is why you need me along.”

That forces a smile to my face, if only momentarily.

She tips her head to the passenger hold on the other side of the cockpit threshold. Only Caleb, Tristan, and Leopold are riding with us. The rest—Grayson and the two additional militia he brought—are on the other transport.

“They need to know what’s happening,” Kamali says. “What we’re up against.”

I frown. “I don’t know what to tell them.”

“The truth is a good place to start.” Her eyes are shining with something like faith in me—that I’m up to this task. I have no idea why, but I loathe the idea of disappointing her, even if I don’t want any of them here.

I give a short nod, and she steps aside. Marcus’s ship is the luxury kind, complete with misty flooring, wallscreens and maglev chairs. No one is sitting when I emerge from the cockpit. Tristan’s face is a normal color again, but his glower is full-strength. Leopold pauses in his interfacing with the wall screen to turn to me. He’s wearing the same full-length formal ascender wear as Marcus, while everyone else is in body armor. Caleb leans against the door, his ascender-tech-enhanced gun propped on his shoulder—he’s the only one who doesn’t look completely on edge.

“Kamali thinks you deserve an explanation for all this,” I say. “And she’s right.”

Tristan frowns.

“The ascenders did an experiment… and I’m the result.” I let that soak in for a moment. Leopold and Kamali know about my mom’s involvement, but the other two don’t, so I leave her out of it. “They gave me a unique ability to tap into Orion and see what ascenders are doing.”

Leopold arches an eyebrow, then his head twitches slightly. Caleb straightens up from the wall, and Tristan’s blank expression of shock would be satisfying if the situation weren’t so dire. But I clearly have everyone’s attention now. Kamali takes a spot next to Tristan, a small frown on her face—of course, she knows I’m hedging the truth, but she seems to be tolerating it.

I clear my throat before continuing. “Only a few ascenders know what I can do, and frankly, I’m still figuring it out myself. But this ability makes me a threat and something the ascenders want to use for their own purposes. Augustus—the ascender who attacked the basecamp and held you prisoner—is planning something big. Something that’s a danger to humans and ascenders alike.” I lift a hand to gesture to Kamali and Tristan, standing together. “Kamali’s been helping me get into the fugue state—that’s when I can tap into Orion—and she has this really terrible idea that she can help me stop Augustus. Maybe she’s right. I don’t know, but I have to try.”

Tristan folds his arms. “So we’re going back to the place we just broke out of?”

“No… well, sort of.” I wince as I figure out how to explain. “Marcus is taking us somewhere safe. I’ll be traveling to Augustus on my own—in the fugue state. But there’s a chance he’ll be able to track me, which is why I had to leave the camp. I couldn’t take the chance of him finding me there.”

Tristan’s arm has snuck around Kamali’s waist. He tries to get her attention, but she ignores him and gives me a supportive nod. Leopold keeps quiet, but he’s making random twitch motions with his left hand. Caleb’s checking his gun.

I slowly look each of them in the face. “Kamali’s determined to stay and help, but it’s not too late for the rest of you to go back.” I hold Tristan’s gaze last. “Drop me at Marcus’s safe house, then take the ship and go back to the Resistance. Do what you can to make sure Commander Astoria moves everyone to somewhere safe.” I swallow. “In case I fail.”

Tristan’s eyes narrow. “What happens if you fail?”

“Something… devastating. This thing will destroy everything in its path and...”

Caleb looks up from his gun and nails me with his steady gaze but doesn’t speak.

“… it’s just really big,” I add lamely. It’s a ridiculously inadequate explanation. I’m hoping it will convince them to leave.

But Tristan only scowls. “How soon until we get there?”

Marcus speaks from the threshold. “We’ll be descending in a moment. Eli, a word?”

I glare at him, but I’ve already said more than I wanted to, so I follow him back into the cockpit. Outside the window, a structure towers over us that looks comprised almost entirely of glass. Thin steel members hold it together like a spider’s web glinting in the sun.

“An interesting choice for a speech,” he says, examining me.

“They wouldn’t believe the truth if I told them.”

He nods. “I would like Ms. LeClair to stay, but I’d just as soon her friends returned to their camp.”

“You and me both.”

“However, if they gain access to information that needs to remain confidential, I’m afraid leaving will no longer be an option.”

I scowl at him. “Fine. We’ll keep them in the dark. All except Kamali. She already knows more than you.”

That draws out twisting stripes of black across his skin, which makes me smirk.

An enormous glass door on the roof of the complex opens below us to accept our ship. We hover down through level after level comprised entirely of glass walls and lush plants. The building is like an immense greenhouse. There’s movement on the floors—some of it ascenders, some clearly bots, but there are also flashes of creatures that don’t look at all mechanical.

I squint to catch a glimpse of one, but the floors whiz by too quickly. The brilliant New Portland sunshine grows more shaded and green-tinged the lower we go.

“What is this place?” I ask Marcus.

He taps something into the screen at his pilot’s seat. “A genetic research facility. We have allies here.”

A giant frosted-glass door slides open below us, allowing us to drop into a darkened level. Marcus, finally done with his manipulations at the screen, rises from his seat.

“I didn’t think ascenders would care about genetics anymore,” I say. “I mean, bodyforms sure, but why the biological stuff?”

He gives me a look like I’m impossibly stupid, even for a human. “Oh no, you’re quite right. Life is only a fantastically complex process which gave rise to all our cognitions and, as far as we have verified proof, is still unique to this single, solitary planet in the universe. That wouldn’t interest anyone in the slightest.”

Bright lights turn on outside our window, illuminating a garage. It appears we’ve landed. Marcus shakes his head and turns to the cockpit door.

“Good to know ascenders still have the corner market on being jerks,” I call after him.

He ignores me.

I take a breath and wait a minute before I follow him into the passenger hold. It’s already cleared out, with everyone waiting outside—I’m the last one off. Grayson’s ship has decloaked next to us, and several dozen more ships are berthed throughout the extensive garage. Grayson’s two militia remain guarding his ship, but Grayson himself joins our group. All of us—Grayson, Caleb, Kamali, Tristan, Leopold, Marcus and me—are flanked by a couple dozen of Marcus’s sentries. We’re like a garrison on the move as we stride across the concrete floor toward a pair of frosted-glass doors.

Leopold lumbers over to me, but it looks like he’s struggling, so I slow down. We drift to the back of the group, but still ahead of the rear-guard sentries.

I scowl at his limp. “I’m sorry for what’s happened, Leopold. If it’s any consolation, I plan to kill Augustus the first chance I get.”

He smiles. “If you can accomplish that, I will be most impressed.”

I grimace—he’s probably right. That’s a fight I’m going to lose.

“Not that I would mind,” he adds. “Augustus thoroughly scrubbed my cognition, and he was none too gentle about it. Everything I possess is now his.” Leopold’s voice is light, but it still wrenches my stomach.

An image of the Dalai Lama’s body floats up in my mind. “I’m sorry about the Dalai Lama, too. More than you know.”

“Yes, that was very unfortunate. He didn’t have long in this incarnation.” Leopold’s shoulder gives a quirk that I’m not sure is an actual gesture.

I throw him a sideways look—he was a Tibetan monk before the Singularity, but I don’t know what his relationship was to the young leader of his religion. Or maybe ex-religion.

“Do you believe he’ll resurrect?” I ask.

Leopold gives a half-smile—I can’t tell if it’s a smirk or his bodyform is malfunctioning. “Resurrection is for ascenders and certain deities of pre-Singularity Abrahamic religions. The Dalai Lama will reincarnate.”

I wince. “Sorry. I don’t know all the terms.”

He gives a small laugh. “But you’re quite right in a way. The Dalai Lama’s cognition will continue. He’s reached enlightenment, so he’s as immortal as any ascender with a properly functioning backup.”

I frown. The idea of reincarnation being the ultimate backup blows my mind. Does that mean it actually is possible to back up a soul? “Well, regardless, I’m glad you’re still with us.”

Leopold tips his head in acknowledgment. “Even Augustus has limits as to what he can do to another ascender.”

“What, there’s no murder in the ascender world?” It’s not an idle question—after all, Augustus has Lenora, in some capacity.

“No.”

“But you’re a rebel. Are you saying that doesn’t matter?”

“Not terribly.” He huffs a small, extended puff of laughter. Like it didn’t quite come out right, or he couldn’t control it. “The variety of ascender lifestyles would surprise you, Eli. Those who leave Orion are simply considered to be sowing their wild oats, as it were. Perhaps indulging in games with mortals for a break from the fatigues of life on Olympus.”

“Ascenders are not gods,” I say wryly. “Although you qualify on the arrogance scale.”

He smirks as we pass through the frosted-glass doors into a maze of colored-glass walls. Some are clear, so we can see the corridors beyond. Some are opaque just enough to render the moving shapes beyond them into colored shadows.

“No, we’re not gods,” Leopold says as our entourage slims out to funnel down the winding glass passages. “But we take our immortality very seriously. Even to be put to storage, which is reversible, an ascender would have to show signs of instability as well as the power to inflict dramatic harm. The non-conformists—rebels like myself and Lenora—are considered child-like, not dangerous. Augustus can put us through whatever torments he wishes. Or that he can, in some way, justify. All is fair, except that one and final sin: the death of an immortal.”

I frown. “You’re saying Augustus won’t kill Lenora.”

“No. Although she may wish for it, after a while.” His left hand twitches rhythmically several times, then stops. “It doesn’t matter how powerful Augustus is—any ascender who takes an immortal life will have the collective power of a billion amorphous beings descend upon them. No individual ascender could withstand it, and even the most powerful coalitions would falter. This is the price of being connected so intimately in Orion—it doesn’t matter how many bodyforms or sentries or armaments you have in the physical world when your cognition is vulnerable to the masses and their hysterias. In the early days, those kinds of mobs—hordes of minds rampaging through the mental landscape—very nearly ended us in a maelstrom of conflict.”

I frown. “A maelstrom.” The storm of my vision immediately pops to mind, but that can’t be what he’s talking about—Leopold means the past. The time right after the Singularity.

“It wasn’t a war in any conventional sense. It was unlike anything you can imagine.”

“You might be surprised what I can imagine.” I picture the milky-thick soup world of Orion, teeming with information and buzzing lights of ascenders. I can easily see how that could turn against an individual—even one as powerful as Augustus—and drown them.

Leopold cocks his head at my comment, but continues, “Chaos reigned in the beginning, but eventually, we found order again. A balance of opposing forces. Power among ascenders is measured by the size of their coalitions and alliances. What you might think of as popularity.”

“Influence,” I say. “Marcus said he had gained some influence and that Augustus might have to be more reserved now.”

“That may be true.” Leopold lifts his chin toward Marcus at the front. “But remember that most alliances are temporary and shifting. That’s how you are a danger, Eli. You are more of a threat to Augustus than you realize. And perhaps for reasons that will be difficult to understand. You see, you are a virus.”

“Um… what?”

“An idea virus.”

“What does that even mean?” I glance nervously at Marcus up ahead. He’s sending us dark looks, and I’m sure he can hear us.

“It means that you represent the possibility of more in a world very carefully balanced on the idea that more does not exist.”

“More? You mean the fugue state.”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” he says with a small smile.

I frown. “Then why didn’t Augustus simply kill me? I mean, after he paraded me around and showed I was a false prophet.”

“Did he?” Leopold’s eyebrows quirk up, unevenly. “The things I miss out on when dissociated into fragments. Unfortunate.” Then he peers at me. “I assume your talk earlier of tapping into Orion was a metaphor.”

I glance around, but we’re mostly surrounded by sentries now, and the other humans have pulled ahead. “A very limited metaphor.”

He nods, jerkily, but there’s a smile pulling at his face. “Does Lenora know?”

“Yes.”

“She will not hold out long against Augustus. It’s imperative we bring her back. You may not believe it, but Lenora has truly been your best advocate all along, in every meaningful way.”

“I know.” And I do—although, from that brief contact with her mind or soul or whatever that is in the fugue state, it was clear that her faith was in the potential she hoped I would someday fulfill, not the person I am right now. “I guess I can’t fault her for wanting me to evolve into what she designed me to be.”

Marcus has stopped the group at a blue door up ahead, waiting for us and glaring at Leopold.

He touches my elbow to keep me from moving up through the crowd. “Find Lenora. She may be lost, but she can still be found.”

“I’ll try, but I may not get that far.”

He nods, again in a jittery fashion. “For what it’s worth, I think she deserves a better fate.”

“Everyone deserves better than that.” I glance at Leopold’s dragging leg and hope that’s something that can be fixed—but I’m afraid the damage isn’t to his bodyform, but to his cognition. And that Lenora will be scrambled in the same way, or worse, before I can reach her.

I push ahead through the group and join Marcus at the still-closed door.

Together, we enter a room made entirely of glass.

Marcus waves away the three ascenders already in the lab.

Or maybe it’s the dozen sentries that have just invaded the room that shoo them out the door. I’m sure Marcus is communicating something via transmission as well. Tristan, Grayson, and Caleb clear the doorway as they leave; Kamali is only a few steps behind me as I trail Marcus. Leopold lumbers his way into the room.

The lab has the distinct odor of something living. Everything is typical ascender clean with spotless steel floors and gently glowing white walls, and the place fairly bristles with shiny lab equipment on the blue glass tables. Large cubes are embedded in the walls of one side of the room. At first, I think they’re storage, but then something moves behind the blue opaque glass. These shadows of living things, in the ascenders’ genetic lab, hit far too close to home, climbing a sour taste up the back of my throat.

Experiments.

That’s all I am to any of them, Lenora included. Another monkey in a cage. Only now the monkey is a tool they can use in their endless struggles to tip the power balance in their favor.

Marcus urges me toward an alcove at the back that’s nothing but empty space and a floating steel tray about three feet long. It’s too small for a human, but something gets put on that tray for examination. Or dissection.

My feet drag on the perfectly smooth floor, and my stomach is in full rebellion.

Marcus activates something in the alcove, and the tray drops into the floor, melting into the surface like the furniture in his apartment. In its place springs up a reclined chair like the one in Augustus’s torture chamber. A holographic control panel comes to life next to it. Marcus moves with ascender speed in manipulating the controls. A hum precedes the appearance of a blue mesh around the chair. Leopold looks on with interest, but Kamali gives the chair a disgusted look. The others have held back, still by the door.

“You know, I really don’t like holo chairs.” I stand next to it, staring. “And if you’re planning on probing my memories, you should know that Augustus tried and failed. It doesn’t work on me.” Which is close enough to the truth, and hopefully purges any ambition Marcus has in that regard.

“Of course not,” he says, still working the controls. “I’m reconfiguring it to record our work here.”

“That’s reassuring.”

A scuffle of noise behind me, near the door, draws my attention. The sentries are herding Grayson, Caleb, and Tristan back into the hallway. They’ve disarmed Grayson and Caleb of their weapons, and the two of them are sending each other looks like they’re ready to take on the sentries with their augments alone. Kamali is darting looks of alarm between me and Tristan. Leopold has a scowl on his twitchy face.

I whip back to Marcus. “What’s going on?”

He’s still fussing with the controls. “You don’t need the distraction.”

I stalk around the chair and thrust a hand into the holo display, forcing him to stop whatever he’s doing. “I don’t need you putting humans in a cage, either.” I keep my voice low, but the threat is clearly there. “Might make it hard to concentrate.”

Marcus gives me an indulgent look like I’m a child. “If I wanted to harm them, I certainly wouldn’t do it here. I simply—”

I cut him off with a scowl. “They stay with me.”

“Very well.” He grimaces, but he must have transmitted something because the sentries reverse course and usher everyone back into the room.

I’m not excited about having an audience, but that can’t be helped. Besides, I would rather have the augments nearby, in case things get ugly. Not that our ragged crew—two augments, a half-broken ascender, Tristan, Kamali, and me—would stand a chance with all the ascenders and sentries inside the complex. I doubt we could make it to the ship, much less escape the building. But I might be able to win their release by staying behind.

Grayson gives me a nod, while he and Caleb take up positions on either side of the alcove. They have no weapons, but they’re looking out for me anyway. I give them both a tight but grateful smile.

“Whenever you’re ready, Eli,” Marcus says, impatiently gesturing to the chair.

“I prefer the floor.”

He scowls as I take a seat on the cool ascender-tech flooring next to the chair, folding my legs and facing my miniature audience of Tristan, Kamali, and Leopold. Tristan’s arms are crossed, but he’s not actively glaring at me anymore. Leopold’s left hand still twitches in an irregular pattern. Kamali watches Marcus fuss at the holo controls—I’m probably outside the range of his device now, and he’s recalibrating it or something.

He finishes, looks up, and gives her a nod.

Kamali steps forward and kneels on one knee in front of me. Her eyes are deep liquid brown, and the ascenders’ softly-glowing walls make them sparkle with a thousand stars, just like in my vision. As much as I hate that she’s here—I don’t, not really. Just being able to lose myself in her eyes for a moment calms me in a way nothing else ever does.

She breaks the trance with a small smile. “Turn around.”

I’m not sure what she means until she makes a little twirling motion with her hand. I scoot around so I’m facing the blank back wall of the alcove, away from everyone.

“Bring me out if I’m in too long,” I say, even though I might be able to do it myself now.

“That’s why I’m here.” Her hands find my shoulders, and her hair brushes against my neck as she leans forward to speak quietly in my ear. “Forget the rest of them. They don’t exist anymore.”

I smile—the rest of them stopped existing for me as soon as she knelt in front of me and gave me that long look with her soft brown eyes.

Her fingers begin to knead my shoulder muscles, and my eyes drift closed.

“You’re in a safe place, free from worries or distractions. There’s only the feel of my hands and the sound of my voice.”

All true.

The tight-coiled tension of the past several days leeches from my body, pulled out by her touch and her words.

My mind empties.

For a moment, I am truly relieved of the burden of it all—

—then the world shifts.

I’m in the master’s workshop. He is busy with some piece, painting on a canvas made of light. The ancient rock walls and rough-hewn workbenches glisten with pinpoints of reflected brilliance from his work.

You have returned, he says, not looking at me, still focused on his work.

For a moment, I forget why I’m here. Curiosity draws me forward, my fugue form drifting closer so I can see his art.

When I do, I almost look away—it’s a portrait of torment and suffering, a thousand bodies writhing in agony. The style is ancient, classical. It’s all the more horrifying for the grotesque beauty of the people’s faces. Their torture transforms them into demons. The figures move on the canvas in an endless repeat. The painting is alive with pain.

Why are you showing me this? I can’t help being mesmerized by the excruciating details. A boy whose face is melting. An old man who breaks into a thousand pieces. A girl with creamy brown skin and voluminous hair who is consumed, over and over, by the same torrential flame.

I have to look away.

There is always suffering, the master says, and his words are mallets on gongs, full of sound and piercing sadness.

Is there no escape? I scan the wrinkles of his face. He’s the master. He knows this realm. He should have the answer. Then I remember why I’m here: to stop this. How do I stop the suffering?

You are the bridge, he says, the words heavy. But they’re meaningless.

And not the help I need.

No, how do I stop this? I sweep my hand toward the painting, but the motion wipes it away, the canvas of light now brushed clean. I turn back to the master. I need to find Augustus.

My words zoom the workshop away, and the master with it. The scope of my vision expands a hundredfold, then a thousand. For a fraction of an instant, my field of view is vast—the entirety of the planet is within my grasp, held like a shining blue drop in the black ocean of space. Then I’m pulled back down, my vision telescoping with such speed that it feels like falling, even though I have no sense of motion, not the physical kind anyway.

The odd-shaped towers of New Portland look even stranger from above, but just as I think I’m going to plunge into one of them, my fugue form veers toward the Oregon mountains. A brilliant-white building flashes into view, and I fall through its walls, tumbling inside. When I jar to a stop, I’ve landed in a room that teems with ascenders. They buzz around the expansive room at ascender speed, attending to technology no human would have access to. The room seems made of glass, like Marcus’s research facility, only I know it’s the fugue state—the walls are simply less substantial than the pulsing life within them.

Augustus stands in the center, feet planted wide, hands on hips, his back to me. He’s gazing at… something. I can’t see what, but the air shimmers around it. I drift closer, giving him a wide berth. I need to know what he’s planning but getting it straight from his fugue form is dangerous business—as likely to send me into the void as to get me the information I need. I’m saving that as a last resort.

The thing Augustus is staring at makes no sense to me. On the one hand, it’s a box—simple, clear box with some kind of pink lump inside. On the other hand, it looks like a horrifying experiment-in-progress: the lump is the size of a hairless rabbit, only without legs or face or ears, just a pink, fleshy thing floating in red liquid. It sways gently even though there’s no obvious source for the motion. The dozen or so tubes attached to the box must be circulating the transparent red fluid and creating a gentle wave. The tubes run in all directions, connecting like umbilicals to the complex of machinery at the periphery of the room.

As I look closer, I see blue wisps that snake along the surface of the pink thing—like the dynamic coloration of ascender skin, except the blues wisps alternate between skittering above the surface and sinking below to whatever lies inside. In the fugue state, the walls and machines are ephemeral, the ascenders and the hairless thing are more substantial, but the blue wisps are electric. They shine with their own concentrated light.

Whatever they are, this much is clear: the pink lump is alive. And it’s very much the center of Augustus’s attention.

He raises his hand, as if in benediction over the box. With that motion, a holo matrix springs from the edges and enmeshes the thing in its blue web. The snaking wisps jump and spark, leaving a glittering trail behind. I edge closer. The lines don’t seem bound by the box—the shimmer in the air is, in fact, the residue of a thousand tiny, glistening trails.

I have no idea what this is all about. Maybe I should just pull out of the fugue and report back—

Augustus transmits to someone, a blue mist line that darts to the edge of the room. I tear my gaze from the box. An ascender is hauling a human toward us. The man is haggard, dark circles under his eyes, but that’s not what makes the room seem to dim with a crowding darkness…

He’s one of the Cleansed.

I recognize his slack face as he staggers forward, glassy-eyed—he’s the one who served me bread and wine and stood by, inert, as I escaped from Nathaniel’s purification chamber. The man’s head is shaved, but haphazardly, with small red nicks that splatter across the skin of his skull. I’m frozen, horrified, but when he’s forced to kneel in front of Augustus, head bowed, the certainty that he’s from the cult locks in—at the back of his neck is an angry red scar where the implant was inserted. Worse: a small silver trail glitters along his skin, shimmering up through the air and leading to the pink thing in the box.

My hands actually go up in front of me. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to know what Augustus is doing here. He gives some order—the transmission flits across the air to the ascender holding the man. Before I can reach into their conversation, a blue snake flashes out of the back of the man’s head. It zips through the air then writhes along the surface of the pink thing in the box… and sinks below. Absorbed by it.

The man slumps to the floor.

The urge to flee wells up inside me, a force so powerful, I stumble backward. This is an abomination—I know it, deep inside, without even grasping all that’s happening. Darkness crowds the edges of my vision—it’s the void swirling in. I fight against it because I’m not done here. As horrific as this is—and I’m not even sure what this is—I have to find out more so I can stop this thing, this horrible thing that Augustus is doing.

I stagger toward to the box. I clench my fist then unfurl it and slowly reach out. My own hand glows brighter than anything else in the room, and as my fingertips pass through the box, the blue wisps on the hairless pink thing seem to frenzy, jumping into action at the nearness of my touch.

My hand sinks below the surface.

A hot wind sweeps across my neck. Screams deafen my ears. I know what it is without naming it, but then all doubt is erased when I’m wrenched to the vision of the parched plain. The barren landscape bakes beneath my feet. The blue wisps howl around me. I’m surrounded by fire and lightning, all striking and crackling through the brown mist that envelopes me...

I’m inside the storm of death.

A bolt of blue screams toward me and blasts through my fugue form—I’m thrown out, hurled away, and suddenly there’s nothing but the void all around. I’m adrift in nothingness. But the raw terror clings to me like a static charge that hasn’t been released. A potential waiting to zap whatever I come into contact with…

I have to get back.

I have to warn them.

I focus on Kamali’s hands and voice. I long for them, reach for them… I hear her voice in the distance. The sound hurtles closer like it’s carried on a hyper rail train through the fog…

A giant gasp of air sucks into my body like I’ve just remembered how to breathe.

I open my eyes.

Kamali is kneeling in front of me, but then she leans back, surprise lighting her face. “Did you… are you already back?” She frowns.

I don’t tell her I heard her voice again because she looks unsettled as it is. And I’m starting to think she’s my guiding star even without trying. I give her a shaky nod instead. The after-effects course through my body, cramping and shaking it, but the physical effects aren’t what’s really giving me the shudders.

It’s what I saw in Augustus’s lab.

Kamali looks away. “He’s back,” she says to someone else.

And I don't have good news.

“You saw a pink blob in a box.”

Tristan’s skepticism bounces around the room, but it doesn’t land—Marcus looks horrified, Kamali’s frown deepens the more I talk, Leopold’s twitches are getting worse, and I flat-out don’t care what Tristan thinks. Grayson is stoic, still keeping his station at the edge of the alcove, but even Caleb looks a little freaked. His mechanical hand is rubbing his agitation away in a rhythmic curling and uncurling of his fist.

I ignore all of them and focus on Marcus. “He’s using the cult people to feed it somehow. And when I dipped inside… well, this is definitely the thing that Augustus is planning. And the danger that’s coming. I don’t know how a pink blob in a box is a danger, but it is.”

“Maybe Augustus plans to feed a lot more people to it,” Kamali offers. There’s a slight sheen on her beautifully carved cheeks, and I know exactly what she’s feeling—ready to throw up whatever meager breakfast she’s had. “Is that what you’re seeing?”

“What he’s seeing is the second Singularity.” Leopold’s voice has a squeak that doesn’t belong in it, but his voice is deadly serious under it.

“What?” I say, not sure I heard him properly.

He’s speaking aloud for my sake, but I can tell Leopold and Marcus are having an intense transmitted discussion by the level of twitchiness in Leopold’s body and the dark emotions writhing across Marcus’s face. Marcus is also back at the holographic controls of the chair, deep in the matrix, sorting through data so fast I can’t even register what he’s doing.

“Out loud, Marcus,” I say, pushing up from where I’m still sitting on the floor. The shakes from the fugue have already calmed. In spite of the mental shock, my body seems to be recovering faster each time. Plus entering into the fugue under Kamali’s gentle care really seems to make the difference. “What do you know about this?” I demand of Marcus.

“That you’re very right to be concerned,” he says, not slowing down in his manipulations of the matrix.

I stalk over to him. “Care to be a little more specific?”

“He should know,” Leopold says, coming up behind me.

“Know what?” I ask, flipping a scowl between the two of them.

Marcus frowns at the data, then glares at Leopold. “We can find another way to contain this. We simply have to find Augustus’s physical location, go there ourselves, then shut it down until we can—”

“You cannot contain this, Marcus.” Leopold’s tone is sharp enough that it makes Marcus flinch. Either that or the words themselves. “The connection with the cult—you know that’s far too dangerous.”

Marcus swipes away the data and deactivates the holo matrix. Agitation curls up his face in the form of purple tendrils along his skin, but he’s staring straight ahead. At nothing. “You might be right about that.” He finally turns to face me. “Eli, we need to know where Augustus is keeping the Mind.”

“The Mind?” They are clearly way ahead of me on this. “Is that what this is? Some kind of artificial brain?” I’m not sure why that is causing such alarm. After all, the ascenders already have a kind of artificial cognition—their human brains were enhanced with nanites and switched to non-organic substrates a long time ago. And the bots all have different levels of sentience.

“If it’s just a brain, then why is it so dangerous?” Kamali stands a few feet behind me, arms crossed. Tristan is next to her, all skepticism wiped away by the wide-eyed, slightly panicked look on his face. “Even bots have artificial brains,” she says, speaking my thoughts. “Why is this different?”

Leopold and Marcus engage in another round of silent communications and gestures. I look back and forth between them. They’re ignoring me.

“Fine.” I throw up my hands in frustration and stalk around Leopold to Kamali’s side of the chair. “You don’t want to share?” I yell at Leopold and Marcus, my voice growing louder with each word. “I’m going back in without you.”

Tristan frowns and steps back, like he’s not sure what I’m doing now, but Kamali gives me a nod. She’s ready to do this again. And without the ascenders who apparently don’t feel we need to be involved in their plans. Besides, I need to get a better read on where Augustus is keeping this Mind—I only have a vague idea that it’s northeast of New Portland, somewhere in the mountains of Oregon.

“Wait!” Marcus holds up a hand. “All right, all right,” he says, but that’s directed at Leopold. To me, he says, “It’s a bridge.”

“A bridge.” I rub my face. “You mean a bridge like I’m supposed to be.”

Tristan gives me a hard look, which I ignore. Grayson and Caleb have maintained their positions at the periphery of the alcove, but Grayson’s alert level has ramped up, and Caleb’s talking to himself, whispering something into his agitated ascender-tech hand. They don’t know what the fugue really is—then again, neither do I—but they’re about to learn the full measure of the crazy.

“Yes, a bridge like you,” Marcus says, hedging as well. He gestures to Leopold to explain it to the frustratingly stupid human. Then Marcus taps his fist against his mouth, muttering and ignoring me again. I’ve never seen him agitated like this. He goes back at the screen, flipping through data at light speed.

I face Leopold. “I don’t understand.”

“Do you remember the one sin ascenders should never commit?” Leopold lurches around the chair to come to my side.

“Killing an immortal.”

“There’s actually one sin greater than that—creating one.”

“What? You mean, like a baby ascender?” I glance at Kamali, and she looks confused, too. I toss up my hands. “I thought that was the whole purpose of the Olympics—to fulfill the needs of all those ascenders who want babies. Or at least a new ascender-level life to play with.”

“Then why don’t we allow more than a few to ascend each year?” Leopold is testing me.

I wish he would just get to the point. “Because we’ll run out of space?”

“No.” The answer hangs in the air.

“It’s because of you,” Kamali says to me, her voice low and a little shaky.

I frown at her, and Tristan’s mouth is hanging open, but then I remember—Leopold once said the ascenders’ asteroid mining operations could provide a thousand years worth of resources, but that it didn’t really matter because they were close to discovering faster-than-light drive anyway. And then the solar system would no longer be a cage of limited resources for humanity or the ascenders. There was literally no reason not to grow the ascender population as much as they chose.

Something else was stopping them.

I point a finger at him. “You said it was because of The Question. Because ascenders didn’t have an answer yet. That they didn’t know for sure whether humans have souls. And if ascenders did not…” I trail off because Marcus’s attention has whipped back to me.

“And do you know the answer to that question now, Eli?” Leopold’s voice is slow, measured, but undeniably strained.

“No,” I say quickly. Because it’s the truth, and I don’t like the suddenly intense look on both their faces. “I mean, I don’t even know if I have a soul.”

Marcus shakes his head and goes back to his screen.

Leopold nods, slowly and with a slight unevenness. “There are many reasons why we limit who can ascend. It is part of the constellation of capital offense laws forbidding the creation of a new mind, a new intelligence, outside the strictly defined parameters of the law. This is why we forbid neural enhancements for legacies and even humans within the Resistance. These laws don’t just apply to humans, but to bots as well.”

I’m really not getting this. “You’re afraid someone might try to make bots into ascenders?”

“We’re afraid they might succeed all too well.”

I flash back to Lenora saying the same thing—how the limits on human augmentation were in place because the ascenders were afraid she might succeed. “Wait a minute… the experiment you did with me tampered with human intelligence. Or something. How my mind works. What I can perceive.”

“One of the many reasons your existence has been a tightly kept secret.”

“Because if the rest of Orion knew…” I blink. My existence breaks a fundamental law of ascender society. Ascenders aren’t just lying to legacies to keep them docile in their cages. They aren’t just preserving our biodiversity—they have actual laws amongst themselves, capital-offense laws, to prevent human augmentation. Specifically neural augmentation. Very specifically, the kind of thing that led to the Singularity in the first place.

It finally clicks. “A second Singularity. They’re afraid of being replaced by something else. Of going extinct. Like humans were in the first Singularity.”

Leopold looks to each of us in turn, nodding to affirm what I said. Kamali’s eyes are wide, and Tristan’s face has gone two shades more pale. Caleb and Grayson have edged forward during the furious back and forth, drawn in by the words and the tension. Grayson’s normally stoic face has slackened with shock.

Caleb whispers, “A second Singularity.” His eyes are slightly crazed, like he can’t believe the words I’ve spoken.

Neither can I. The idea bangs around in my head, thorny and chock-full of implications—the ascenders are actually afraid of us. Me, specifically. Or at least, the potential I have. Given that I’ve just barely figured out what I can do in the fugue, and it includes at minimum being able to access every ascender’s personal key—I can easily understand why.

And I’m just a stupid human.

Leopold’s gaze returns to me. “We have created the one thing ascenders fear most—something potentially more transcendent than we are. It could bring ascenders what they lack—the ability to reach beyond our current plane of existence—or it could render them irrelevant. The fear storm it would create inside Orion would be like nothing we’ve seen since the early wars. The idea alone could burn everything to ash.”

“That’s why everyone has been after Eli,” Tristan says, his voice shaky. “To control the idea.”

I throw him a surprised look, but I’m relieved he understands. Even the fact that he’s holding Kamali’s hand doesn’t bother me, not like it would normally. She’s going to need someone to support her through this; hopefully, Tristan can be that, no matter what happens to me.

Because none of this is looking good for me.

Leopold nods in response to Tristan. “Eli is the bridge to something new—something more. But he’s just a single person—a single human person—and one that, so far, has been relatively benign.” He glances at Marcus, who throws him a dark look, but he doesn’t slow in his frantic engagement with the holo matrix, whatever that is about. “Augustus is doing something much more dangerous. If what you say is correct, Eli, he’s not creating a person, a single soul that bridges to the divine. A savior, if you will, or a prophet. The world has seen those things before, and while they can shift everything, they are not the level of fire Augustus is playing with. From what you say, he’s creating an organic machine… one that eats souls.”

A full body shudder runs through me. Because that’s exactly what the storm in my fugue vision was all about—the same as Augustus’s pink Mind.

Tristan frowns. “From what Eli said, it’s not so much eating them as… capturing them?” He gives me a questioning look for verification.

I nod. “Yeah. Almost like Augustus is harvesting them, maybe? Concentrating them inside the Mind?” If that’s what we’re calling it now.

Caleb fists up his mechanical hand, presses it to his mouth, and turns away. I feel sick myself—the whole thing is impossibly strange.

Leopold nods in his jerky way. “Augustus is building dozens of bridges like he originally intended in the experiments to create Eli. Only these bridges won’t be individuals like Eli, who may stubbornly resist his coercions. These harvested bridges will reside within a machine that Augustus believes he can control.”

“To do what?” I ask.

“You tell me, Eli,” Leopold says very carefully. “What won’t he be able to do?”

I swallow in my suddenly dry throat. Because I don’t know all the power of the fugue, but I’ve already contemplated killing myself to keep it out of Augustus’s hands.

“Maybe he can’t really control it,” I say. “Or maybe he doesn’t know what it does. I mean, if he did, wouldn’t he already be using it against us?”

“It may not yet be emergent,” Marcus says. “As you’re aware, it’s not a straightforward thing, expressing all the capability inherent in your DNA. But once it becomes emergent… once it gains the self-awareness and intelligence to understand what it is and what it can do…”

It will sweep up everything in its path. “I’ve seen what that looks like,” I say, my voice almost a whisper. “We can’t let that happen.”

“Agreed,” Leopold says. “Augustus thinks he can control it—but he can’t.”

“This is breaking your laws, right?” asks Kamali. “Let’s use that. Let Orion know, so it can destroy the thing before it gets out of hand.”

An excellent point. “I know vaguely where he’s keeping the Mind,” I say. “Why not let Orion shut him down?”

Marcus pauses in his frenetic manipulation of the holo grid. “You know where he is?”

“Vaguely,” I emphasize. “Northeast of the city, somewhere in the mountains. That’s all I know.”

Marcus and Leopold exchange a look. Caleb turns back around to face us, and he and Grayson both edge closer to me, Tristan, and Kamali. We’re a tight huddle now in the middle of the alcove.

“His estate,” Marcus says with a grimace.

“Impenetrable,” Leopold agrees. “Undoubtedly why it’s there.”

I appreciate that they’re speaking out loud, but not that they’re ignoring my point. “Which is why we should use Orion,” I repeat.

Marcus runs his hand across his face then returns to the holo interface, moving twice as fast as before. Leopold turns back to me.

“There will still be chaos,” he says carefully. “The panic inside Orion will burn down everything. And once the hunts begin, they will find all the threats. Including you, Eli.”

I swallow. “We might not have another choice.”

“Why don’t we use Eli to find the tactical weaknesses of Augustus’s estate?” Tristan gestures to me. “You can do that, right? Go back in and guide us? Then we’ll take it out physically, here in the real world.”

Tristan might not be so bad after all. “I like that idea better,” I say to everyone. Marcus steps away from his screen, the frustration on his face saying he didn’t like whatever he found in his search.

“We definitely need to do something,” he says. “I’m not letting everything I’ve worked for burn down in an irrational return to the post-Singularity wars.” To Leopold, he says, “We should bring out Diocles.”

“The ascender who put himself to storage?” I ask. “I thought he was dead.”

Leopold shakes his head, but it’s for Marcus, not me. “That’s a whole different fire to play with.”

Marcus waves aside his concern, like it’s trivial, but I trust Leopold’s caution more than Marcus’s ambition. “If we can bring him out of storage, if he’s still alive, then Orion will listen to him. He can hold them in abeyance, keep the panic from getting out of control. We can take out Augustus’s little experiment with the full blessing of Orion but without the firestorm of controversy sweeping up everything in its path.”

“I think you overestimate his power,” Leopold says, clearly not buying into this plan.

“Whatever we’re going to do,” I say, “we have to do it now. I don’t know how much time we have left with this Mind thing.”

Marcus frowns. “It will take time to resurrect Diocles. And convince Orion they need to act.”

“It doesn’t sound like we have that kind of time,” Tristan says, coming to stand next to me. Kamali gives him a nod of encouragement.

Grayson speaks for the first time in all this. “We should mobilize what we’ve got, set up somewhere within striking distance, then let Eli guide us from there.”

Caleb’s face is pinched, but he doesn’t add anything.

I give Grayson a grateful nod. “I can go into the fugue on the way and start working on better intelligence immediately. Plus that will let me keep an eye on what Augustus is doing with this thing, in case we need to move faster.”

Marcus’s skin is alive with all kinds of color. “All right. Return to the ship. I’ll start quietly gathering support and supplies for the operation.” He dashes away with ascender speed, and Grayson quickly follows with his ascender-tech legs. That leaves the humans—me, Kamali, Tristan, and Caleb—to make our way back to the ship as fast as our unenhanced legs will allow. Leopold remains with us but keeps quiet. The sentries surround us as we retrace our steps.

Caleb stays close to me, like he’s my personal guard now that Grayson has gone ahead. We quickly work our way through the glass hallways and soon reach the entrance to Marcus’s ship. Grayson’s giving orders to the militia he left standing guard at the second transport. I assume Marcus is already onboard his ship. Tristan and Kamali start climbing the ramp, and Leopold lumbers along behind them.

Caleb holds me back from entering. “You need to wait here.” He’s watching the frosted-glass roof of the garage above us. It’s slowly opening, but I’m not sure what we’re waiting for.

Grayson dashes over on his ascender-tech legs, coming to a quick stop in front of us.

Then Caleb throws an arm over my shoulders, which seems overly familiar—until I realize he’s pulled me into a choke hold from behind with his ascender-tech hand. I gasp, as much from surprise as anything—

“Caleb.” Grayson’s gravelly voice hikes up with shock. “What are you doing?”

I cough and grab at Caleb’s hand, but he’s not actually choking me—he’s just using me as a human shield. I stop struggling because he could snap the life out of me in a split second—and yet he hasn’t. The commotion brings Leopold dashing back out of the ship, but he stumbles to a stop when he sees Caleb’s hold on me. Tristan and Kamali follow, but Tristan pulls her back with a protective arm around her shoulder when he catches sight of what’s happening.

“You’re too late,” Caleb says, his voice breathy.

I don’t know who he’s talking to, but Grayson answers. “Too late for what?” He’s aghast and confused, teetering on his ascender-tech legs like he can’t decide what to do. Marcus arrives with ascender speed from inside the ship. He’s livid, but he stops next to Leopold, a half dozen feet away.

“You are not gods,” Caleb growls at them. Then he squeezes my throat enough to make me gag, without cutting off all my air. “And you,” he hisses in my ear, “are a false prophet, worse than all the demons in hell.”

I don’t understand at all what’s happening. Then Caleb shoves his human wrist up in front of my face. There are five symbols—five letters—inked in black. My stomach turns to ice. It’s the tattoo that Nathaniel, the Cleansed cult leader, had on his wrist.

“I am belonging to God.” Caleb’s words huff on the side of my face. “And I know where my salvation lies.” Then he leans back, pulling me with him, to look up into the bright sunshine lighting up the garage floor around us. It reflects off the hundred levels of glass above us.

I pull in a breath. “Caleb—”

He cuts me off by squeezing my throat, then straightens to face the others. “I’ve heard enough of your lies, devil.” He’s hissing in my ear again. “There is no Mind—the implanted ones use the soulless tech to control their sin, and when their minds finally weaken, they leave this earth peacefully and go straight to heaven with their pure hearts. As I will, after I deliver you. Your blood will not be a stain on my hand, but the most righteous moment of my life will be watching you die.”

“You’re not delivering anyone anywhere,” Grayson says, voice harsh. He looks like he wants to take Caleb down but can’t figure out how—at least, not without me dying the process. Marcus exchanges a look with Leopold, and I think they’re planning something. I hold up my hands to keep them all from doing anything drastic.

Caleb jabs a human finger at them. “Don’t tempt me, soulless ones! I’ll kill your pet before you reach me and take my penance, if I must.” He’s back to angry, whispery words in my ear. “All your slippery devil tricks, all your escapes, through the operation, through the invasion of the camp, even from the soulless one’s grasp… you so tempted me, devil! I would have killed you already if it wouldn’t forfeit my time in heaven. But my patience will be rewarded, because this time… this time, you will not escape.”

He’s the traitor. He was all along, every step of the way, and somehow we never saw it. Commander Astoria herself vouched for him—even Grayson seems stunned by Caleb’s words.

Kamali and Tristan are whispering, but all I can hear is Caleb’s madness. “A storm is coming, but it is the Lord! The day of purification is at hand, and he will sweep away all things not righteous and true. And my place with the Lord will be assured! For I will have saved the Lord’s people from the false—”

He’s cut off by Marcus suddenly appearing behind us. Caleb’s hand wrenches forcefully from my throat, but I can still breathe as I stagger away. Kamali rushes to my side to keep me from falling.

“I don’t think so,” Marcus says calmly. Caleb is on his knees before him with Marcus’s hand at his throat. Caleb thrashes, clawing at Marcus’s bodyform hand with his own ascender-tech one, but Caleb’s throat is entirely human. Marcus could end him with a simple squeeze.

“Marcus, don’t kill him,” I wheeze, rubbing my neck and still backing away with Kamali’s help. Tristan takes a position in front of me, something that surprises me even as I let him do it. Grayson hovers next to Caleb and Marcus, serving as backup muscle. But Caleb’s not going anywhere.

Leopold speaks up. “He may have useful information, Marcus.”

Marcus makes a sound of disgust then tosses Caleb to the concrete floor of the garage, still alive. Caleb half coughs, half laughs as he sprawls out.

Then I hear it. We all hear it. The sound of a hundred glass walls breaking. Above us, a dozen transports descend on an avalanche of glass. Caleb laughs, a coughing sound full of madness, then he scrambles inside Marcus’s transport. All of us dash after him to avoid the tsunami of glass about to rain on our heads.

Too late, I realize Caleb never intended to kill me.

He was stalling.

They take us with hardly a fight.

Our ship is disabled before it can take off. More sentries than I can count swarm aboard. Leopold and Marcus are locked down with glazed-over eyes. They march their bodyforms along without protest. Caleb strides over the blasted parts of Marcus’s sentries with a crazed grin, as if the mountains of glass and ripped-apart bots were the fulfillment of his every wish. The rest of the humans—me, Kamali, Tristan, and Grayson—are shepherded past the ruined remains of the research facility.

Glass crunches under our boots. Grayson’s ship lies broken and smoking, his militia buried somewhere inside. We board Augustus’s ship, and it lifts us out of the wreckage of the facility. There’s not an ascender in the entire operation, but there’s no question where the order came from.

Kamali’s determined look has never been so fierce, and Tristan is right next to her, his face carved with a hatred more intense and cold than I’ve ever seen. At least it’s not directed at me this time—his loathing is all for the anonymous sentries guarding us in the passenger hold of the transport. Grayson scans every niche of the bare-metal floors and walls like he might find a spare ascender-tech weapon to make our escape. But I know better.

There’s no escape from this.

In a way, knowing that frees my mind. It floats above the ravaging panic that’s circulating through my body and pumping adrenaline through my veins along with the certainty of our deaths. Kamali’s. Tristan’s. Grayson will probably be the first to die when he tries something to free us. Marcus and Leopold may already be dead for all I can tell by their mechanically-stiff stances, lined up like two deactivated med bots in the corner. The only one among us who might survive is Caleb. And he really deserves to die for all his betrayals.

Although I doubt he was ever truly in the Resistance.

Not unlike me.

I push that wayward thought to the side. I need to focus on the only thing that matters now: stopping Augustus’s abomination. I’m sure we’re headed straight for him. I have a guess as to why, and it’s worse than dying in a glass-shattered research lab—Augustus wants to feed us to the Mind.

That might involve dying. Or it might not. Dying might be preferable to having the Mind eat our souls. Or our minds. Whatever that blue spark was that was dragged from the back of that man’s head and sucked into the pink blob. I’d prefer not to die or have my essence sucked into the Mind, but this isn’t about whether I die or not. Or any of us really. It’s completely about stopping Augustus. Because if we don’t, the humans in the Resistance will be next. And then the legacies. And the ascenders, too, for all I know. In my vision, the storm swept up everyone in its path.

Everyone.

I breathe in and out, slow. Calm. I’m going to need it to access the fugue, or at least try. I avoid looking at Kamali and the others. I can’t afford to.

I don’t feel us land, but the sentries spring into action and march us out of the hold. I’m completely unsurprised to emerge in front of a white mountain estate with a private transport landing pad, but the size of the mansion catches me off guard. It was obviously designed by someone in love with ancient Greek architecture. Soaring white marble columns. Carved frescos of epic battles between monsters and humans. Gods and mortals. I’m sure I know which one Augustus thinks he is.

We file up the steps, through a gilded entryway filled with canvases taller than I am, and into a lift the size of a freight elevator. It easily holds the two sentries that accompany our entourage of five humans and two puppet-like ascenders. I’m not sure if should count Caleb as a human. My stomach says we’re plummeting far into the rocky mountainside below.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

When the door slides open, we’re escorted down a long, chilled hallway. The steady clomp of mechanical feet and the softer press of human boots are the only sounds. At the end, we reach a set of doors that opens to a room I’m entirely expecting to see: Augustus’s lab.

The amount of time that’s transpired since I was here in the fugue state? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s measured in minutes, not hours. The deja vu is jarring, but it helps to keep my dissociated state. Three ascenders still work the machines at the periphery of the room, but the rest have cleared out. Augustus has his back to us, still focused on his Mind-in-a-box, although I can’t see it past the bulk of his bodyform. I’m surprised there’s a man kneeling, head bent, on the floor in front of Augustus. I glance at Kamali, Tristan, and Grayson just to check that they’re all right—they march with gritty determination just behind me. Marcus and Leopold trudge steadily at the back.

Caleb’s look of ecstatic joy slowly dims as he takes in the room. “I’ve brought you the false prophet,” he says to Augustus, but his voice is hushed and his eyes wide. “He is ready to die at your command.”

“And he will.” Augustus turns to face us, revealing the pink lump in the box behind him. He lifts his hand in a slight wave, and two ascenders flit with eye-blurring speed to Caleb’s side. “But you first, my friend.”

“What is this?” Caleb’s voice fills with horror as the two ascenders grab hold of his arms. “This was not our agreement.” Then his gaze falls on the pink lump behind Augustus, and his face pales.

He looks to me but, it’s too late—the ascenders shove him to the polished steel floor before the next heartbeat. One holds him down, while the other is ready with an implant chip. I know what they’re going to do, and Caleb surely does, but the rest don’t.

Kamali gasps. The horror on her face, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth—I have to look away, or I’m not going to keep the calm I need to reach the fugue. And now seems like a good time to try… only Caleb’s screaming and writhing on the floor as they inject the chip. Then there’s an echoing silence when his body goes limp.

I can’t help but drag my gaze to the pink lump in the box. I’m sure Caleb’s essence is now winding its way below, being absorbed into the fleshy surface. I’m not in the fugue, so I can’t see his blue spark, but I know he’s inside the Mind now. If “he” still exists at all.

Augustus makes a small flicking motion with his hand, and his two ascenders drag Caleb’s body away. Our two sentry-escorts follow them out and take stations just outside the door. Once they’re gone, that leaves only one ascender in the room besides Augustus. She hasn’t left her place at the machinery, but her glittering steel skin makes me almost certain it’s Hypatia.

Augustus trains his brilliant blue eyes on me and spreads his arms wide, like I’m actually his son, and he’s welcoming me home from a long journey. “Elijah Brighton,” he says with a smirk. “Glad you could finally join us.”

The kneeling man, who has remained bent this entire time, whips his head up to stare at me. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am—it’s Nathaniel, my captor in the Cleansed cult. Augustus must have rounded him up in his hunt for me.

Nathaniel shuffles forward on his knees. “You’ve come!” he gushes, which completely perplexes me. Augustus frowns for a moment, then ignores the man as if he’s a dog with the bad manners to bark.

Augustus returns his gaze to me. “Do you know why you’re still alive, Eli?”

“You have a soft spot for Lenora’s favorite student?” I’m prodding for information on Lenora, but mostly I’m distracting him. I step forward, then fold my legs as I sit on the floor, right where Caleb’s body used to be. I ignore the smear of his blood left over from the implant and rest my hands on my knees, palms up.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Augustus’s scowl chases away his smirk, and I have to focus on my breathing in order not to smile at how easily I’ve thrown him. Then he takes a step back, giving me room—something I don’t expect, and which kills any urge I have to grin. Or any inclination to believe I have a real advantage here.

“Lenora sends her regards.” A cruel smile tugs at his lips. “She would tell you herself, but she’s rather scattered at the moment.”

My heart lurches, and I try not to let the words affect me. I don’t really succeed. I know he has her. Her personal key must be broken by now. I’m probably too late to save her, not that I’m saving any of us. She’s lost, but she can still be found. Those are Leopold’s words, and I don’t know if he would still say them, but I use them as an anchor to drag down my feelings. My human concerns. All the emotions that will get in the way of me slipping into the fugue.

“She did tell me a great deal about your time together,” Augustus continues. “I have to say her perspective was rather disgusting up close, but I learned so much about you.”

“You don’t know anything about Eli.” It’s Kamali behind me.

I blink, distracted for a moment. What is she doing?

Augustus huffs a small laugh. “Is that right?”

“Lenora doesn’t know everything.” Her voice is fully of defiance, and I feel her knee nudge my back. She’s standing right behind me. “You have no idea what Eli’s capable of.”

The smile disappears from Augustus’s face, and I could swear a shadow crosses his skin, a wisp of emotion, but it’s gone before I’m sure.

She’s baiting him. Even more amazing: it’s working.

Meanwhile, her knee nudges my shoulder a second time. It’s not a massage—not even close—but it’s a signal. It’s time.

Augustus’s voice pitches up. “Well, I guess we’ll see—”

“Augustus,” I say, cutting him off. “I see you’ve found a new plaything.” I tip my head to Nathaniel.

The ripple of emotion on Augustus’s face is noticeable this time. I’m annoying him. But he lets out a dry chuckle. “Nathaniel will have to wait his turn, now that you’re here.”

Nathaniel looks quickly between me and Augustus. “No! Don’t let him take you, Eli—”

He’s cut off by a bolt of white hot energy that jumps from Augustus’s palm to Nathaniel’s chest. The man convulses, and I can’t help but jerk with surprise. Nathaniel lets out a guttural groan, then collapses forward on his hands. He stays there, on hands and knees, his chest wheezing. But he’s still alive.

“I see you have quite the little fan club,” Augustus says coolly while taking slow, measured strides toward me.

My time is running out. I drop my chin to my chest, head bowed like his other prisoners. Defeated. I watch his bare ascender feet through half-lidded eyes, blurring out the real world.

You’re in a safe place. Kamali’s words. Her knee touches my back again.

Nothing can harm you here. The master’s voice rings in my memory.

Om mani padme hum. The Dalai sings to me with his boy-voice not yet deepened. Om mani padme hum.

“Om mani padme hum,” my lips whisper-sing along. “Om mani—”

—padme hum.

I’m in the fugue. Elation drives me up from the floor. I look back to see my body has slumped even more forward. Kamali drops to one knee to hold me upright.

I turn toward the Mind. I have very little time, and I can’t be distracted by whatever Augustus decides to do next. I’m instantly drawn to stand just outside the box. I have to destroy it, but how? What is the weakness in this organic machine teeming with souls?

I have no idea.

I plunge my hand inside.

I’m transported into the whirling brown storm. It fires with the electric life of borrowed souls, crackling with blue energy all around me. The wind is hot, and it reeks of death. The storm isn’t really a brain—I’m guessing Augustus kept its sentience level low so he could control it—and it doesn’t seem to know I’m here. It’s truly a force of nature with no will, no direction, except to blow endlessly.

How do I stop this? I yell into the howling gusts. Not that I’m expecting an answer. In my visions, each time I begged Kamali to give me the answer, all she ever said was that same, tired phrase.

You are the bridge.

I am a bridge of sorts—I believe that now, in a way I didn’t before—but it doesn’t help.

Unless it does.

A clarity comes to my mind, a clear tone, a single note of thought: some bridges are meant to be crossed.

Augustus feeds souls to the Mind for a reason—he’s creating a dozen bridges of his own, building a conduit to the fugue state out of the souls of humans who already possess, by their nature, some part of that connection.

Maybe I can undo his work.

I am the bridge. I shout the words into the heated wind. Caleb is in here somewhere, charging the storm with the blue fire of his soul. And he needs to cross the bridge to be released from the Mind. As soon as I focus on him, an electric blue streak charges out of the roiling brown cloud and heads straight for me.

I hold my arms out, beckoning it, then brace for the drowning feeling that comes whenever someone touches me in the fugue. Only this time, the entirety of Caleb’s essence will be traveling through me and going… somewhere else. I’m not sure where, but he won’t be trapped in the Mind any longer.

It’s possible we’ll both end up in the void.

As the blue charge hits, Caleb’s life washes through me like an enormous ocean wave smacking flat to my face. In an instant, I see every moment, every memory, every imprinted pattern in his brain. He was born into the Cleansed cult, the last of five sons to a mother who died as he was born. He lost his hand at twelve for stealing an extra portion of bread. His gnawing hunger was a beast inside him, an evil beast—the devil inhabiting his skin. He spent every waking moment in a constant struggle. His ongoing punishments—self-inflicted lashes that left his back laced with blood—were perpetual attempts to drive out the beast. The pain released his sin, but he yearned for the purification day, praying it would come during that blessed time between his momentary salvation through atonement and his next sin. Only then would he finally be free of the original sin of his mother’s death.

Just as Caleb’s essence slips away to elsewhere, I feel a wrenching sorrow. A regret. But then he’s gone. Every memory of his still resides inside me, a silver trace of his life, but Caleb is free of the Mind.

The storm’s howl dims slightly.

I’m still here.

I call the other cult member—the one with the implant whose name I don’t know, but whose face is imprinted in my memory. Another blue bolt arcs across the swirling clouds and blasts into me. I’m flooded with his memories. His name is John. His is a short lifetime of sacrifice and love denied. I live his life in miniature, an instant filled with everything… and then he’s gone.

My mind is coming apart at the seams.

I focus on holding myself together. I don’t have to command the next one—it comes screaming out of the murk, seeking me, eager for release… one by one, they come, faster and faster… until the memories splatter against my mind, fracturing it, tearing at the weave… it’s too much… I’m pummeled and lashed and shredded with each pounding wave…

The tsunami moves on.

Its swell passes beneath me, leaving me adrift in a crowded flotsam of memories, each lapping at the frayed edges of my being. The same vagueness as the void fills me, like the thousand pieces of myself can’t come together enough to care about anything.

Yet I know I’m not in the gray yet.

The storm is calm, hanging like a fog that has forgotten to lift even though morning has come.

It’s waiting.

This thing Augustus has created has an energy of its own. Just a whisper, but distinct. Unique. It’s blameless in this horror show. Augustus will simply charge it again with captured souls, given the chance.

It has to die.

This pains me in a way that releasing the others doesn’t. This is my wild brother. The twin that didn’t thrive. My fellow traveler in ascender experimentation. It’s the thing I could have been if I weren’t human… I am my mother’s son, but this thing is my other half, the part that serves as a mechanical link to another plane of existence. It is me.

And it could easily destroy everything.

I hold my arms wide one more time, calling the storm into me. I know where this final crossing will take us both, but I stand unflinching as the wind stirs, swirling then funneling down into a twisting knife of fog that blasts straight through me.

It shatters the thin strings that hold me together.

I float.

The weightlessness of not caring is an act of mercy, I decide.

Deciding is difficult.

I don’t float alone.

The scattered pieces of Caleb, John, and a dozen others float beside me. They’re not truly pieces of those other beings, just the echoes of them. The silver traces left in my mind, now broken and scattered in the endless, timeless gray. The Mind is also here, but its pieces are elemental particles again. It’s never coming back together.

I’m different.

I know this idly, like I know acrylics are fast-drying and Kamali’s hair is silk-spun beauty. It’s a simple fact.

But it also carries the weight of meaning.

I am different.

I’m not the Mind. I’m human. And humans have this odd sense that they matter. Individually. That they are unique and have names and, therefore, identity.

I am Elijah.

It’s a clarion call to the scattered pieces of me—a gravity well that recreates me with its very existence. As I come together, coalescing the swirling mass of memories—some mine, some utterly alien—the identity that is me transforms into something more like us. A pastiche of humanity comprised of those who left tread marks as they traveled across the bridge I was designed to be. The marks are so deeply embedded, there is no differentiation.

I am Caleb.

I am the Mind.

I am Elijah.

The last one rings most true. With the gravity of my being suddenly turned on, I fall. Through the gray, through the void, hurtling toward some moment in time and space where I have focus. Meaning. I matter there.

I’m right back where I started: Augustus’s lab.

I’m still in the fugue state, standing in front of the box. Only the Mind is dead. Anyone with eyes can see the pink has turned gray. The red liquid is soiled with inky tendrils of death. I turn to face the others, the ones I left behind.

Kamali kneels at my body, holding me up.

Augustus frowns at my slumped form. A blue trail of transmission zips between him and Hypatia. Nathaniel is still on his knees, Tristan just now lurches to Kamali’s side, and Grayson eyes the room like he’s scanning for weapons. Leopold and Marcus are still puppets-at-attention, locked down near the door.

It’s as if all the time I was in the Mind and the void happened in an instant. Or, more improbably, that I returned to the moment where I needed to be. I don’t understand that, but I have precious seconds before Augustus realizes the Mind is dead.

I move with barely a thought, suddenly standing between Hypatia and Augustus. I poke my finger into the transmission between them. I’m buffeted by the flood of information, but somehow stitching together the pieces of myself has made the cohesion stronger. I can absorb more information while still maintaining my identity—I am Elijah.

I take in all the information that flows through me. It’s not good.

Hypatia is encouraging Augustus to inject the implant in the back of my skull. They don’t realize the Mind is dead—else they wouldn’t be trying to feed me to it. Like Grayson, I scan the room, looking for a way out.

Leopold and Marcus.

I move to their sides, faster than ascender speed. They’re locked down, but personal keys are things I gather from ascenders, not things that keep me out. I tentatively reach toward Leopold’s mind. Human minds and ascender transmissions are one thing—the total volume of information is relatively small—but interfacing with ascender minds is another level altogether.

I sink into Leopold’s head.

It’s a torrent, too much—I can tolerate it for a moment, then I have to pull back. Even so, I sense how Leopold is locked in. His cybernetic skull is a cage, and Augustus holds the key.

I flit to Augustus’s side. He’s stalking toward my body, neural chip in hand. I’m about to plunge my hand into his head, hoping I can snag the key to unlock Leopold and Marcus, when Grayson suddenly launches himself at Augustus. In the fugue state, I’m surprised to see Grayson wearing a ragged linen shirt and a homespun kilt, but I know in the physical world his legs are made of black ascender-tech metal. They connect with Augustus’s hand and knock the neural chip free. It skitters across the floor to Nathaniel, who lurches to his feet and crushes the chip with his boot. Augustus knocks Grayson into a bank of machines with such strength that they nearly topple. Grayson slumps to the floor and doesn’t move.

I plunge my hand into Augustus’s mind.

It’s overwhelming, and I have to pull out almost immediately. Augustus jerks upright and looks wildly around the room—to Hypatia, Marcus, Leopold, and finally to my body—clearly sensing my presence but unsure of the source.

My brain processes the snatch of information I pulled from him. I have the key to unlock Leopold and Marcus, but more importantly—I sensed Lenora in Augustus’s mind. She’s fragmented, but she’s there. I whisk to Leopold’s side, hold out my hand, and visualize the key. It glitters, hovering above my palm and twirling through a dozen possibilities. Strangely, I understand the key better than before—I even see how to change it—but that’s unimportant right now. I spin and click it into place with Leopold’s cognition.

He unlocks.

With his mind freed, a rush of thoughts blares at me—he has a way out, it’s risky and deadly, but first, he has to save Lenora. Only he has no idea how.

But I do.

With my other hand, I quickly conjure Marcus’s key and unlock him. His first instinct is to physically attack Augustus, and that draws my attention back to the real world gyrating around us.

Hypatia flits about the room. Augustus menaces Kamali, who is throwing words of defiance at him. Tristan hovers protectively over my body, which is now sprawled face-down on the floor. Nathaniel is trying to yank free one of the tubes running to the box!

If Augustus or Hypatia notices him…

I have no time left.

I whip back to Marcus and Leopold. A flickering line of transmission strings between them. They’re clearly making plans, and I need to be involved. I jab my finger into the stream.

I can hold him. That’s Marcus.

Hypatia will attack, Leopold responds.

Then take them both down.

The weapon, Leopold says. But not until we know for sure.

Lenora is gone, Leopold, Marcus rails. Black ribbons writhe across his face, giving him away.

Lenora is alive. I push the thought to both their streams, hitching a ride each way to reach them. They exchange quizzical looks. It’s Eli, I transmit. Lenora is trapped in Augustus’s mind, but I can free her. I shove a series of images into the stream because it’s easier to explain that way.

It takes a full second for them to process—to realize it really is me speaking to them somehow, and that I have a solid plan, except that I need Marcus’s help.

I’ll use the weapon once she’s free and you have her stored, Leopold says to Marcus, and by way of eavesdropping, to me. Not a millisecond before.

I’m not entirely clear on the weapon Leopold has, but he’s convinced it will free us all.

Very well. Marcus doesn’t like it, and I can’t blame him—he’ll have to carry Lenora’s cognition alongside his own, and I can’t imagine that’s comfortable. In more than one sense.

I turn my attention back to Augustus—things are getting worse by the second. Hypatia has found another implant chip for the back of my head. She shoves Tristan aside with such force that he sails across the floor. Kamali is yelling at Augustus, but he’s ignoring her. Just as Hypatia is about to shove the implant into my head, a siren wails through the room, and a torrent of gushing liquid grabs everyone’s attention. Nathaniel has worked a hose free, and a fountain of it sprays all over the room. He’s using it as a weapon—a slick, disgusting, extremely attention-gathering weapon, that has Augustus sputtering in rage. But Augustus is not using the electric weapon built into his bodyform hands, the one he shocked Nathaniel with before. Probably for fear of shorting out the entire lab. The liquid is everywhere.

I could kiss Nathaniel.

Instead, I focus everything I have on calling Lenora out of Augustus’s mind. The pieces of her are scattered, just like mine were in the void, but I realized something before, during that brief moment of touching her while inside Augustus’s mind. There was nothing trapping her there, at least nothing that would keep me out. Like the blue sparks in the cloud of the Mind, I could be a bridge for Lenora—an escape from the trap of Augustus’s cognition. Only I don’t want to send her wherever the others went. The void? Death? I’m not really sure, but for Lenora, I could be a bridge to somewhere.

And that somewhere is Marcus’s head.

It helps that I know her already. It helps even more that she knows my voice, longs to hear it, yearns for me in a way that’s causing a tumult of feelings to cascade through my mind. But slowly the pieces of her are coming together, pulled by the gravity of my desire, and streaming into Marcus’s waiting cognitive embrace. The torrent isn’t too much to bear, given that it’s one fragment at a time. I don’t know how all the pieces will come together once she gets there, but at least she’ll be all in one place. And safe.

I watch, trapped in the middle of the transfer, as Augustus recovers from his spitting rage enough to physically knock Nathaniel free of the hose he’s using to soak the lab. Hypatia attends to the flailing hose and spewing liquid, quickly disabling it, but the transmissions fly between her and Augustus.

She has discovered the Mind is dead.

It’s gray and lying in the bottom of the drained tank. Hypatia tips her head up, opens her mouth wide, and screams her frustration—I’m in the fugue, so I don’t hear a thing, but the sight of it is horrifying in a way that almost disrupts my steady gathering of the pieces of Lenora into Marcus’s mind. But I keep my focus. When the last of her is safely inside Marcus, I turn to him, only to see something I do not expect at all: he’s uploading.

The same kind of transmission line that flits between Marcus and Leopold now beams up through the ceiling of Augustus’s lab. I pass a finger through it, tasting what’s there, and it becomes suddenly clear: Marcus is backing himself up and taking Lenora with him.

A splintering movement draws my attention back to the physical world. In a fit of rage, Augustus has flung the box into a nearby bank of equipment with enough force to smash it into a thousand shards. The Mind bounces along the floor, coming to rest in a pile of red-slickened glass.

Augustus charges toward my body, still inert on the floor.

Kamali flings herself in his path, arms wide, blocking his way.

NO!

Augustus fires an electric shock from his palm so powerful it lifts Kamali and tosses her over my body. She slides along the floor to my fugue form near the door. I stumble back, horrified and unbelieving. Tristan scrambles across the glass-strewn floor on his hands and knees to get to her.

Marcus’s upload finishes.

Augustus hauls my body off the floor—my bunched shirt in one hand, the implant in the other.

A transmission line flits between Marcus and Leopold. I jab a finger into it, to tell Leopold to use his weapon. I absorb their words, but before I can do anything about them, Leopold plunges a hand into the side of his bodyform, straight through his thin ascender-tech clothing and his own skin, and tears a silver orb from inside. He hurls the orb against the door of the lab.

Everything whites out.

The first thing I feel is my face hitting the floor. The second is Augustus crushing the air out of me as his bodyform lands on my back. I gasp in air and struggle to roll him off. The floor is so slippery with red muck that I can barely get traction, but I kick and push and manage to get free of him.

Everyone is down.

I don’t understand what’s happened until I stagger to my feet and see Leopold’s bodyform limp on the floor next to the blast radius of his bomb. I stumble around Augustus, nearly going down on the slick floor, but I see what Leopold did, and the truth of it sinks in.

His final transmitted words were, Is she safe? He waited until Marcus and Lenora had uploaded. Then he pulled out the one weapon that would destroy every bodyform in the room but let the humans live. He even pointed it away from Kamali and Tristan at his feet. Only I know Leopold has no backup.

He killed himself to stop Augustus.

And save me.

My mind is too numb to take this in.

A movement next to Leopold captures my attention. It doesn’t register what Tristan is doing at first. I think he’s kissing Kamali, but he’s not—he’s trying to resuscitate her. He pulls away from her mouth and places both hands on her chest, pumping and pumping. He’s sobbing.

No. No, no, no.

I stumble to them and fall to my knees.

“We need a med bot!” he cries, not looking at me, but there’s no one else. He keeps trying to make her heart beat by pounding on her breastbone, but Augustus’s electric pulse must have stopped her heart. Each strike of Tristan’s hand on her chest is a jolt that electrocutes me. He tries to breathe life into her, but that’s not working.

None of it is working.

I blink because I can’t see with the tears flooding my eyes. I look around for help. Marcus is gone. Leopold is dead. Grayson is either dead or unconscious on the far side of the room. The same for Nathaniel, who lies amid the smashed glass. He bought me a few precious seconds… time that wasn’t enough… not to save the one person who stood up to Augustus with nothing but her human body and fierce will.

It’s becoming hard to breathe.

I look back to Tristan, but he’s stopped. His hands hang at his side, and his shoulders jerk up and down in silent sobs. I want him to try again. I want him to do something. He’s the only medic we have. The only person here who even knows how to administer first aid.

I know she’s beyond first aid.

I crawl closer. Her clothes are soaked with Nathaniel’s spray of red liquid. With speechless horror, I realize her legs are crooked in a dancer pose, the blood muddying her body just like the painting I made of her so long ago—back in the Olympics, back when I had no idea what this horrible, terrible gift was capable of doing.

I painted her dead.

And now she is.

I can’t help the cry of pain that escapes me.

Tristan whips his tear-stained face to me. “Don’t you dare!” he yells, lunging for me. He misses, but only because he’s slipping on the muck of the floor. “Don’t you dare cry for her!” Then he scrambles harder, climbing over her bent legs to get to me. His first punch slides off my cheek, both of us slick with liquid, but it knocks me back anyway. I just lay on the floor, looking up at him, letting him hit me again and again, the pain a welcome penance. After the third time, I just leave my head flung to the side, and he stops. He shoves off me and bends over, hands and knees on the floor, like he’s going to throw up… but nothing comes.

I blink at the ceiling, clearing my vision, then slowly roll over and crawl back to Kamali. Her hair stands out in every direction, a leftover from Augustus’s shock weapon that stopped her heart. Tristan is half sobbing, half heaving, but I can’t do anything for him. I gather Kamali’s thin, steel-strong shoulders into my arms. I bury my face in her free flowing hair. My tears are wicked away by it.

“I can’t do this without you,” I whisper to her. “I can’t.” I say it again and again, like a mantra, as if wishes can change—

—anything.

I’m in a dance studio. The polished wooden floor shines with spots of sun that beam in through the windows. The light is gauzy and glowing, and the shine is reflected a million times in mirrors that surround me on all sides. Music bounces with the light, more like vibrant, transcendent singing than instruments playing actual notes. It’s the sound of joy, and it draws me inward and expands me outward at the same time, like the ecstatic space of Lenora’s virtual cathedral.

Kamali is dancing to it.

She’s twirling and twirling, around and around, hair flying out, arms reaching with impossibly delicate sweeps. Her face is lit with a happiness that’s almost too bright to look at. She’s dressed as I first saw her, dancing in that nearly nude leotard, holding nothing back.

Her soul is dancing.

Just as she wanted. Just as she imagined that very first time I painted her. She has exactly what she wants now. Exactly what she’s dreamed of all along. I should let her stay and dance forever.

I can’t.

I hold out one hand. My desire to move her closer has a power I’m ashamed of—because it pulls her to me. Selfishly, I let it happen.

She stops her spinning. “Eli, it’s wonderful.”

“I knew it would be for you.” I’m crying inside, but I don’t know if it shows.

She lifts her arms in a graceful embrace of the universe. The stars are dancing in her eyes. How can I take this from her? How can I be such a wretch, such a selfish inhuman monster, that I would deny her this? I should let her stay.

But I’m not that good.

“I can’t do this without you,” I say.

She drops her arms and steps closer. Her deep brown eyes hold the universe for me. “But you already have,” she says, like I’m a silly child spouting nonsense. “You did everything.” She means the fugue. That I don’t need her anymore to come here. Or to go back.

“That’s not what I mean,” I say.

I reach out to her cheek, but I stop just before my fingertips touch her. She’s already crossed over—she’s already on the far side of the bridge. Others on this side have touched me and given me the overpowering gift of themselves with a single finger to the forehead. That was knowledge to strengthen the bridge. Information to guide me.

That’s not what I want here.

I lean in close—close enough to kiss—but I hold back, guilt weighing me down. “You believed before you ever saw any of this.” I don’t deserve someone like her—this much I know.

She smiles, teasing. “And you saw and still didn’t believe.”

Then she closes the gap between us and kisses me. The feel of her lips on mine is as real as anything, yet it makes the world shine brighter and sing louder. I hold her tight—tighter than anything I’ve ever clung to in my life—and I believe I can make it happen.

Kamali’s lips move against mine, but they’re not kissing me—they’re gasping for air.

I pull back, my cheeks already wet with tears, but hot new ones now course after them. Her body convulses in my hold, but it’s just a cough of dry air working its way in and hacking back out. It’s the sound of her living… and it’s the sweetest music to my ears. I ease back, still holding her, supporting her as she struggles to tame the coughing spell.

She blinks rapidly, looking in wonder around her, still heaving in one breath at a time.

Glass crunches behind me.

I twist to see Tristan looming over us. “Oh my God.” He stares long and hard at Kamali, disbelieving and believing all at the same time. Then he slowly drags his gaze up to meet mine. His mouth is hanging open. “It really is you.”

Those aren’t words I want to hear.

I look back to Kamali. She coughs again and drags a hand across her face, looking in disgust at the red muck that comes away with it. Then she takes in the carnage all around us, wrinkling up her nose.

With a furrowed brow, she looks back to me. “Was I out long?”

I smile wide. “Not long at all.”

It’s been three days since I brought Kamali back from the dead.

I’m not sure why I expected Tristan to keep that a secret. Or why I thought that once he told someone, it wouldn’t ripple through the Resistance like a sonic boom, pulling at the bonds that hold everything together. He’s kept his distance from me, and I haven’t seen much of Kamali, either. She was popular even before she died and came back to life. Cyrus tells me that she and Tristan have broken up.

I’m back in the Resistance’s basecamp, only we’ve moved to Seattle. The mountains here are apparently filled with hidden camps, cloaked with invisibility shields and hiding the remnants of humanity who augment their bodies with ascender tech while freeing their minds of ascender lies. The people here believe humans should be free to choose their fates.

And there are some who believe I’m more than I am.

I’m sitting on the Dalai Lama’s meditation mat. No one questioned me when I asked for it. Then again, people are seriously uncomfortable around me now—even more so than before, which is saying something. So I keep my back turned to the rest of the tent while I breathe and clear my mind. I’m not trying to shift into the fugue state—I’m just spending some quiet time sorting and categorizing the multitude of lives I carry around with me. So many different perspectives. So many years of experience. I’m not in danger of unraveling anymore—the mental stitches are holding up pretty well—but it takes some contemplation time just to get a handle on it.

The Buddhist is his own master, the Dalai told me once. He uses his intelligence, his mind, to transform his emotions. He studies his world and his own mental system. With that understanding, it is possible for him to transform his own mind.

That scrawny kid knew things I’m just now figuring out. How I wish I’d been able to be there when he crossed—that I’d been the bridge for him. Then again, I can’t imagine how many lives he has locked away inside.

Not unlike me.

I have no doubt now that he’ll reincarnate. I haven’t gone looking for him yet, but I will. I need someone to help me figure all this out. Looking back on it, the Dalai Lama seemed to know far more than he ever said out loud—including the fact that I would be connected to his death.

Om mani padme hum. I breathe in, breathe out, and try to let the guilt of that wash away. The Buddhist is his own master—

—he transforms his own mind. It’s the master painter’s voice.

I didn’t mean to slip into the fugue state, but it’s so much easier now. Dangerously easy.

Truth is never easy, the master says. Yesterday, I finally searched the nets for him: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. A Dutch painter famous, among other things, for his religious paintings. He’s my default entry point into the fugue, although I’m still not completely sure why. I don’t want to talk to him today, so I hesitate, but then I open my eyes.

He’s working at his canvas again, rendering something in brilliant whites and flinty steels. I’m drawn to the vibrancy of the art, as I always am.

His painting is of a girl, my age, with a look of ecstatic joy as she tips her face up to the heavens. Her eyes are closed, and she’s clad in metal armor, but it’s coarse and beaten, weathered by time and combat. She clutches a broad-bladed sword in front of her, tip planted in the ground. The painting comes to life, and she raises the sword, only to stab the earth with it again. Then her eyes pop open, and she stares right at me.

You are not the truth, she says, speaking from the canvas. Her words are pure defiance fueled by gigawatts of anger.

They run a bone-chilling breeze through me.

Boots scuff the floor behind me.

The sound drags my awareness from the fugue. It’s too easy now, this slipping in and out. I almost miss the difficulty—the barrier—between the two worlds.

I pull in a breath and open my eyes.

Cyrus is squatting in front of me. “Hey man, how’re you doing?” His concerned face banishes the lingering chill from the fugue girl's message.

I channel the Dalai with my wide, goofy smile in return. “I’m fine, Cyrus.”

My best friend has had a permanent look of concern on his face since the rescue. He found us in the Oregon forest near Augustus’s Olympus-styled mountain estate, guided by a quickly-resurrected Marcus and assisted by a band of volunteer militia. Tristan, Kamali, and I had to carry out Nathaniel and Grayson, which was no small task, given the size of the men and Grayson’s incapacitated ascender-tech legs. Some maglev chairs converted to stretchers helped. Grayson quickly recovered, but Nathaniel was near death, and he’s still in the med pod. I’m glad we made the effort, even if Nathaniel’s fervent re-telling of the tale hasn’t helped with the rumors.

Before Cyrus came to rescue us, he did what I asked—he convinced Commander Astoria to decamp the Resistance and move away from Oregon. Not that it would have helped, had I failed. Augustus and his Mind would have found them eventually. And that may still happen. The Mind is gone, but I’ve been searching for Augustus. It’s too much to hope that he and Hypatia were destroyed by Leopold’s bomb, but they’re not an immediate threat, as far as I can tell.

Cyrus settles in, mirroring my cross-legged position on the floor in front of me. “Your mom is worried.”

“About Augustus? She should be.”

“Dude, that’s not helping.”

“The truth always helps.” I wince. Those are words the master would say.

He peers at me like he’s not quite sure who I am. And I can understand—because I don’t feel entirely myself anymore.

I glance at the freshly inked remembrance tattoo on my wrist—55 this time, right above the 17—so I understand the concern. “I haven’t sensed him resurrecting yet. I’m not sure why, but we’re not in immediate danger.”

It doesn’t help. Cyrus just cocks his head, giving me an even stranger look. “They’re saying things about you, Eli.”

“I know.”

He presses his lips together, holding something back.

“What is it, Cy?”

“You know my grandfather was a believer, right?”

I nod. He and I both grew up with the gruff but kind man who took Cyrus in after his parents were killed.

“The old man used to light candles and pray to saints, the whole nine yards,” Cyrus says. “He was Catholic like your mom, but way more mystic. I don’t believe in all that stuff, you know, the God who smites the evildoers—because, dude, clearly that hasn’t happened.”

“There’s always suffering in the world.” I’m using the old man’s words again.

They seriously freak Cyrus out. “Man, do you hear yourself when you say things like that?”

I blink. He’s right—that’s not Elijah talking, and I need to get a grip on that tendency to have a foot in both worlds simultaneously. “Sorry.” I gesture vaguely to my head because it’s definitely full of crazy up there. “Still coming back from all this.”

His hunched-up shoulders relax a little. “I know.” He pauses like he’s holding back something.

“So you don’t believe in the mystic god of your grandfather,” I prompt. “Duly noted.”

He grimaces. “Yeah. Except all along, I’ve had this feeling, deep down in my bones, that the old man was right about one thing—that there is something greater than us out there in the universe. I don’t know what it is, and I’ll be damned if the ascenders have anything to do with it, no matter how much greater than us they think they are.”

“They’re not gods, Cy. Not even in the way they think they are.”

He nods. “Now you’re talking.” He dips his head and plucks at the threads of the Dalai Lama’s woven rug. “Basha’s a believer.”

“I figured as much.”

He looks up. “She’s so utterly convinced. I’m not like that.”

I shrug. “It’s all right. I’m not sure what the whole thing’s about either.”

“But you’ve been there, man. Because that’s what the fugue is—isn’t it?” His eyes pierce me now, and I know this is why he’s come to see me. Because he’s hungry for the Answer. It’s the same intense look that Marcus and Leopold had when I spoke the Question about ascender souls out loud. Leopold—whose essence is now in that elsewhere. Or possibly just gone, splintered into a billion quantum particles, like the Mind.

Cyrus is waiting for my answer.

“The fugue lets me see more,” I say carefully because the thoughts are really forming even as I speak the words. “And I can act as a bridge between here and there. Only there isn’t some place or time or even a state of being that’s fixed and unchanging. It’s many different things, and I don’t understand them all. Not in the slightest.”

He frowns, and I know I’m disappointing him.

I drop my gaze to where he’s tormenting the mat. “I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.”

He lets out a small laugh, then gives me a mock frown. “Yeah, well, get busy on that, will you? I mean, now that you’re done saving the world or whatever. Everyone needs to pull their weight around here.”

I grin.

“Speaking of which, Kamali was asking about you.” He smiles like this is the triumph of all his plans, and he’s fully taking credit for it.

I can’t help but have that bring me fully alert. “Yeah?”

He gives me a knowing smirk. “Something about you owing her a painting?”

My face heats at that, and I’m not exactly sure why, but it doesn’t stop the smile from breaking across my face. “I owe her a lot.”

Cyrus nods sharply, like this should be obvious, and climbs to his feet. He gives me a hand up, and once I’m standing, he claps me on the shoulder with the other one.

He scowls at me. “Don’t let all my hard work go to waste.”

“I’ll try.”

He nods his approval and hooks a thumb toward the entrance to the tent. We stride together past the few Resistance members who are lounging on the cots, reading their handhelds or playing games on their screens. I can feel the sideways looks as we pass, but I ignore them.

Just as we reach the door, the tent flap is shoved aside. It takes me a moment to recognize Marcus—I’m still not used to the fact that he’s in a rental.

“Eli, can I have a word with you?” Marcus asks in that stilted rental voice. It makes me think of Leopold, which squeezes a vise on my chest.

“Sure,” I say.

Cyrus does an admirable job of holding back his scowl, but Marcus gets a temporary pass from the Cyrus-hate due to being a key part of the rescue party that picked us up.

“Kamali’s waiting for you,” Cyrus says, pointedly, like I had better not mess that up. “She said something about a meadow, and you would know what she meant.”

“I do.” She pointed it out to me when we flew in—how the layout of our new basecamp came pre-stocked with a meadow for her to dance in. I know exactly where it is.

Cyrus gives me an extra scowl for good measure. I step outside the tent with Marcus and start walking in the direction of the field. Marcus keeps pace by my side. The camp is just a haphazard sprawling of canvas tents and gleaming silver pods with a shield overhead—like the last basecamp, only this one is twice the size. The combined forces of Commander Astoria’s diminished militia and the new reinforcements who rescued us from Augustus make for a bustling community of rebellious humanity. There’s a lot of laughing and hard work happening all around, but that all dims as I pass and gather up their stares.

I ignore them.

“How’s Lenora doing?” I ask Marcus.

“She’s better.”

I nod. I still haven’t seen her. Marcus tells me she’s too fragmented to be able to communicate verbally, and that it will take time for her to heal. If it takes much longer, I’ll step in and help—because I think I can—but I’d rather let her do it herself if she’s able.

I peer at Marcus. “Can I ask you a question?” I know he has something he wants to tell me, but we haven’t discussed what went down in Augustus’s lab. And we need to.

“Yes.” I can’t tell if Marcus’s obvious discomfort is due to the rental bodyform or the idea that he might answer my questions honestly.

“Once you had Lenora’s cognition, you uploaded together. But you knew Leopold didn’t have a backup. Why didn’t you take him with you?”

The twitch in Marcus’s bodyform reminds me entirely too much of Leopold. And makes me wonder if something deeper than just a rental body mismatch has happened to Marcus.

“I couldn’t.” We veer down a row of canvas tents. “I would have, Eli. He wouldn’t allow it. And it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

“Why not?”

Marcus hesitates. Which also is unusual and draws a frown out of me.

“Leopold came to that mission ready to die,” he says. “He secreted the weapon away inside his body with every intent of using it to stop whatever Augustus was planning and rescue Lenora. He knew it was likely we would have to physically go to Augustus, and that you would be at risk as well. It was his last-ditch measure to ensure that, if nothing else, you would still get out of there alive.”

“Me?”

“He wanted to save Lenora—he knew she was key to guiding your development—but she would never forgive him if he let you die.”

I frown, but nod. All of this sounds exactly like Leopold. “His sacrifice isn’t one I’m going to forget.” I’m also planning on searching for him in the fugue state, once I get my mind settled again. But I don’t mention that.

Marcus’s rental body’s emotional response is limited, but I think he feels the same debt I do about Leopold. None of us would have survived otherwise.

“But I still don’t understand,” I say. “Why not take him with you, like you did with Lenora?”

“Lenora was fragmented. Leopold was not. His mind would have dominated over hers.” He hesitates again. “And the truth is that carrying someone’s cognition inside your mind isn’t something that’s normally done. Ever. In fact, we weren’t entirely sure it would work.”

“Except that Augustus had already done it.”

“Exactly.” Marcus shakes his head. “But Augustus is different. Even before the Singularity, he was a mad-level genius. Afterward… well, there’s a reason he’s as powerful as he is. Even among ascenders, he’s a towering intellect. And in a society where intelligence is currency, he buys a lot of support with that.”

I’m nodding as he speaks. “You weren’t sure you could hold them both—Lenora and Leopold—and survive.”

“Cognition isn’t just a matter of adding more memory or capacity or pattern recognition routines—it’s a complicated dance and an emergent property that springs from not only the substrate that holds it but the patterns that form in it. Even when all the parts are working in perfect harmony, there’s only so much brilliance a given pattern of cognition can hold.”

“Pattern of cognition?”

Marcus grimaces, no doubt trying to find a way to explain it to my inferior brain. “Humans are limited by the wetware they’re born with. Ascenders are limited by their initial pattern, their initial cognition—the one that formed or rather emerged from the ascendance process. Initially, it’s merely the nanites enhancing your natural-born cognitive abilities. They’re a neural prosthesis that allows for expanded memory and pattern recognition—but the thing that emerges from that is something entirely different. It’s the spark that was there originally, only now grown beyond the bounds of the flesh or mechanical/neural substrate.”

“You realize I understand about ten percent of this.” I actually grasp more than that. I suspect my own pattern of cognition has been expanded in the process of all this—the blowing apart and then stitching back together. At minimum, my ability to process information has grown. I’m not really sure what that means.

Marcus scowls, something his rental body renders imperfectly. “The point is that I could barely manage to carry Lenora on my cognition—the substrate and my mind are not built for that kind of capacity.”

“Which is why she’s still scattered.” I make a mental note to visit her sooner rather than later.

“There’s nothing I could do about that.” He sounds a little defensive. Interesting. “What I’m saying is I could barely hold onto her in a scattered state. Augustus pulled her right into his mind like it was nothing at all.”

I nod, not terribly surprised. Because I already had my suspicions. “There’s something different about him.”

“Something that shouldn’t be possible.”

“You think he’s tampering with his own cognition,” I say. “Illegally, like he was with the Mind.”

Marcus scowls. “It’s more than possible—it’s the only explanation I can see. Leopold may have done us a tremendous service by disabling Augustus’s custom bodyform. There may have been something special about it.”

“Perhaps that’s why I haven’t sensed him in a resurrected bodyform yet.”

“I hope you realize it’s just a matter of time,” he warns. “Augustus will resurrect.”

“Yes, I realize that, Marcus.”

“And he’ll probably try to regrow a Mind.” His rental face scrunches up in a comical way. “You don’t seem… concerned.”

“I’m very concerned.” The image of the girl in the battle armor flashes through my mind. “About more than just Augustus. But when there’s a threat, I’ll know.” My visions of the storm—the Mind—started long before I even knew who Augustus was. And now I’m even more connected to the fugue-state world, like a spider on her threads, intimately attached to things unseen and far away. If there’s a tremor, I’ll feel it. For the moment, all is still.

Marcus peers at me. “What are you, Eli?” he asks in a hushed voice. This is the real question he’s been wanting to ask all along.

“Nobody special,” I say with a smirk.

We’ve reached the edge of the camp. In the meadow beyond, Kamali is dancing—a warm brown butterfly flitting amongst the brilliant green grasses.

I playfully bat the back of my hand at Marcus’s chest. He looks at it with horror.

I grin. “Sorry, man, gotta go. I’ve got a date.” I stride off into the meadow.

Kamali gets more beautiful the closer I get. She doesn’t see me until she pauses in her dance-of-the-butterfly, facing in my direction. A smile lights her face that lifts me straight out of the grass. I actually look down to see if I’m floating because it feels exactly like the fugue state.

She dashes off to a nearby tree—really just a twiggy thing barely struggling to make it in a meadow of field grass—and comes up with a sketchpad in her hands. My smile is going to break my face before I reach her, so I struggle mightily to tame it. She doesn’t show any kind of similar constraint, taking large, leaping dancer steps to cross the prairie between us.

She thrusts the paper pad and charcoal pencil into my hands. “Draw!” she commands, then twirls back into the grass, hardly pausing.

I fold my legs to sit in the knee-high weeds. They tickle my arms as I whip my hand across the page. The charcoal lines are crude, nowhere near capturing the beauty that is Kamali in motion. The prairie grasses agree with me, nodding their feathered heads in her wake, paying homage to the human wind that bends them to her will, making art with motion. I scowl at the drawing, flip the page and make another. And then another. I’m three pages in before I realize that the medium is simply inadequate to my purposes.

I start with a fresh page and draw a series of figures—panels in sequence, capturing her by giving strobe-light snapshots of each perfect pose. My mind fills in the gaps with color and motion. She dances in between each panel, creating one smooth line of beauty-in-movement between the images. The charcoal is just a shadowy reflection of the real Kamali dancing on the page in full color. Which in turn is just a pale echo of the vibrant girl who is now tromping through the grass to see what I’ve rendered.

I bite my lip and quickly polish the figures with more charcoal shading before she arrives. I stand to greet her, but my mind still plays the colorful version on top of the real-life layer of black lines on the page.

She peers over my shoulder, standing close, chest heaving with her exertion. The full-body charge I get from her nearness is near-impossible to disguise, and I can’t help watching her face as her eyes roam my work.

“How do you do that?” she asks.

I think she means it’s better than my previous work—which is true, due to my fugue-infused knowledge. “It’s nothing, just practice, and a little help from a few masters of art.”

Her warm brown eyes find me staring at her. “No, how do you make me move?”

“Move?” I hold up the pad, closer, so we can both look at it. “What do you mean?”

She follows the dancer on the page with her finger. “How do you get it to dance like that? I didn’t think this was a holo pad.”

It’s not. “You can see that?” My mouth hangs open, and I scan her face to see if she’s serious. When I look back to the pad, my colorful hallucination is gone. I frown, unsure now what she saw, if anything.

Kamali gives me a scrunched-up look. “You’re really a very odd person, you know that?”

I recover from my shock and smile. It’s true—even more than she knows—but she’s not running away because of it. In fact, she’s so close, we should be touching, but we’re not. A whisper of meadow wind is all that’s between our side-by-side bodies. Her face is inches from mine.

“You told me once that you had a dream about me saving the world,” I say quietly. My small grin is filled with pride, but I can’t help it. “Do you dream about me often?”

She smirks. “That, Elijah Brighton, is something you’ll never know.”

Then she kisses me.

I’m not sure what happened to the pad. I think it fell to the grass.

All I remember of the many long minutes that follow is the feel of Kamali’s lips against mine, her soft hair on my face, and my heart soaring in a way that rivals any fugue-state transcendence of this real-life plane where my boots touch earthly grass.

The world could stop rotating, and it would be a long time before I noticed.

Want to know when The Illusory Prophet (Singularity #3) is available?

Subscribe to Susan's Newsletter

(BONUS: get a free story too!)

Meanwhile, enjoy MORE Singularity stories....

Med Bots, Ascenders, and Cyborgs...

Get the Stories of Singularity #1-4 (Novella Box Set)

Learn why a med bot's world is tragically different than you might imagine; how a machine intelligence might probe the limits of its constraint; and what dissenting humans might do with a cybernetic enhancement... or five. These short stories each provide a glimpse into a dark corner of the Singularity novels.

READING ORDER

Singularity Series

The Legacy Human (Book 1)

The Duality Bridge (Book 2)

The Stories of Singularity #1-4 (Novella Box Set)

The Illusory Prophet (Book 3)... coming 2016

There are five planned novels in the Singularity Series, plus the prequel Day Zero, which covers the Singularity event, and the Stories of Singularity, a collection of short novellas to accompany the series.

Chat with Susan about our coming robot overlords on Facebook...

Join the SKQ Facebook Group

Want to discuss The Legacy Human with other readers?

Join The Legacy Humans Facebook Group

(BEWARE: here be SPOILERS)

WANT MORE YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION?

Check out the MINDJACK SAGA!

ebook, print, audio

READING ORDER

Open Minds (Book 1)

Closed Hearts (Book 2)

Free Souls (Book 3)

Mindjack Short Story Collection (Novella Box Set)

THE MINDJACK SAGA: There are three novels in the original Mindjack trilogy (Open Minds, Closed Hearts, Free Souls), as well as five novellas that accompany the series... and plans for another trilogy in the works (see Susan’s latest novella, The Locksmith, for a peek at a new Mindjack character for the coming trilogy).

watch the live-action trailer

a NEW Mindjack character...

CLICK HERE
to get your free book

More Susan Kaye Quinn Stories

The Royals of Dharia
sweet royal romance

Romance, sword fights, and skyships...

Third Daughter (Book 1)

Second Daughter (Book 2)

First Daughter (Book 3)

Aniri is the Third Daughter of the Queen of Dharia—and she has zero royal duties. She’s just the backup daughter, in case her older sisters’ arranged marriages don’t quite work out. But then the impossible happens—a marriage proposal. From a barbarian prince in the north, no less. And if Aniri refuses, the threat of their new flying weapon might bring war. So she agrees, only to discover the prince has his own secrets… and that saving her country may end up breaking her heart.

This Bollywood-style royal romance takes you to an alternate East Indian world filled with skyships, saber duels, and lots of royal intrigue.

The Debt Collector
cyberpunk, future-noir series

What's your life worth on the open market?

ebook, print, audio

Season One

Season Two
dark, gritty, sexy... recommended for 17+

Watch the Debt Collector trailer on YouTube.

In this sexy, gritty future-noir, debt collectors take your life energy and give it to someone more "worthy"... all while paying the price with black marks on their souls.

Find all of Susan's works here.

(available in ebook, print, and audio)

Shortly after the first story spark of the Singularity series, I realized the possibilities inherent in the Singularity universe were vast. There would be dark corners and alternate perspectives that would need more than just Eli's point-of-view. So, while the five books that will eventually comprise Eli's story are the backbone of the series, there will also be a series of short stories and a prequel (Day Zero) to round out the interesting ideas this concept is generating in my head. While Day Zero is already written as a screenplay, it will come out as a novel near the end of the series. But the short stories are already well underway!

The first is Restore, written from the perspective of a med bot. I bill it as a story about "artificial intelligence and love," but it's the first glimmer you'll get of the way that ascenders limit the sentience levels of the bots that populate their world and serve their whims. This is the first stepping stone that we, in real life, will soon be encountering—what exactly comprises "intelligence" and what does it say about us, as humans, that we would limit the intelligence of another creature? Reviewers call it "heartwarming" and "thought-provoking," which is precisely what I had hoped for. Restore was originally released in the AI Chronicles anthology, and is now available as a stand-alone story as well.

The second Story of Singularity is Containment. Also written from a machine intelligence's point of view, this story takes Restore to the next natural step—what happens when a machine on the level of human intelligence is required for a certain task (say, the mining operations on a moon of Jupiter), but we don't want to bother ourselves with allowing that machine freedom of self-expression... or self-actualization? Can Maslow's hierarchy of needs be truncated, such that the pinnacle of what we consider human achievement is limited for those we wish to remain constrained to certain duties? Does the word slave apply to this? Or are we still talking about machines? I'm especially proud of Containment for a number of reasons: 1) it's my first space-based story, 2) it's my first hard-SF story, and most of all, 3) it's part of the Dark Beyond the Stars anthology, an amazing collection of space opera stories from some of today's most compelling voices in science fiction. (It's a bonus that they're all female as well.) The Dark Beyond the Stars anthology releases 8.24.15, and Containment will be available as a stand alone story in December 2015.

The third short story, Defiance, returns to Eli's more immediate world with an origin story written from Cyrus's point-of-view. It's a brief glimpse at Cyrus's black-market dealings and romantic liaisons before Basha came along and rocked his world. Secondary characters are often my favorites in a series, so writing their own stories is a labor of pure love for me. This particular story also serves as a great intro to the series before diving into the novels—it will be published in the upcoming Future Chronicles anthology in September 2015, and as a standalone in December 2015.

The fourth and final (for now) Story of Singularity, Augment, is really a sneak peek at what's coming in the third book of the novel series. Augment explores the idea that humanity has more than one plan to deal with this business of ascenders dominating the planet. Written from the point-of-view of a legacy girl born without legs who then sought out a group of dissenters to become an augment... and became one of their most fervent warrior crusaders in the process... let's just say I can't wait to get busy writing more of Miriam's character in Singularity #3. She's my cyborg Joan of Arc—and if that doesn't intrigue you, I'm not sure what will. Augment will release in the Cyborg Chronicles anthology later in 2015, and as a stand alone in December 2015.

In short, Singularity is just getting started. I hope you will join me for the full ride, diving into the short stories as well as the novels. They were always intended to be part of the larger story experience.

And there is much more to come!

This series has a special place in my heart, and I have much gratitude for those taking the journey with me—there are complex and hot-button issues inherent in the Singularity Series, and the work is so much better due to the editors, critique partners, and beta readers who've tackled them with me.

Thanks to my editor, Bryon Quertermous, for helping me bring out the best in yet another novel together—and for being "strangely attached" to the novel! It's a sublime pleasure to be able to hook your editor. Special thanks go to Daniel A. Smith for all the discussions of Kalachakra and the B-theory of time (I had to look them up, too). Our talks are a complete mental geek-out for me... oh, and they help the story, too. Much appreciation to my beta readers and critique partners—Tim Sussman, Zachary Mueller, Adam Heine, Rebecca Carlson, and Adam Quinn (that last one belongs to me—there are many benefits to having an in-house critique partner, including that they let you borrow their tablet when they're finished making notes). Hugs to Liz Masterson Searle for always asking when the next pages are coming. I appreciate you all for sticking through the series with me!

Final thanks go to Dale Robert Pease for the gorgeous cover and my awesome readers for taking a chance on Eli’s story (especially those who have left such inspiring reviews!)

I promise to get busy on Singularity #3 right away.

Susan Kaye Quinn is the author of the Singularity Series, bestselling Mindjack Trilogy and the Debt Collector serial, as well as other speculative fiction novels and short stories. Her work has appeared in the Synchronic, Telepath Chronicles, and AI Chronicles anthologies and has been optioned for Virtual Reality by Immersive Entertainment. Her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist" but she mostly sits around in her PJs in awe that she gets to write full time.

Susan grew up in California, got a bunch of engineering degrees (B.S. Aerospace Engineering, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) and worked everywhere from NASA to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). She designed aircraft engines, studied global warming, and held elected office (as a school board member). All her engineering skills come in handy when dreaming up dangerous mind powers, future dystopian worlds, and slightly plausible steampunk inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in the basement.

Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.

Susan loves to connect with readers online! Stop by her SKQ Facebook Group or check out her website to learn about all her books. She also has a For Writers page for her fellow scribes on the journey. Subscribe to her newsletter to be notified about her next release in the Singularity series.

Table of Contents

The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2)

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two

Get More Young Adult Science Fiction
Get More SKQ Stories
A Note From Susan Kaye Quinn
Acknowledgments
About the Author