Chapter 17

It had been over a day since they watched the Maze Cutter disappear beyond the horizon, but Isaac couldn't stop thinking about everyone on board. His only solace lay in the fact that he trusted Minho more than he'd ever trusted Kletter.

"Think they'll be okay?" Jackie asked quietly as they walked south along the coast.

"Yeah . . ." Isaac rubbed the grass-braided bracelet around his wrist that Sadina had made him. "They'll be okay." He wanted to fill the silence that Cowan and Old Man Frypan left open. Isaac didn't blame Frypan for not wanting to go to Alaska. To everyone else, the stories of old were just stories, but to Frypan they were memories. Painful, terrible, memories.

"They'll be something." The old man added, "Long as they don't come across any Grievers, they'll be fine."

Isaac couldn't tell if he was joking.

Cowan coughed. "They'll come back to join us soon. Once they reach the Godhead, we'll be their next stop."

"You think it'll happen that quickly?" Jackie quickened her step with this news.

Isaac wondered if Ms. Cowan was going to tell the others what she'd told him—that everyone from the island was a test subject, not just Sadina. Well, except for Isaac and the old man, who were last-minute additions. It made sense now why Cowan had hesitated to let them come on board. Surely Frypan didn't look at manipulation kindly. Not about test subjects, at least, with the infamous tattoo still visible on his neck.

"What do you think will happen when we get to the Villa?" Isaac directed his question to Cowan in an attempt to invite the whole truth to the rest of their group. He'd kept the secret of her infection and he didn't want to carry another one.

"We'll introduce ourselves and our lineage and we'll ask them for help," Cowan answered matter-of-factly, as if it would be that simple.

Frypan chimed in, "Nobody's going to help us if they don't see any help in it for themselves." The trees on the path started to look weak the farther they went, more and more bare. Something was eating their leaves. Or infecting their leaves.

"We don't have to go in the Villa, you and me," Jackie said, turning to Frypan. "We can just stay in the woods until they—"

"Nah, we'll go in. If there's something in my old blood that can help you recover Ms. Cowan, I'll help."

This brought an honest smile across Cowan's lips. "Thank you."

"It doesn't look like the Flare." He added, "A new variant, maybe, but it's not the Maze-forsaken-Flare, that's for sure."

Isaac's shoulders relaxed at hearing that. He had nothing to compare Cowan's symptoms to in his mind, but the rash looked bad and the woman's face had begun to droop, as if the sickness in her body pulled her down in every possible way.

"Anyone need a rest?" Isaac asked, looking back specifically at the adults. If his legs were tired, then Cowan's and Frypan's had to feel twice as worn.

"I'm good," Cowan said.

"A little farther," Old Man Frypan added.

"How is it that I'm ready for a break and you two aren't?" Jackie blew out a heavy sigh and laughed. "I'll walk all day if it means I'm not swaying on that stupid boat, but I don't think I'm in quite the shape as you two."

Frypan flexed a bicep. "Back home I walked four miles every morning. Up the coast and back around." No wonder he had so much energy.

"When we get back home, I'm doing that walk with you," Jackie said. "Every day."

"Me, too." Isaac smiled thinking of home. He wasn't sure they'd ever make it back to the island, but he was relieved to have the others. Even if something happened to Cowan, Isaac wouldn't be alone. Jackie might not have the stomach for a boat ride, but in Isaac's opinion, she was the strongest islander of the group, even stronger than Dominic. If they ran into Cranks again, he'd trust Jackie to kill them with her bare hands if needed.

"What is that . . ." Cowan pointed to a brown lump on the dirt path up ahead. Isaac squinted at the strange blob. He walked ahead to investigate and leaned over. It was a dead bird.

"Just a sparrow." Jackie joined him and bent over to touch the bird.

"Wait, don't touch it," Isaac said, "it might have a disease."

"I'm not touching the bird, there's a little someone I wanted to say hi to." She motioned to the tiny, wiggly, red and orange thing crawling on the dirt behind the bird. An amphibian. Cowan had started another coughing fit and took the opportunity to stop and rest. "Hi little guy, what's your name?"

Old Man Frypan took a look. "That there is a big ol' Salamander."

Cowan coughed and coughed to clear her throat. "This is silly, but maybe it's a sign . . ."

Isaac looked down at the dead bird and then back to Cowan. He didn't want her to think she'd soon be dead on her back, beak to the sky, too. "No. Everything will be okay."

"Exactly. It's a good sign." She managed a smile, but her forehead creased like a frown. Isaac had no idea what she was talking about. "We have these old books in congress, written accounts by the immunes, sharing their knowledge and memories. And in one of those books, someone called a Salamander a Newt. Said not to eat them."

"I'd starve before I ate this cute thing." Jackie pet the creature on the top of its head with the pad of her finger.

"Little Newt," Isaac said, and it earned him an honest smile from Old Man Frypan.

"That's a fine name for anyone," he added.

"Hear that?" Jackie asked the tiny salamander. "You're a newt, Little Newt." She stood up and placed the new pet on her shoulder.

Their group had just added another member, one that made each one of them smile. Maybe the little guy even had a bit of luck in him. Isaac wasn't superstitious, but he'd welcome any good fortune they could get, especially since the brown sparrow was the second dead bird they'd found in as many days.

Their days had found a routine, and that helped Isaac's mind from going completely bonkers—or wonky bonky as Trish would say if she were here. Cowan's rash was getting wider and its red rawness peeked out from behind her scarf. Their plan was to retrace their steps to the house where Isaac and Sadina had been kidnapped, where Kletter was killed, and then to follow the streets and houses up the hillside until they saw people.

"Kletter never told anyone what the Villa looked like, did she?" Isaac asked.

"No, that woman had way too many secrets," Jackie said bitterly.

Isaac looked over at Cowan for her answer, but as a woman with too many secrets herself, he knew she wouldn't say anything. "Ms. Cowan?" he prompted her. "Did Kletter say anything to you about the Villa? Before we got on the ship, maybe at your meeting?"

Cowan blinked more slowly than usual, like her body and muscles were exhausting their strength to keep her legs walking. "I don't know . . . I don't think so." Isaac wasn't convinced. If Kletter had told her about needing control subjects and more people than Sadina from the island, then he was sure Kletter had revealed something else. Things that Cowan either didn't remember or chose not to share.

Jackie picked up another wiggly insect. "I think he likes worms the best."

Isaac watched Little Newt slurp up the even smaller creature. "He definitely is not a vegetarian."

Jackie rubbed her mouth, "Ew, plhhhpt!"

"What happened?" He stopped as she spit something out and scraped at her tongue.

"A bug just flew right in my mouth. Gross."

Frypan looked concerned. "Did it sting you?"

"No," Jackie said, still scraping.

"Here." Isaac handed over his canteen. "Wasn't a murder hornet, was it?"

"Probably, with my luck." She spit again then took a sip of water.

Frypan stole away their attention. "Hey, look. I remember that up ahead, that building." He pointed, and it only took a second for Isaac to recognize it, too. It was the first building they'd seen upon arriving from the island. A true skyscraper, surrounded by many others. Only a short journey now to the house where Letti and Timon had slit Kletter's throat.

Thinking about that put Isaac on edge. He couldn't let his guard down, and as they walked on, toward the same place where everything had gone wrong before, he reached for the knife Minho had given him.

This time around, if someone taunted them from a creepy house, Isaac would be ready.

Gastar saliva.

A waste of saliva and a waste of breath, as her Abuela would say. There was no use in telling Carlos what she felt to be true about her mom and his wife. Dead. His poor, young, beautiful wife who he'd hoped to have children with someday. Carlos' measure of hope would always outweigh anything else in his mind, and their trip was already depressing enough. Eating snakes, sleeping in the desert, moving camp every morning. The heat. The unbearable heat.

"Do you want the snakeskin to make something?" Carlos asked as he packed up their cooking tools. Ximena declined with a quick shake of her head. There would be plenty more snakes on their path if she wanted to fashion something. "What's the matter? You've been quiet."

"Nada. Nothing's wrong."

Up until the clear feeling she'd had about her mom being dead, Ximena had spent every single day in the desert looking at the horizon, hoping she'd see her mom and Mariana walking toward them. Then they'd walk faster, then maybe they'd run. But she should have known that it wasn't hope which brought them out here. It was her intuition that something was wrong. Manera de ver, as her Abuela would say. Her way of seeing.

"You having a vision and not telling me?" Carlos asked as he flicked the snakeskin aside.

She shook her head and kicked a rock, then started walking north again on the worn path. "No." It wasn't a lie. She had a feeling, not a vision. They were two very different things.

Carlos nodded as he joined her. They had a map to the Villa if needed, but so far, the path was clear enough.

Many people back home in the village had intuition in various forms. Carlos might, too, if he wasn't so clouded by hope.

Hope. It had a way of blanketing all things as some big, glorious lie until they morphed into what a person wanted them to be. Seers, on the other hand, embraced the pain of truth, and saw things how they weren't.

Ximena looked over at Carlos as they walked. He was a strong enough man to protect her from almost anything that came along—anything but the truth.

"There's something bothering you," he said when he noticed her gaze. "You're never this quiet in the morning." He was right; typically, she thought out loud.

Ximena softened. "Just thinking about what will happen when we get there, is all."

Carlos stopped. "Don't be all mad at Annie when we see her. She can't help it that these missions go on longer than expected."

"She can help it. She's the lead on the team. She's literally the only one who can help it." Carlos picked up his feet again, but she wasn't letting him leave this behind. Her mom and Mariana were two months past the latest point in time when the group had assured they'd be back. But Absent-Minded-Annie always conveniently forgot the promises she made to those back home, like when their mothers, daughters, and wives would return. Ever since Ximena was little, her Abuela had taught her how to trust herself and why she shouldn't trust ‘Annie from the Villa.'

Despite this, Ximena never actually thought Annie would get her mom or Mariana killed. So why was she feeling that way now? Ellas estan muertas, her gut whispered, as her mind searched for any feelings that came with names from home who'd left at the same time as her mom. Fransico, Manual, Ana . . . she concentrated on each name as she and Carlos walked but no imprint came to her. Dónde estás? But she got nothing. Not even colors of their auras came through.

There had never been a time in Ximena's childhood when she'd been separated from her mom where she couldn't at least feel her, out there, wherever she was. Ximena didn't know how to explain it to anyone else, but she couldn't feel her mother anymore.

If something was killing the rabbits, something could be killing people. Half-Cranks. Or healthy humans who weren't Cranks but might as well be. Humans evil enough to annihilate her whole village.

Or, there could be another virus.

One that her homeland couldn't withstand.

A virus that started with dead black jackrabbits in the desert.

"Annie isn't—" Carlos gave a big sigh. "She's not to blame for everything." He looked back at Ximena to make sure'd she heard the last part.

She had, but she didn't believe it. It was painfully obvious that Annie had been responsible for every last thing that went wrong in their village in the last twenty-five years, and Ximena had only been alive for sixteen of those. If Carlos wanted to ignore it, she would let him continue to ignore it.

"You're so much like your mom right now."

"What? Why?" Ximena hated that it had been so long since her mom agreed to work off-site for the Villa that she was already starting to forget things about her.

"She always thought she was smarter than everybody else." Carlos shook his head as if being intelligent in a world full of half-Cranks was a bad thing. So what if her brain was more . . . human than most humans. Better that than the brain of an animal. A monster. Or a liar like Annie.

Ximena itched at her neck. The mosquitoes were terrible in the desert. "Sorry." She didn't know what else to say. It wasn't that she thought she was smarter than others, she simply just was. She almost always knew things before they came to fruition, especially when it came to her family and their village.

A storm that came unexpectedly, out of season, and wrecked the roof of the south station.

A sick elder on the west end who went blind from eating berries.

And the most important one of all: her mom foresaw an "Eagle" coming to the land and bringing with it truth and awareness. An eagle moved itself into their village two years ago, perched on the highest of trees. No one else understood its importance as deeply as Ximena's mom. Ximena was still trying to figure out what the prophecy meant, but the big beautiful bald eagle hunted in the field across from her house every day and watched over her village every night.

Ximena's mom sewed the design of an eagle into everything she laid hands on.

And she made her daughter promise that she would do her best to sew truth into the world for the rest of her days.

Orphans certainly weren't Gods, but Orphans were no devils, either.

Minho struggled to give himself a place within Roxy's grandfather's story but it was difficult to do because he didn't know his creator—he'd never met his parents.

"You fix that steering issue?" Roxy asked, motioning to the wheel.

"Maybe," Minho said. He'd tinkered below for an hour or so without knowing exactly what connected to what, but something might have worked. He let go of the wheel to see which direction it favored, and the ship slowly started to veer left again. "Nope."

"That's okay. You've been blessed by the Gods." She pointed to the sunset.

"What're you talking about?"

"They used to say pink sky at night is a sailor's delight." She laughed. "Are you getting tired of all these stories of Grandpa's yet?"

Minho smiled, something still relatively new to him. He liked that she called him Grandpa and not my grandpa. "Never." He kinda liked hearing someone's family history even if it wasn't his own. And he especially liked knowing that more than just pain, torture, and disease could be passed down from generation to generation.

"Well you've had just about the best sailing weather possible and this sky promises you another good day tomorrow." Roxy put her arm around his shoulders. "Want me to take over?"

"Not a chance."

"You're finally getting me back for not letting you drive the truck?"

"I'm getting you back, and I'm getting us there safely." She wasn't wrong; he did like being in control. Roxy nodded and handed him some water. He let her hold the captain's wheel while he took a sip. Maybe he shouldn't ask the next question, but he couldn't help himself. Something about seeing the boat make wave after wave, ripple after ripple, made him realize that every action had a reaction. He needed to know. "How did Grandpa die?"

Roxy's face wrinkled up, like a berry that hung on the vine too long. "You soldiers get a little morbid, don't you?"

"No, I mean . . ." He paused, tried to ask what he really needed to know most. "Did he die at home, warm in bed?" The Orphan set the water down. "Or did he go for one of his travels one day and just never come back?"

Roxy didn't respond for a moment.

"I need to know," he said with a shrug. "Just like you needed to know about your mom. I just do."

Roxy let go of the captain's wheel. "Are you worried you killed him? All the way out in that Remnant Nation of yours?" She shook her head as if it were impossible, but she didn't know just how many men the Orphan had killed.

He swallowed hard. "We've shot lots of trespassers." He hung his head, couldn't bear the thought of it.

"Grandpa died long before you were even born." She put her hand on Minho's shoulder, but it didn't make him feel any better. Someone in the Remnant Nation still could have killed him.

"At home?" Minho asked.

Roxy shook her head slowly. "He died while traveling." Minho knew it. He took the controls back over and she stepped aside. "But his life wasn't just his. His life was also in each and every one of those books he read. He lived hundreds of lives, and he died hundreds of deaths every time one of those stories ended." She took a deep breath. "He lived a long, good life."

Minho couldn't let it go. "But it's possible he wandered near the fortress . . ."

She finally gave in. "I guess anything's possible." He stared at the ocean ahead. The vast, empty, ocean. The water went on so far that not even something as big as the Remnant Nation could control it. "Minho?"

The Orphan looked at her.

"Why's this bothering you so much?"

He wasn't sure exactly. Something about being on the other side of the wall made life feel different. Waves. Ripples. The more days he spent training himself not to kill people, the more he started to regret the times he did. "Anyone who touched our borders. . . . We were instructed to not let them say more than three words before shooting." He'd always broken that rule. He'd let them say a sentence or two, because every man deserved to speak before they died.

"Why only three words?"

"Just a rule. Lots of rules." Minho looked over his shoulder to make sure Orange wasn't on deck to hear. "I'd always let them say more, though." Trespassers would either insist they weren't infected or they'd beg for the Nation's help for someone who was infected. Someone they loved. "Everyone. . . . They all had a story to tell."

Roxy sighed. "At least you were different enough to recognize such a thing."

Minho wanted a change of subject. Anything to stop Roxy from picturing him killing trespassers. "What about the books? Your grandpa's books?" he asked awkwardly.

"Oh, I still have them. Well, had them. Most of them are back at the house where you found me."

The Orphan remembered seeing lots of books on shelves when she welcomed him in for a meal. Somehow, thinking of Roxy leaving all of her grandfather's stories behind felt like more of a death than all of the intruders he'd killed put together. "You left all his books behind to come with me?"

"Of course!" Roxy said. "Those stories will be there. I know most of them by heart, anyway. But in this story . . ." She hugged Minho tighter than anyone had ever put their arms around him before. She hugged him like Minho had seen Dominic hug Jackie before they left her behind. His reflexes tightened. He fought the urge to twist her wrist and flip her to the ground. "In this story, it's a true adventure. And in this adventure, I get to have a son."

The Orphan named Minho would never get tired of hearing her say that.

And instead of flipping her and breaking her arm, like every instinct within him screamed to do, he did the exact opposite.

The Orphan hugged her back.