Chapter 19

There it was. The house where everything changed and their adventure became an escape mission, then a survival mission, then a rescue mission. There was something about the house even before it all went bad that creeped Isaac out. The windows broken and dusty, the paint peeling, the burnt siding from some long-ago fire. Once he walked past this awful place where he and Sadina had been taken, where Kletter had been viciously murdered, he hoped they could all reset their future and forget Letti and Timon had ever mentioned evolution and extinction.

Isaac wondered about Letti and Timon, if maybe they hadn't been half-Crank when he met them. Then he wondered if Kletter's body was still decaying somewhere. He picked up his pace and decided it best not to find out. He twisted the grass-braided bracelet around his wrist. Every day that passed, the bracelet got drier and drier. He hoped Sadina and the rest of the crew were doing okay. "You think they're getting close to Alaska?" he asked the group.

"Closer every day," Old Man Frypan replied.

"What do you think, Ms. Cowan? Think Minho threw Dominic overboard yet?" He liked the challenge of trying to make Cowan laugh.

"No, I'm sure Dominic is on his best behavior, but Sadina," Cowan coughed, "now she can be stubborn. I hope she and Minho don't have any differences."

Isaac hadn't even worried about that. Cowan was right, they were two strong personalities, but he'd count on Trish and Miyoko to keep them in line. He knew the islanders would stick together. "It may be hot out here, but at least we're not seasick." Isaac waited for Jackie to chime in, but she didn't. She'd been awfully quiet the last mile or so. He turned to her. "Right, Jackie?"

Her walk slowed.

"Ithaac . . ."

"Jackie?" He stopped, tried to catch her eyes, but her distant gaze was unfocused. She looked right through him. "What's wrong, Jackie?" Isaac knew she was prone to nausea, but the path had been smooth and straight. "Do you need to throw up?"

"If you gotta blow chunks, blow them over there." Old Man Frypan pointed to a bush of clover weed. But Jackie wouldn't make it that far. Her knees buckled, then her legs folded beneath her like an island hammock cut by a storm. Isaac rushed to her side and caught her weight in his arms, lowering her to the road. Newt fell from her shoulder and scampered off into the weeds.

She reached for Cowan. "Myth Cowan."

Cowan took Jackie's hand.

"What's going on?" Cowan asked. Jackie felt heavy, almost lifeless in Isaac's arms.

"I can't feel my lipth, or my thongue, or my legth."

Jackie's voice was slow and slurred. Isaac looked at her and then back toward the house, as if it held some kind of curse. It was probably haunted by Kletter's spirit.

"What's happening?!" Isaac looked to Old Man Frypan, their most trusted source of wisdom, but his face didn't hint at any answers. Isaac frantically searched her skin for a rash. Nothing. No sting marks. No rash.

"We've got some bad luck going on around here," Frypan said.

Isaac, in a panic, looked up at Cowan. "I don't get it, no rash, you're still standing but she's not?" He could feel the warmth radiating from Jackie's skin. Whatever this was, they had to get to the Villa even more quickly.

"Ithaac . . ."

"It's okay. We're going to get you help. The Villa can't be that far. I'm gonna carry you, okay?" With one big lift Isaac hoisted Jackie into his arms. "You're okay." He tried to reassure her with a forced smile but she wasn't looking back at him.

She was looking right through him.

"Ithaac," she slurred, "I can't thee."

Isaac walked as fast as he could through the endless neighborhood, Jackie in his arms. His biceps burned, tendrils of flames leaking through his muscles, but he wouldn't stop to rest until they found someone, anyone, who could help. He'd run if he knew where they were headed, but the uncertainty only aided to the panic in his chest.

"The houses are getting bigger up here, we have to be close," Frypan offered. They reached a mansion rimmed with circular columns in the front. Something moved.

"There!" Cowan pointed at a person near the front door, but Isaac knew it could just be a wandering Crank. The knife Minho had given him was strapped to his boot, but his best Crank killer lay limp in his arms.

"Please, help!" Cowan shouted; the figure ahead stopped and turned. As they walked closer, Isaac, sweating profusely, breathing with labored heaves of hot air, could see a woman with blonde hair. Despite his weak condition, he started to run, Jackie bouncing in his arms.

"Stop! Don't come any closer!" The stranger's voice trembled and cracked, as if she weren't used to talking so loudly, or talking to other people.

"Please, we just need help." Isaac slowed down, but he didn't stop.

"We're scientists, not doctors. We're not resetting bones and we sure as hell aren't a Crank Palace. If she's got the Flare, you take her there. Hear me?" The woman turned her back on them and opened the door to what Isaac hoped was the Villa.

"Is this the Villa?" he asked in desperation. "Kletter told us about you."

The woman stilled. Then slowly turned back around. "Kletter? Is she with you?"

"She's not that far behind us." Just a bit dead, but you don't need to know that, he thought. Isaac made eye contact with Cowan and Old Man Frypan, hoping they understood.

The woman looked each of them up and down and eyed Frypan as if she had never seen anyone so old. And maybe living out here among the half-Cranks, she hadn't. What did Kletter mean to these people to change the stranger's mind so quickly? "What's wrong with the girl?" she asked.

Isaac answered, wearily, almost to the absolute end of his strength. "We don't know, she just started to slur her words, then lost feeling in her legs, and then sight. I think it was in that order. I don't know. It all happened so fast."

The woman released a heavy sigh. "Okay, we'll bring her in. But you all need to stay out here until I get clearance. We can't compromise our lab."

"We don't have the Flare," Frypan said.

"It's not the Flare I'm worried about. It's Evolution. Come on. Lay her down right here, in the doorway. In the next thirty minutes we'll know if she'll make it."

Evolution?Isaac wondered. What was that supposed to mean?

"Wait," Cowan spoke up, "I need help, too." She pulled down her scarf and revealed the rash. The woman started shaking her head back and forth so vigorously Isaac thought it might pop off.

She shouted at them, "Let me see all of your necks. Now!" She pointed vigorously at Isaac, then Frypan.

"It's only the ladies who are sick," Frypan said as he lifted his chin and turned in a circle, as did Isaac, Jackie still in his arms. The woman walked completely around Frypan to look at his neck again.

"You're . . . tattooed . . ." She said it in a tone that was somewhere between worship and fear. Probably in disbelief that he could actually be a Glader of Old.

It was Frypan's turn to sigh. "Yes. I'm a subject from the original Maze trials." Isaac had never heard him say it out loud like that, but perhaps the scientist would appreciate it being put so formally. More like a hero, Isaac wanted to add. A survivor. A legend.

The woman again appeared conflicted. Honored one moment, horrified the next.

Isaac couldn't hold Jackie another second. "Can you help us or not?" he asked.

The woman slowly nodded, obviously still stunned. "Come in. All of you. We'll take the cellar entrance."

She led them down a gravel path that wrapped behind the building, finally to a door in the rear that was painted black, like the pupil of an eye.

"Getting close?" she asked Carlos. Abandoned houses lined both sides of the crumbled street.

"Yeah. Maybe twenty minutes."

"You keep saying that and then we walk another hour." Sweat drenched her shirt.

"If I keep saying that, then one of these times I'll be right." He smiled, always so genuine from him. "Give me a break, it's been two years since I walked this path."

A heaviness hung inside Ximena's chest. One she knew well and had learned not to cling to. Anxiety in and of itself was sometimes a premonition. She tried to focus on each of the passing houses and imagine what bright colors graced their walls when they were first built.

"Lookie, Ximena." Carlos picked something from the ground. A small bush of weeds. "Mariana loves these. Well, no, she actually hates them, but she'll laugh if I bring her some." He gave Ximena a single weed to investigate. "She grew these right after you were born."

"Me? Why?" She looked at the little pink flower on the end of the red clover, but she didn't understand Carlos' excitement and her face must have shown it.

"Because your mom said she'd been drinking red clover tea before she got pregnant with you. So, Mariana ripped out and collected every last clover in the village, no matter what color it was." Carlos chuckled. "Eventually she planted a whole garden's worth of just clovers." He continued gathering a bouquet of weeds for his wife.

Ximena nodded. The whole village did a lot of weird things after she was born. "What's clover tea taste like, anyway?"

"Terrible. Exactly like a weed should taste. But if she wasn't tending that garden or drying the clover, she was busy drinking the tea, day and night. Hot tea, iced tea, making tea cakes from it. She wants a child so badly. Doing something you hate for someone you love is, well, that's unconditional love."

"She would've been a great mom," Ximena agreed, before realizing she'd said it in the past tense. She hoped Carlos didn't notice.

"There's still time." He laughed. "I know to a teenager like you I must seem ancient, but we're not that old yet."

Ximena looked at the house behind the patch of red clover and wondered if the woman who'd lived there before the Flare ever needed to drink fertility tea. Her eyes focused on an unusual deterioration pattern on the house. Burnt siding.

"Do you see that?" she asked Carlos, but he was too busy trying to make weeds look like flowers. "The side of the house got burned. You think that's from a fire or an explosion?" She walked closer to the melted siding of the dusty haunt.

Carlos stopped picking. "I know you think people used to walk around throwing hand grenades every day. Probably not."

"I think they're a revolutionary weapon of defense and more people had them than you think." She was so focused on possible evidence of her favorite weapon from history that she didn't pay attention to the ground below the burnt siding.

Once she did look down—she couldn't look away.

"Carlos . . ." She had a hard time catching her next breath. The anxiety from before found its reason to spread. Her heart pounded all the way to her eardrums. "Carlos, quick!"

She didn't actually want him to look. He had a weak stomach, but she needed him to verify that she wasn't just imagining the clothed skeleton at her feet.

"Oh jeez, get away from it." He waved her closer to him, but she couldn't take her eyes off the bones. The knife sticking out of the pants pocket looked oddly familiar.

"Wait, Carlos?" She bent closer to the dead body and reached into its pocket to free the knife.

"Ximena you'll get a disease. Come on." Carlos said it as if he'd forgotten for a moment that she couldn't catch the Flare; no one in their village could. And no disease was as great as the Flare.

"This is from our village!" She held up the knife so that Carlos could see the embroidered outline of an eagle, with a circle around it, on the weapon's sheath. The same design that Ximena's mother sewed into everything. To symbolize truth. She traced the white and brown thread of the eagle's head, sewn directly into the leather. "My mom's design . . ."

Carlos stepped forward and Ximena gave him the knife to see for himself. He looked at it with dismay, as if its blade had just popped his entire balloon of hope. "Oh, shit." He suddenly looked like he was going to throw up.

"What?"

He took a deep breath and looked away from the body. "Does the left hand have a snake ring on the second finger?" He asked as if he already knew the answer was yes.

It took Ximena a few moments to distinguish what was and wasn't a part of the skeleton, but a shiny sterling silver ring reflected the sunlight. "A snake eating its own tail? What's that mean?"

Carlos avoided Ximena's eyes. ". . . A symbol for the eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation. Or some such mumbo jumbo."

"No, I—what's that mean as far as the person the ring belongs to? This former person. Who is it? Who was it?" Not anyone from Ximena's village, she knew that much.

"It's . . . Kletter." Carlos looked at her as if she was supposed to know who that was. Everyone who visited their village had three or four names. Birth names. Middle names. Surnames. Town names.

"Did they work for the Villa with mom?"

"It's Annie Kletter."

Ximena's shoulders tensed; all the air in her lungs whooshed out of her. "This is Annie?" She looked down in disbelief. Anger. Absent-minded Annie. Dead. Like a black jackrabbit in the desert, right here on the way to the Villa. Ximena would have rejoiced at the thought days ago but now it only made the anxiety in her chest grow to a monstrous size. "Mom and Mariana . . . they wouldn't have just left her here. They would have given her a village burial. Why . . . why didn't they?" She paced, gripping the knife in her hand.

Carlos didn't answer. He just held his bouquet of weeds.

Ximena let the anger surge through her body to block the tears from coming. Not that she would have cried for Annie's death, no. She was glad that woman was dead. Ellas estan muertas. But the tears she wouldn't let come were for her mom and Mariana. Something was wrong. They wouldn't have left someone they worked with for so many years behind. Her mom wouldn't have let the animals feed on Annie's dead flesh without any sign of ritual or prayer. "They wouldn't have just left her here!"

"Maybe they . . ."

"There's no reason. This close to the Villa?" She shook her head.

"Maybe that's why your mom and Mariana stayed behind for so many extra months. The lab needed extra hands." Carlos turned back to the road. "Come on. They're at the Villa. We'll find answers. Maybe Kletter left for a different trip and they have no idea she's . . . gone."

Ximena followed Carlos up the road.

Her feet pounded the cracked pavement. She wanted answers. Justice. She hoped Carlos was right. She hoped for . . . Hope. But the anxiety in her chest said that Hope was a Devil, luring her to a false reality until both the lie and the truth killed her.

A circular object in the road caught her attention. She bent down to pick up a grass-braided bracelet.

"What's that?" Carlos asked. "Is it fresh?"

"Yeah," she said as she wrapped the bracelet around the handle of Annie's knife. "Might be a clue. Someone had to kill Annie Kletter and I want to know who."

The woman at the Villa had never told them her name. Isaac wished he'd asked as he sat impatiently in the quarantine room with Old Man Frypan. They were there to be ‘observed' but it had started to feel more like a prison than a safe place to wait. Frypan sat quietly against the back of the glass pod. Isaac wanted to believe that Jackie would be okay. He wanted to believe that he'd see Sadina again and reunite Sadina with her mom and that Frypan would live to be a hundred years old. But the truth was rarely better than what you wished for.

Isaac thought he couldn't have been more emotionally drained until he looked down and realized his grass bracelet had broken off somewhere. Must've been when he was carrying Jackie. He rubbed his bare wrist. That was it.

"Hey!" He knocked on the glass wall of his room and got another scientist's attention. He had counted five total people since they'd stepped into the building. All of them wore black clothes under white lab coats. Seemed almost like a cult. Did all scientists do that? He tapped the glass again, and a man at the back wall of the lab looked up at him. "Can you tell me what's going on?" Isaac shouted. Despite the guy looking right at him, he said nothing and returned to his work.

"They're not gonna level with you because they don't think you're on the same level as them." Frypan sighed.

"But she brought us all in because . . . we're unique. We're immune. Sadina and—"

The old man interrupted him. "Ever wonder if the truth ain't really the truth?"

Isaac paused. "What do you mean? You don't think we're immune?"

"Things change. Isn't that what evolution means?" He closed his eyes and settled further against the glass wall. "When a stew gets too salty, you don't throw it away. You've got to add a potato."

Isaac shook his head. "Seriously? What does that mean?" The mention of food made his stomach growl.

"You can add a peeled potato and it'll soak up the salt in the stew, but you gotta remember to take the potato out. And if you get clever and chop a potato up and leave it in, you can solve the problem that way too, but then you'll end up with potato soup rather than a stew."

Isaac truly loved this man and his lessons. "Are you talking about the Evolution? With a capital E?"

"I'm just saying that we're in a salty situation, here." He looked around the lab as if he were afraid the scientists wouldn't like what he was saying. "We came in to help Cowan and Jackie, but we gotta make sure these two potatoes," he pointed to himself and then to Isaac, "get the hell out of this pot as soon as we can." His eyes motioned to a glass pod way in the corner of the lab, which had a black curtain hanging on the outside. Black curtains like black uniforms. Everything in this place had a sense of mystery, cloaked.

"What's in there?" he asked, and Frypan pointed to the bottom corner of the glass pod. The curtain was flipped up just a bit, slightly revealing the contents of the room.

But Isaac couldn't really see anything.

"Just wait . . ." Old Man Frypan whispered and watched.

Isaac waited.

He didn't know what he was looking for, but nothing happened.

Until a flash of metal moved within the visible space. Something like Isaac had never seen before. Brighter than any metal he'd ever hammered on the forge. Sharp. Jagged.

"What is that thing?"

"That is something I never wanted to see again." The fear in Frypan's face highlighted every wrinkle and every age spot. "That, my friend, is a Griever."

Isaac turned back to the pod but the Griever's leg or arm, whatever it was, had moved on. He could only reach into his imagination for the stories Frypan and the elders told of the Glade and the Grievers coming after them, stinging the Gladers with a variation of the Flare. Nightmares come to life. Could that really be a live Griever in there? Seemed almost impossible, like a fairy tale. He turned to Frypan. "What's the longest you think two potatoes can simmer in a stew before they get mashed?"

He didn't hesitate. "Maybe a day at most."

"Whether they're true immunes or not, this Kletter lady sounds a lot like the Grief Bearers. I don't trust any of it." Orange was sitting on the captain's bench and flipping through the captain's log. Minho had spent two nights looking at the book in detail but couldn't string enough words together to form an opinion, other than the same conclusion that Orange had just come to.

"You never trusted the Grief Bearers? Even before that crazy stunt on the Berg?" Minho focused on the waters ahead. It wasn't long ago that the Grief Bearers of Remnant Nation had sent him away so that he could become one of them, one of their peers, but he'd known before they shoved him off a cliff that he didn't want that. Not only did they torture children for the sake of rising up one day to kill the Godhead, but Minho didn"t want to kill the Godhead—he wanted to join them and help the world evolve. But of course, he couldn't tell Orange that. Evolution—even the mention of the word—was blasphemy within the Orphan Army.

"Something about them never felt right." Orange handed over the captain's log and picked up her binoculars.

Minho relaxed behind the captain's wheel.

Unlike everyone else on the boat, Orange could watch for whales and other ships ahead without trying to fill the space between them with words. It was just like they were back on the wall guarding the Remnant Nation—except no one would die. Hopefully. Meanwhile, Minho could decompress in silence. He didn't have to work so hard to understand the dynamics of the group or to fight his soldier instincts. When it was just him and Orange, he could be himself—the Orphan named Minho.

He watched the horizon as he steered North-East. The sounds of the ocean grew on him, like the wet scraping the bottom of the ship made as it cut through the water. The whoosh of the wind over the deck. Even the way Dominic's cheerful voice carried up to the deck like an echo from the cabin below.

Minho would miss all of this when they got to Alaska.

Orange lowered her binoculars and turned to him with a confession. "Skinny and I never said anything out loud because we didn't want to get reinforced, but . . . once you left, we knew you wouldn't come back."

"Really?" The notion brought him peace, like an affirmation that he'd made the right decision. He wondered if the Grief Bearers had known, too. If that's why they'd fastened his cordage so tight. Why they'd pushed him so hard off the cliff. Why they came after him.

Orange nodded. "Yeah. We were jealous."

He'd never dreamed that anyone would even notice his absence, let alone be jealous of it.

"Have you thought about how you're going to do it?" she asked. "Kill the Godhead?"

"No." It wasn't a lie. He looked at her for a reaction, but she didn't have one. Maybe it was the number of days they'd spent on the open ocean, but Minho decided to test Orange. "What do you think Evolution is really about?" Her eyes got big with surprise. "Sorry, it's just something I think about sometimes . . ." He returned his attention to the ocean ahead of them.

"I don't know . . ." Orange wasn't accustomed to having permission to think on her own about the subject. But if she had time to think about Crank Armies, surely she would have thought about the Evolution and what it was or wasn't. "I guess it could be what we were told, or it could be something completely different. I only know one thing for sure. I'm never stepping foot back in that place."

"Me, neither." The walls of the Remnant Nation were ones he'd never see again. Ever. But as soon as he said it, he felt a pang in his gut. Kit.

"What's wrong?" Orange asked. "Your face just did a thing."

"Nothing. Just remembered something I left back there."

"Minho, no weapon, artifact, or internal organ is worth going back for."

"How about a person? A little boy named Kit." He couldn't believe he was telling this story to Orange but if anyone could understand how he felt, it would be her. "One night I was walking through the tunnels of Hell and heard something that sounded like a dying dog. I saved him, I think." Minho wasn't sure how long the boy would have lived after such a beating; maybe he should've just put the kid out of his misery. What the Remnant Nation called "reinforcement" was just another version of death, beating their will and subordination far below the surface. Saving Kit was the first time Minho went against the things he'd been taught.

Leaving the Remnant Nation and never going back was the second.

Orange seemed genuinely impressed. "Wow. Can't believe they didn't kill you on the spot for that."

"I don't think it was a Grief Bearer that hurt him. Whoever it was ran away."

Orange set her binoculars on the bench. "You should feel proud of that memory, not sad."

The Orphan shook his head. Pride had nothing to do with it. "When I asked the boy his name he said, Kit. But when he asked me back, I told him I didn't have one." Shame. In the same moment of his life where he'd shown the most courage, he also displayed the most cowardice.

He took a deep breath.

"You couldn't have, and he shouldn't have told you his name. That's probably why he was beaten, for giving himself a name. You know that." She crossed her arms at this and shook her head. Minho knew she'd understand. He needed to stop berating himself for it, but not telling Kit his name lingered as his one regret. "Gotta just try to forget about it. When I was a kid, I got reinforcement real bad like that."

"You did?" He looked her up and down for visible scars, but she was pretty spared.

He shook his head. "Not beat like this kid was."

"No?" Orange turned away from Minho and lifted up the bottom of her shirt. Across her lower back were three-inch-thick scar lines that looked like she'd been nearly cut in half. "I was ten. They heard me sing." She lowered her shirt and faced him again.

"Damn, Orange. You're tougher than I thought." That image would be impossible to get out of his mind. Slashes. All for singing? But if Orange could survive that, then there was hope for Kit too. Minho tried to move on. "Even so, as the captain of the ship, I give you permission to slap Dominic across the head anytime he starts singing again."

Orange smiled, leaned into the captain's wheel, and whispered, "He's awful, right? Like a seagull squawking over a dead fish."

Minho shook his head, his face pained. "I can't believe we've listened to him hum and holler this whole trip and you've been holding back on us. You should sing. Over him, with him, but preferably instead of him."

"Eh, maybe." She shrugged, not quite able to move on.

The Orphan understood. He once had a beating so hard he didn't talk for a month. Minho felt intrusive even thinking about it, but he had to ask her. He slowed down the ship. Orange deserved his full attention for this next question.

"What's your name?" His eyes focused on hers.

Orange tilted her head in confusion.

"Your name?"

She trembled slightly, as if a Priestess could slap her right now for even thinking about it, but the Remnant Nation had no hold over them now, out here in the middle of the ocean. They were free. She had to have a name.

"You know my name. It's Orange."

"Orange is a nickname, not a real name." He wanted to know what this girl, standing in front of him with scars from singing, called herself inside her own mind.

"Yeah, but nicknames are better than real names because only friends call you by your nickname." She nudged him. "Which means I have friends."

Minho took it in like the slow-moving waves ahead of them. He wondered if having a nickname was the one true measure of friendship—and if he'd ever have a true friend. Orange interrupted his thoughts, "Just like Skinny and I always called you Happy."

Minho searched his memory for a time when Skinny would have called him that.

He could only vaguely place it.

"Happy?" It wasn't anything he would have called himself.

"Yeah," Orange squinted at Minho, "Everyone calls you Happy." She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted across the boat to the others climbing on deck from below, "Hey Dom, what's Minho's nickname?"

Dominic was all too enthused to answer. "Happy!" He waved from across the deck. "She told us on the Berg. Took actually meeting you for me to really get it." Then, completely unprompted, unwarranted, and unwelcomed, Dominic started singing a song aboutbeing happywhile the others clapped along.

Minho couldn't help but smile. He moved the lever to pick up speed. Roxy and Miyoko clapped enthusiastically, letting out hoots and hollers to go with the song.

Minho, the Orphan with no name, now had two names.

One he chose. And one he just might grow into.

Happy.

Anchoring close to shore before sunset helped the Maze Cutter stay safe while Minho and Orange rested, but Sadina hated how much the ship rocked back and forth from the incoming waves. She leaned against a bunk and closed her eyes while the others prepped dinner.

"Can't you do that on deck?" Miyoko asked Dominic, "You're getting fish slop everywhere and it smells terrible. Worse than you."

"Jackie would be vomiting if she were here, that's for sure," Trish added.

Sadina tried to block out the noise and commotion, but thinking about Jackie made her think about Isaac which made her think about her mom and Old Man Frypan. Her heart ached.

Dominic was never fazed. "I cook them down here so it makes more sense to prep them down here. I like the smell! Plus the deck is extra windy today."

"Oh that's right, Dom gets cold," Miyoko teased. Sadina opened her eyes.

"Hey." Dominic stood tall with a fish head in his hand. "I didn't know when we packed for this adventure that we'd be freezing our asses and our heads off." He put the fish on his own head, mouth down, like a hat.

"Gross. Stop." Miyoko waved.

"What? I'm the Godhead of fish."

"You're the Godhead of nothing." She swatted the fish from his head.

Trish laughed and looked to Sadina, but Sadina, worried about her mom, didn't feel like laughing. Today, for some reason, she felt like something bad was about to happen. She kept telling herself that they likely made it to the Villa safe and sound, but not knowing what was really going on only made the feeling worse—it gave that bad feeling room to spread out and take over.

"You look like you're going to throw up," Trish said as she came over to Sadina.

"I'm not seasick, but I don't feel good." She wasn't nauseous. But she wasn't right. It came from a different place in her gut. "I think I'll go up for some air."

"And I shall honor your space." Trish smiled and blew her a kiss. She was taking their talk particularly well, which Sadina was thankful for. It seemed like the farther the Maze Cutter got from her mom, the sicker she felt and the more space she needed.

Sadina climbed the steps to the deck; her eyes squinted at the change in brightness. The sun setting off the water was blinding, a brilliant contrast to the dim cabin below. And Dominic was right; it was cold. She walked over to Orange and Roxy along the railing.

"Hey," Orange said; her fair skin looked redder by the day. "What's wrong? You going to be sick?"

"No, just. . . I don't know. I have a bad feeling that something might happen to my mom." Sadina unloaded this before even thinking that something had most definitely happened to Orange and Minho's moms—and dads. "Sorry, that was insensitive."

"It's okay. We grew up knowing our moms were prolly dead in Flare pits somewhere. That's why this sunburn doesn't bother me. It could be worse." At times, the things Orange and Minho said felt dark—and this was one of those times.

"I just can't shake the feeling that something's really wrong," Sadina said again as Minho walked over carrying ropes in his arms.

"Why didn't you stay behind then? Stay with your mom?" Minho always caught Sadina off guard. He was so direct with his questions in a tone that sounded like he judged her. Truth was, his comment hit her so hard because she hadn't even considered staying behind. The pressure of their mission, the call to Alaska was so great—it didn't feel like not going was an option. But he was right—it had been. Isaac didn't think twice about staying with her mom so that she could go to Alaska. She could have stayed behind, too.

"I don't know. I mean . . . the Cure and all, I think if we get to the Godhead and we can help them with that, then—"

"But if you're the Cure, shouldn't you have stayed with her?" Minho pushed further and tears just about welled up in Sadina's eyes.

"But she doesn't have the Flare, right?" Sadina looked at Minho, Roxy, and Orange. Did they know something she didn't? Roxy took a deep breath and shrugged. What did that mean? "Roxy?" She searched the woman's body language.

"It's okay sweetie, you weren't wrong to leave her. You did what you felt you needed to do. Just . . . something that Kletter lady wrote in the log made Minho wonder about things." She put her arm lovingly around Sadina's shoulders.

"Wonder what?" She examined each of their faces for a clue.

Orange didn't say anything.

Minho just looked at Roxy.

Sadina shrugged off Roxy's arm. "What is it? What did Kletter write?"

Roxy sighed and threw her arms up. "Well, I don't know, I can only read a few words here and there, but she chronicled a lot about infection and expiration, and . . ." She looked at Minho and he nodded. "And she wrote a couple pages about your mom."

"She what?" The waves against the boat rocked Sadina extra hard. "What did it say?"

Minho handed her the captain's log.

"We can't understand it, but back here," Roxy pointed, "these pages are where she wrote Se?oraCowan a couple times next to infección."

Sadina looked down at the journal and Kletter's stupid, sloppy, handwriting. She stared at the words surrounding ‘Se?ora Cowan' and wished they could have unjumbled themselves to make sense, but they didn't. That feeling deep in her gut, the one that said something is wrong, wasn't a premonition—it was regret. She should have stayed with her mom. Sadina handed the book back to Minho and tears fell from her eyes. Roxy wrapped her in a hug. Sadina wished Trish had followed her up to deck and not given her space. She couldn't have felt more wrong. She was one big mess. "I shouldn't have come."

"You've got too much on your shoulders, girl." Roxy rocked Sadina back and forth in a hug. "It's okay. You're doing what you believe is right, and Minho didn't mean to make you cry—did he?" She glared at her adopted son, stern eyes held with the necessary pause for an apology.

"I'm sorry," Minho said. "I just wondered why you didn't stay." What a way with words. Sadina stared into the sunset and let the tears fall.

"It'll be okay," Orange said. But as sunburned as Orange's skin looked, that's how Sadina's heart felt.

"Just try to do a sniper move," Minho said.

"I don't think shooting anyone is the answer here." Roxy continued to rock Sadina.

Orange nodded her head as if she knew. "No, that is a good idea." She held her hands out. "To stay calm under pressure we did breathing exercises." Roxy loosened her arms around Sadina. "Before you shoot at a trespasser or an animal, you always take in a lung full of air through your nose, and let it out real slow through your mouth. Then the rifle and you are steady enough for a shot."

"But I'm not going to shoot anyone." Sadina shook her head. "No, thanks."

"It's not about pulling the trigger," Minho said. "It's about letting everything go in that breath, out of your mouth so your body can steady. You put every anxiety, every worry, every thought you ever had in your whole life into that exhale. And you push it out of you to somewhere else." He pointed far off into the horizon.

"Go on, try it," Roxy said. "Can't hurt." And they all waited for Sadina to breathe. It felt silly.

She wiped her eyes and took a slow inhale through her nose and held her breath, long enough to think about everything she needed to put into her exhale to let go. Worries about her mom being alive. Seeing her again. Ever seeing Isaac again. Living up to Old Man Frypan's legacy. Living up to her great uncle Newt's legacy. Being a part of the Cure. Meeting the Godhead. All of it at once.

And then Sadina let it out in a slow whoosh. She released all the worries and pressure into the air to float away somewhere else. She pictured those thoughts skimming along the top of the ocean, and pictured the same tide that rocked the ship so roughly, taking them away. Far, far away.

"Here we are." Carlos pointed ahead to a building with columns in front, but it didn't look like what Ximena remembered. The Villa seemed so much bigger, and scarier, when she'd been little. The mansion in front of her looked worn down and weak. Concrete crumbled on the steps leading up to the front door. She headed that way.

Carlos grabbed her arm and stopped her. "Not that door."

"Why?" Ximena waited for Carlos to point to another entrance but instead he just looked into the trees to the left and the right. He wouldn't let go of her arm. "What?" she asked again. Carlos pulled her by the wrist to the side of the Villa. Her foot slipped on the knotted roots of a dried-up bush. "?Qué diablos?" She looked at Carlos for an explanation.

"They have security," he said in a whisper.

"In the trees?" She watched as he scanned the whole property with his eyes, keeping his body tight against the Villa. He couldn't tell her about this on their long journey? It would have only confirmed her doubts about the trustworthiness of Annie and the Villa, and Carlos probably hadn't wanted to hear miles and miles of Ximena's questions. "What's going on? You're acting like they'll shoot us for trespassing."

Carlos didn't say anything, which told Ximena everything.

He waved her to follow behind him along a thin path in between more dried bushes. Ximena took the knife she'd taken from Annie and lifted it out of its leather sleeve. "But you worked here, too. Isn't there some sort of password you can give them?"

"It's more of a process than a password." He carefully stepped closer to the back of the building. "I don't know if they still have traps, so we have to—"

"Traps?" Traps were for animals, not people.

Carlos turned to her. "The work they do here is very important, Ximena. It needs to be protected."

She sighed. She'd heard her whole life about how important the work at the Villa was, but she had yet to see the impact of that importance. She only saw the ways it affected her own village negatively. She matched Carlos' steps as best she could until they turned the corner of the house and reached a door painted all black. The paint was chunky as if someone had painted over it in layers. Sloppy. If this was a sign of the work the Villa did on the inside, then her thoughts about the Villa would stay unchanged. Carlos knocked once, hard. The crack of sound echoed around them as if the door was made of metal. Why did the Villa have metal doors?

Carlos rocked back and forth. He only did that when nervous. "Think they already know about Annie?" he whispered as if someone might hear him through the steel door.

"No. If they did, she wouldn't still be there. They wouldn't have left her there, not like that." Ximena steadied herself as the door opened. To her surprise, someone from their village was on the other side. Ximena recognized her features, but couldn't remember her name. "Diena?" she guessed.

"Danita," the woman said without any warmth. She eyed the two of them up and down.

"Hola, ?Podemos . . . podemos entrar?" Carlos asked, but Danita shook her head.

"Tenemos que hablar con la profesora Morgan ahora." Ximena insisted they speak to Professor Morgan, but Danita started to close the heavy black door. Ximena stopped her with the same hand that held Annie's knife. "Annie Kletter, Ellas están muertas."

Danita paused. "?Ella esta muerta?"

Ximena nodded.

"Podemos entrar?" Carlos asked again motioning to the door.

It had been years since Ximena had seen the inside of the Villa. Danita led them through the lower rooms to the main floor without a word. Ximena would have expected questions about the village and her family back home, but Danita seemed only focused on the task at hand—finding Morgan. Carlos held his bouquet of red clover as if he might see his wife at any moment, but Ximena wasn't even looking at the faces of workers and scientists around her. She was too busy examining the machines and instruments that changed room by room. The Villa had grown in its capabilities, greatly, since she'd been here last.

They reached the main floor and Danita turned to them, "Wait here."

Carlos nodded. Ximena's memories of the Villa came to life when she looked over at the glass-cased room built within the lab floor. A room she knew well. It was the one they'd built for her after her mother insisted Ximena be on the same floor of the lab as she worked, not below with the rest of the subjects. She started to walk over to the glass box but Carlos grabbed her wrist again. He motioned with his eyes to the two men inside. Ximena hadn't noticed them before.

Two men, one old and one young, sat with their knees folded into their chests. They looked tired, haggard. Or maybe it was defeat. She remembered well how the glass box they called a ‘safety pod' made her feel the exact opposite.

The young man stood and made eye contact with Ximena.

She quickly looked away.

"Carlos, Ximena, what is this news about Kletter?" Professor Morgan walked in from the hallway, and just hearing her voice made Ximena shiver. Morgan's hair was just as blonde as Ximena remembered and her hands just as boney.

"We found her body, about two miles from here, south. In the narrows." Carlos put his backpack down but still clutched the red clover. "Can you let Mariana know I'm here?"

"Mariana was with Kletter." Morgan said it without emotion, but Carlos acted like he hadn't heard, still holding the bouquet of weeds as if his wife would be there soon. "She took a research group with her to find the descendants of the Immune. You should know this."

Descendants of the Immune? No, her mother would have told her if that's where she was going. "Where's my mom?" She realized Annie's knife was still in her hand and she gripped it tighter.

Morgan carefully approached Ximena and helped her put the blade back into its sheath. She hated that her mind and body still followed directions from Morgan so easily. It had been years, but just like that—Morgan had disarmed her. "Your mom was with Mariana and Kletter."

"But we found Annie. Mom and Mariana weren't there." Ximena realized they hadn't checked inside the haunted house. They should have. Why didn't she? She looked at Carlos, "We didn't go inside that house."

"They wouldn't stay there." But that wasn't what Ximena meant. What she was trying to say was, they should have looked inside the house for more dead bodies.

"Well, they'll turn up," Morgan said, as if Ximena's mom and Mariana were just a pair of lost dogs who wandered from the pack. "We have four of the group they found here, from the island." She motioned with her eyes to the two men inside the glass room.

"Those are the immunes?" She looked back at the room. Both of the strangers were dirty, sickly. Something wasn't right. "If my mom and Mariana went looking for them, with Annie, then how are they here and Annie's dead? My mom wouldn't have left a mission." Professor Morgan didn't respond. Ximena turned to ask the two men herself, but Carlos stopped her again.

"Ximena." His sharp tone reminded her of Abuela letting her know when she was out of bounds. But why weren't they as worried as she was?

Morgan finally spoke, quietly. "They told us that Kletter was coming, right behind them." She stepped closer to Ximena and Carlos. "Was she dead long?"

Ximena nodded. She had never seen a body so decomposed. Being out in the open certainly hadn't helped.

"How long do you estimate?" Morgan turned to Carlos as if he knew, but he hadn't seen any more dead bodies in his life than Ximena—and he'd barely glanced at Annie's. He wasn't an elder who conducted burials, had no measure of decomposition. He was just a man looking for his wife, holding a bouquet of weeds and too much hope.

Ximena took it on herself to guess. "The flesh was liquified. Bones." She was no longer a child to be set aside in a glass box.

Morgan nodded slowly, only once. An up-and-down motion that somehow made Ximena feel heard. Respected. "They know more than they've told us. We need to question them carefully." She motioned to the lab techs in the background. Danita walked back over.

"I'll help," Ximena said before thinking. Morgan looked impressed, perhaps seeing potential. But it wasn't about that—Ximena needed to know what these men who'd traveled with Annie knew. She needed to find her mom.

"Join us, then," Professor Morgan said. "Danita, open the door."