Chapter 4

"You really think we'll run into Cranks out here?" Orange asked as they walked through the spotty forest. She eyed Minho's hold on his weapon as she dangled her own gun by her side. The trunks of the trees creaked as they swayed in the wind; the branches and leaves sang a haunting, whooshing tune.

"Maybe," Minho answered. Whether Cranks or something else, he'd be ready. Especially when the rest of the group took bathroom breaks in and out of the woods. Even wild dogs protected each other when one of them had to do their business. Orange seemed to be letting the islanders rub off on her, but Minho couldn't let his guard down so easily. "You don't?"

"I think the worst of what we could possibly run into . . . is back in Nebraska." Orange grimaced, and Minho silently agreed. Even before meeting people like Roxy and Ms. Cowan, he knew that the way of the Grief Bearers, not to mention their priests and priestesses, wasn't right. The constant guards. The rigid schedules. Training and watch duty for hours, being forced to kill anyone that approached the fortress walls. "And call me crazy, but I think the Remnant Nation must've collected all the Cranks in the world for their sick Crank Army and that's why we haven't seen much of any out here." She waved her weapon in front of the coastline as if to prove her point.

Minho looked at Orange to see if she was kidding. "I thought only the lowest level of soldiers believed in that rumor."

Orange frowned and raised her eyebrows. "I thought only the dumbest of soldiers didn't."

"Cranks can't be trained. And they can't be taught how to shoot." He tried to reason with her. "The rumor about an Army of Cranks is just something the older officers threatened to send off the younger soldiers to in order to scare them straight. To make them think that if they ever disobeyed they'd be turned into brainless slugs fighting the same war whether they wanted to or not."

"Sometimes rumors turn out to be true." Orange said.

"Name one."

"I don't know, maybe the rumor about Grief Bearers throwing Orphans off cliffs when they turn eighteen." She gave him a knowing look. Meh. She was only half right; sometimes they threw Orphans over the cliff before they turned eighteen—like Minho.

"Everything's always exaggerated." He understood the ritual and why the Grief Bearers sent away their strongest soldiers for a forty-day pilgrimage. It was obvious—to weed them out and find the ones strong enough to become Grief Bearers, help train the next generation.

"They still threw you off a cliff."

The sound of swift rustling in the brush returned Minho to the present moment. Roxy, Trish, and Miyoko stepped out from the thicker woods and back on the trail with Old Man Frypan.

"Did I hear that right? They threw you off a cliff?" Frypan asked and everyone's eyes swerved to Minho.

Roxy looked the saddest. "They what . . . ?"

"It wasn't that high of a cliff." Minho didn't know why he felt the need to defend the Grief Bearers. It was more about him not being viewed as vulnerable to the others. "Everyone goes through it. It's a rite of passage."

"Sounds like they weren't very nice," Frypan said with a massive roll of the eyes. "Much less trustworthy."

Minho shrugged. He was still learning what real trust meant, and hearing that Orange believed in such a thing as the Crank Army rumor made him realize he couldn't ever tell her his real reason for going to Alaska was to join the Godhead. Because if Orange believed in childhood rumors then she surely still held on tight to her training. She'd been taught to kill the Godhead, and Minho wanted to join the Godhead. He didn't know how he'd separate from the group when they arrived in Alaska, but there was something in his blood that screamed at him: You are one with the Godhead.

And he believed it.

The Orphan named Minho was one with the Godhead.

He'd prove it in time to everyone else but for now it'd be his guarded secret. He was still learning about life outside the walls of the Remnant Nation, but he knew one thing for sure: Gods could not trust men.

One's tolerance of the cold depended on genetics, and Alexandra always knew she had good, adaptable DNA because of her ability to withstand frigid temperatures. Or maybe it was mind over matter that she'd developed from strengthening her principles with the precepts and the Flaring discipline. Whatever the cause, others around her had bundled up in their mustard-yellow cloaks while she was comfortable with only a thin veil of cloth wrapped around her shoulders. It made her strength visible, which helped her to stand out even further from the crowd. It told the Pilgrims that she was their fearless leader.

She was their God among men.

As she moved closer to the eager crowd before her, the sheer cloak gently moved and folded with each step, like the Aurora Borealis in the sky. She pointed to the heavens above and spoke, throwing all the eloquence she could at the words.

"The sun shines on us now with a new energy. The Alaskan lights have returned to the night sky with all the colors and all the glory of the Universe." Only two Pilgrims clapped at this; the rest gawked at her in confusion. She couldn't blame them. "Were you not blessed to behold the colors of the sky last night?" Alexandra worked daily on strengthening her mind and controlling her thoughts and emotions, but times like this when it felt as though she were speaking to children, only the digits helped.

"The lights are a sign of the end times," a man murmured, and although Alexandra was prepared for their doubt to show up in many ways, she couldn't help but be annoyed. The Pilgrims of countless religions had been wishing the end times upon them for longer than recorded history. Why was every generation bound to the hopelessness of the generation before it? Why couldn't something so grand as the Borealis be a sign of good things to come?

"The northern lights are a promise of hope. They are telling of the times ahead, the evolution of the world to come and—"

An ungrateful and uneducated Pilgrim interrupted her. "Red appeared in the sky before the Sun Flares!"

Alexandra stood tall and recited the digits in her head. She was far too tired from a sleepless night to coach the citizens into their future. Always, she was forced to comfort their feeble minds. But today, shifting their perspective took more time than what she had patience for. Always more time. She hated progress halted by such lack of foresight.

"The sun will never flare or scorch the Earth again," she said calmly. I hope. "Nicholas foretold times just like these. Your Godhead has prepared you, have we not?" She enunciated every word as if to cut their doubt and fears in half.

"The Godhead is good!" a woman in the crowd shouted as she held her baby up in the air. Those around her murmured in support and raised their voices together to repeat, "The Godhead is good!"

Alexandra smiled. All it ever took was one voice to guide the others back to faith. She made eye contact with the woman holding the baby and nodded in gratitude. She remembered the faces of those who supported her just as much as the faces of those who spoke against her. Glaring back at the others who'd expressed fear, she said the words herself along with the crowd while peering deep into their eyes, "The Godhead is good. The Godhead is good."

The people breathed and chanted as one, a single organism moving and swaying together with each word. Something caught Alexandra's eye. Movement in the distance. A hooded man walked in the opposite direction of the town's square, his back to the crowd. But she didn't need to see his face to know whose shoulders lay beneath that cloak. It could be only one person: Mikhail. And Alexandra knew exactly where he was going.

"The Godhead is good," she chanted again. "The Godhead is good." And she watched Mikhail disappear around a corner, turning left toward the former home of Nicholas. Their former God.