Frozen

NINE

AS THE TEAM BEGINS TO retire, Xavier takes his post for evening watch. Sammy guides Emma to her tent, his hand on the small of her back. She smiles, looking shy, but not trying to avoid the contact either.

I glance away and catch Bree stalking from camp. She slides down a bluff, disappearing from view as she makes for the ocean. I dart after her.

“And they say you’re a quiet tracker,” she says, turning on me almost instantly. “I heard you coming a mile off.”

“What are you doing? Everyone’s settling in for the night.”

“That’s exactly what I am doing.” I stand there, confused. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you.”

I scramble down the bluff. The moon is waning but the sky is cloudless, and being free of the forest, its light seems to go on forever. There’s a dark shadow on the beach. Bree’s tent. It’s facing the water, far enough back that the surf can’t swallow it, but close enough that the ocean is an endless roar that ebbs and flows.

“That’s your tent,” I say.

“Good work, genius.”

I’m about to ask her why she chose to set up camp so far from the others when something she admitted during a game of Bullshit hits me. “You haven’t been able to sleep well since your Heist,” I say. “You miss the sound of waves.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember everything you said that night.” Her lips press into a sly smile, like she’s impressed. Or amused. “So you’re planning on falling asleep with the ocean, then?” I add quickly.

“Yup.” She raises an eyebrow, jabs me in the chest. “You should stay with me.”

“Does this mean you’ll be sneaking out of your own tent before dawn, then? Or am I supposed to go back to mine after my watch?”

Bree frowns. “I really don’t want to argue tonight.”

But that’s what we do best, I feel like saying.

“Let’s just sit for a while,” she offers. “Deal?”

I have plenty of time before my watch and since I’m not terribly tired, I agree. We start a small fire and sit facing the ocean, the tent at our backs. The salt is strong on the air and the waves endless. They seem too restless to help a person sleep. Just when one has fully died out, a new one comes crashing against the land: a constant disruption.

Without warning, there is a noise out on the water, a mournful call. It is solitary and eerie, drawn out. And then there is another, in response. The two echo each other, wailing into the evening.

“Loons,” Bree says. I’m not familiar with the bird, but she identifies their call so surely I don’t question her judgment.

“They sound sad.”

“But a sort of peaceful sad, don’t you think?”

They call out again and I suppose I can see what she means. There is something bittersweet and melancholy to their cries.

“If a pair gets separated, they call for each other until they’re reunited,” she explains. “We had them during the summers in Saltwater. You could always hear them when dusk fell. Their songs helped me sleep, just like my waves, but the birds migrated away for the winter—warmer waters, I think. It doesn’t seem warm enough here, to be honest, but then again, this water didn’t always exist. Maybe the flooding changed their habits.”

The loons call out again. Bree clasps her hands together and blows on her thumbs. The whistle she produces is strikingly similar to the birds’ cries on the water. Beautiful and haunting and stark.

Bree shows me how to shape my hands, the way to bend my thumbs, where to place my lips. She makes it look so easy but after many attempts, I’ve done nothing but blow soundlessly into my palms.

“This is impossible.”

She shoots me an unforgiving look. “It took me almost a month to learn how to do it when I was a kid. If you picked it up after two minutes, I’d be furious.”

“Knowing how rare it is to see you angry about something, I don’t want to miss this opportunity.” I dramatically roll up my sleeves and cup my hands together. I blow on them without success, but a loon wails at the same exact moment. “Look at that! Perfection.”

I expect a snide comment but it never comes. I turn and find Bree staring at the burn scars on my left forearm. They look more pronounced in the firelight: the rippled portions of skin deeper, the slight discolorations more severe. I wonder what state my arm would be in if Bo hadn’t pulled me from the flaming platform as quickly as he did. When Emma first tended to me, she said I was lucky and that the scarring wouldn’t be too drastic. Even still, my arm has never looked the same.

Bree presses a hand to my skin like she hasn’t seen the burn before, like she didn’t spend our first night together running her palms over the scars and kissing from my fingers to my elbow.

“I wish there had been a way to get you out of that square faster,” she says. “It kills me that this happened to you. That I let it happen.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It feels like it was.”

“You did an awful lot of good that day, too,” I say, thinking about how I was staring down the barrel of a rifle at Harvey moments before her rubber bullet hit me. “You saved me from pulling the trigger. I don’t know if it’s possible to repay someone for a thing like that.”

“I didn’t do it so you’d owe me, Gray. And I didn’t do it to save you from shooting Harvey, either. I did it because it saved you. Period.”

I feel a smile creep over my lips. “You see why thank you doesn’t seem like enough?”

She elbows me and the loons start crying again. Bree calls back, and I try to do the same, failing to make a noise that even slightly resembles their wails.

“This was a perfect way to end my birthday,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder.

“We should have done something as a group, like we did for Sammy’s.”

“No, this is better. Just you and me.”

Yes, just the two of us, I think. Always for a few hours. Always when no one is looking. But never for an entire night.

Bree tilts her chin toward me, offering me her lips. I hesitate and she sits back, frowning.

“Why are you fighting this, Gray?”

I glance at her fingers still resting on my skin.

“Tell me,” she demands.

It’s only now that she’s asking—willing to talk about us in the open rather than hide behind all our jokes and teasing—that the truth seems so painfully clear.

“Because . . .” I look out to sea, terrified to say it to her face. “Because maybe we’re not right, Bree.” A wave crashes against the shore. “You and me . . . Maybe we’re too aggressive for each other. We’re either at each other’s throats or we can’t keep our hands to ourselves. We fight and yell and argue. We shove each other around. We never stop critiquing what the other is doing. It’s exhausting. And that’s not a real relationship. That’s not how it should be.”

“Yes, it is,” she says firmly. “That’s exactly how it should be. We’re a team. We push each other. If it’s not honest and truthful and challenging, what’s the point?”

“To find a balance, maybe? A counterweight? Someone who is the things you’re not.”

“Like Emma?” She is staring right at me, but I’m too much of a coward to look at her. I can face Frank and Forgeries and Walls, but a girl half my size terrifies me.

“Maybe. Or someone like her. I don’t know. It’s just that Emma helps me fight my weaknesses. She calms me. I could probably use someone like that.”

“Emma makes you boring, Gray. She makes you safe.”

Those words are spoken with such bitterness that I’m suddenly brave enough to look her in the eye. “What?”

“You heard me. She takes all the things I love about you and stifles them. She doesn’t mean to, but that’s what happens when you’re with her. You fizzle. You die. You become quiet and guarded and cautious and not yourself. I hate it. I hate how I accept you in your entirety—the good and bad—and you do the same for me, and yet you’re still fighting it. Trying to act like you can’t feel what I feel. Like this won’t work.” She motions between us.

“Well, look at us. All we do is argue. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe it was never going to work.”

“Bullshit,” she spits. “A part of your heart has always belonged to her, so don’t you dare tell me this won’t work when you haven’t even tried. Not truly.”

“I haven’t tried? Really? Me? Because last I checked, you’re the one rushing out every night, running back to your own bed.”

“Oh, sure—blame me, Gray. Make this my fault. My defenses could never be because I sense your hesitation. Because I catch you watching her. Because it’s been this way since the day we met. No, I should gladly hand my heart over so that you can stomp all over it.”

“I have no intention of—are you even listening? This is exactly why I just said everything I did. Because we’re not right, Bree. We self-destruct! Can you not understand that?”

She throws sand on the fire and the beach goes dark. “Oh, I understand. I understand so well I swear I’m in your head! I knew this was coming. I knew it all along. Do me a favor, will you? The next time a girl wanders into your bedroom, think real hard about what you’re doing before you pull back the covers for her. I’d hate for her to get confused and misled by your oh-so-clear intentions.”

“I’ll go, then,” I say, because she is furious, and a wildfire cannot be controlled, will not be controlled. A civil conversation is not going to take place tonight.

I stand and she jumps to her feet, squares her shoulders to me.

“Yeah, great. You go! That’s just perfect! It really was a lovely birthday, though, Gray. I appreciate the effort.”

And then she is storming toward the waves, hair whipping in the wind, jacket flailing. I think of following her, but know it’s useless. The only words she wants to hear are words I’m not sure I can give her without lying.

TEN

BREE WON’T TALK TO ME in the morning. She won’t even make eye contact. When the team heads north along the shore toward Bone Harbor, she runs ahead to walk with Xavier and I feel her absence from my side more deeply than I expect to.

It is another cloudless day, warm enough for us to forgo our hats and let our jackets hang open. It’s liberating to walk in so few layers after weeks of frigid temperatures. Clipper says the change is a combination of things: the Gulf trapping warm air and the fact that we are farther south than we were when we set out from Crevice Valley. But I don’t care to make sense of the change, not when I can finally feel the sun again.

Bone Harbor appears well before noon. It is unlike Taem in every way possible. The town is tucked back into a cove, no dome protecting it, no glamorous signs or flying trolley. Docks clutter the shoreline. Shanty buildings along the water are discolored with growth from the sea. The ones set back farther hunch as though the wind has crippled them, paint peeling. The entire place smells like fish, and a rowdy species of white birds hovers overhead, screeching endlessly.

“Is it called Bone Harbor because it looks like death?” Sammy asks as we enter the town from the south.

“Course not,” Bo says. “It was the backbone of the fishing industry for a while after the Quake; hence the name. But the flooding continued and the Gulf crept closer to Haven, so now Bone Harbor is just a forgotten waterfront community where those not fortunate enough to buy their way under a dome make do the best they can.”

“You know something about everything, don’t you?” I say. “Did they let you read a history book on AmEast when you sat in Frank’s prisons?”

Bo stops tapping at his pack’s straps long enough to wink. “It’s phenomenal how much a person can learn if they only listen.”

“Um . . . guys?” Bree waves a hand to get everyone’s attention. When I see what she’s pointing at, my stomach lurches.

Plastered against the walls of the back alley we’re walking through is a series of posters. Most threaten arrest for anyone caught harboring, trading with, or even conversing with an AmWest citizen. Several announce the recent capture and execution of Harvey. But one is larger than the rest, hung dead center, overlapping a curfew warning.

WANTED ALIVE FOR CRIMES AGAINST AMEAST INCLUDING LARCENY, SEDITION, ESPIONAGE, AND HIGH TREASON.

And above the crimes is my name, and above that, my face, staring out into the street with the gray eyes for which I was named. It’s a recent picture, probably taken by Frank’s cameras when I returned to Taem for the vaccine. I will most certainly be recognized in Bone Harbor.

“Oh hell,” Sammy says. I think he’s reacting to the poster, but I follow his gaze and just when I think things can’t get any worse, they do.

The Franconian Order. Two of them, ahead in the alley, questioning an older woman who’s wiping her hands nervously on her apron.

Xavier turns on Jackson. “The damn Forgery sold us out.”

“Me?” he says, startled. “How? Telepathy? Magic?”

“You got ahold of our gear! Radioed someone!”

“We had a deal: You keep me alive and I get you into the Outer Ring. I still don’t have what I was sent for—your headquarters’ location—so why would I risk my own life to call the Order, who may or may not be able to get me out of this mess?”

Xavier looks furious. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe to—”

“Clipper and Xavier, stay with me and the horses,” my father orders harshly. “Everyone else, split up. I don’t care how you do it; just do it now. We’ll meet at the docks. After sundown, if we can manage.”

“But the Forgery,” Xavier says. “He—”

“Not now,” Owen snaps. “There isn’t time.”

We scatter not a second too soon. I somehow get stuck with Jackson after Xavier shoves him at me. The two of us run for the nearest side street—or rather, I run and Jackson refuses to cooperate, so I have to drag him behind me. I shoulder my way into the first building we come to. It is a single-level home, set on the corner of the side street and the alley we just fled. It’s currently vacant, but there are clothes hanging on a drying rack and a few dishes set out on a table that also holds a bowl of fruit. Someone will be back eventually.

I move into the kitchen, where a window looks onto the alley. My father is just coming into view.

“You’re going to get caught,” Jackson says, a note of humor in his voice.

“Shut up.”

“I’m just stating the facts.”

I shove him against the wall. “I mean it. Not another word.”

Outside, my father has pulled his hat back on even in the comfortable weather, but I know he’s done it to cover his hair. Between the hat, and his blue eyes and full beard, he no longer looks like an obvious father to the boy on the wanted posters. Xavier holds the reins of the two horses at his side and Clipper has his hands on the straps of his backpack, gripping them so tightly his knuckles have gone white.

The Order members flag them down as they approach. The red triangles on their chests are screaming danger, and I want my father to turn and run. Nothing good can come of these people.

“Morning, folks,” one of them says. His words are murky through the glass window, but I can hear well enough.

“Morning,” Owen echoes.

“What brings you to Bone Harbor?” the second asks. A female. Her face is square and angular, her neck so thick she almost appears not to have one.

“What makes you think we are only visiting?”

“There’s not much need for horses around here,” the woman says, eyeing the reins in Xavier’s hands.

“We plan to trade them,” my father answers. “They were necessary to get here, but we need a boat now, not horses.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Haven,” Clipper says.

“You’re pretty far south of home. Where are you coming from?”

“Even farther south, ma’am,” Clipper continues. “A small town in the Southern Sector. We have family there.”

“So you’re all related?” the male asks.

“My son and nephew,” Owen says of Clipper and Xavier, which is believable enough.

“And you chose to travel by boat and horse from Haven all the way to the Southern Sector?”

“Not everyone living under a dome can afford to power a car. And a trip through the Wastes is desolate, too easy to get stranded without fuel. I don’t mean to pry, but was there a point to this questioning?”

The stocky woman frowns. “Yes, there is.” She holds out a copy of the wanted poster. “We’re looking for this boy. We have reason to suspect he was heading west, possibly through this town or one of the others along the New Gulf.”

Owen takes a moment to examine the photo. “I haven’t seen him.”

“You’re positive?” the woman says, folding her arms across her chest. “This boy can be quite persuasive when necessary. If he promised you anything in exchange for silence, you should know he won’t keep his side of the bargain.”

“I assure you we have never seen him,” my father says, “but if that changes, we’ll alert someone immediately. It’s no good, having a criminal like that running around.”

“Too true,” she responds.

“Are we free to go now? I’d hoped to trade these horses by midday.”

“Yes. Thank you for your time.”

They pass by, horses in tow, and I feel like air is finally returning to my lungs. Not a second later the door of the house is thrown open and Emma and Aiden stumble inside.

“What are you doing?” I hiss at her as she closes the door.

“We were one house over, but the owner came home and we had to sneak out a window.”

I peer back onto the main street. The Order members are turning the corner, pointing at houses as they head up our side street.

Emma reads my face. “They’re coming, aren’t they? This way?”

We hear footsteps, boots against the hard-packed earth. Then a knock on our door.

Jackson looks momentarily amused. He sold us out after all, just like Xavier suspected. But then the Forgery notices Aiden shaking in fear and his demeanor changes to something so close to worry that I reconsider the theory. Maybe the Order is simply doing what Jackson and Blaine were sent to do: intercept us.

Another knock.

“Don’t say anything,” I whisper. “They’ll leave eventually.”

“Franconian Order!” the woman shouts from outside. “We’re sweeping all houses in this alley. You have twenty seconds to open your door or we will assume no one is home and open it ourselves.”

“Let me talk to them,” Emma offers.

“What? No!”

“I’ll tell them I saw you across town or something. I can do this. It will be easy.”

She looks so sure of herself, so confident. It’s her eyes: brilliant with hope, so steady she seems unstoppable. But I can’t have Emma risking herself like this for us. Frank might suspect she followed me back to Crevice Valley last fall, and just because I’ve only seen posters with my face on them doesn’t mean Frank didn’t create additional signage featuring hers.

“Take Aiden into the back room,” I tell Emma. “Find a closet or something and stay put until I call for you.”

“Let me do this.” Her voice is hard. Almost desperate.

The door trembles under another pounding.

“Emma, please don’t make me ask again.”

She exhales sharply and takes Aiden into a side room just as the Order woman starts counting backward.

Ten . . . Nine . . .

The quarters are too tight to fire an arrow, so I grab a knife from the kitchen and face Jackson. “Open that door and tell them you saw me on the other side of town.”

Eight . . . Seven . . .

He eyes the knife in my hands. “You won’t be getting access codes to Group A if I’m dead.”

Six . . . Five . . .

“We keep you alive, and you help us if we run into Order members,” I remind him. “You said that back in Stonewall.”

Four . . .

“Do you want them to search this house? Find Aiden? Punish him because he’s here with me?”

Three . . .

Jackson’s eyes dart between me and the door. “I’ll handle it.”

Two . . .

I cut the ropes binding his wrists.

One . . .

He opens the door. It swings inward, blocking me from the Order’s sight.

“Sorry about the delay,” he says. “Was in the bathroom.”

“Not at all,” replies the woman. There’s a rustling of paper. “We’re looking for this boy and checking in on citizens while we’re at it. Making sure he’s not holding anyone against their will.”

“I think . . . Yes. I saw this boy just earlier, peering into a window down that alley.” Jackson’s voice is surprisingly convincing. “I thought he locked himself out of his house, but maybe he was looking for a place to hide.”

I hear the woman take the poster back. “This alley, you say?” Jackson must nod or point in clarification because she says, “Thank you.”

The door closes and I’m breathing again, weight lifting off my chest. I grab the Forgery—who’s rubbing his forehead like the entire encounter has given him a headache—and push him into a chair in the sitting room. “Emma! It’s safe.”

She looks angry when she reappears with Aiden. It’s not an expression I’m used to seeing on her face and I know why she’s shooting it my way; deal or not, I momentarily put our lives in the Forgery’s hands. But it paid off and I don’t regret a thing.

I rebind Jackson’s wrists, covering the rope burns he’s beginning to develop. “Thanks,” I say to him. “For helping us like that.”

“I was helping the boy, not you. I’ll do what I need to, eventually: get the location I came for. I don’t have a choice.”

“Every action is the result of a choice. Even a Forgery’s.”

He grunts skeptically. I look over to Emma, who has a hand on Aiden’s shoulder.

“The others?” I ask her. “Did you see where any of them went?”

“Sammy has the dog, and he just sat in the open. Smart, really. Bo and September hid in a house across the way.”

“And Bree?”

“I don’t know. Last I saw, she was running along the roofs. Alone.”

But these words are reassuring, because if Bree is on her own, I know, without a doubt, that she is absolutely fine.

ELEVEN

WE TAKE TURNS BATHING. THE water that comes from the faucet is tinged with salt, but I’m clean at the end of the process and that is enough to make me happy. There is no window in the bathroom and I feel comfortable letting Jackson have some privacy after I’ve emptied the room of razor blades and anything else I think he can get too creative with.

The owner of the house still hasn’t come back, but the sky is starting to lose some of its color. We should leave soon, but Emma insists on cutting my hair first.

“I like it better long,” I argue.

“It’s not about what you like, Gray. It’s about making you look less like the face on those posters.”

I reluctantly stand near the sink in the bathroom while Emma hovers around me with scissors. I’m not sure why parting with something as meaningless as hair hurts a little. Nothing has been the same since I climbed the Wall with Emma over the summer, and I feel most comfortable when my hair curls over my ears, falls into my eyes, grazes the back of my neck. These things remind me of Claysoot: a reassurance that I haven’t lost myself in all that’s happened.

“What’s Jackson doing now?”

Emma glances out the open door and into the sitting room. “He’s playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with Aiden. Just like he was the last five times you asked me to check.”

She smiles at me in the mirror and then pushes me to my knees so she can better attack the rest of my hair.

“What will you do when this is all over?” she asks, cutting my bangs back so they no longer fall into my eyes. “Group A, Frank, everything. What then?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. It almost feels dangerous to be so optimistic.”

“I’ll go back to Claysoot,” she says. “I miss my mother. And I want to find Laurel, too; tell her that I was never crazy to believe there was more, even though she laughed at all my theories when we were younger.”

I picture the reunions. Emma’s mother and best friend dissolving into tears, hugging Emma so tightly she can barely breathe.

“Will you stay there?” I ask.

She shrugs. “It depends. It might have too many tough memories, of being a prison and a lie. But then, it’s still home, and maybe it won’t seem so bad when we can cross the Wall freely.”

“I’ll go with you. To see Blaine, because I know he’ll go there immediately, looking for Kale. And then maybe I’ll fight with Chalice for good measure, just to watch you stitch her chin up again.”

Emma grins and puts the scissors down. “You are not good with grudges.”

“I know,” I say, standing. “I’m terrible with them.”

“Well, no one’s perfect. Least of all me.”

A few months ago I would have said that Emma was as close to perfect as a person can be. Kind, helpful, confident. Loyal. But now, even though I’ve known her my whole life, she feels like a stranger.

“I really am sorry.” She looks at me, and her eyes are terrifyingly doubtful, like she fears we’re ruined forever. More than once, I’ve had the same thought myself.

“Whenever you decide I deserve that second chance, I’ll be ready,” she adds. “I hope you know that.”

She brushes past me and into the sitting room. I squeeze the lip of the sink with both hands, stare at myself in the mirror. I wish I knew how to forgive her, wish I could love this Emma the way I loved the one in my memories.

I fetch a blade from the other room and shave. It will make me look more like the face on the wanted posters, but I don’t care. I just want to feel like myself.

By the time I step into the sitting room, Aiden has grown tired of his hand games. He’s lying on the couch, his head on Jackson’s lap, eyes struggling to stay open. Jackson has an arm draped over the boy in an almost parental manner. The Forgery: a pillow, a protector. It’s so ridiculous I almost laugh.

I gather my gear, tell the others to do the same. Aiden yawns and says something about using the bathroom first, and I snap at him to hurry. Emma gives me a chastising look, but the sun is setting. I don’t feel like pushing our luck in the house much longer.

I flip through a handful of letters lying on a cluttered desk while we wait for Aiden. They are handwritten in elegant script, all smooth arcs and flourishes. I find the most recent one, dated a week back, and read.

Carl—

Badger told me he won’t run our letters anymore, even if you are trading with him. He says it’s getting too risky. The Expats are gaining momentum—I know some of their stories have made it to Bone Harbor—and Order troops along the borders have doubled as a result. Ships on the Gulf are being stopped more and more often. They’re looking for reasons to arrest people, Carl. So long as it’s a blow to the Expats—dulls enthusiasm—they won’t hesitate.

Badger claims these notes hold too much damning evidence. I’ve pleaded with him, said we can change names, places, anything—we’ll talk in code if we have to—but he refuses to be our courier.

This is my last letter.

I’ll be fishing with Charlie where the catch is good the week of the holidays. You know the place: our favorite spot southwest of the Gulf. Meet us, won’t you? You can come west for good. We’ll give up fishing and head for Expat protection. I know you’ve never liked my brother, but this was all Charlie’s idea: getting you out, having you join us. We can even sink your seiner, make it look like you went down. No one will come after you.

Please, Carl. The Order has taken everything from your people: their hope, their resilience, their freedom. Don’t let them take your heart, too.

You know where to find me.

All my love,

May

I realize then what I hadn’t before: the clothes on the drying rack are not the slightest bit damp; the fruit on the kitchen table is beginning to spoil. The owner of the house—Carl—is long gone. And he won’t be returning.

Also on the desk are dozens of paper scraps, edges ragged as though Carl tore them from a larger source. There’s a story about Order troops being stationed in gulfside towns as additional border control, an announcement on freshwater taxes, a note mandating curfew, another saying all ships are subject to random search upon leaving and entering port. The Franconian emblem sits at the end of each story.

A crumpled piece of paper catches my eye because it’s a different shade from the others—more tan than ash gray. I skim a few sentences about water prices and black markets. Badger’s name appears twice. There is no Franconian mark on this paper, merely a line at the bottom that reads The Bone Harbor Harbinger—burn after reading.

I frown at the conflicting stories, run my thumb over Badger’s name.

Aiden steps from the bathroom, and I slip the Harbinger and May’s letter into my pocket. I’ll show them to my father later, but at the moment, we need to move.

TWELVE

THE STREETS ARE QUIET AS we steal through them. We pass a building with a cross on its peak. People are singing inside, and a single candle burns in each window. Most other buildings in town lie dark and seemingly vacant, and we spot only one Order member on our way to the harbor. He stands with his back against a brick wall, staring at the stars instead of the streets he should be watching.

When we get to the docks, the rest of the group is already there. The horses are gone and I assume this means my father had success selling them.

Bree greets me with a curt nod. “Nice haircut.”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

“I’m not. But it’s good to know you aren’t dead.” She pivots and stalks off to join Xavier and September in a discussion about something called high tide.

My father is scanning the town, binoculars to his eyes. Clipper does the same. “Three flames in the highest window, one in all the others,” Owen says to him. “That’s the signal.”

“There,” Clipper exclaims, pointing at a tiny house set back in the cove.

“It’s a good thing everyone is preoccupied with holiday eve celebrations,” Bo says. “Otherwise getting to that house unseen would be a difficult task.”

“Yeah, hooray for holidays,” Sammy mumbles behind me. “This is exactly how I like to spend them.” Rusty yaps in agreement, and half the team hushes him all at once.

When we get to the marked house, my father raps on the door, a funny little pattern that I’m sure is another signal. The door is yanked open and light floods the alley. The man standing before us is plump and lively, with bushy eyebrows and an even rowdier mustache. A pipe is rooted between his teeth as though it grows there.

“Merry Christmas, friends!” he says. “Come in. Come in! It’s nearly curfew.”

And then we are ushered into the warmth of his cramped home for a series of introductions, the cry of the ocean shut out by the door.

The captain, Isaac Christopher Murphy, is the most superstitious person I have ever met. He nearly faints when he learns that there will be women on board his ship.

“This weren’t part of the agreement,” he spouts. “Ryder didn’t mention no women. I won’t have it! Wouldn’t’ve taken the job if I’d known.”

Isaac paces around the small sitting room, puffing on his pipe and claiming the females will sink his boat. It’s not until a small girl walks into the room and points at Isaac’s tabby cat, which has curled up in Bree’s lap, that Isaac finally calms.

“Look, Pa,” she says. “Dixie likes the lady.”

“Well, it changes things a bit,” Isaac says after some consideration, “but I still ain’t fond of the idea. Lunacy this is, bringing women on board. Especially with the state of things! Order members increasing their presence in town. Tensions rising along the borderlines. When I was fishing with my regular crew on the western shores of the Gulf a month back, we heard wind that AmWest is trying to convince AmEast citizens to come to their side. ‘The real patriots are Expats,’ they’ve been saying. Have you heard this chatter?” I’m about to mention May’s letter when Isaac gasps, the pipe tumbling from his lips.

“There will be thirteen of us! Thirteen, including Dixie. More bad luck. Not to mention it ain’t comfortable with over ten, but thirteen! No, I won’t have it.”

“It’s fourteen, actually,” Bree says. “If you count Rusty.”

“You don’t count dogs,” Isaac says, as if this should be obvious.

“But you counted the cat.”

“Course I did. Cats are good luck on a ship.”

“Hold on a minute,” my father says. “Not everyone continues from here, so the number won’t be a problem. September will be setting up a post in Bone Harbor.”

“I will?” September says, as surprised as I am by this news.

“We agreed to take Aiden as far as the next town, and the upcoming leg of our journey is no place for a young boy. But since we can’t just dump him on the streets, I’m hoping that you, September, can find him and Rusty a good home. Then we’ll need you to sit tight until we are able to send word for you to join us. So that drops our number down to ten, Isaac. Eleven, if you insist on counting the cat.”

“We’ve established the cat’s counted,” he grumbles. “I still don’t feel good ’bout the women, but I suppose I ain’t got a choice in the matter. Can’t very well strand friends of a friend.” He puffs on his pipe a moment longer and adds, “I don’t suppose you ladies would be willing to remain naked on board? A bare woman is good luck, you know.”

“You’re dreaming,” Bree says. “We’re coming and we’re keeping our clothes on and everything is going to be fine.”

“What about you, then?” Isaac raises his bushy eyebrows at Emma.

She just blushes and stares at her hands. Bree nudges her shoulder and whispers, “Go on, Emma. Don’t let him make you uncomfortable. Tell him to shove it.”

But before she can, Isaac’s daughter and Aiden erupt with squeals. The girl has been teaching him a new hand game—one where they join fists and battle to pin each other’s thumb down.

“Catherine, child. Bed!” Isaac motions toward the hallway. “If you’re expecting Saint Nicholas to come with even the smallest of holiday tidings you’ll be asleep before I count to three. One . . . two . . .”

But Catherine is already gone. Emma leads Aiden after her.

“My sister’ll be here early to take care of Catherine. I’d prefer to be gone before she arrives—that woman’ll talk our ears off—so rest while you can.” Isaac stares at me, as though he is seeing me for the first time despite the fact that I shook his hand when we arrived. “You . . . You’re the boy on the posters.”

I nod, and he pulls a set of curtains closed hurriedly.

“I don’t like it,” he says yet again, which leaves me thinking Isaac doesn’t like much of anything. “It’s a bad time to be smuggling fugitives ’cross the Gulf. It’s a bad time to be on the Gulf in general.” He blows out the candles in the front of the house and yanks those curtains closed as well.

“Ryder said you were a man we could trust,” my father says. “If this is true, I’m sure you don’t believe everything you read on Franconian signage.”

“Course not,” Isaac mutters. “How could I when the Order keeps patrolling our streets like we’re criminals and taxing our drinking water like it’s gold? They’re gonna make me broke. I’ve had to start buying off this guy that goes by Badger. Man’s shifty as they come but his water’s clean and cheap, and I ain’t turning down that sort of deal. Even if he does live in AmWest.”

“AmWest?” Bo echoes. “I thought water was even harder to come by out that way.”

“Supposedly is, but they’ll trade for the right price: information. Anything Franconian they can get their hands on, so long as it’s trustworthy, and I know a boatload about the Order’s shipping habits from all my time on the Gulf. They’re planning something. Don’t know what, but if it knocks the Order ’round a bit, gets them outta my hair as much as theirs, I ain’t complaining. You know, sometimes I catch myself wondering if those AmWest guys are just like us, only caught on the opposite side of a line drawn in the sand.”

Isaac pulls the last set of curtains closed. “We’ll leave well before dawn,” he announces to the room. “Pack your black clothes away—they won’t be worn on my ship—do not utter the word drown on deck, and when you step on board, lead with your right foot, else you’ll brew up a storm and bury us in the Gulf. Is that clear?”

Everyone nods, but when Isaac retires to bed Bree mumbles, “What a load of crap.”

We spread out in the tiny house, sleeping bags practically overlapping. Those in the group who have not yet bathed take turns using the washroom. I’m squished between Bo, who is humming his song about red berries, eyes closed; and my father, who is cleaning his rifle. I show him May’s letter and the Harbinger story. He reads silently, forehead wrinkled.

“What’s it mean?” I ask when he hands them back.

“I don’t know. Could mean a lot of things. The Harbinger is clearly an underground paper published by people here in town, so its facts are only as good as rumors, which is to say, not good at all. And the letter? It’s just one girl’s words to a fisherman she likely met on the sea and fell for.”

“But the rumors in the Harbinger match most of May’s letter, plus some of what Isaac said earlier. And besides, wouldn’t rumors have some basis in truth?”

My father nods and frowns in one motion. “A very good point.”

I watch him run a cleaning rod through the rifle. “I just . . . I think we’d be stupid to not look into it.”

He puts the weapon down. “Let me see those again.” I hand him the papers and he reads through them. Twice. “We’ll talk to Isaac again tomorrow. Try and get more out of him. I think I might have September poke around town after she gets Aiden settled, too. See if she can confirm any of these rumors.”

I nod, settle deeper into my sleeping bag. I’m not sure what will come of it, but it seems the right thing to do: follow these odd stories until the truth unearths itself. I’d still be sitting in Claysoot if I hadn’t done the same after my doubts about the Heist surfaced.

Behind me, I can hear Dixie hissing as Jackson tries to coax her into his lap. It took him forever to win over Rusty. I don’t know why he’d expect to have success with the cat. Forged Blaine flashes through my mind, how I couldn’t sense his true nature, and I feel a little pathetic for having worse instincts than a house pet.

“You sure we should take the Forgery on the boat?” I ask my father.

“It would be too easy for him to tip off the Order in Bone Harbor. And I don’t want to regret leaving him behind if Clipper ends up having complications with the Outer Ring.”

Dixie hisses at Jackson again and I worry that he will be a greater risk to us than ever once we are on a boat and Aiden is left behind. The child miraculously brings out a semblance of humanity in him.

“You should sleep, Gray,” my father says. “It might not come as easily once we’re on the water.”

I roll over and try to block out Bo’s humming. Outside, wind surges against the house. The ocean is a distant noise now, practically drowned out by the creaking of floorboards and drafty walls. It seems like my eyes have closed for only the briefest of moments when someone is shaking me awake.

It is time to greet the sea.

THIRTEEN

ISAAC IS FRANTIC IN THE morning.

“Let’s get going,” he urges. “The Order’s been inspecting boats at random before they push off these last few weeks and I want to disappear before they start crawling the shore. Hurry, hurry!”

We are rushed through our good-byes. September promises to take care of Aiden and find him the very best of homes. We all peer into the bedroom before leaving, even the Forgery. Aiden’s dark hair is splayed out against his pillow, Rusty curled up at his feet.

We gather our gear and head out, Isaac mumbling about early departures and how we’re bound to get flagged down if we don’t pick up the pace. By the time we reach the docks, most of the team is stressed. Even Sammy seems flustered.

The vessel is larger than I expect, a looming giant emerging from thick morning fog. Sammy says it’s a fishing boat, a trawler, to be exact, but I can’t imagine sneaking up on any animal in something so massive. He laughs at this and says the boat is midsized, but when I look through the harbor, not many of the vessels surpass Isaac’s in scale.

The sky has barely started to lighten, but I can make out Catherine painted on the boat’s side. I wonder if the ship was named after Isaac’s daughter as a token of good luck or simply because he loves his child so much that her name helps him feel near her when he’s at sea. The captain left fruit by the fireplace when we set out this morning, along with a doll and wooden top, which makes me suspect the latter.

Isaac won’t let us board until he’s spit in the sea—yet another ritual for luck—and warned us again about leading with our right foot as we step on board.

“He’s something else, huh?” I say to Bree as we shuffle along the dock.

She stares ahead, hands grasping the straps of her pack.

“The captain,” I clarify. “All those superstitions.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, her face full of mock concern. “Were you saying something?”

“Bree, you can’t avoid talking to me forever.”

“Watch me,” she snarls, marching toward the boat.

“Ah-ah-AH!” Isaac scolds. “Your right foot first. Your right!”

Bree throws her hands up and even with her back to me, I’m positive she’s rolling her eyes. She switches her footing and continues forward.

Sammy nudges my shoulder. “What’s going on with you two?”

“Nothing. Just Bree being Bree.”

He looks doubtful. “She scares the crap out of me, man. I don’t know how you put up with her.”

Bree’s arguing with Isaac now, something about ridiculous rules and delusional superstitions.

“She scares me, too,” I admit. “I think she scares everybody.”

Sammy gives me a look I can’t fully read. “Come on. Let’s board before Isaac finds something unlucky about us standing on the dock and delaying the departure.”

On deck, we are immediately put to work. Sammy and I end up struggling with the thickest ropes I have ever held, coiling them into organization as Isaac hurries off to start the boat. He keeps glancing at the shore, but with the exception of a few other fishermen, the town is still sleeping.

The boat rumbles to life a moment later and then we are pushing out to sea. The land fades away; Bone Harbor’s buildings shrink in height. Soon the people on the shore are nothing but minuscule silhouettes. I blink and they are swallowed by the fog. It’s just us and the boat now, battling against the choppy water as we sail northwest.

To be surrounded like this, blue in all directions, makes me feel like I’ve fallen into the sky. I get a little paranoid by the idea that the only visible “earth” is the deck I stand on. The whole thing makes me queasy and I take to wandering with Sammy as a distraction.

Everything making up the boat has a common enough name, but the words seem to take on new meanings out on the water. There is a bridge, but it doesn’t span anything, just serves as a raised section of the ship where the captain can command the vessel and oversee the main deck. The bridge is made up of what Sammy calls the wheelhouse—which is not a house at all, but a room protected from the elements and filled with navigational equipment, a captain’s chair, and a table currently covered in maps—and a small deck that encircles the wheelhouse and its many glass windows. There are multiple sets of stairs leading between the ship’s decks, but Sammy refers to them as ladders. Given how steep they are, this seems just as well. The crew quarters below are full of bunks, which turns out to be a fancy word for beds stacked one on top of another.

The boat lurches without warning and my stomach reels. “Air,” I tell Sammy. “I need air.”

Back on the deck, the wind is whipping fiercely. I pull my hat on and cling to the railing, trying to steady my breathing. My feet are planted firmly on the deck and yet I feel like they are bobbing independently of each other.

“You look green.” Clipper has joined us at the railing.

“Nah,” Sammy says, smiling. “He’s pale as a ghost. The color’s drained out of him completely.”

“Not. Helping.” The two of them look so chipper I forbid myself to lose my breakfast. It figures that Bree would be right about the sea making me sick. Why did she have to be right?

“You think this is rough?” Clipper says. “Just wait ’til there’s a storm.”

Sammy grins. “Maybe we should put him in the lifeboat and drag him behind us.” He motions to a small boat strapped down on the deck that wouldn’t hold more than five people. “Then he’ll realize how good he has it, how this thing cuts through waves like a knife.”

They stalk off, laughing at my misfortune. I hate them for it, but at the same time it’s oddly comforting, that friendly sort of teasing. It’s almost as good as having Blaine around.

We celebrate the holiday over drinks. Isaac offers up a large jug of clear alcohol but refuses to join in the festivities.

“We mighta dodged that inspection back in town,” he says, “but that don’t mean the Order won’t flag us down out here if they have a chance. Navigating this ship clear of their standard routes is like threading a needle. But don’t let me stop your fun.” He turns toward the wheel, looking somewhat disappointed.

We should probably be more worried by Isaac’s words, but Xavier grabs the alcohol and we gather around the cramped table. I think we all just want to forget that there might still be a need to keep glancing over our shoulders.

“So anyone believe there’s truth to this Expats nonsense?” Sammy says as the jug makes its way from person to person. “That they’re AmWest citizens in opposition to Frank—sort of like the Rebels, only stuck on the other side of the border?”

Bo wrinkles his nose. “If they’re gathering compromising Order information and helping out the average AmEast citizen in the process, they certainly don’t sound like monsters.”

I tell everyone about May’s letter and the Harbinger. Isaac chimes in on the latter.

“That thing’s written by a bunch of Bone Harbor locals practically asking to be arrested. They hate the Order, always looking for ways to one-up ’em. I bet they’d fit in well with your lot. That tip about trading with Badger has saved me a ton of money, though. I hear he’s not even taking on new customers anymore; too busy.”

“If AmWest isn’t any different than the Rebels, why did they attack Taem last summer?” Emma says. I think back to the planes I saw from Union Central’s roof. “They would have killed so many innocent people if they’d been successful.”

“Maybe they thought it was a necessary sacrifice,” my father offers. “I’m not saying I agree with it, just that if their goal was eliminating Frank they might have thought it was their only option.”

“Questionable morals, if you ask me,” Sammy says, and then, as if it makes up for it, he adds, “At least they’ve got a ballsy name.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, the East referred to everyone in the West as expatriates during the War because the West wanted to secede. They were happy to renounce their country. But now, it looks like they’ve taken what used to be an insult and embraced it. It’s like a slap in Frank’s face.”

“It’s ironic, too,” Isaac says from the wheel. “Especially given their new slogan, how they’re saying fighting Frank is the truly patriotic act.”

The jug reaches me and I take a swig before passing it on to Bo.

“What about that virus they released at the start of the War?” he says. “Was that patriotic?”

Isaac shrugs. “My old man used to say revolutionaries and terrorists are one and the same. It ain’t logical, that theory, and at the same time, it is. Makes my head hurt.”

My father frowns, deep in thought. “That virus was released decades ago, so the people responsible are likely no longer the ones in charge. Maybe we don’t know as much about AmWest—about the Expats—as we think we do.”

Emma looks like she wants to bring up their air attack again, but Bree cuts in. “It just seems awfully suspicious to me. How these rumors and stories have started popping up all of a sudden.”

“We have been heading west,” Xavier points out.

Sammy taps the table livelily. “Yeah, maybe we’re hearing all this because we’re moving closer to the source. Maybe these stories die out before ever reaching Taem.”

My father raises an eyebrow. “And maybe Frank makes sure they die out.”

“Wait a minute!” I say, an idea slamming into me. “Remember when the Forgery laughed about our plans with Group A? He said Frank was giving us too much credit to assume we were extending our reach in the West. Well, maybe he meant the west-west. As in AmWest! Maybe Frank knows they’d make a good ally for us and that’s why he’s been so bent on stopping this mission.”

Everyone twists to face Jackson, who is slumped against the glass windows, looking bored. “You think whatever you want. Unless we revisit our deal, the only thing I’m giving you is a way into the Outer Ring.”

Owen stands. “I’ve got September scouring Bone Harbor over these Expat rumors, but maybe she should be trying to get in touch with Ryder instead. I’d love to know what he makes of all this.”

He scrambles for the radio beside Isaac, desperate to make a call before we slip out of range. Our speculations continue until the alcohol starts warming us, convincing us to trade serious talk for something more relaxed. When Owen rejoins us at the table, Emma suggests a game of Little Lie, or, as the Rebels call it in Crevice Valley, Bullshit.

We play for what feels like hours, everyone telling five supposed facts and the group attempting to guess which one is a lie. Xavier lets slip that he hates cats, and everyone shoves Dixie at him for the rest of the evening. Clipper and my father both admit to fears of heights, which I may have guessed about the boy, but not Owen. The story of how Sammy’s father was executed for forging water-ration cards in Taem somehow comes up, turning the mood sour, and Bree counters by sharing a handful of embarrassing things that have happened in her lifetime, many of which I wish I could unhear: rolling in poison ivy naked on a dare, wetting the bed once as a child, getting her first monthly bleeding while hunting and having to retreat home empty-handed for fear she was dying.

The team is laughing hysterically. Bree’s cheeks are flushed, but I’m positive it’s not from shame. She’s just let the alcohol get the best of her. We all have. I’ve drunk so many times in defeat that my head has started spinning. The bridge is blurry—the faces around the table, too. It’s all Bree’s fault. She keeps spotting my lies without any real effort and it’s driving me mad.

“I think that’s enough,” Isaac says, snatching the nearly empty jug back a while later. “I ain’t got a need for hungover help come morning.”

“Well, that’s what you’re gonna get,” Sammy mumbles. “At least in me.”

Owen hits him playfully behind the head and the group cracks up. I can’t remember the last time we laughed this hard. It feels good. I catch Emma grinning at me from the other side of the table, her smile inviting.

“Isaac’s right,” my father says. “Let’s call it a night.”

But my head has suddenly staged a revolt. Everything is spinning.

“You okay?” Xavier asks when I refuse to stand with the others.

I rest my head in my hands. “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” Bree says, her voice laced with malice.

“I’m fine,” I repeat. “I just . . . it’s too loud.”

Xavier’s laughter hits me like a raging storm and I shoo them away. Sammy’s hand goes to the small of Emma’s back. He’s been making a habit of that.

With the exception of Isaac at the wheel, I’m soon left alone. I thought the quiet would help, but it’s somehow making my head spin even more.

I’m going to be sick. I am finally going to be sick.

I get up and stumble from the bridge. My legs betray me on the steps to the main deck and I end up on my hands and knees. A pair of boots enters my vision.

“Well, aren’t you a sight.” Bree. The last person I want to deal with right now.

“I needed fresh air,” I manage as I climb to my feet. “It’s the boat. It’s making me sick.”

“You sure it isn’t the alcohol?” She’s blurry, dancing before me, but I can see well enough to note her smug expression.

“You’ve picked a real convenient time to start talking to me again.”

The Catherine lurches over a rough patch of water and I nearly fall. Bree grabs me at the elbow and helps me toward the railing.

“Just get it over with. You’ll feel better after.”

I grab the cool iron, hang my head over the edge. I need to throw up. I can feel it coming, but doing it in front of Bree seems like a terrible idea, like she’ll win some game I didn’t know we were playing.

I tighten my grip on the railing. “This is embarrassing.”

“You’re not the only one who drank too much,” she says. “You only think I’m sober because you’re too gone to know the difference.”

“It’s the boat,” I argue again.

A tiny smile. “Keep telling yourself that.”

I close my eyes, which only makes it worse. The deck seems to be moving beneath me, independent of the waves. I look out to sea and even the horizon appears to be bobbing around like a madman. The ship lurches again and finally, I am sick.

I do feel better when it’s over, even if only minimally. I wipe my face on my sleeve and turn toward Bree. She’s still a blurred version of herself, and she’s smirking.

“What? You think this is funny?”

She smiles wider. “Absolutely.”

“At least I didn’t throw myself at you,” I snap, thinking back to the last time Bree and I were drunk. I’d held things together while she begged me to kiss her and later got sick on my boots.

She scowls, vicious, furious. “I really hate you sometimes.”

“Yeah? Well, the feeling’s mutual.”

She spins so quickly her braid fans out, but when her arm finds the railing of the stairwell, she pauses. “And for some reason, I still love you,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “I hate you and I love you and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

My chest is pounding. From her, or that word, or the alcohol. I can’t tell which.

Not that it matters.

She’s already gone.

FOURTEEN

THE HEADACHE I HAVE WHEN I wake is sharp and merciless, a pressure behind my eyes that pierces clear through to my temples. Everything seems foggy: my head, the room, the events of last night. I remember only snippets—laughter around the table, Emma glancing my way, Bree’s smug face when I got sick.

I’m lying in my bunk alone, my head pounding at the slightest of noises, when Emma walks in carrying a canteen. She glances at my bare chest, the floor, the wall, and finally sits near my knees.

“Water,” she says, holding it out.

I take a few sips and the liquid sloshes in my stomach. I groan and pass it back.

“I promise it will help,” she says. “You need to drink it.”

“Can’t you make me something for the nausea?”

“I don’t have even a fraction of the ingredients. You’re just going to have to fight it off with sleep and water.”

I sling my forearm over my eyes. In the dark, the pressure in my head feels less intense.

“You’ll be fine,” Emma says, her voice so soft it is almost a whisper. “You always are.” And then her fingers meet my skin, press against my forehead. I flinch, startled, and pull my arm back so that I can see her. She’s looking at me the way she had from across the table last night: almost playfully.

“You’re not warm,” she says, which surprises me because I’m sticking to the sheets. She leaves her palm against my forehead, staring at me like I’m a stranger, her mouth slightly parted. What feels like ages later, she moves, bringing her hand to my chest. At her touch, I feel a familiar ache between my ribs—weaker than it used to be, but still there, just barely, desperate to reach for her, to fix things.

“Emma!” Sammy shouts from above deck. “The Forgery keeps complaining about his wrists. Wants you to look at them.”

She twists to face the doorway, breaking contact with my skin. “I’ll be right up!” When she turns back to me, the space between us seems incredibly vast.

“I should go see what he needs.” She bites her lip, a small half smile sprouting, and hurries from the room.

Chest pounding, I climb out of bed, pull on fresh clothes. I should move, busy myself with something that will distract from my hangover. I don’t know if Emma has intentions of coming back, but it’s probably best that I’m not here waiting for her if she does. Especially when she didn’t wait for me.

No wonder we haven’t been able to move forward. I’m too busy basking in my grudge, dragging up things that have already happened and will never change despite how much I wish they could.

Jackson is tied to a railing, Emma’s medic bag at his feet. She, however, is nowhere in sight. The rest of the group is mopping down the deck beneath the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. Bree notices me, and straightens up, scowling. I think I may have insulted her last night, but I can’t remember. I’m never drinking again. Not only does it confuse your brain, muddy your senses, and encourage you to embarrass yourself, but it insists on making you feel like absolute trash the following day.

I head to the bridge in search of my father and find only Emma, bent over an assortment of Isaac’s gear in the wheelhouse. The door closes loudly behind me and she jumps, dropping something on the table.

“Gray!” Her hand clutches at her chest. “Gosh, you scared me.”

“Sorry. What are you doing up here? I thought you had to tend to the Forgery.”

“Ran out of fresh bandages.” She holds up a fistful of material and I spot Isaac’s medical kit lying open behind her. “Well, I guess I should . . .” She glances out the glass windows at the deck and squeezes by me. My father enters with Bo and Isaac not a moment later.

“We’ll stay west of this peninsula,” Isaac says, spreading a map over the table. He taps at a protruding landmass between New Gulf’s two northern bays. “Should reach it by nightfall. Then it’s straight sailing up Border Bay ’til you depart.”

“It’ll be good to be off the open waters,” my father says. “The fog offered some cover yesterday, but today I feel we could be spotted for miles.”

“If the visibility’s that great,” Bo says, snatching up a pair of binoculars, “I can get my first glimpse of another domed city.”

“Really?” I say.

“Haven.” Bo turns the map toward me. The city is positioned at the tip of the more eastern bay, in a territory labeled Big Water. It’s a fitting name, given the massive lakes nearby.

“Clear day like this, there’s a chance you could spot the Compound, too,” Isaac says.

“What’s that? Another city?”

Isaac points at the map, noting an island in the middle of the Gulf, farther south. “Another area under Order control, and a water-treatment plant according to rumors. They take salt water and run it through a long desalination process so it’s drinkable, I guess. I’ve wanted to check it out, see if I couldn’t snag a little freshwater myself so I can stop relying on Badger, but the Order guards that island like a fortress. You ain’t setting foot on it unless they bring you on themselves.”

He straightens up. “Now if you’re truly after some sightseeing, you better do it while you’ve got the chance. Weather can turn fast out here.”

My father and Bo grab binoculars and skirt onto the small, exposed deck that circles the wheelhouse. I follow.

“You see that, Gray?” Bo hands me the binoculars and points north. I take a look, ready to shake my head, but then the sun breaks through the clouds and a beam of light reflects off something. A glinting dome on the horizon, no larger than my thumbnail.

“Haven?” I ask.

He nods. I admire the city for a moment longer, but the gleam of the dome is making my headache worse. I pass the binoculars back to Bo.

It’s cold again, given how we’ve been cutting northwest. The wind bites at my nose, my ears. Owen is still scanning the south, trying to locate the Compound, when I catch sight of Isaac through the glass windows. He looks panicked all of a sudden, tugging at the wheel, mumbling into his radio. He tosses it aside and yanks open the door to join us.

“You see anything to the south?” he shouts over the wind.

“Nothing but a few specks on the water; fishing boats, probably,” my father says. “Why?”

“This ain’t good, boys. This ain’t good at all.” Isaac rubs his forehead. “I just got a call from the Order. They’re wanting me to drop anchor along the nearest shoreline and wait to be boarded. Said they found it suspicious I left port so early yesterday and so they’re coming to me for an impromptu inspection. I told ’em I ain’t up to nothing, just wanted to leave early and try my luck in the western portions of the Gulf, but they’re sending a team our way regardless.” He scans the horizon, rubs the back of his neck. “There ain’t no one on our tail yet. We should make a run for it.”

“No, it’s too risky,” Owen says. “Soon as we’re along land, you should drop anchor like they say. We’ll leave. It gives us more ground to cover on foot than we planned for, but at least your story will check out when they board. And by then, our team will be too far gone for them to track us.”

“I wish that’d work,” Isaac says, “but the nearest bit of shore? That peninsula we’re approaching? It’s a lookout point. The Order’d be all over you in a matter of minutes. We’ve gotta sail farther up Border Bay before it’s safe to depart. Tomorrow morning, maybe. Tonight if we make great time.”

My father frowns and glances to the south. “How’d they find us?”

“That’s what worries me. We weren’t the only boat getting an early start yesterday—I saw half a dozen docks already empty when we shoved off—and it was foggy as all can be until a few hours ago. I don’t see how—or when—they could’ve identified us.”

“Which means . . .” Bo looks down at the deck.

“The damn Forgery,” my father says through clenched teeth. “I don’t know how . . . but if he . . . I’m going to . . .” He shoves his binoculars into my chest and storms off.

By the time we sit down to eat dinner, I’m nervous. Everyone is. We’ve spotted a ship to the south with the binoculars that looks larger than the other fishing vessels. Jackson claims he has nothing to do with it, but the boat is clearly following us, a shadow in our wake. It gains. Isaac worries it will be far closer than comfortable come morning.

I’ve never felt so completely and utterly trapped. There is nowhere to run but as far as the Catherine’s deck allows. There are no trees to climb, no boulders to duck behind, no caves to burrow within.

I decide I hate the sea. It is an unforgiving place.

The team eats in silence, my father staring at me from across the table. He looks oddly distant. His mouth does this weird dance, attempting to pull into a smile behind his beard but always falling short. He drops his chin down, staring at his unfinished meal, and swallows, hard. Then, without warning, he grabs Jackson by the collar. Several mess kits are knocked to the floor as Owen tugs the Forgery to his feet and hauls him outside. We all watch through the glass windows, rigid with shock.

“Are you positive you don’t recognize it?” Owen shouts. Jackson stands there, despondent, and my father brings a knee into his gut. “I asked you a question!”

Jackson looks to the south. “It’s too dark to tell.”

My father punches him and the crack of Jackson’s nose breaking is so clear I hear it from where we sit. “Did you call them? Did you tell them somehow?”

Jackson is bent over, gasping for air. Owen grabs him by the shirt and throws him against the glass windows of the wheelhouse.

“My son is on this ship. My son and eight other lives, and the only one I don’t care about losing is yours. I will throw you overboard if I have to. You call them off. You do it now!”

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

Owen hits him again.

“I mean it,” Jackson gasps, coughing. His bound arms are held before his face, frantically trying to shelter himself. “I don’t. I can’t.”

But Owen is striking him again and again and finally I’m the one with enough sense to run outside and pull my father back. The Forgery’s eyes are already swollen shut, his face a bloodied mess. My father is stronger than me and breaks free. He lunges at Jackson again, but stops midswing, turns to face me.

“I won’t lose you because of him. I won’t let this monster be our end.”

He spits at the Forgery’s feet and walks back inside.

“We’re disembarking early,” he says to the group. Everyone is silent, not a word exchanged. Even Sammy refrains from saying something clever. “I don’t care if we’re questionably close to the lookout point; we need to get off this boat before they overtake us. Tomorrow, the moment there’s enough light in the sky to see the shoreline, we’re gone.”

Isaac nods and as Owen stalks off, Emma slips outside with her medic gear to tend to Jackson.

FIFTEEN

THE SUN IS BARELY UP. The clouds hang heavy and ominous.

“Snow,” Xavier predicts.

But we all feel something far worse.

The boat on our tail is most certainly an Order vessel. It is gigantic, dwarfing our ship even at a distance. It is close enough that we can see the Franconian emblem on its side with binoculars—a red triangle with a cursive f in its center—but not near enough to make out anyone on board.

Isaac guides the Catherine toward what he’s picked as our departure point. If the cold wasn’t enough to remind us that we’ve been traveling north, the return of snow is. A thin layer covers what I assume is a sandy beach, and lines the branches of the few trees in the distance. A craggy outcrop of rocks to our left is clear of snow on account of the crashing waves. Isaac claims the rocks jutting from shore will offer us some protection; the Catherine will be able to maneuver into far shallower waters than the large Order vessel without hitting bottom.

It starts to flurry as Xavier loads the lifeboat. It is small, unable to support more than five in weight, which until now has never been a problem for Isaac. He claims he rarely fishes with a crew larger than four. Between our team and all the gear, it will take two trips to get everything to land.

We are on the deck, preparing to make the first run, when we hear a distant rumble. It is faint at first, like a rainstorm strengthening behind the shoreline trees, and then three cars break into view. I realize instantly what has happened. The Order boat has pushed us exactly where they want us.

We drop immediately, stomachs against the deck. I hear the vehicles come to a halt, followed by the opening and closing of doors.

“Isaac Murphy!” comes a man’s voice from shore. He must be using something to amplify his words because he sounds as though he stands on deck. “Captain of the Catherine. Show yourself.”

I hear the door of the wheelhouse slide open, and then Isaac’s heavy footsteps on the bridge’s exposed deck.

“Glad to see you’re finally willing to cooperate, Mr. Murphy. Now drop anchor.”

“Afraid I can’t do that,” Isaac calls out. “Anchor chain rusted out a few weeks back and I ain’t replaced it yet.”

“We’ve got records from a week ago stating the Catherine was in perfect working order,” the man continues. “Now, a person skipping inspection when they leave port makes me think they’re hiding something. Water, for instance. Water they might have bought off AmWest scum and are now looking to make a profit on. If this is untrue—if you’ve done nothing wrong—then you have no reason to fear us.”

“It’s got nothing to do with fear,” Isaac shouts, “and everything to do with how you ain’t got proof I’ve done something wrong. This is my ship. You can come aboard when I invite you, which’ll be never.”

The Order member lets out an amplified sigh. “Drop anchor now. This is the last time I will ask.”

“This is my property, bought with my own earnings, and you ain’t got no right to board it whenever you damn well—”

A single shot is fired. Birds flee from the nearby trees and I hear Isaac collapse.

That didn’t just happen. It couldn’t have. But when I look up toward the bridge, Isaac is slumped against the walls of the wheelhouse, motionless. Blood trails the glass window above him.

I mutter a curse, hear my father do the same at my side.

From the shore there are shouts. “Get the raft. We’re boarding and dropping anchor ourselves.”

“Like hell you are,” Sammy mutters.

Everyone looks at my father. He gives a single nod, and we scramble into position. Bree fires the first shots at the shore and my ears start ringing. There are no more than a dozen Order members on the beach and even though they fire back, we take out half of them easily. The rest crawl behind their vehicles for shelter. They shoot at us when they can, but the Catherine is a formidable piece of armor.

Sammy runs off, only to return with rags soaked in something that reeks.

“Diesel,” he says. “From the engine room. Think you could get one of these inside a car?”

I nod, not sure how a smelly scrap of cloth will help us, but after he wraps one of my arrows with a rag and strikes a match against it, it goes up in flames. One of the cars is set far out of range, but with a good shot, I just might be able to reach the others. Bree and Sammy cover me as I stand and take aim, fire. The arrow goes clear through the closest car’s window and buries itself into the seats, slowly burning the car from the inside out.

“Let’s get another,” Sammy says, and we repeat the process.

I send the second car up in flames and soon the Order members are running into the open. Bree takes them down like it’s target practice.

There’s a blast on the beach, so intense it sends me to the floor, arms over my head. When I recover, I find the first car I fired at a mess of flames and smoke, its windows blown out. Sammy whoops triumphantly.

“Did you know that would happen?”

He winks and ducks to the deck as the second car explodes. He readies an arrow for the final car, despite the fact that I think it’s beyond reach. Before I even can take aim, there is a monstrous noise from below. The Catherine lurches. We go sliding. I’m forced to let my flaming arrow drop into the ocean.

We are still in open water, far from the rocks that bordered the beach, but we must have run over something. The collision shifts the Catherine and she starts drifting into deeper waters, heading closer to the Order vessel at an awkward angle.

Just then, something strikes the walls of the wheelhouse, one of the few parts of the ship built with wood. It goes up in flames. I whip around. The Order vessel is nearly upon us, and apparently firing something as threatening as my burning arrows.

“Let’s move!” my father shouts.

Xavier, Bo, Jackson, and Clipper climb into the lifeboat. I grab Emma and shove her in as well. She barely fits, with all the gear already in the boat.

“What about you?” she asks, eyes wide.

“I’ll come later.”

Sammy and my father swing the boat over the water and start lowering it down by the pulley system. Emma refuses to let go of my hand.

An explosive noise erupts behind us. It is followed by a terrible screech as something fired by the Order vessel blows through one of the Catherine’s metal rigs used to haul fish from the ocean floor. The rig topples overboard, ripping itself free from the deck as it falls. The Catherine rocks violently and we lose our footing. Emma’s hand is ripped from mine. The lifeboat drops nearly to the water and jams.

“Cut the ropes.”

Xavier looks terrified by Owen’s words. “But how will you—”

“Cut them now, Xavier. That’s an order.”

“What if I can’t come back in time?”

“There’s an inflatable raft below deck. Now go! We’ll meet you on shore.”

Xavier and Clipper cut the ropes in unison and the lifeboat drops the last several feet into the water. Emma is still staring at me as Xavier fires up the boat’s small engine and pulls away.

“Bree!” Owen yells. “The raft!”

She races belowdecks to retrieve it while the rest of us return our attention to the last two Order members on shore. No sooner have we taken them out than the threat behind us gets worse. The Order ship is now close enough to fire bullets, and they ping against the Catherine’s deck. I can even make out the faces of the shooters. There is a man in the forefront, shouting savagely. He has a thick beard, a bald scalp, and livid eyes, one of which is as foggy as morning mist. Marco. Frank’s go-to man. A man I eluded when I ran from Taem, and again when I returned for the vaccine. A man I’m terrified I may not elude a third time today.

He smiles, as if to say hello, and then aims his handgun directly at me.

He fires.

I don’t know where my father comes from. I don’t even remember him being near, but he is in front of me now, and then falling against my chest. His hand goes to his jacket and it comes away bloody, so bloody that I know even if I get him to shore there is nothing Emma can do to make this right.

Owen coughs out my name.

“Pa?” I shout, shaking him, but he can barely keep his eyes open. “No. No-no-no, don’t do this, Pa!”

His bloody hand grabs at my jacket; his breathing grows ragged. I hear myself screaming, feel Sammy dragging me, his arms hooked at my elbows; but I see only my father, lying on the deck and gasping for air. I need to get him to shore. I need to put pressure on his bleeding chest. I need to send an arrow directly between Marco’s eyes for taking him from me.

I struggle against Sammy, but somehow he is stronger. I’m lugged away from the bullets, away from a man I only met a few months ago, a father I’ve never been able to truly know. He is going to die alone on a sinking ship, end up at the bottom of a watery grave. I won’t even get to bury him.

“We have to jump,” Sammy shouts. He climbs the railing of the Catherine and I realize for the first time how unnatural its angle is. “Gray! Are you listening? Now!”

I glance away from my father, toward the stairwell. “Bree.”

Sammy’s face is blank and I know what he’s thinking. But I’m not about to lose two people in a matter of minutes.

“I have to try.” I tell him. “I can’t not try.”

His mouth hardens. He gives me a quick nod and jumps, plummeting into the icy water. I make for the stairs, sliding from the severe angle of the ship. I have only managed to descend half the flight when I am greeted by water.

The Catherine is flooding.

SIXTEEN

IT IS COLD.

Freezing.

I am shaking by the time the water crosses my ankles.

Every instinct tells me to turn around, but I force myself forward. My breath comes in short, panicked gulps as the water gets deeper, covering my knees, waist, now chest. I shout Bree’s name but I hear only the sound of rushing water forcing its way into the ship, swallowing it whole.

I head for the storage closet, not knowing where else the raft could be kept. The heavy sliding door is still open on its tracks. I wade up to the frame and there’s Bree against the far wall, the water creeping toward her chin. She’s convulsing with cold and tugging at something beneath the surface. A half-submerged shelving unit has fallen right in front of her.

“The raft stuck on it?” I shout, heart sinking.

She looks up. “No, I g-got it already.” She lifts a compact, yellow bag from the water, its shoulder strap already looped over her chest. “You p-pull the tab t-to inflate it.”

“Whatever, let’s get off this thing.”

She tugs again at something beneath the water. “My leg. The shelves. Wh-when the ship went s-sideways.”

I realize then how close the unit likely came to hitting her when it toppled. How its metal frame nearly has her pinned against the wall, and how beneath the water, where I can’t see, it’s somehow holding her in place like an anchor. I take a deep breath and dive. The water is so cold I can’t control my exhale and I shoot back to the surface.

“Gray, just g-go,” she says, teeth knocking. “T-take the raft and—”

I dive before she can finish. This time I make it to the floor, feel along the shelving unit’s frame. It’s lying right across her ankle—not crushing her foot, but pinning it so that she can’t twist or rotate her leg enough to free herself. I grab the edge of the unit and pull upward. It’s heavy. Too heavy. And I’m running out of air.

I resurface. The water level is at Bree’s lips now, her head tilted back so she can breathe. “G-go,” she says. “Before it’s—”

“Pull with me this time.”

Down again. I plant my feet against the floor, grab the edge of the shelving unit, and push off, like I’m trying to take it to the surface with me. The salt stings my eyes, and my lungs burn in my chest, but when Bree helps pull, we manage to raise the shelves a fraction of an inch. I can feel her twisting her leg beside me, trying to free her ankle. My lungs are screaming. Static darts into the corners of my vision. I pull harder, push off the floor with all my remaining strength, and the unit lifts a bit more. It’s enough. I feel Bree slip free, let go of the shelves. I drop them as well and resurface, gasping.

With the raft still slung over her shoulder, Bree lunges at me, hugs me around the neck.

“Gray, I—”

“Come on.”

I grab her hand and head for the hallway. I know what she wanted to say, and even if I didn’t, we don’t have the time to spare for thanks.

When we reach the main stairwell, the water is surging in so aggressively it feels like we’re walking against a wall. I can barely move my legs. Bree can’t take another step. I help her, but she’s suddenly so heavy. I pull. And I pull. And we somehow make it onto the deck.

Here the flurries have become a full-blown blizzard. If the Order vessel is still nearby, it is impossible to tell. The world beyond our ship is a whirlwind of thick flakes, the sky now dark. We crawl against the awkward angle of the deck, climb over the railing of the Catherine, and after hooking our arms together, we jump.

My feet hit the water so hard I feel it in my back. We plummet as though we wear extra weight. The water is biting my lungs again. I can’t tell which way is up. Bree has stopped kicking. She’s become an anchor and she wants to bring me to the bottom.

I fumble with the raft on her shoulder, my eyes burning. I can’t find the tab she mentioned. My boots are too heavy. My clothes tug me south.

We are trapped. Water is everywhere.

Ice.

Freezing.

Frozen.

We are going to die here. Drowned. The two of us. Going down with my father. With Isaac and his ship.

I find something protruding from the flattened raft—a loop large enough to hook my fingers through. I pull it.

The water around us fills with bubbles and we’re jerked upward as the raft seeks out air. We break from the surface and I am gasping, shaking uncontrollably. Bree isn’t breathing. I somehow manage to roll her into the raft, somehow manage to get myself into it as well.

I blow air into Bree’s lungs. I push on her chest, which is pointless in the soft-bottomed raft. I try to revive her again, cursing her, shouting at her. She must hear me calling her a coward for dying because she coughs a mouthful of water onto me. Her eyes flutter open and she is shaking once more. She looks like she wants to say something but her lips are trembling too violently. I turn my back on her and begin paddling toward the sound of breaking waves because the snow is too thick to see land. By some miraculous stroke of luck, we wash ashore. The team is nowhere in sight.

“Bree, come on,” I urge, my teeth knocking. “We have to move.”

“C-cold,” she stutters. “Too c-cold. Can barely move.”

“That’s why you have to.”

She shakes, trembles.

“Dammit, Bree. Move your feet!”

And at the order, she does.

Flames still eat at the two destroyed cars. We stumble toward the undamaged one, which sits before a crop of trees. I pull the back open, my hands shaking against my will. The vehicle is loaded with gear: sleeping bags, blankets, Order packs, spare uniforms. These cars weren’t planning on returning to the lookout point.

I go to the front. There are keys dangling near the wheel. I watched Bo drive before, and we don’t have to go far now, just enough to be safe for the night. I’ll have to manage. We’ll freeze to death if we waste time looking for the others, and for all I know, the Order is already on our tail.

“Get in,” I tell Bree. She does.

I turn the key as I saw Bo do in Taem. The car roars to life. I step on the pedal. The vehicle growls, but doesn’t move. I press my foot down harder.

“Sh-shift,” Bree says. “Shift it to drive.”

I follow her eyes to a lever between our seats. I move it as she instructed, and this time, when I put pressure on the pedal, the car lunges forward.

We drive—no, lurch—following the Order’s tire tracks from when they first ambushed us. I take a sharp turn, leaving their path, and head into a field of stiff, tall grass. Everything is gray and lifeless under the snowfall. I watch a compass mounted near the shift lever so I’ll know how to find the beach again later. There is hot air blasting from vents behind the wheel, but it feels like the most feeble form of heat, too weak to penetrate the icy shell that is settling over my body.

I don’t stop driving until the field dips low enough to keep us hidden from anyone passing by way of the Order’s original tracks. The snow and wind should cover our own in time, making us invisible. I get out of the car, hands still shaking, and pull the gear from the back. My teeth chatter. My body wants to seize up, stop working, but some innate drive orders me to hurry, tells me what to do and in what order.

I blink, and I’ve lined the back of the car with sleeping bags. I blink again and I’ve turned the vehicle off, shut all the doors to lock the heat within. I blink a third time, and I’m stripping off my jacket.

“Take your clothes off,” I order Bree.

She’s just standing there shaking, her hair wet against her neck, her face so pale she already looks dead.

“Bree!”

“C-can’t . . . I can’t.”

“You can. You can do anything I can do.”

And something in those words wakes her. She pulls off her jacket and tugs her shirt overhead. And then another layer, and another. She fumbles with her pants but her trembling fingers can’t manage the buttons. I help her out of them. I take her boots off, too. And her socks. I dry her hair as best I can with a blanket, help her into one of the spare Order uniforms, and send her into the warmth of the car.

My fists are cramping up. I can barely move, barely breathe. I’m so cold I think my lungs might freeze solid, shattering when I take my next breath. I pull off my shirt, my pants, everything. I force my cramping limbs into dry clothes and crawl back into the car.

I lie down alongside Bree. She is shaking uncontrollably. I’m shaking, too.

“Bree?”

There’s something else I want to say, about body warmth, and staying near each other, but I can’t form the words. I nudge closer to her, pull her into my chest, wrap us in the blankets. I hold her until our convulsions turn to trembles, which turn to shivers that finally fade.

It takes a very, very long time, but I finally feel warmth. It starts in my chest and spreads to my torso, then knees, then toes, and it is as I fall asleep that I no longer fear I won’t wake up.

SEVENTEEN

WE RISE WITH THE SUN.

The storm has left no more than three inches of snow on the ground, meaning it must have arrived in a hurry and died out nearly as fast. Our clothes, which I draped over the front seats last night to dry, are still stiff and damp with salt water. We’ll be wearing the Order uniforms for a while longer.

Bree nurses a fire to life, a blanket pulled tightly around her shoulders, while I dig through the car and assess supplies. Our personal gear—bags, tents, weapons, additional clothes, matches, flashlights, everything—was in the lifeboat that Xavier and the others escaped on. I find some wanted posters with my face on them in the car and pass them to Bree. She adds them to the fire, which is smoking from the mostly green wood she’s had to use for the base. Still, it’s emitting warmth, and for that I’m grateful. A blanket, no matter how you wrap it, is not terribly warm. We need jackets. Underwear wouldn’t hurt either, given how damn stiff the uniforms are.

“Do you think they made it?” Bree asks.

“They had to. If we don’t believe they did, we’re already doomed.”

“And Sammy?”

“He jumped when I went back for you. If he got to shore and found the others, he might have had a chance. They had extra clothing, could have started a fire and made sure he was dry. If not, I don’t see how he would have survived the night.”

Bree bends to blow on the flames. I’m glad she hasn’t asked about my father yet. I don’t have the strength to even think about him. When she glances back at me, her face is softer than I’ve ever seen it. There is no scowl on her lips, no harsh angle to her brows.

“Last night,” she says. “I was so cold my hands wouldn’t work. And it hurt to breathe. I couldn’t . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t—”

“Stop it. You were fine. You were perfect.” She messes with the fire a bit more, avoids my eyes. “I mean it, Bree. I wouldn’t have made it through last night if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Me?” She straightens up, scoffing. “You were the one who did everything. You got me off the ship, you revived me on the raft, you set up the blankets—”

“And you kept me warm. All that stuff I did earlier? It would have been pointless if I’d frozen to death during the night. I kept you alive, and then you kept me alive. We kept each other warm. We got through it together.”

She forces a smile, a tiny lopsided one. Her braided hair has dried in an odd manner, half of it clumped at the side of her neck in a mangled knot, but she somehow still manages to be stunning. It’s her lips in that smile. Her chin, held defiantly high. It must require her to stifle every ounce of her pride, because she’s frowning viciously when she adds, “I’m glad we’re talking again.”

“Yeah.” I smile, unable to hide my amusement. “Me, too.”

There aren’t any jackets in the car, but I do find clean cotton shorts.

“Underwear?” I say, tossing the smallest pair to Bree. She turns her back to me, and shamelessly starts changing. I should really look away, but I can’t help myself. When she’s fully clothed, she goes back to poking at the fire, either unaware that I’ve been staring at her, or not concerned enough to care. I change, too, throw the blanket back over my shoulders, and return to assessing the gear.

There’s not much else that will help us if we don’t find the rest of the team in the next day or two. Some matches, dried fruit, a knife, binoculars, eyewear that I suspect to be night-vision goggles because they look similar to some Rebel gear I once saw Harvey working on. But no water: the one thing we can’t go long without.

I scour the rest of the car, and find only a map and handgun in a compartment in the front. The weapon is fully loaded, so that gives us six precious shots between the two of us. I hope we don’t need them.

I unfold the map. We may have wiped out the ground crew, but Marco and the rest of his men on the Order ship were unharmed. If we head south and return to the beach, we risk running into them. Unless they chose to stay on the water rather than pursue us.

Maybe Bree and I should just take the car and drive northwest, try to find Group A. Why had I never picked Bo’s brain these past few weeks? He kept saying over and over that he practically had direct coordinates, and somehow I never managed to get them from him. That knowledge belongs only to him, Clipper, and my father.

No.

It was knowledge my father possessed. Just like that, he’s become a piece of the past. Yesterday Owen stood beside me on the Catherine and today he’s gone. Dead.

I ball up the map and slam my hands against the compartment where I found the gun. Hard. Then harder. Then again and again until my palms are throbbing.

“Are you okay?” Bree is standing outside the door.

I rub my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You are crying.”

I touch my cheeks and my fingers come away wet. I don’t remember telling myself I could cry.

“I caught breakfast,” she says, holding up a squirrel speared on a stick. “I’ll cook it. You take as long as you need.”

I flatten the map out, fold it up neatly, and immediately join Bree.

“That was fast,” she says.

“I was wasting time.”

“You lost someone you love. Not a single moment you spend in mourning is a waste.” She skins the squirrel and sets the meat over our feeble fire.

“How did you know?”

“I saw him. When you pulled me up the stairwell and onto the deck. He was just lying there.” She glances at me, her face somber. “I’m really sorry, Gray.”

“Sorry doesn’t change what happened.”

“I know. But I still feel it.”

When the food is cooked we sit on the rear of the vehicle—her feet dangling, mine planted in the snow—and pull apart the meat with our fingers. It is dark, but moist, and it fills us well enough. Bree tosses the spear into the fire when we’re done.

“What now?” she asks.

“We should take the car, I think. Head west. Look for the team.”

“I’ll drive,” she offers.

But I’m not ready. Because moving on means leaving this place and traveling farther from my father. Every moment from here on out will be a step away from him. I let a hand fall on Bree’s thigh.

“I need a moment.”

“Sure.” Her fingers curl around mine.

We sit there, staring at the flames until I feel strong enough to continue.

Bree’s driving is exceptionally better than mine.

Over the years, the Rebels managed to take a few abandoned Order vehicles into their custody and—with the help of workers in the technology wing—bring them back to life. Bree learned how to drive during her time at Crevice Valley before I arrived. She tells me that some cars run electrically while others require fuel. The differences mean nothing to me until Bree says we are in a fuel-powered model and that it is likely the best fit given our current situation.

“We’ve got about a half tank of gas left,” she says, squinting at the markings behind the wheel. “Should get us another hundred fifty miles or so. Either way, we’ve got enough to track down the others.”

“Assuming they want to be found.” I’m fearful the team will be extra cautious from here on out, running for cover at the first sound of an approaching car.

“We’ll find them,” she says sternly. “And if we don’t, we should be able to make it to Group A, and they’ll catch up with us there.”

I don’t mention that I’m unsure how exactly to find Group A.

The car bounces over the uneven ground as Bree takes us out of the field. She slows as we reach the Order’s tire tracks from yesterday. They are nearly invisible, almost completely filled in with fresh snow.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“We can’t not check the beach. If they’re not there, we may at least find their tracks. If there’s no sign of them, we’ll just keep driving.”

She nods and fiddles with the dial controlling the heat. We may be miserable, but at least we’re no longer cold.

Two skeletons of cars. Eleven dead Order members. One abandoned lifeboat.

This is what we find on the beach.

Our car is hidden back in the trees and the air feels frigid outside the warmth of the vehicle, but Bree and I scour the shore thoroughly. She carries the handgun because she’s the better shot.

The dead Order members are covered in the snow that fell last night, and for this, I am glad. I don’t want to see their faces, the look of shock in their eyes, the places where bullets met flesh. I feel like I’ve seen far too much these past few days.

We make our way down to the water, which is lapping peacefully against the wet earth. The rocky outcrop to our right is covered in the white froth of waves. Even when we climb out to the point, there’s no sign of the Order. They could have gone to Haven, to gather another team so they could track us more efficiently. Or maybe they are still sailing, waiting to spot us from afar. Either way, they will find us. Marco will not let us slip away again. I’m sure of it.

A trio of crows soars by, circling over the dead bodies. I look out across the water, scanning for any sign of the Catherine, but the Gulf seems to have devoured her thoroughly. I wonder if Dixie made it off the boat or if she went down with her master. So much for cats being good luck.

Bree and I are carefully climbing back to the shore when I spot footprints heading toward the trees. They are mostly filled in by the snowfall, but one thing is clear: This person was walking with an uneven gait, almost as though he were shaking against his will.

“Sammy,” I say, pointing.

We follow his trail into the trees. His prints meet another pair, where it appears that he was then dragged.

“Did the Order take him?” Bree asks.

I shake my head, uncertain, and we continue to follow the tracks until we stumble upon a particularly dense cluster of trees. Beneath them, kept mostly clear of snowfall, is a pile of dark coals. The Order wouldn’t have stopped to make a fire. One of our team must have heard Sammy coming. He was not being dragged away against his will; he was being dragged because he couldn’t continue without aid.

I put a hand over the coals, but they give off no heat.

“They’re long gone. Doesn’t even look like they made camp. There’s no sign of tents being set up.”

“But they’re alive,” Bree says, smiling.

“They are.”

And when I say it, I feel the weight lift off my chest, a burden I didn’t even know was there to begin with. The team is alive. Emma is alive. And right then I forgive her. For everything. I’m tired of living in the past and dwelling on things that have come and gone—especially when the people you care for can be taken from you in the time it takes to blink. I glance toward the shore, thinking of my father.

“They went this way,” Bree says. She checks the sky. “North.”

Our eyes meet and without exchanging another word, we hurry back to the car. The team has likely been hiking since yesterday, possibly traveling through the night to put extra distance between themselves and the Order. We have wheels and can travel quickly, but I worry about our chances. What are the odds our paths will intersect when this land seems to stretch on forever?

Bree drives. I watch the water disappear in the mirror that hangs between us. It fades into a blue sliver, dividing the snow-whitened beach from an overcast sky. In a matter of seconds, it is gone entirely.

It is only when it has slipped from view that the words escape me.

“’Bye, Pa.”

I’m positive Bree hears, but she keeps her eyes on the horizon. I appreciate that small, private moment with my father more than she will ever know.

EIGHTEEN

WE FOLLOW THE TEAM’S TRACKS, but they are disguised by windblown snow, filled in, and often difficult to see. We end up having to obsessively right our course. The air in the car grows warm and thick. It’s making me sleepy, but Bree’s pace is so aggressive I keep getting jerked awake each time my eyelids drift shut.

It is midday when we spot dark silhouettes on the horizon.

“The Order?”

“Don’t think so,” Bree says, her lips pressing into a smile. “There’re six of them. And look at that one on the end, being dragged. That has to be the Forgery. It’s them, Gray!”

She throws a palm against the steering wheel, which makes the vehicle cry like a goose. As we slide over the snowy ground, I roll down the window and hang half my torso out. Bree is laughing and I’m shouting like an idiot at the ants on the horizon, one arm clinging to the inside of the car, the other waving frantically. The wind tears at my face. My eyes start streaming. Soon they are no longer minuscule shadows, but figures with recognizable features. They are all there: Xavier, Bo, Sammy, Clipper, the Forgery. And Emma. Emma with her hair whipping in the wind and sprinting toward the car to meet me. Emma who’s dropping her bag so she can run faster.

Bree brakes and the car skids sideways in the shallow snow. I duck back inside, throw open the door. Emma’s so close, and then she’s in my arms, her body colliding with mine, and I’m hugging her, kissing the top of her head.

“I thought you . . .” She looks up at me, amazed, relieved. I hear the others arriving, their feet crunching in the snow. Someone is greeting Bree, hands are being clasped, but I can see only Emma, her eyes wide and cavernous, so large I lose myself in them.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “About Craw, about everything. I’m so—”

“I know. And I’m over it.”

She looks doubtful.

“I was furious, Emma,” I admit. “Really, really furious. I felt so betrayed, so sick at the thought of you with him, and the anger was the only thing that helped me feel better. I needed the grudge. But then the Forged version of Blaine almost killed you, I nearly drowned on that ship, and now I just want to put it all behind us while we still have the chance. Please? Right now. Let’s forget everything that happened before.”

“But I don’t want to forget it,” she says. “Not the birds, or the day you taught me to shoot an arrow, or climbing the Wall, or how it felt to see your car crest that hill.”

I can’t help smiling, because I don’t want to lose those memories either. “Fine. Only the bad moments. The mistakes. Let’s forget the mistakes and move on.”

She nods, buries her face in my chest. I hug her tighter. And then, in the back of my mind, a worry blooms. If Craw is the mistake Emma must forget, is Bree mine?

But Bree wasn’t a mistake. Bree was never a mistake. I know it. I can feel it in my gut.

Which is why it is all so confusing. Because this, right here, is what I’ve wanted since I was a child: Emma. After so many missteps and grudges and errors, we might finally be able to set things right, and I’m happy at the prospect, so mind-numbingly happy, that I can’t understand how it is possible to be simultaneously sad.

Bree and I ditch the Order uniforms and change into extra clothes from our gear bags, which the team thankfully chose to hold on to even when they assumed we were dead. Xavier explains how the lifeboat got them safely to shore, where they then headed into the trees for cover.

“We heard someone stumbling toward us. Thought it might be the Order, but it turned out to be Sammy. He was blue. Could barely walk. We started a fire but he was shaking so badly we practically had to undress him ourselves before we could get him warm again.”

“Oh, I believe it,” Bree says, and then she drops her head as if the memory of her own struggles last night embarrasses her. Sammy puts an arm protectively around Emma’s shoulders and glares between me and Bree, eyes narrowed. I feel like he’s hearing words that haven’t been spoken.

It’s quiet for a moment and when Bo speaks, my entire being tightens up.

“Owen?” he asks.

I swallow, look at my boots.

“He’s not with us, and he’s not with them, so where do you think that puts him?” the Forgery says.

My fist flies. I hear Jackson’s nose crack, he falls into the snow, and then I’m grabbing the handgun from Bree. I point it at the Forgery, livid, possessed.

“My father is dead because of you!” I yell. The weapon quivers from how hard I’m squeezing it. “You called that Order ship and now he’s dead!”

“Your ship was singled out because you left Bone Harbor suspiciously early,” he responds. “You brought this upon yourself.”

“You worthless, lying—”

“We had a deal! My safety for entry to the Outer Ring. If I’m going to betray you it will be after that deal is complete, not on a boat where I have nowhere to run.”

I press the gun against his forehead and his face washes over with shock. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do it. Give me one good reason.”

Nothing. No pleading. No begging. No words of defense.

Almost as if he wants me to pull the trigger.

My finger moves for it, but it’s like that time in Taem all over again, when I couldn’t bring myself to shoot an Order member even though his bullet nearly killed Bree. My arm starts shaking. The outstretched gun grows heavy.

Killing Jackson won’t bring back my father. And I don’t want another face joining the one I already see in my nightmares: Forged Blaine, the arrow in his skull. No, if I have to meet the people I kill again in my dreams, I’m saving this bullet for Marco.

I lower the weapon, hand shaking, and pass it back to Bree. The team stands there in a ring around me and Jackson, speechless.

“Maybe we should talk about where to go from here,” Bo says eventually. “Clipper, you want to share that theory of yours with Gray?”

The boy pulls out his location device. My pulse is still pounding from the confrontation with Jackson, but I take a deep breath and try to focus on what Clipper’s showing me: the landlines running along the western edge of the water and continuing north once the bay ends, dividing AmEast from AmWest.

“Group A’s around here.” Clipper touches an area of land between the two ears of water. “As you pointed out on the Catherine, it seems like the Order is expecting us to enter AmWest. They’ll probably sail up Border Bay and try to cut us off at the border.”

“That theory assumes the Forgery didn’t tell them exactly where we were going when he ratted us out,” I say. Jackson glares at me.

“I think the Order would have followed us onto land if that were the case,” Bo says. “And they didn’t. That ship took back to sea.”

“But aren’t the borders highly patrolled?” Bree asks. “I can’t believe they think we’d try to cross it on foot.”

“Ignorant is what it is,” Sammy says. “We should thank our lucky stars we’re dealing with idiots.”

“They’re not so dumb if they tracked us and sank our ship!”

“I see the icy water didn’t improve your spirits, Nox,” he shoots back. “And here I was thinking you couldn’t get any more frigid.”

Bree shoves Sammy so hard he stumbles backward.

“Okay, okay!” Xavier says, stepping between them. “This is pointless. What’s the plan?”

The group falls silent and everyone turns to look at me and Bo. I glance at him for help, but he just shrugs. “What do you think, Gray? This is your mission.”

But it’s not. It was my father’s. I may have suggested the excursion, talked with Bo about getting Ryder to endorse it, but Owen was in charge. He was the leader. I’m just some guy whose father is dead, who climbed a Wall and got stuck in a mess far bigger than himself.

“How much longer until we get to the Outer Ring?” I ask Clipper.

“About three days on foot.” He eyes the car behind me. “But we could be there tonight if we drove.”

The car only has five seats, but the rear area is enclosed and large enough to hold the other three in our group.

“We’ll drive,” I say. “It will be tight, especially with all the gear, but if the Order thinks we’re walking, we should cover as much ground as possible.”

“We’ll run out of fuel soon,” Bree warns. “We should be able to make it to Group A, but it will be a one-way trip.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.”

The team starts loading up the gear and Emma brushes past me to examine Jackson. He’s still sitting in the snow, touching his nose cautiously.

“Broken again. And I just set it on the boat.” Emma twists to face me. “I know you’re upset, Gray, but you can’t go around attacking our team.”

“He is not a part of our team.”

She gives me a taxed look. “He’s traveling with us and if he’s hurt, I have to tend to him. That makes him part of the group.”

“Maybe by your standards,” I say. “But not mine.”

Emma sighs, bandages in hand. “Can you please just think things through before you react? I know it’s hard for you, but you have to try. You’re better than this.”

She sounds oddly like Blaine, disappointed, calling me out for my shortcomings. But in this moment I don’t need to hear about my faults. My father is dead and I need to hear that there are situations where logic and reason don’t apply, that sometimes an ugly action is a necessary one. I need to hear that I’m not a failure for being impulsive. Above all, I just need someone to say, “It’s okay. I understand,” and if they can’t say that, I don’t want them to say anything at all.

NINETEEN

CRAMMED BETWEEN EMMA AND BO in the backseat, Clipper calls out directions while Bree drives. Sammy and Xavier are in the rear with the Forgery and most of the gear. Each time we crest a new rise in the plain and see nothing but more land, Sammy asks for an updated estimate on our time of arrival. Bree’s patience runs out quickly.

“Sammy, I don’t see how you can spend weeks hiking and not once ask how much farther we have to go, but now, when we are in a car and you know perfectly well we’ll arrive at Group A by dusk, you suddenly need a progress update every two minutes.”

“Nox, if you had to sit back here, feeling carsick because the person driving can’t steer better than an uncoordinated toddler, you’d ask for updates, too.”

Bree glares at him in the mirror. “You better watch your back when we make camp.”

The team chuckles, but I’m staring out the window, watching the landscape fly by. Everything in the Western Territory is gray or white or dead. The snow accumulations seem to grow. The car slides now and again, but Bree makes no attempt to slow our pace. When the sky is just beginning to lose some of its light, a dull structure appears in the distance. The wall encircling Group A’s Outer Ring.

“The nearest town is on the northern side,” Clipper says, studying the location device resting in his lap. “Maybe a two-hour drive out. We should be fine approaching from any direction.”

The car is silent except for the uneven rhythm of Bo’s characteristic tapping as Bree brings us closer. Soon, the wall is towering above us. Imprinted on it is the same word, spaced out at even intervals: QUARANTINE. The letters are aggressive, each one blocklike and powerful despite its now-faded state. I know they are a lie, but I can see why people stayed clear when Frank set up these test groups to initiate the Laicos Project.

Bree takes us slowly around the structure. We’re all looking for an inconsistency in the facade, a place that might open wide enough for a car, when Jackson announces, “Right here. Stop.”

Sammy and Xavier lug the Forgery outside on my instruction. From my seat, I watch as Jackson runs his hands along the wall, following a seam that is so subtle I’m amazed he spotted it from the moving car.

“You should have let me try first.” Clipper sounds disappointed, like he’s been told to sit out a thrilling game.

“We didn’t even recognize this stretch of wall as the entrance,” I say. “And besides, it’s time we put all the Forgery’s talk to the test.”

Outside the car, Jackson brushes snow aside from the base of the wall and presses a palm against it. A panel the size of his hand pops open. He starts tapping at something I can’t make out from where I sit.

“Say he enters the right access code,” Bree says. “Will it even open? Frank cut off power for Group A ages ago.”

“I talked about this with Ryder before we left,” Clipper says. “There’s likely a backup power source just for the entrance. One the Order can manually tap into if they ever chose to revisit the place.”

Jackson rubs his forehead almost nervously, then stands. A moment later, the entrance is sliding open.

“Took him long enough,” Emma says, which I find amusing since it seemed rather quick to me and could have taken Clipper far longer.

Sammy shoves Jackson back in the car. “Can we off this maggot now?” he asks.

I almost say yes. The deal is complete and it’s not worth keeping Jackson alive any longer. Not with the stunt he pulled on the Catherine. But my father is gone and he’s never coming back and I want Jackson to suffer for it. I don’t want it to be quick. I want him to feel pain and I want him to feel it for a long, long time. Maybe this makes me heartless, but I don’t care.

“We’re leaving him tied up to something in Group A,” I say. “He can starve to death.”

“You can’t do that,” Jackson says, voice panicked. “I held up my part of the deal.”

“Well, Forgery, now you know what betrayal feels like.”

“Dammit, put a bullet in me if you have to. But leaving me to freeze? To starve? No man should die that way.”

I feel like countering with the fact that he’s a Forgery, not a man, but I settle on an offer. A gracious one that he doesn’t even deserve.

“Maybe if you tell us where Frank thought our mission team was originally headed, I’ll reconsider. So how about it? Did he think we were trying to contact AmWest? Is there a reason we should stop thinking of them as our enemy?”

The Forgery doesn’t respond.

“Fine,” I say. “Starve to death.”

He swears. I don’t know what he expected. He made it clear that he’d try to complete his mission in the end, and our deal just prolonged the inevitable. If he has no information left to give me, I won’t give him a chance to retrieve Crevice Valley’s location. Especially when I know his methods of procuring it will include torture.

I tell Bree to drive into the Outer Ring. A shadow passes over the car, and we are inside.

It brings back a lot of memories. Running with Emma. The feeling of confusion and bewilderment at finding not only more land beyond Claysoot, but another wall still trapping us in place, not to mention the sprawling, unimaginable world outside it. I crack my window open, and the bite of cold air is a comfort.

We cut through the dead, snow-covered earth until Group A’s Wall suddenly looms before us. I scramble from the car, walk up to the structure, and lay a palm against it. It is smooth and sleek, the facade like ice to the touch. It looks just like our Claysoot Wall.

“Now what?” Xavier asks.

The entire team is watching me, even Bo. I hate that I’ve somehow become the person in charge. I have no clue what I’m doing.

Bo seems frigid and miserable; Emma, anxious. Clipper looks . . . young. I don’t know how my father handled having so many people under his command. I don’t know how to lead them. I only know what I would do alone, so that’s where I start.

“These people are cautious. When we saw them in the control room, they were barely visible—just a quick glimpse of a hand or leg. If we saunter in now, while there’s still a bit of light, there’s no way they’ll show themselves. But at night, if we are quiet about our approach, we may be able to find them before they have the chance to hide. And we could use the cover of dark either way; I don’t want to be spotted by the cameras.”

Now that I’ve started talking, the plan is forming effortlessly. “We’ll split up. Bo will man the camp here—with Xavier and Emma—so that we have ears on the outside. The rest of us are going in.”

While Sammy warms canned beans over a fire for dinner, Xavier and I take an inventory of our weapons. What made it off the ship on the lifeboat is all we have left: Xavier’s bow and arrows; two knives, carried by Bo and Clipper; two extra handguns stowed away in my father’s pack. There’s also the gun I found in the Order car that Bree’s currently carrying.

When Sammy says dinner is ready, I bring a cup of beans to Jackson. He’s locked in the car, staring at the towering Wall through his window. Something in his eyes looks a bit too hopeful.

It should have been him, I decide—not Owen—that went down with the Catherine.

It is dark and once again snowing when we move the car alongside the Wall to make our crossing. Xavier lends me his bow—I’ve never favored firearms, especially if they don’t have a lengthy barrel—and he takes one of my father’s handguns so that the team staying behind isn’t left unarmed. Sammy has the second of my father’s guns, and Bree, the weapon that’s been tucked in her waistband since I threatened Jackson with it.

There were only two pairs of night-vision goggles in the Order’s car and I’m wearing one of them. Bree has the other. The rest of the team coming with us has flashlights stowed away, though the goal is to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary. We’ve also got a handheld radio so that we can communicate with the crew staying behind. Clipper double- and triple-checks the channels and reception before telling me we’re ready.

As the team scrambles onto the car to make the climb, a hand grabs my elbow. Emma.

“I want to go with you,” she says. “I could help if someone gets hurt.” She puts her palms on the front of my jacket and I feel a familiar ache in my chest.

“No one’s getting hurt.”

“But if they do, I should be there.”

“Clipper knows enough first aid to handle anything minor.”

She frowns. “If the worst injuries will be minor, I don’t see why I can’t come.”

This debate could go in circles all night. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Emma.” She looks up at me. “Please stay here, with Bo and Xavier. With people we trust. Where it’s safe. I’ll be back soon.”

She glances at the Wall. “Just be careful?”

“I’ll try my hardest not to do anything stupid.”

“I’m not sure that makes me feel better. I know how you are.”

I laugh, then freeze as she hooks her hands behind my neck. She raises herself up onto her toes and plants a kiss on my lips. Quick and friendly, but there are a million memories attached to it.

“I have a good feeling about this,” she says, stepping back. “Group A. The mission. A real good feeling.”

“Me, too,” I say, overwhelmed with newfound confidence. “I’ll see you soon. Promise.”

She gives me her typical half smile. “I’ll be waiting.”

I head for the car, climb onto the roof where the team waits impatiently. Especially Bree. She’s scowling at me, arms folded against her chest, pointer fingers tapping her biceps. There’s something else to the expression, an emotion I can’t place. Fear, maybe? Anxiety?

“You okay?” I ask.

“I’m a big girl, Gray. I don’t care who you kiss.”

“I meant about the Wall,” I say, taken aback. “Are you ready?”

“Oh.” Now she looks insulted, almost as if she wanted me to ask about a kiss I didn’t initiate or plan for. “Of course.” She pauses and frowns. “Unless they’re crazy like Fallyn predicted—a bunch of savages. That would complicate things.”

Fallyn, a Rebel captain and the main representative of Bree’s people from Saltwater, never supported our mission. She swore we’d trek halfway across the country and find nothing but wild animals living behind the Wall, but I always thought the clips we saw in the control room suggested otherwise.

“We’ll be fine,” I say. “Especially together. I’m never more confident than when you have my back.”

“Stop it,” she snaps. “Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

“Stuff about me and you and us. It only makes it harder.”

“So I can’t speak my mind? Even if it’s true?”

She scowls so intently the look turns into something more sad than fierce. “Especially if it’s true.”

“You want me to lie to you?”

“I don’t care what you do so long as it doesn’t feel like you’re standing on my chest and breaking my rib cage.”

And so we are back to this—comfortable one moment, at arms with each other the next—and that’s just fine. I can play this game with her. Push her, taunt her, egg her on, be consistently sarcastic. I can be all the reasons I told her we’d never work to begin with. It’s not even a struggle; it’s second nature, us at each other’s throats. As easy as breathing.

“If you get spotted by a camera on the other side, don’t expect me to save your ass when the Order swoops in to investigate.”

She smirks, and it makes her look a bit more like herself. “Likewise.”

“Also, your boots are untied.”

Bree looks down and finds her laces tightly bound. She shoves me, her lips pinched together like she’s holding in a combination of laughter and fury.

Sammy clears his throat. “Are we doing this or are we going to stand around all night?”

“No, we’re going,” I say, and at my words, Xavier is beside me, offering interwoven fingers to use as a stepping stool.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” I say to Bree. Her face hardens and she nods: one small, curt movement of her chin.

I put my boot into Xavier’s palms and he heaves me upward.

My hands find the top of the Wall and I pull.