Josin L McQuein - Meridian

“You’re going out there, aren’t you?” I ask.

“Like you’re not here for the same reason.”

I’m here because I don’t believe in coincidence. Trey’s bait. The shadow-hugger probably planned this. He left Marina a trail of Fade-crusted bread crumbs, and she’s going to follow it until she loses her way home.

“It’s too dangerous,” I say.

“If Rue or one of the others knows something, then—”

“Then what ?” I snap, harsher than I mean to. Louder, too.

She flinches back, and I tell myself to get a grip before I scare her and she goes looking for him to protect her from me. I’m too jumpy. The nightmares were bad enough, but seeing them on paper, like Trey pulled them out of my head, was too much.

Touching those things changes people, no matter what they say.

“What if they expected this to happen, Marina? What if Trey’s just the first?”

“I don’t believe that.”

Of course she doesn’t. All she can see is the tragic hero who risked his life to save his lost love. Rueful’s a fairy tale. How do I compete with that?

“We should wait and see what Doctor Wolff says,” I suggest.

“I don’t trust Doctor Wolff.”

Right.

“Then we wait here. Honoria’s brother might show. We can—”

“Take a look, Tobin. What do you see?” she says.

I turn back to the Grey, but there’s nothing there.

Nothing. No one, and no Fade. There hasn’t been a night without at least a handful of them hovering in the Grey until sunrise drives them back. Tonight, there’s only the fog, coming too close and making my skin crawl. I can almost hear the click-clack of tiny feet marching up my arm.

I reach down for a rock and throw it, but it drops out of the air on its own without hitting anything.

“Bolt’s not coming,” she says. “No one is.”

Our night started with an invisible Fade on the front line. Now they’re at full retreat, and Trey’s jacked into my nightmares. What’s next?

“I can stop you from going,” I tell Marina.

“You’re not going to hit me.”

“No, but I can hit my wristband and send us straight to Red-Wall.” She might hate me now, but she’ll thank me later. “For all we know, Trey had a bad reaction, like an allergy. If it was serious—”

“Your eyes were silver.”

Her answer’s ice water to my face, knocking the air out of me.

She’s lying. She has to be. Marina picked a sore spot because she knew it would get a reaction.

“You don’t have to make up—”

“Your eyes were silver in the Arbor, when you saw the blood on my hand. Look at my hands.”

She removes her gloves and holds her hands out, palms up. She turns them over to let me see both sides, and the perfect, unscarred skin that’s replaced the cut I cleaned and the one from the broken bottle.

“What happened?”

“I fell asleep after Honoria’s presentation, and had a nightmare— your nightmare. The cuts were gone when I woke up. Your eyes were silver, and I’m healing like someone’s reknitting my skin from the inside out. We shared a dream, Tobin. Whatever’s happening to Trey, he’s not the only one. I’m not waiting. I’m going to find Rue. I’m not giving him a choice but to help—the end.”

“Wait.” I grab her by the shoulder as she steps forward. “What if it’s not a dream? What if it’s a premonition?” My voice sounds strange.

“It’s not.”

“What if the Fade are spreading again and we caused it by bringing down the Arc and letting them in?”

Never forget, Honoria’s voice drones in the back of my mind. It was a single mistake that put us over the edge .

“Tobin, listen to me. Rue will fix this.”

Sure he will. The mighty Fade Charming can fix anything.

I pull my gloves off my shaking hands, searching them for lines on my palms and knuckles. I check between my fingers in case they’re hiding, but it’s just skin. A fading tan from wearing the gloves so long, and fingernails that are clean, except for the one I tore trying to bite off a hangnail.

“You don’t have lines,” she says. “Neither do I. The silver was only a flash, but it was there.”

“Maybe it was trick of the light.”

“That’s what I thought. I thought it was Cherish, and her mind games, but now—”

“You said you couldn’t hear them anymore.” I take a step back. I want to throw up, but my stomach’s got a giant knot in it that hits my throat every time I try.

“Not them ,” she says. “ Her . She messes with my head sometimes.”

“But she’s you, isn’t she?” And since when is there a distinction? The shadow crawlers are an all-for-one deal. If you hear one, you hear the rest.

“I thought so, too, but I’m not sure about anything tonight,” she says. “Something must have gone wrong when Bolt and Rue healed you and Trey.”

I’m more concerned with the idea that something went right, and this is stage two. She might be convinced that the Fade mean no harm, but their definition of help isn’t the same as ours—that’s why they’ve stuck with Dad. We don’t always speak the same language. This could be their idea of “better.”

“You should have told me,” I say.

“I just did.”

Marina stands on the Arc with her foot hovering above the ground, but she can’t manage to take the first step.

“What if she’s stronger than me?” she says, but more to herself than me. She flinches, slapping at her ears. Did one of them say something back?

“If you’re crossing, I’m going with you, and it has to be now. Leaving after the Arc goes hot will set off an alarm.”

“This is a bad idea,” she says. “But I don’t have a better one.” She takes a breath, closes her eyes, and steps over the boundary into the Grey.

The short side used to be most dangerous place I knew; it’s where we were most vulnerable. Anytime the Fade tried to break in, they did it here, because it’s the only place you can cross and get back in a few hours. Now it’s simply the most convenient. A couple of other people are already out here, barely within sight of the Arclight, but none of them are the kids from Honoria’s speech.

“Tell me your dream again,” Marina says after we’re past them.

“I’m standing on the Arc, when it comes on and fries me where I stand.”

“Now tell me the real one.”

I don’t want to. If I recount it, then I have to think about it, and if I’m thinking about it, then I might as well be living it.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because maybe I’m wrong,” she says. “Maybe mine wasn’t the same and I only convinced myself it was.”

“That’s probably it. I doubt your brain is as twisted as mine.”

“I saw the Dark, Tobin,” she says. “But it wasn’t the place we went before, with the houses and families. It was like Trey’s drawings. The whole thing was one writhing monster, ready to devour the world.”

“I call that variation two,” I say. Number one is worse.

We’ve reached the point where the terrain begins to change. Murky water appears in puddles and then turns the ground to mush that sucks against the bottoms of my boots. That’s the only sound here beyond the wind and the occasional movement of the water.

This is part of the dream, too.

A creature I first mistake for a log makes a whipping motion with its long snout and tail before sliding into the water with barely a ripple. Its eyes shine red beneath the surface, where it lurks, watching.

“So, once we’re in . . . there . . . how do we find the nanobot?” I ask. “Do we call its—”

“His!” Marina snaps.

“Fine. Do we call his name or try to find our way back to the settlement on our own?”