THE WATCH

CLARITY: BOOK ONE

A n n a H e r l i h y

The Watch (Clarity: Book One) is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2014 by Anna Herlihy. Published by Lalune Press. www.annaherlihy.comAll rights reserved. Lalune Press and the crescent moon colophon are trademarks of Lalune Press and Anna Herlihy. Published in the United States by Lalune Press. ISBN 978-1495929762 Printed in the United States of America by CreateSpace.

���3

T H E W A T C H

!5

C H A P T E R O N E

WATER

Ren left the ship on a day when the setting moon was barely a sliver in the sky. The Doctors made their rounds in the village only when the moon was full. Ren should be able to make it there and back without being discovered. Just in case, she slung a gauzy white scarf around her neck and pulled it over her head like a hood. It never did much against the heat of the day, but it hid her face and kept strands of her hair from flying away in the wind.

A great spear of rock drove through the center of her ship and kept it from tumbling down the cliff and into the sea. Ren thought it was an odd place for a ship to be, all alone and broken, closer to the coast than the sea, and liked to waste a lot of time daydreaming about how her ship could have been beached. The cliff almost completely surrounded her ship, except for a tiny sliver through which a view of the sea peeked. It was quiet place, like her own personal hole to hide in.

Ren wouldn’t have found her ship at all if she hadn’t been climbing down the cliff, desperate to find a cave, and lost her footing on a loose rock. She had fallen off the cliff, eyes slammed shut with the certainty of death, and had landed right on the stern deck. Her back had ached for a full moon cycle after that, but that bit of pain was nothing compared with six years of refuge.

Climbing the cliff had not gotten easier with time. She was continually dislodging streams of crumbly brown stones to patter against the stern deck and echo through the barren air. The wind beating against the cliff face was determined to blow her away

! THE WATCH6

each time she began her clamber to the coast and had been the cause of some particularly bad falls during the first year on her ship.

Pulling herself onto the coast was the hardest part of the climb. It required more faith in the strength of her arms than Ren possessed. There was this moment, when half her body was folded over the cliff edge and her feet dangled in open air, that Ren doubted whether she could pull herself the rest of the way up. The moment happened with every climb, and no matter how much Ren prepared herself for it, her stomach plummeted straight down below her feet each time without fail.

The coast was mostly barren, the ground a mix of gray rocks, tired brown dirt, and sad little clumps of white grass. The only break in the flat horizon was a small cluster of low hills to the north. Ren turned her attention to her left wrist where she wore a circlet of clean, black metal. Her mother’s Watch. Tapping it with her right index finger, the Watchface lit up and displayed a series of pulsating, squiggly symbols. Ren couldn’t read them, only knew to press the third one from the left in the top row to access the compass.

Following the northwest directions displayed on her wrist, Ren jogged towards the village. It was beyond foolish to be risking a trip to the village for something so trivial, but this desire had stewed into an obsession. She couldn’t reason it away any longer. She went to the village for food as often as she dared; this trip shouldn’t be any more dangerous than her regular visits. Six years without indulgence required a reward.

The village came into view just as the sun yawned over the horizon, its harsh light chasing away the calm night. Ren slowed to a walk as she approached the edge of the village and leveled her racing heart with long inhales of dusty air. The village was a single line of metal buildings bordering a beat up road that sprouted up from the dirt at one end of the village and disappeared at the other end. A few of the villagers were already up and milling about outside, enjoying the sun. Ren kept a wary

���7

distance from them all, making directly for the pub at the center of the village. The shopkeep looked at her expectantly as she passed him, and Ren nodded in greeting as if he was her friend. She often pretended that he was, when she was on her ship with nothing to do all day but think, and it somehow made her feel less lonely.

The pub didn’t have a front wall. The tables and chairs spilled out onto the roadside and the roof was nothing more than an immense piece of brown fabric tied down to the side and back walls. Her footsteps rumbled the metal sheet that acted as a floor and announced her entrance. She hurried to an empty table with her head down, overly aware of the wary faces turning to watch her. Her desire to be among people again had evidently been intense enough to make her forget that she would always be an outsider in this village. What good was being alone in a room full of people? Coming to the pub was so stupid, so unbelievably stupid, that Ren suppressed the urge to slap herself across the face.

Leaving right away would be too suspicious. She had to order something first, to act casual and unhurried before someone decided to question who she was. A grizzled old barman was limping to her table with cautious eyes. He was frowning, and Ren could imagine quite clearly what he saw. Filthy clothes, layers of dust settled into her skin, and the sleek black Keeper’s Watch that shone out so differently from the rest of her haggard appearance.

“A glass of water, please,” Ren said calmly. The barman nodded and made his slow way back to the counter. The rest of the pub’s interest in her was starting to wane as everyone returned to their breakfasts and tall, luxurious glasses of water. Only low grumbles of suspicion remained from a table on the far side of the pub.

Ren twisted her hands together under the table. The barman was taking much too long to get her a simple glass of water. What if he reported her? She hadn’t touched anything yet, the Doctors wouldn’t be able to trace her fingerprints if she left. She was just

! THE WATCH8

rising from her chair to flee without her drink when a group of people entered the pub.

They were four in number, two men and two women. The rising sun illuminated a cloud of dust surrounding them as they entered. The man in front was haggard and stomped through the pub with a scowl. He wore cargo pants, a white shirt, a scruffy leather jacket, and a thick black belt off of which hung twin pistols and a short, jagged dagger. The woman on his right side had a massive rifle twice as tall as herself slung casually across her back. It was made of wood and brass, shone like diamond, and held an assortment of knobs and scopes poised atop the barrel. Something like that cost more than everything Ren had seen in her life combined, including a book. The barman stood up straighter and stepped behind the bar, knife in hand.

The group, talking quietly amongst themselves and indifferent to the stares of the villagers, chose to sit at the table next to Ren. Shaking, Ren kept her eyes fixed on her hands.

“How many more days?”“Can’t be more than two, no?”“Don’t get impatient, you were the ones who wanted to go

out of our way to get a drink,” said the man in the leather jacket. Ren glanced at the table. The two women sat facing Ren, the

two men with their backs to her. The barman, appearing at Ren’s other side with his knife still clutched firmly in his free hand, thrust a small glass of water under her nose. She thanked him, slid a triangular bronze coin across the table in payment, and brought the glass to her lips.

The water was like a breath of clean air. Her teeth sung at its chill and she swished it around her mouth with relish before swallowing. Compared to the silt-filled water she collected from a stream near her ship, the comfort of drinking clean water was enough to make this trip worthwhile.

One of the women from the next table pointed at Ren and said, “Sloan, look.”

���9

Before Ren could put her glass down, the man in the leather jacket had spun around and seized her wrist. Startled, she let the glass slip from her grasp and shatter on the table, its precious contents wasted. Sloan had both of his rough hands around her left wrist. He nearly pulled her arm out of its socket as he yanked her towards him.

The entire pub had fallen silent, some of the smarter villagers hurrying outside. Terrified, Ren kicked the man in the chest as hard as she could and toppled backwards off her chair when he let go of her wrist. She scrambled to her feet and barreled through the empty tables of the pub, cradling her left wrist to her chest. She heard the scraping of heavy chairs against metal behind her as she flew onto the street, frantic to keep this last remnant of her mother’s memory from petty thieves.

Instead of sprinting for the coast and the sanctuary of her ship, Ren skidded to a stop just outside the pub, her already tangled nerves screaming at the sight that awaited her. At the entrance of the village stood three disturbingly tall figures clothed in black. Their cloaks hung loosely around them and encircled their heads. Long lacquered masks in the shape of a beak covered their faces. They slunk into the village, shifting their beak masks back and forth, each one holding a bioprobe in their freakishly long, gloved hands. A small blue light blinked on the tip of the bioprobe as the Doctors swept the street for signs of infection.

Head spinning and stomach churning, Ren ducked into a lean alleyway between the pub and the house next to it. The Doctors had to know she was there, why else would they come to the village so early in the moon cycle? She fumbled to tighten the white scarf around her hair. The only fingerprints she had left behind were those on her glass of water. It had shattered, so the bioprobes shouldn’t be able to pick up her trail. But what if a strand of her hair had fallen out? They would find her…finally catch her…

! THE WATCH10

Ren watched the shadows of the Doctors creeping towards the pub, her lips trembling and sweat pooling in the small of her back. The alley was thrown into sudden shadow and a hand shot out to cover Ren’s mouth, suppressing her yell of fright. Ren struggled against the body pressing her against the wall of the pub, her white scarf snagging on Sloan’s black jacket and dropping onto her neck. She sunk her teeth into Sloan’s hand, careful not to break the skin and draw blood. He cursed and backed away long enough for her to shimmy further down the alley. Somehow she made it through and emerged onto the gray dirt behind the pub.

She took off at a full sprint, not daring to look behind her and using the buildings of the village for cover. At each alley she closed her eyes and ran blind to avoid seeing whether or not the Doctors had picked up her trail. She paused at the edge of the village, gathered her nerve with a gulp of dusty air, and hurtled forward. Her scarf bounced around her shoulders and the heat of the sun made her skin prickle. The sound of her boots against the ground was like a hammer pounding her heart further and further up her throat. When she thought herself to be at least out of sight of the village, she glanced over her shoulder. She saw nothing; neither Sloan and his group nor the Doctors had followed her. She slowed down enough to focus on the compass on her mother’s Watch to find the way back to her ship.

At the edge of the coast she stopped, bent over and dry heaving. The Doctors only ever used bioprobes when they were looking for someone specific. Ren didn’t think any of the villagers had contracted the Blood Plague, as that was usually followed by all of the healthy people picking up their lives and running for a new place to live. The only explanation was that the Doctors knew she was there. If those three Doctors couldn’t find her, others would come. Ren couldn’t visit that village or stay in her ship anymore, not unless she wanted the Doctors to find and execute her for being a carrier.

���11

Descending the cliff took much longer than usual. The combined effects of her jumbled nerves, the heat, and the knowledge that this would be her last time climbing down the cliff made her stop every few feet to gather the courage to go on. When she finally touched down on the stern deck, she wasted no time in dropping through one of its many holes and into the cabin.

It was dim and cool in her ship. She barely had any possessions at all outside of a few changes of clothes and the basic things she needed to survive, but they all fit easily into a gray bag she had once traded for a pair of her father’s fancy, polished shoes. She stuffed the food she did have in the bag, retrieved her canteen from her bed, and slung both across her chest. The only things left in the cabin were the jumble of threadbare blankets she used as a bed and the creaky old chair she kept underneath the largest hole in the deck to climb through. Everything else she owned was packed, and she really shouldn’t waste any more time, but she couldn’t just leave her ship so abruptly.

She walked slowly around the cabin, her fingers tracing the wall and eyes drinking in every last inch. She had had many homes in her life. The cozy house in Hythe she grew up in and shared with her parents, the neighbor’s house she had hid in after her parents were murdered, countless caves and ditches she had spent years in after leaving Hythe, and her ship. She had spent the last six years tucked away from the world and safe from the Doctors, whiling away her time with daydreaming and scavenging for food, never preparing for the day when she would have to leave. Her ship had made her soft; she had no idea where she was supposed to go to find another place like her ship.

She stood in the middle of the cabin and paused to take one more look around. A loud boom reverberated through the cabin—the sound of someone landing on the stern deck.

Pressing a hand against her mouth to stifle her breathing, Ren dashed for the door of the cabin. Sloan dropped through a hole in

! THE WATCH12

the deck and landed directly in front of her, the twin muzzles of his pistols in line with each of her eyes.

“The Watch, love,” he snarled. His voice was deep, resonant, and bounced off the walls of the cabin to cage Ren in. The rest of Sloan’s group were dropping through the holes in the deck and assembling in a loose circle around her.

Ren spun in a circle and was met at each turn with the muzzle of a gun. One of the women, the one with bright red hair framing her round face, said, “Look at her, she’s trembling.”

“You can’t have it,” Ren said to Sloan’s pistols, wishing for an ounce more force in her voice. Sloan, glancing briefly at the woman with red hair, lowered his pistols.

“Where did you get it?”“You can’t—”Sloan interrupted, said, “Jasmin.”Something pummeled into Ren’s temple and she crumpled to

the ground. Her eyes crossed and a ringing sound peeled angrily through her ears. She let herself fall limp and still, her eyes cracked open just enough to get a sense of what was going on around her. Adrenaline coursed through her body swift, strong, and demanding for action, though all the reason she possessed was telling her to be still.

Sloan bent over her and held up her left wrist for the others to see. He ran his thumb over the surface of the Watch with reverence.

“Can you get it off?” Jasmin asked. She was petite, beautiful, with dark hair and a delicate face far less intimidating than the rifle she carried.

“We need to enter its Code,” Sloan muttered. He looked to Ren’s face, appraising it, then back at the Watch with a frown.

“Let’s ask her, then,” said the woman with red hair. Her voice was light, on the verge of cheerful, and she pushed her bushy hair out of the way as she leaned over Ren’s body to take her pulse. Her fingers were warm and pressed hard into the side of Ren’s neck, almost hard enough to make her wince.

���13

“As if she’d just give it to us?” Jasmin rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t it be easier to cut it off?”

“No!”“Merrigan,” Jasmin sighed, exasperated. “If that’s the only way

to get it—”“Did you fail to notice that she was running from the Doctors

in the village?”“I believe she was running from us.”Merrigan raised her chin, voice rising with irritation, “She’s

most likely a carrier. No sane Disposable would live in conditions like this unless they were hiding their infection. Amputating her hand and exposing all that blood…we’ll all be dead in a week.”

“She doesn’t look sick,” Jasmin insisted. “Carrier, I said! It’s not worth the risk.”“Merrigan’s right, we can’t cut off her hand,” the second man

in the group cut in. He was tall and lanky with unkempt hair and the shadow of a beard across his jaw.

“Finn, Sloan said we can’t get into Base One without a Keeper’s Watch,” Jasmin said. “We’ve been traveling for a month now and this is the first Watch we’ve come across. We can’t just do nothing.”

“I didn’t think there were any Bases around here,” said the tall man, frowning. “Why would a Citizen be so far from a Base?”

“We’re far from our Base,” Merrigan said. Finn shrugged. “We’ll wait,” Sloan decided. “Merrigan, stay with me. Finn,

search this ship for anything useful, and Jasmin go up to the coast and make sure none of the Doctors followed us here.”

Jasmin threw her rifle up one of the holes in the deck and pulled herself up after it. The tall man Finn paused to squint after Jasmin before saying, “Evie’s been alone for a long time.”

Sloan nodded and Finn turned sharply on his heel, opening the door of the cabin with a thick creak and walking into the rest of the ship. Sloan crouched closer to Ren’s body, strapping his twin pistols into their holsters and unsheathing his knife.

! THE WATCH14

Before he could realize she was awake, Ren began to stir, slowly at first, then all of a sudden she sat straight up and made to lunge away from Sloan. He caught her and pressed his knife against her neck, forcing her to lay back down.

“How did you find me?” Ren asked. She was shaking against the edge of his knife, her mind completely blank of any ideas towards freedom.

“You forgot about your footprints. Answer quickly,” Sloan whispered, his voice sharper than his knife. Ren instinctively covered the Watch with her right hand. The knife blade was hot as she swallowed around it.

“Where did you get the Watch? Do you know its Code?” Sloan pressed the knife harder into her neck and repeated, “Do you know its Code?”

Ren moved her head in the smallest of nods. Sloan stared her down for a long moment before withdrawing

the knife. He pulled Ren roughly to her feet and said to Merrigan, “Find Finn. Let’s get back to Evie.”

Merrigan hurried out of the cabin. Ren grit her teeth, focusing all her strength into not cracking under Sloan’s iron grip around her arm. She felt displaced and unsure of reality; she didn’t trust herself. Of course she knew the danger that had invaded her ship, yet she didn’t want it to leave altogether. There were people here, she hand a person’s hand on her arm and another on the coast making sure the Doctors wouldn’t find her ship.

A thud behind her made Ren jump and she turned to see Jasmin land gracefully in the cabin. She was gasping for air and clenching her fists, not appearing at all in control as her words made her seem.

“No Doctors or their minions, either,” Jasmin said to Sloan, who merely nodded. Ren stared at the rifle across Jasmin’s back, panic seizing her like a slap in the face and bringing her out of her ridiculous daydreams.

Merrigan and Finn returned to the cabin, Finn holding up a pile of folded blankets Ren kept at the other end of her ship.

���15

Sloan shook his head and Finn tossed the blankets carelessly onto the floor. Then, he clicked his tongue and said, “Merrigan!”

“What?” she cried, following his gaze to the handgun she had left haphazardly on the floor. “Oh, right.”

Sloan pushed Ren under the nearest hole, grabbed her around the waist, and heaved her upwards. She scrambled to catch the edge of the hole, her flimsy bag getting caught as she tried to pull herself up. Below, someone grabbed her feet and gave her a shove. She rolled onto the deck, jumped to her feet, and dashed for the cliff.

Sloan was climbing through the hole behind her, unperturbed by her attempt at escape. Ren reached the cliff and scooted up as quickly as she could, dislodging waves of loose pebbles and dirt in her hurry. Sloan was soon climbing next to her, then passing her. He scaled the cliff with ease and sent pebbles to sting Ren’s forehead and scrape her knuckles. She should just let herself drop, why was she still climbing? The rest of Sloan’s group were below her, panting and cursing the steepness of the cliff.

Sloan pulled himself onto the coast and stood at the edge. He crossed his arms with so much impatience that it seemed to glimmer across his body like a shield. When she came within reach of the coast, Sloan leaned forward and hoisted her onto the dirt by her armpits. He kept her pinned to the ground with his foot until the rest of the group struggled to the coast. Then, she was dragged to her feet. Jasmin stood behind her with her rifle raised, Finn and Sloan crowding her on each side.

Jasmin prodded Ren’s back with the muzzle of her rifle. Ren let them lead her on a straight path towards the cluster of hills to the north. The grass crunched under her boots. The Watch felt heavier than normal as she marched. Her mother had given Ren her Watch minutes before she died; it was the single most important thing Ren owned, but only because it was her mother’s.

Hythe had been a relatively large village, with three streets instead of one, and certainly the wealthiest Ren had ever heard of.

! THE WATCH16

They had a library in Hythe, with actual books, and her mother had been the librarian. She wore the black Watch every moment of her life and called herself a Keeper of Ages because she kept the history of Earth in the library. Ren hadn’t thought much of the Watch beyond its connection to her mother, it didn’t seem remotely dangerous or profitable, but Ren really had no sense of what the Watch was worth. It could easily be worth more than the entire library of Hythe. All Sloan had to do was take it from her to be rich, and turning her in to the Doctors after that would make him even richer. Was that what was waiting for her at the hills? A Doctor, perhaps a few of their Reapers, and Sloan’s reward?

Ren worried at her bottom lip, heart racing as she searched desperately for some way to escape. She knew without a doubt she would never be able to outrun Sloan or the range on Jasmin’s rifle, nor did she stand any chance in fighting them head on. Even if she was strong and cunning enough, she had worked so hard to become a person who wouldn’t harm another. Ren glanced quickly at Sloan and he responded by grabbing her arm roughly and all but dragging her at his side.

As they neared the hills, Ren found that they were made of large gray boulders, not dirt, and formed a dilapidated ring with a hollow in the middle. In the hollow there stood a tent large enough for four people and the remnants of a fire. The sun had already passed its apex. Finn and Jasmin were covering their eyes against the glare, panting and red-faced. Merrigan was doubled over, wheezing.

“I’ll never get used to this sun,” Merrigan complained. “Or this air. It’s too dry, how do you stand it?”

“You’ve come far from a month ago,” Sloan said. “It’ll get easier now that your body is adjusting.”

The flaps of the tent pulled back and out ran a small girl no more than ten years old. Her hair was inky black and horribly tangled, her face unsettlingly gaunt. She ran straight for Finn, who knelt down to hug her and smooth down her hair.

���17

Sloan pushed Ren to sit against one of the boulders. He crossed the hollow to the tent, ruffling the small girl’s hair on the way, and returned to Ren with a rope and long piece of red cloth. He tied her legs and arms together, then folded the cloth lengthwise and tied it over her mouth. Ren had braced herself in anticipation of being rousted, but Sloan was almost gentle. He left her against the boulder without a word and joined the rest of his group gathered around the girl.

“Is she safe to bring around Evie?” Finn asked. “If she might be a carrier?”

“Even if she is a carrier, so long as we don’t expose ourselves to her blood we’ll be fine.”

“How do you expect us to get the Watch if we can’t expose her blood?” Jasmin asked.

Ren shifted against the boulder, her lips tingling from the rough red cloth. If they wanted the Watch so badly, why didn’t they just take it off her wrist? Why was their only option to amputate her arm? She looked down at her lap. On her left wrist sat the Watch, foreboding and mysterious, on her right palm a scar in the shape of a crescent moon. Her eyes traced the outline of her scar. They’re not going to give me to the Doctors, Ren thought, a thrill running through her veins. The Doctors would never pay for a carrier whose blood was already exposed to the air.

“Are you sure that its even a real Keepers Watch?” Finn asked Sloan. “She definitely wasn’t born in a Base, look at her skin.”

“But she knows its Code,” Merrigan said. “She’s a recruit,” Sloan said confidently. Ren frowned. Recruit

for what?Sloan continued, “It is the only explanation. If I thought any

Disposable capable of stealing a Keeper’s Watch, it wouldn’t be someone that looks like her. She’s a Citizen and not dangerous. What she’s doing on the surface doesn’t matter as long as we can get her Watch.”

“We need to decide on something quickly,” Jasmin said. “There’s not even a month left until Clarity leaves and we’re

! THE WATCH18

barely halfway there. Soon, even Sloan won’t be able to get us over the Bridge in time. If amputation is out of the question, let’s just kill her the old fashioned way.” Jasmin paused to crack her knuckles. “The Watch will become open property and we can take it without a Code. None of us will be able to wear it, though, but Cecelia can do something with it still, no?”

Sloan paced, rubbing his eyes. He said, “We’ll take her with us for now. Give her time to realize she can either die with the Watch or live without it.” He looked at Ren and raised his voice. “You hear that?”

Ren nodded slowly. She was amazed that no one else could hear the frantic, deafening beating of her heart. She was vaguely dizzy from trying to figure out what exactly the group was talking about; half their words meant nothing to Ren. All she could glean from them was that they weren’t going to give her to the Doctors and that they were headed somewhere important. They were more than well supplied with weapons and had each other for protection. Ren might not understand the entirety of their journey, but if it meant the possibility of going somewhere out of the Doctors’ reach…

Sloan stomped towards her and Ren sat up straighter, determined to make herself look in control. He removed the cloth from around her mouth and kneeled in front of her, his face so close that their noses nearly touched.

“Tell me the Code now, give me the Watch, and you can return to your ship.”

“I think I’d rather see the Bridge,” Ren said.Sloan paused, considering her face, then said, “Admitting

you’ve never seen the Bridge isn’t doing much to convince me of your usefulness. The only reason I haven’t killed you already is to give you time to give me the Code on your own. But, I am not a patient man.”

“I will give you the Code.” Ren was grasping for anything to say, anything that would make Sloan want to take her with his group. If she was protected by this group and brought somewhere

���19

safe from the Doctors, she thought herself capable of giving them her mother’s Watch. She could be safe and talk to other people again, be in the midst of a crowd and not holed up alone in her own mind.

Sloan narrowed his eyes. With his face this close, Ren could just make out the distress that flashed across his features before being replaced by anger. He said, “This isn’t some fun trip. Don’t waste my time. You will give me the Code.”

“I will, so long as you don’t waste my time,” Ren said, silently congratulating herself for sounding so in control of her future.

They stared at each other. Ren could smell the leather of his jacket and see tiny specks of bright green in his deep olive eyes. She expected him to surge forward and simply yank the Watch off her wrist and was even more confused when he stood up slowly and walked to the tent. Ren watched him, calculating. She had no choice but to swallow her disquiet if she wanted to be safe. Her mother’s Watch and the foul taste Sloan triggered in her mouth were nothing compared to the mere possibility of protection from the Doctors. She was pulled towards this group with a heedless hope and the vague contentment that came with being among a crowd.

! THE WATCH20

C H A P T E R T W O

PRISONER

Sloan and Finn emptied the tent and began to roll it up. Merrigan picked up a large white bag and dug through it to retrieve a yellow bottle. She squeezed a sizable dollop of white cream onto her palm, then passed the bottle to Jasmin. Jasmin passed it to Evie, and she to Finn. One by one, they rubbed the cream onto their faces and bare skin.

Sloan grumbled under his breath as he collected all their belongings into an assortment of bags. Ren almost imagined she could see his patience evaporating like a glass of water at midday. He barked orders at his group to pack this, clean that up, and disperse the burnt twigs and grass from the fire. Despite the efficient, utterly obedient way his group followed his orders, Sloan’s frown never softened.

“Who wanted to go into that village?” Sloan snapped. Finn cleared his throat and focused on tying the tent with a

thick rope, not daring to meet Sloan’s depreciating glare. “We’ve wasted almost an entire day. Stream water will be our

only option from now on.” Finn stuffed the tent into a sack and slung it over his back,

groaning under the weight. He added three rolled blankets to the load on his back and tightened the holster of his stun gun. Sloan strapped a small gray bag to the back of his belt and out of the way of his twin pistols

Jasmin picked up a long duffle that clanked and clattered as she walked. Her rifle loomed behind her, its strap a thick rope

���21

strengthened with strings of copper. She held the weight with a soldier’s strength, her movements more natural under the shadow of her rifle than without it. Her hair, a warm, decadent brown color, was twisted into a tight plait and sizzled in the sun. It draped over her shoulder and tangled with the strap of her rifle.

Merrigan braided one side of her hair to keep it away from the strap of her white bag. She was very clean, no spots of dirt or rips on her clothes, no smudges of dust on her face, and no tangles in her busy red hair. Compared to the rest of the group, Merrigan was a fleck of soft skin and femininity against a troupe of walking dustballs layered in leather and brass.

Evie was the only one exempt from carrying anything. Jasmin tied the rest of the blankets to Ren’s back, pulling the straps too tight and pinching Ren’s skin. Her hands were still tied as they left the safety of the hollow. Sloan assumed the lead, holding onto another rope he had tied around Ren’s waist like a leash.

Sloan led the group in a frantic walk, the low sun at their backs. Ren found that she settled into Sloan’s pace easily despite the ropes digging into her hipbones and wrists. She concentrated mostly on her breathing to keep herself calm. If she let her mind think too much, a growling anxiety would form deep in her gut and shoot flashes of doubt through her body like electric shocks. Spending six years on her ship had been comfortable, but she had always harbored the faint notion that one day she would have to take action to survive. There was no way of knowing whether this was that day, or if she was mistaking Sloan and his group for something much more dangerous than they seemed. She had made her decision in too short a time; she should have thought about it, meditated on it, before jumping gung-ho into believing herself capable of making a deal with Sloan.

They had been walking for no more than two hours when Ren was surrounded by coughing. Merrigan’s face was screwed up and red, tears wetting her cheeks as she bent forward and wheezed for breath. Jasmin was pounding her fists against her ribcage to clear the watery sound to her cough and Finn was gasping and

! THE WATCH22

holding his throat as if drowning. Each of Evie’s inhales were accompanied with a shuddering rattle from her chest.

“Just…two…minutes,” Merrigan rasped.Sloan glanced idly at his group and stopped walking. His gaze

was focused on the direction they were headed in and his eyes roamed the horizon leisurely, completely unperturbed by the sounds around him. Ren backed away from the group as far as she could with the rope around her waist. She nearly began crying herself when Merrigan fell to her knees with the force of her coughing. If Merrigan had fainted then, Ren would know her own life to be over. Her parents had drilled the early symptoms of the Blood Plague into her head with such force that seeing someone faint would have her making peace with the moon and resigning her life away.

Yet Merrigan didn’t faint, nor did any of the other three. They wheezed and struggled to breathe, dabbed at the sweat pouring down their faces, and drank heavily from their canteens, but none fainted. The whites of their eyes were clear of blood and their skin free of bruising. Sloan waited with an amount of patience Ren wouldn’t have thought him capable of an hour ago.

Finn and Jasmin recovered more quickly than Merrigan. When she was finally able to stand up straight and take a breath without coughing, she fixed her one-sided braid and asked, “Ready?”

Sloan nodded and tugged on Ren’s rope. She followed, though kept the rope taunt in her effort to put as much distance between herself and the group as possible. Sloan didn’t lead them at the same pace as before the breathless spell; this one was significantly slower. Ren flinched when Jasmin’s sigh turned into a cough.

“What’s the problem?” Jasmin snarled, her fingers inching to her rifle’s strap.

Ren held up her bound hands quickly and spluttered, “Nothing! I just…are you all right?”

Jasmin only narrowed her eyes. Her shoulders were trembling with the effort of suppressing more coughing. Ren lowered her

���23

hands and followed Sloan’s lead obediently, keeping as far from the group as possible.

An hour later, Merrigan stopped and threw back her head to open her throat. “Wait…a…moment…”

“We can’t stop for every breathless spell,” Sloan said. His voice was softer than his words. “The faster we move, the faster you’ll acclimate to the surface air. Push through it.”

“You’ve had five years to learn how to breathe,” Evie said. She crossed her arms and looked petulantly up at Sloan, her voice thin, as if she was trying to get all her words out before she needed to gasp again. “Can’t she have five minutes?”

Sloan sighed. “Five minutes.”Finn rubbed Merrigan’s back as she fought through the

breathless spell, the rest of them watching on in silence. They were calm and nodded their heads empathetically as Merrigan struggled, all except Ren. She was running through the list of symptoms of the Blood Plague in her mind. Merrigan didn’t fit a single one. Ren couldn’t see any lesions on her body, her gums weren’t bleeding, and her fingernails were in tact and not falling off. She was obviously very sick, all four of them were, but whatever it was was beyond Ren’s knowledge.

If it’s not the Blood Plague, Ren thought. There’s nothing to be worried about. Sloan’s fine, so it’s not infectious.

She wriggled and twisted her hands so that she could dig her left thumbnail into the scar on her right palm and make the sign of the crescent. She traced her scar over and over, drilling the logical conclusion that she was safe into her mind and using it to dispel her fear. Finn gave Sloan the go-ahead and they resumed their slow walk. Ren concentrated on her logic until the shadow of the moon swirled on the dirt below her boots. Sloan stopped them at random and ordered his group to make camp.

There was nothing around them for miles and miles, nothing to break the flat landscape. They were truly out in the open, and yet Sloan was telling Finn to set up the tent. Ren bit her lip. If they simply laid on the ground, they would barely be visible to

! THE WATCH24

someone headed remotely in their direction. The tent was no more inconspicuous than a bonfire in such a ridiculously flat area.

“Anyone,” Ren started. Her voice was like a whip. Sloan and his group all froze at the sound of her voice, each and every face turning slowly to glare at her. Her stomach dropped. Sloan’s right eyebrow cocked as if to challenge her daring. She ducked her head and forced herself to continue, “Anyone traveling by night nearby will easily see us with the tent.”

“The tent is black,” Finn snapped. “It’s too dark for anyone to notice us,” Merrigan said. “Why are you speaking?” Jasmin growled. Sloan jerked the rope and Ren lurched forward, failing to

catch herself and stumbling face first into the dirt. She groaned and sat up, dust stinging her eyes. Sloan dropped the rope and said, “Let’s set up camp.”

The group snapped to attention, forgot about Ren, and hurried to start what seemed to be a well-oiled nightly routine. Merrigan placed her white bag on the ground with care, then helped Finn and Sloan put up the tent. Jasmin unstrapped the blankets from Ren’s back and tossed them to Evie, who began unfurling them as well as the other blankets Finn carried. Jasmin then sorted through Sloan and Merrigan’s bags, counting to herself.

Ren sat hunched over where Sloan had left her. Sloan was evidently completely confident that Ren would stay there, and she wished she could run away just to spite him. There was something off about the way the group moved in quick, jerky, purposeful motions as if responding to a silent command. Their clothes, while dirty and travel-worn, were peppered with pockets and made of a supple, seemingly luxurious material entirely foreign to Ren. Jasmin’s clothes were different from the others, armor-like and strengthened with sections of metal, but Evie’s soft, fitted shirt was just as strange in its own way. The only thing familiar about their appearance was the weapons they carried. Made of dark wood, brass, steel, and glimmering bronze, their

���25

guns and Sloan’s knife matched what Ren had seen on the belts of men in Hythe and the other villages she had visited while hiding from the Doctors. She had the distinct impression that they had stolen most of the weapons.

Evie was airing out the blankets as she waited for the tent to be put up, all the while staring at Ren. Her eyes darted over Ren’s body and blinked slowly, distrustful yet curious, and Ren did the same to her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a child. Hythe had been large for a village, surely there must have been other children living there. She couldn’t have been the only one. Yet, as she racked her mind for the memory of a child’s face, she couldn’t find one. She remembered teenagers and some kids older than herself, but no one the same age or younger. Ren decided to ignore this realization, not keen on dealing with it while fettered.

“Last of the cheese,” Jasmin announced sadly. The tent was finished and Evie started bringing the blankets

inside it. Sloan came over to untie Ren. She scooted to sit with her back against the tent, watching the group as they all sat together a few feet from her. Her legs thumped dully with soreness, her back ached, and the skin right below her eyes felt stretched and thin with exhaustion.

“No wonder we moved underground,” Merrigan grumbled as she struggled to fold her legs in a comfortable position. “It’s miserable up here.”

“You just haven’t—”“Gotten used to it yet, I know,” Merrigan sighed. “We

definitely had the right idea. Though, it is sad that we’ve missed out on the Disposables’ natural evolution. Her skin is exquisite, look, it’s changing in the moonlight.”

Her eyes roamed over Ren hungrily, and Ren hunched forward, embarrassed.

“I can’t tell,” Evie said, squinting at Ren.

! THE WATCH26

“It’s very subtle. See how when she moves her arm the moonlight catches her skin and there’s just the slightest change? Like a ripple of silver?”

“Oh, yes, I see it now. How strange.”“I expect in a few centuries they’ll be able to change skin tone

at will. Evolution has just begun, so it’s only bits and glimmers now. It seems like different colored shadows passing over them, but it’s actually the skin itself changing. It’s very beautiful, and very practical,” Merrigan finished wistfully, rubbing the sunburn on the tip of her nose. “I don’t expect a Disposable to have had melanoma in decades.”

Ren pulled her knees into her chest and tucked her arms into the space between them to keep them out of Merrigan’s sight. There was nothing wrong with her skin. She was a normal person.

“How long do you think she’s been on the surface, then?” Finn asked with a frown. “She may have been born a Disposable and recruited, but that doesn’t explain why her melanophores are expressed.”

“She had to have left her Base right after getting her Watch,” Jasmin said.

“She’s too young to even have a Watch, let alone spend enough time on the surface for her melanophores to activate,” Merrigan said, her words a great rush of nervousness. Her eyes widened as she looked at Sloan.

Fear woke in Ren’s chest. She could tell that Finn and Merrigan were accusing her of something. Sloan’s eyebrows were inching together slowly and a scowl dragged the end of his lips down. He said, “Pass out the food, Jasmin.”

His group looked at him, stunned that he was ignoring whatever Finn and Merrigan were insinuating about Ren. Jasmin passed out bread to everyone, then a slice of a white, wobbly something that Ren had never seen before. She forced herself to ignore the stares of the group as she ate the bread. It gurgled and tumbled in her anxious stomach, and she willed herself to keep it

���27

down. She acted as normally and unconcerned as she could manage.

Ren finished her bread and turned to the white, wobbly something in her right hand. She sniffed it, wiggled it, and ultimately decided to just hold it until she could figure out what the group wanted her to do with it without seeming suspicious.

“It’s not poisoned,” Sloan said, his voice deep and hanging on the edge of scorn. “We’re all eating it.”

Ren bristled at his tone. “What is it?”They all stopped chewing. The muscles in Sloan’s jaw danced

as he ground his teeth together. “It’s cheese,” Merrigan said.“You’ve never seen it before?” Finn asked, his arm moving in

front of Evie, as if protecting her from Ren. “You’re not a recruit,” Sloan said, matter-of-fact.The group changed faster than Ren could ask what a recruit

was. Jasmin stood and aimed her rifle at Ren’s chest; Finn pushed Evie behind him and drew his stun gun; Merrigan hid behind Jasmin; and Sloan was on top of her, his knife pressing against her throat.

“You lied,” Sloan growled. “No!” Ren gasped. His legs were crushing her thighs and his

free hand grasping her forearm above the Watch. His grip was so tight her fingers were beginning to tingle. His voice slithered into her ear as a coil of barbed wire—scathing and bitter.

“What was your Base number?” “I-I,” Ren stammered, her voice shaking as much as her body

was. She had been so wrong. She was just a naïve girl who had grown up with daydreams and a broken ship. How could she have thought herself capable of holding her own against other people? “I’m not sure what a Base is?”

Sloan exhaled sharply and sat back on his heels, his full weight boring down into her legs. She stifled a groan and rubbed her neck, mounting frustration with herself morphing into the urge to cry.

! THE WATCH28

“You don’t have the Code, then?”Ren swallowed and paused to compose herself before

answering. She would rather Sloan slit her throat than to have him see her cry. “Just because I don’t know what a Base is doesn’t mean anything. I know the Code.”

“Right. You need to be in a Base to get a Watch and therefore it’s Code. So, no, you don’t know the Code.” Sloan sucked his teeth and spoke with his eyes looking straight upwards as if he was looking for divine patience.

Ren sat up, her nose bumping clumsily into Sloan’s. His condescension was making her irrational, was taking her frustration and fear and lighting it into defiance. “What do you know about Keepers? Any of you? I don’t see any of you wearing a Watch!”

Jasmin said, “Kind of surprising she was able to break in and steal on, don’t you think?”

Sloan tilted one shoulder and leaned back from Ren. He said, “The Watch would have been programmed to a specific Base. If she had stolen it, she would have had to know the Code to come topside. I suppose she could have stolen it off a renegade.”

“It’s probably a fake,” said Jasmin.“She doesn’t look smart enough to know the value of a Watch

enough to copy one.”“She must have stolen it from a renegade without knowing

what it was.”Sloan hummed in agreement. So blinded by her irrational and

abrupt anger, Ren surged forward to head butt Sloan. He wasn’t expecting the move and toppled to the side with a grunt. Ren was on her feet before he could retaliate and sprinting away from the group. She managed a glorious dozen strides in freedom before strong arms enclosed around her and dragged her back to the tent. She was flung on the ground, landing with a dull oof.

Wild and beyond controlling herself, Ren rolled onto her back and turned on the Watch. The light blinded her at first, so that all she saw was the jumble of symbols on the Watchface and

���29

Sloan’s shadow looming above her. Her eyes settled. Sloan was frozen, the light from the Watchface illuminating his face from below.

“I didn’t steal it,” Ren said. “I know how to turn it on. I know the Code!”

Ren could hear only herself breathing. It was as if the night had frozen with Sloan. The spell lasted long enough for Ren to get her emotions under control and sit up with some sense of dignity. The group was inching closer, their eyes catching the Watch’s light and glowing hungrily.

“How did you get that Watch? I can tell you’re not a Keeper, so don’t bother with any more lies.”

“This Watch was my mother’s,” Ren said haltingly, a twisty knot of guilt crunching up her gut. She had no reason not to tell Sloan and his group about her mother, yet she still got the distinct felling she was betraying her mother in some way by admitting the Watch was hers. Ren squared her shoulders and told herself firmly that this was the last bit of emotion she was allowed to show.

“And you don’t know what a Base is? You’ve never heard that word in your life before?” Sloan squinted at the Watch. “Was your mother a Keeper?”

“She called herself a Keeper of Ages, but it was only a joke between the two of us.”

Long shadows spread on Sloan’s face as he frowned. “There’s no such thing as a Keeper of Ages.”

“I just said it was a joke. What do you know about Keepers?”“I am a Keeper,” Sloan said, his voice steely and sorrowful. “I

can personally guarantee you that your mother lied to you. Either she was a Keeper, a regular one and not one with some ridiculous made up title, or she stole the Watch from a Keeper.”

The more Sloan talked, the less Ren cared about controlling her emotions and the more she wanted to hit him. Pride and rage coursed through her as she burst forward, fist raised. Sloan was prepared for her and caught her fist, twisting her arm behind her

! THE WATCH30

and forcing her onto the ground. She tried to wriggle from his grasp, but he was so much stronger than her. She had no choice but to give in, her eyes wet with an overload of frayed nerves and confusion.

I’ve done it, she thought bitterly. They’ll never take me with them now.

“You can’t kill me,” Ren said desperately. “I know the Code.”“Turning on the Watch has nothing to do with its’ Code.

Accept that you have nothing to bargain with already. Eat your cheese.”

He let go of her and Ren scrambled away from him, sitting with her back against the tent. Sloan’s group was watching her, their expressions ranging from the interest in Evie’s eyes to the apprehension clouding Finn’s. Ren waited for them to attack her, or chase her away, or take the Watch from her wrist, and wasn’t a bit relieved when all they did was resume their seats from dinner. Sloan turned his back from her and sat with them, murmuring to Jasmin and glancing at Ren over his shoulder.

Ren turned off the Watch, sighing at the return of the gentle moonlight. They still needed her Watch, so she was safe from the Doctors for the time being, though not from them. A heavy weight sat on her chest, a weight dense with uncertainty and bordered with doubt. She had never questioned where her mother had gotten something so obviously expensive as the Watch; it had simply always been in Ren’s life and, before meeting Sloan, never seemed to need an explanation. The seed of doubt Sloan had planted about her mother was nothing compared to the roaring tidal wave of indignation crashing around her mind and making it hard to think clearly.

Merrigan was the first to bid goodnight to the rest and duck into the tent. Evie trailed after her, staring openly at Ren as she passed into the tent. Ren stared back, unable to hide her interest in observing how a child acted, and blushed when Evie tsked in annoyance and snapped the tent flap closed behind her. Jasmin

���31

was set on first watch. Finn and Sloan slipped into the tent, both walking passed Ren as if they couldn’t see her.

Jasmin sat down directly in front of Ren and laid her rifle delicately across her lap. They sat in silence for what felt like hours, until Ren’s eyes stung with exhaustion and her body whined with soreness. The moonlight, usually her only source of comfort, was less than helpful as it glittered across the barrel of Jasmin’s rifle. She had absolutely no intention of sleeping with that rifle right in front of her, so she bit her tongue, the inside of her cheek, or her lip whenever she felt herself start to doze. The smell of the piece of cheese Ren had discarded lolled in the air. Ren’s stomach grumbled every few minutes, yearning for it.

Jasmin was a statue as she watched Ren give in a retrieve her slice of cheese. She rubbed off as much of the dirt as she could and bit into it quickly, before she lost her nerve. Her mouth flooded with salvia and a rich, creamy taste. She ate the rest eagerly, relishing in its unbelievably satisfying saltiness.

“Do you like it?” Jasmin asked. “It’s amazing,” Ren admitted. “What’s it made from?”“Cow’s milk, I suppose.”“No, really,” Ren snorted. “Do you use synthetic milk?”“I don’t understand,” Jasmin said, shaking her head. Ren’s

enthusiasm crippled and she was stunned with herself for speaking without thinking about how naïve she would sound. She didn’t seem capable of controlling herself. She had never realized how incompetent she was before then.

Jasmin continued, “I thought the Disposables would have been able to handle taming a few cows.”

“Who are Disposables? There are no more cows on Earth, I only know about them from my mother’s stories,” Ren said. “The cows died out centuries ago in the first Blood Plague outbreak, with the sheep and goats.”

“The cheese isn’t synthetic,” Jasmin said brusquely. She pushed her lips into a thin line and stroked her rifle with the tips of her fingers. “You’re very strange. Sloan is, too, but at least he’s

! THE WATCH32

a Keeper. Keepers get strange if they lose their Watch. Did you always live in that ship?”

Ren hesitated. Jasmin could easily be tricking her, it seemed like something a woman in armor and carrying such a sinister rifle would do. Even so, Ren found herself talking, relaxing, and growing excited that someone was listening to her without accusing her of stealing a Watch.

“No, I was born in a village north of here. Hythe. I left a year after my parents died, when I was ten.”

“Hythe’s not far, we passed it on our way down. You’ve barely moved at all.”

“No, I haven’t.”“How’d your parents die?” Jasmin asked. Her tone lacked any

kind of sympathy, as if she didn’t think prying into such things warranted any emotion.

“Painfully,” Ren said stiffly, her excitement at having someone to talk to extinguished.

They sat in silence after that, Ren peeved as Jasmin’s impassivity, until Finn emerged from the tent to take over for Jasmin. He was half-asleep and sagged against the tent with barely an attempt at keeping his eyes open. Within minutes, he was asleep.

Ren lay down on the hard ground and turned her eyes to the stars. The taste of cheese was still on her tongue. She looked to the moon and made the sign of the crescent on her right palm over and over, until her mind was peaceful and she saw the silver of the moon in her mind. She asked for guidance, for safety, and concentrated on making the sign of the crescent.

Ren didn’t consider herself a particularly gifted Moon-soul. She had never been able to use the mudra to enter a state of total meditation. However, what she did achieve was enough for her—a heightened reasoning, a better sense of what she was to the world. As she completed a circuit of crescent signs, she peeked through her lashes to gaze at the moon. She couldn’t make sense of anything that had happened that day. Sloan and his group had

���33

sucked her reasoning dry. The only thing she could find comfort in was the fact that Sloan hadn’t killed her immediately after finding out she didn’t know the Code.

She rested her hands on her stomach and waited impatiently for sleep to take her, promising herself that she would make the effort to find her Moon-soul balance and figure out what she had gotten herself into once she got some rest. She was a prisoner to people unsettlingly odd, yet she found it surprisingly easy to fall asleep.

! THE WATCH34

C H A P T E R T H R E E

PARDON

The sun was barely a foggy glow peeping over the horizon when Sloan ripped back the tent flaps and bellowed for his group to wake up. He had been last on watch and spent his entire shift pacing around the tent with his pistols drawn. Sloan’s incessant, heavy footsteps were keen to crunch and crackle every pebble in their path in their victorious attempt at keeping Ren awake. Each time his pacing brought him by Ren, she could hear him mumbling under his breath.

“Stupid…waste…if…alive…Watch…stupid…what…”When Sloan’s group emerged from the tent rested and

brimming with energy, Ren rolled groggily to her feet and blinked blearily against the rising sun. Breakfast was distributed and eaten quickly, Ren receiving the same portion everyone else did. She pretended to be very interested in watching the sun rise, though she could see Sloan staring at her from the corner of her eye. He was chewing slowly and with an exorbitant amount of purpose behind each bite, his eyes stripping Ren’s body as if they were a laser gun. Ren swallowed the last of her bread and let out a shaky sigh. She had to keep it together, no more emotions or lies or overreactions.

“Hands,” Sloan said. Ren offered up her wrists for him to bind. He was careful to tie the rope below her Watch so that it remained undisturbed on her wrist. The second rope he looped around her waist and tugged gently to make sure the knot held.

���35

“Evie, you have to put it on,” Merrigan said. She had dug up the yellow bottle of white cream from her bag and was rubbing the cream furiously into her skin, Jasmin and Finn doing the same. Evie was pouting and shrugging away from the bottle.

“I’m better than you guys. I can make it the whole day without sunscreen,” Evie insisted.

“You’re not fully acclimated yet, you’ll still get burned,” Finn said. He took the bottle from Merrigan and squeezed out more cream onto his hand. Evie ducked, swerved, whined, and bobbed around, but in the end, Finn smeared his handful of sunscreen across his face and she was forced to rub it in. The tent was tied up, the blankets tied onto Ren’s back, and Sloan tugged on Ren’s rope to start walking.

“Let’s try and keep this pace today,” Sloan said over his shoulder to his group.

“I can’t promise that,” Merrigan said brightly. Whatever caused her breathless spells hadn’t caught up with her yet, and she sauntered alongside Finn with an easy smile and bounce in her bushy hair.

Sloan kept Ren close to his side and shot her the occasional glance, to which Ren responded with what she hoped to be a crippling, cool indifference. She didn’t know what Sloan found so interesting about her that he kept staring, but Ren wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how uneasy he made her. So much for not overreacting, Ren thought, then shrugged to herself.

Sloan walked with the confidence that came with being in charge. The weapons on his hips caught the early sunlight with menacing glares. He was uncouth, dangerous, and held Ren’s rope loosely so that it wouldn’t dig into her skin. That loose grip gave her her own confidence, probably a lot more than she should have. She wasn’t convinced that he was as dangerous as he appeared to be; if he was, Ren would have been dead already. She still had a chance of persuading him to keep her around, and even if she couldn’t manage that, she also wasn’t convinced that his group was capable of murder. They were more a group of weary,

! THE WATCH36

sickly runaways than anything else. They were defensive, not bloodthirsty.

Underfoot, the grass grew thicker and less sparse, though it still looked so far passed dead that a light wind would wipe the ground clean. Ren walked with her head down compliantly and tried to get her thoughts in order.

“Sorry,” Merrigan called out, and the group came to a halt not two hours after moonset. She was reapplying the white cream, the so-called sunscreen, to her face and struggling to recapture her breath. Finn rubbed her back and gave her tiny sips from his canteen. Merrigan recovered, and they started walking again.

The day dragged on. They stopped three more times before noon. Sloan’s impatience was starting to materialize on his face as a scowl. He kept it hidden from his group, but didn’t seem concerned that Ren could see it. The yellow bottle was passed around the third time they stopped. Evie only needed a small dollop of sunscreen for her cheeks and walked with a robustness that didn’t match her rawboned frame.

“This would be a great day for the pool,” Merrigan said wistfully. Beads of sweat dripped off her round chin and stained the collar of her clean shirt. Ren turned her face to the light wind coming from the west. The sun was unbearable, but the breeze was only warm. To Ren, it was a treasure of a day.

“You were never signed up for lap course,” Finn teased. “Do you even know how to swim?”

“No,” Merrigan said airily. “That’s doesn’t mean I wouldn’t jump in a pool right now regardless of whether or not I could swim. A shallow pool.”

“You’re forever lecturing us on the ‘incredibly interesting climate and indigenous adaptations of the surface’,” Jasmin impersonated Merrigan’s voice so well that even Ren’s lips twitched in amusement.

“Scientific curiosity is more for the laboratory, right?” Finn said, smiling at Merrigan. Jasmin rolled her eyes and asked Sloan to pick up the pace. Sloan did, pulling the rope around Ren’s

���37

waist. She stumbled beside him until the others couldn’t keep up. They were barely out of earshot from his group and with as much privacy as Ren imagined Sloan to have.

“I want to know how you came to own the Keeper’s Watch and why you’re running from the Doctors. The full story. Lie to me again and I will kill you. I won’t risk the safety of my group for a Disposable.”

“I haven’t lied. I would be honored to answer any questions you might have,” Ren drawled. Disposable? Again?

Sloan scowled deeper at her tone and asked, “Did you mother truly give you the Watch?”

“Yes.”“It was definitely hers?”“Yes,” Ren snapped. Would Sloan consider her ignorance of

her mother’s life as lying?“She didn’t tell you what it was for? What its Code is? She

never brought you to her Base?”“What I know about the Watch hasn’t changed overnight. I

thought the Code meant turning it on, I never knew you were asking about something else. My parents were killed by the Doctors when I was nine. She gave me the Watch right before she died, showed me how to turn it on and off, and that was it. I figured out how to use the compass and the clock on my own.”

“Did she steal it from a renegade Keeper?”“No! I don’t even know what a Keeper does, only that she

called herself a Keeper of Ages.”“There’s no such thing,” Sloan said. He ground his teeth

together and flared his nostrils. “If you’re a Keeper, and a Keeper needs a Watch, where’s

yours?”“I lost it.” Sloan turned around and beckoned Finn to join

them. Finn jogged forward, a thin wheeze audible in his breathing.

“Did you have Keepers of Ages at your Base?” Sloan asked.

! THE WATCH38

“No. Space, Thought, and Power, just like any other Base.” Finn considered Ren’s wrist for a long moment before continuing. “We haven’t ruled out the possibility of it being a fake. A Watch can’t be removed without inputting its Code, right? If it’s real, and her mother gave it to her, then her mother would have had to know the Code to take it off her own wrist and program it for Ren.”

“Can you take it off?” Sloan asked Ren. “I’ve never wanted to.” Ren shifted her bound hands away

from Sloan instinctively. He still didn’t try to take it off her by force. If he had, Ren might have not felt so utterly baffled as to what his intentions were. The Watch was her mother’s and she needed to protect it, but if Sloan wasn’t going to steal it…and she could find out what its purpose was…

Sloan untied her hands. Ren began to shimmy the Watch off her wrist. When she tried to move it over her palm, the Watch constricted with a soft zzz and the Watchface flashed purple. Ren gasped, pawing at the Watch to push it back onto her wrist before it broke her hand, but it wouldn’t budge. Sloan reach over, tapped the screen three times with three different fingers, and the Watch moved of its own accord across her skin and back onto her wrist. It was tighter than before.

“Well, it’s real,” Sloan said. “You have no idea how to use it, do you?” His voice had fallen flat, disappointed and sad, and his grip on the rope around Ren’s wrist slackened.

“Your mother didn’t lie to you,” Finn said, patting Ren on the shoulder gently. “At least not about everything. She might have stolen the Watch, but she could have been a Keeper, too. What she was doing outside of a Base is beyond me, though.”

Sloan tucked the piece of rope from around Ren’s wrists into his pocket. Ren was opening and closing her fists, trying to get the chill of her sudden fear of the Watch cleared from her aching hand. Why did Sloan win in making her question her own mother? A dull headache was starting to form at the base of Ren’s

���39

skull with all the things she was desperate to understand and connect.

“Your story?” Sloan prompted. “I was nine when the Doctors came for my parents,” Ren

started. For some reason, she couldn’t bring her eyes off her boots. She had never had occasion to share her story with anyone, and therefore had no clue what she should and shouldn’t say. She decided to skim over most of it to avoid the risk of revealing anything that might reveal the extent of her naiveté. “They flayed my parents to death under suspicion of infection. They didn’t even test them, and my parents were perfectly healthy. Something else had to have happened, but I was so young that all I know was that my mother was telling me to run away before the Doctors killed me for being a possible carrier. She gave me the Watch and I hid in a neighbor’s house for a year, until the Doctors started asking them questions and I had no choice but to leave Hythe. I spent a few years going between villages, then found my ship on the coast. I was there six years. That’s all there is. If you believe me, I can offer you my help.”

“Help with what, exactly?” Sloan’s eyes were so narrowed they may as well have been closed all the way.

“Staying alive and away from the Doctors. I’ve survived this long without them catching me. I can help you to wherever it is you’re traveling to.”

“What makes you think we need to hide from the Doctors at all?”

“Everyone does.”Ren clenched her newly unbound hands together, imagining

herself making the sign of the crescent. She was convinced this was the most logical route. If she tried deceiving Sloan again, she had no doubt she would fail. She needed protection, and Sloan needed help, or at least she hoped he did. Sloan and Finn caught each other’s eye over Ren’s head and had a long, silent conversation full of shrugs and raised eyebrows.

! THE WATCH40

Ren had expected to fell exposed, vulnerable, if she revealed too much about herself, but instead her heart was racing with adrenaline. If she could just attach herself to this group, she would be surrounded by weapons protecting her and shooing away her loneliness. The only thing she could do to damage her possibilities was to reveal how ignorant of the world she really was, and how desperate she was to stay alive. Sloan and his group were drowning in desperation, it was clear in every word they spoke, and Ren trusted desperation more than anything else. Desperation was the only true motivation.

Finn doubled back to help Jasmin through a breathless spell. Ren was left alone with Sloan. He didn’t speak and stopped his furtive glances at her, preferring to keep his scowl directed at his boots. Behind, his group had fallen into loud whispers not nearly quiet enough to hide Evie’s hiss of, “Finn, tell me what she said!’

“She’ll hear you if you keep talking so loudly,” Merrigan shout-whispered back. “Disposables have evolved to hear human voices over far distances, an adaptation that has enabled them to find their sister villages and—”

“She doesn’t need to be more evolved to hear the two of you try to whisper,” Jasmin moaned in annoyance.

“Well, I can’t hear anything with this wind!”“It’s barely a breeze, calm yourself.”Ren looked over her shoulder and tipped her head in thanks

to Jasmin. Jasmin smirked as Merrigan’s eyes widened with guilt. They stopped walking at dusk just when Ren was beginning

to smell salt in the air. She checked the compass on the Watch. They had been moving in a southward arc to the coast. The tent went up, Sloan untied the rope from around Ren’s waist, and dinner was passed around. Ren was given a long piece of bread with crunchy things baked in it, plus some raw vegetables.

“We’re about an hour’s walk from the Bridge. I want to leave tomorrow morning before dawn so we’ll have as much daylight as possible on the Bridge,” Sloan said. “I’ll take first and last watch, Jasmin you’ll have second.”

���41

Jasmin nodded. Evie was already yawning, and only stayed with the group long enough to finish eating before she retreated into the tent. Merrigan and Jasmin were next. Jasmin paused at the tent flap, looking down at Ren in her spot on the ground. She furrowed her brows and contemplated Ren for an unsettling amount of time, then said, “Come inside. I have a big blanket, there’s plenty of room for the both of us.”

It sound like more of a threat than a sincere offer. Ren glanced at Sloan, decided that his indifferent expression was a good sign, and followed Jasmin into the tent. She sat on a tattered blanket Jasmin indicated as her own. It was cool, comfortable, and filled with drowsy air inside the tent. She took off her boots, bag, and scarf, piling them all at the foot of the blanket. Evie and Merrigan sat on the other side of the tent as Merrigan combed Evie’s hair. Finn entered and sat on the blanket next to Ren. He stared at Ren for a moment, then gave her a sleepy smile.

Jasmin threw herself onto the blanket with a moan of exhaustion. She asked, “Have you seen the Bridge, Ren?”

“No,” Ren said. She sat uncomfortably straight, too tense to relax as the rest of the group was. They were comfortable around each other, generous with smiles and teases, and didn’t seem at all uncertain at how they should act. Ren smoothed down her short hair and clenched her jaw anxiously, wishing she knew what one does in a tent full of other people. Was she supposed to just lie down and go to sleep? Was she supposed to strike up conversation?

“Evie seems to think that the Bridge is so close to the water that we’ll be able to dip in whenever we want,” Finn said. “Something tells me that Sloan won’t take too kindly to swimming breaks.”

“Definitely not,” Jasmin chuckled. “Is she your daughter?” Ren asked, nodding at Evie. For a horribly long moment, Ren thought Finn was going to

ignore her. He must have deemed her question harmless enough

! THE WATCH42

in the end, because he said, “My sister. We were the only ones in my family to make it out of our Base alive.”

“And Merrigan? Is she your wife?”Finn made a small squeaking noise in the back of his throat

and Merrigan scoffed, flipping her hair over her shoulder and blushing. Jasmin snickered and said, “Stay away from that.”

Horrified, Ren was muttering her apology when Sloan stomped into the tent. He stood in the center facing Ren and crossed his arms.

“I’ve thought over your proposal,” he said. “Now it’s time for you to tell your story to everyone else. We’ll decide this together.”

“Decide what?” Evie asked. “We need a Watch and she has one.”

Finn opened his mouth to answer her, glanced at Ren, and closed it. Ren paled and her hands began to tremble. With five pairs of eyes fixed on her, Ren cleared her throat and repeated her story to the group. She kept her eyes down and voice painstakingly calm, unsure whether her nerves came from her perception of their expectations or if the feeling of handing over her life’s story for safekeeping after spending more than half her life in solitude was finally catching up with her.

“So, you’re not a carrier?” Merrigan asked when Ren finished. “I’ve never been tested, so there’s a possibility I could be? My

parents, though, they definitely weren’t sick. I know what the Blood Plague looks like.” Ren stopped before the lump in her throat got any bigger.

“You’ve seen infected people die?” Merrigan asked hurriedly. “What’s it like? How do the Doctors do their tests for Filavirus? With the Clennan-Hallan method?”

“Are you talking about the Blood Plague?”“My father discovered that method,” Merrigan said proudly.

“He and his partner, Keeper Roe Hansen Hallan. It is the only know method for diagnosing Filavirus infection without risking further exposure.”

���43

“Right. Well, I should have said that I know what it should look like, I haven’t seen anyone infected in person.”

“Oh.” Merrigan’s bubbly excitement deflated like a flat putter of wind. “That’s disappointing. You come across a true Disposable and you kind of want to hear stories about the infected…”

“Come on,” Jasmin said. “When was the last time you heard of a surface outbreak?”

Merrigan glanced swiftly at Sloan, cleared her throat, and said, “I can hope, can’t I?”

“Not if you intend to be disappointed. Never hope and you’ll never complain.”

Evie looked up at Jasmin, her head tilted to the side and eyes sparkling.

“She’s a Disposable then? That’s what we’re agreeing on?” Finn asked. “Her mother was a renegade who had a Disposable daughter?”

“It fits,” Sloan said, shrugging. “It’s clear the Doctors were acting on orders and eliminating

someone the Union sent them after,” Jasmin said. “She said this happened over ten years ago. Some of the Doctors were still in the Union’s control back then.”

“If the Union wanted her parents eliminated,” Finn said slowly. “She’ll be a fugitive of the Union and the Doctors. How’re we supposed to sneak into Base One with her?”

“Hang on,” Ren blurted out, heart racing and sweat popping up above her lip. “This Union is what? Some type of organization where the Doctors originated?”

“Cecelia will handle it,” Sloan answered Finn. “Wait!” Ren cried, hysteria possessing her. “If you’re all from

these Bases and part of this Union, why do you have to sneak in? Wouldn’t they want you there?”

“Once we’re on Cecelia’s ship,” Sloan said, talking right over Ren’s questions. “We’ll be able to explain the situation to the Command Council. We need to focus on boarding Clarity, everything else can be handled after that. Cecelia needs a Watch

! THE WATCH44

and its Code, though. She can help us a lot, but only so much. We have to bring her a Watch, preferably a live one.”

“A lot has happened in ten years,” Merrigan said. “Ren might only be wanted by the Doctors now, not the Union too.”

“First,” Finn said. “We need to figure out exactly why the Doctors want Ren. If she’s not a carrier, then there must be some reason for their hunting. That reason could make us late for Cecelia.”

“Can someone tell me what a Base is?” Ren shrieked. They were all talking so fast and not making any sense. Her fate was being decided by people who could potentially be in line with the Doctors. Was she running from the Doctors and towards the people responsible for them?

A tense silence pervaded the tent at her outburst. Ren paused to collect herself until she was sure her voice wouldn’t give away anything but a mild indifference. “What is a Base?”

“A command outpost for the Union,” Sloan spat, the quicker to get her question over with and move on to his own. “What village did you say you were from?”

“Hythe. Are the Bases underground? That’s why you’re not used to the sun, right? Because the Bases are underground and you’ve never been outside?”

Sloan ignored her. He squinted at her face with such concentration that Ren’s spine tingled with the horrible thought that he was able to read minds. He said, “There hasn’t been an outbreak of Filavirus—fine, all right, don’t look so confused—of the Blood Plague severe enough to require regular testing by the Doctors for, what?”

“Sixteen years,” Merrigan answered promptly.“What does that have to do with anything?” Ren asked. “My

parents were killed after that.”“Why were those Doctors in Hythe? The village is very far

north of the closest of their command outposts, they wouldn’t have travelled so far just to kill two people unless they were ordered to. That was just around the time the Doctors start to

���45

break from the Union, but there were still enough loyalists left to send after your parents. Besides, groups of them wouldn’t be regularly checking villages more than ten years later for one person who was never tested as a carrier in the first place. The Doctors were in Hythe on some specific mission. What did your parents do to the Union to get themselves executed?”

“Maybe because her mother was a renegade,” Evie piped up.“Renegades aren’t sentenced to death,” Sloan said, and Finn

shushed Evie, as if she had said something unbelievably rude.“I don’t know what they did,” Ren said. “My parents were

normal people.”“They must have been involved in something. The Doctors

wouldn’t—” Sloan froze, his jaw falling slack and eyes bouncing between Ren’s face and the Watch. “What was your mother’s name?”

“Excuse me?” Ren frowned. There was greed in Sloan’s eyes, a smirk crawling across his lips, and a chuckle bobbing his Adam’s apple up and down. Ren balled her fists and pushed her lips together in a refusal to answer his question and confirm whatever it was he had figured out about her. Sloan waved his hand, dismissing the question, and licked his lips.

“Well,” Sloan barked finally, consumed with staring at Ren’s Watch. “What’s the decision?”

“I’ve heard enough, I’m getting some sleep,” Jasmin yawned. “As long as you’re sure her Watch will get us into Base One, I’ve got not problem with her staying alive.”

Finn and Evie nodded their heads in agreement simultaneously. Merrigan waved her hands flippantly and said, “Oh, you were serious about putting it to a vote? I thought she was already coming along. Why’re you making this so dramatic? She has a Watch, so, yes.”

Sloan waited politely for Merrigan to finish, took one last possessive glance at Ren’s Watch, then ducked out of the tent without voicing his personal decision. Merrigan might find her interesting, Finn and Evie might be obliging to protect her, and

! THE WATCH46

Jasmin might find her amusing, but without Sloan’s final approval Ren had no doubt the rest of them would discard her without a second thought.

Ren looked around the tent and found that the group was just as bewildered at Sloan’s behavior as Ren was. They stared at the tent flap waiting for some signal from Sloan, and when he did nothing but sit on the ground and take out his pistols to polish, a stressed sigh floated through the tent. Without Sloan explicitly telling them what he thought of Ren, the group wavered between biding her courteous goodnights and giving her suspicious, over-the-shoulder frowns.

Whatever curiosity and suspicions Ren had about the Bases shriveled up and was forgotten as she slid under Jasmin’s blanket and rested her head on her rolled up scarf. Exhaustion was waiting to claim her and she hurried to submit to it, happy to let it consume her and her haywire thoughts, happy to let it distract her from things she really needed to be thinking about. She mouthed the words of her sleeprise chant and made the sign of the crescent on her palm, desperate to dispel the distress rolling around in her gut.

She closed her eyes. Around her, the tent eased into silence as the group slipped into sleep. Her mind was muddled and hung on the fringes of sleep, though refused to drift into dreams. She had gotten herself into a mess, had offered to help people that lead lives she clearly couldn’t comprehend. Though her own eyes were closed, she could fell Jasmin’s jewel bright eyes boring into the side of her face. The hard work of reciting the sleeprise chant was undermined by a line of thought bouncing giddily through her mind.

It’s not a risk. It’s smart to stay with Sloan. It’s not a risk. It’s not a risk. He’ll protect you. It’s not a risk. It’s smart to stay with Sloan…

���47

C H A P T E R F O U R

BRIDGE

Sloan didn’t have to wake his group the next morning. Excitement at seeing the Bridge had buzzed through the tent well before moonset and prompted four sets of bright eyes to blink at each other in the dark, waiting. Ren herself had woken early, not out of excitement, but because her mind apparently needed a few extra hours to agonize over how confused it was. Sloan had come in the tent from last watch to rolled bags and eager jitters. He exhaled sharply through his nose and mumbled, “It’s really not that exciting.”

“For you,” Finn said. “You’ve been over the Bridge many times already. I’m sure you were just as excited as we are now your first time across.”

Sloan grunted, shrugged, then lead the way out of the tent. The air was crisp and dim as Ren stepped out. She looked to the low moon and made a single sign of the crescent against her right palm, marking the start of moonset. Sloan stepped in front of her view and Ren hurried to disguise the movements of her hands by rearranging her bag. Ren had no good reason for not wanting him to know about her Moon-soul and her devotion to the Moon-and-Sun other than she didn’t want him to tease her. He wasn’t paying attention to her hands, anyway, as he pulled her white scarf from around her neck.

“Cover your face with this,” he ordered, fumbling to arrange the scarf around her head. It kept falling back onto her neck.

“Why?”

! THE WATCH48

Sloan clicked his tongue and said, “I’m supposed to help you survive the Doctors, wasn’t that our deal?”

“No, I’m supposed to help all of you avoid the Doctors—”“A task to which you are in no way qualified.”“And you are?”“Yes. Put the scarf on and try to cover your face. Don’t make it

look suspicious. I’m changing our deal. I’ll help you survive, and you concentrate on keeping that Watch safe. Got it?”

He stomped away, the scarf fluttering back onto Ren’s shoulders. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, glaring at Sloan’s back. He hadn’t bound her hands and the rope that usually went around her waist was no where to be seen. He was definitely tricking her, she could feel it in her gut, but she wasn’t exactly in the position to argue with him. So, she fixed the scarf so that it sat on her head like a hood and shadowed her face, wracking her brain to figure out what Sloan had realized about her mother the night before.

The group packed up and started off at a light jog in all the excitement, slowing to a walk when Merrigan’s wheezing started sounding painful enough that Ren was unconsciously pawing at her own chest. Jasmin, after spending most of the night staring at her in what Ren could only assume to be an attempt at figuring out Sloan’s great realization, was taking a new tactic. She walked alongside Ren and talked about her rifle, each new comment accompanied with a sidelong glance at Sloan to measure his reaction.

“This rifle belonged to my father. He was a Keeper of Space, Division of Defense. He took shifts stationed at the entrances to Base Eight and made sure no one came in or out without clearance.” A pause to scrutinize Sloan’s expressionless face. “It always seemed like such a pointless job before I learned that there were still quite a lot of Disposables on the surface. Well, not a lot, but enough.” A pause and glance at Sloan, a frustrated sigh. “This rifle may look Disposable like the other weapons we’ve

���49

stolen, but it has only ever been used by verified Citizens of the Union.”

“You must have a bunch of interesting adaptations. Besides the melanophores in your skin, that is,” Merrigan said. The group’s reservations about Ren seemed to have vanished after last night and she hardly knew how to respond to all their bizarre words. Merrigan had jumped onto Jasmin’s bandwagon, though she seemed to be talking because she enjoyed it, not for any ulterior motive as Jasmin was, and happily chattered on without anyone expressing interest in what she said.

“I knew Keeper Huan was wrong about melanophores. I always said so, and he wouldn’t listen to me. You’d think after I was accepted three years early to the Filavirus Resistance Program, he’d know to listen when I said that the children of Union Citizens would express melanophores if subjected to the right environmental conditions at an early age. I mean, really, what would be the point of recruits if we couldn’t have the Disposable adaptations too, right?”

Merrigan laughed heartily, coughed, and plowed on. “When we first left Base Eight, Sloan had to spend a whole

week teaching us how to breathe in this air. I still can’t do it so well. The air in Base Eight was filtered and purified, nothing at all like the air up here. All the dust and the microbes, you know. Your lungs must be absolutely fascinating.”

“This is Merrigan’s way of asking to experiment on you and poke at all your fancy adaptations,” Finn said.

“No!” Merrigan cried when Ren gasped in horror. “He’s joking! I’m curious, but I’ll settle for you describing your conditions, I don’t need to cut you open or anything.”

Finn laughed. Evie, grinning from ear to ear, said, “But you cut open that frog once.”

“It was an experiment!” Merrigan’s face twisted in distress. “Ren, it was in the lab, and I really didn’t want to kill the poor thing, but I had to learn. I would have failed my anatomy course if I hadn’t done it!”

! THE WATCH50

Ren was just as breathless as the group was. They were all talking so fast, and acting so familiarly with her, that her awkwardness was only getting worse. She was, suddenly and inexplicably, overly concerned with the arrangement of her scarf, and fidgeted with it every few seconds.

“You and Sloan know something,” Jasmin said to Merrigan. “I can tell by your face, you know something about Ren. What is it? How did you figure it out, from her stupid adaptation?”

Merrigan gawked at Jasmin helplessly. “By my face?”“Why are you so positive her mother was a Citizen?”“W-who said I was? I thought we all agreed her mother could

be either a renegade, or a Disposable that stole the Watch?”“Yet you know she was a renegade, you just said she was a

Citizen. What do you and Sloan know?”Sloan whirled around, stared Jasmin down, and growled,

“Enough of this. We have somewhere to be. You are here for a reason, so stick to your role and stop prying into problems you are only imagining to be there.”

Jasmin clamped her mouth shut and seemed to drop all interest in everything but her measured footsteps. Ren’s own mouth had fallen slack with incredulity. It was absurd how easily Jasmin was obeying Sloan; it was downright ridiculous. Ren looked around at the group and saw every one of them giving Jasmin expressions that said, ‘You deserved it.’

The smell of the sea grew steadily stronger as they walked. There were even tufts of actual green plants sticking up through the cracks in the gray dirt. Ren was careful not to step on them, hoping over and around them, filled with pride at their resilience.

It took them much longer than the estimated one hour to reach the coast. When they finally did reach it, the sound of waves boomed through the still morning and a salt breeze seeped into their skins. Ren’s eyes widen with amazement.

The land cut off abruptly and jaggedly, forming a tall cliff with a long bridge built right into the cliff face. The Bridge was somehow both horribly rusted and sturdy-looking at the same

���51

time, extending out into open space further than Ren could see. Where it connected to the coast there stood a four story, compact building painted black. Ren could just make out two people standing in front of the building and holding long shapes that looked suspiciously like Jasmin’s rifle.

Without hesitation, Jasmin lifted her rifle, spent a few seconds fiddling with an assortment of dials and the position of the scope, then pulled the trigger two quick, definitive times. The figures in front of the black building collapsed. Sloan and the group sprinted towards the Bridge, Jasmin swinging her rifle onto her back casually. Ren’s legs were unwilling to move right away with her eyes fixed on the lifeless, fallen figures. Her knees creaked as she forced them forward. She was consumed with blank horror at herself for wanting to be a part of this group.

“How many times have I asked you not to shoot them in the head?” Merrigan snapped at Jasmin when they reached the black building. “Brain matter interferes and prolongs the reading.”

Merrigan kneeled between the two bodies and took a small bottle of blue liquid from her white bag. She poured the liquid into the blood-brain-bone pools swimming above each dead man’s shoulder and, the liquid remaining the same vibrant blue, sat back on her heels satisfied they weren’t carriers.

Jasmin ignored her scolds and kicked open the door to the black building. She, Sloan, and Finn dashed inside, weapons drawn. Ren stopped at the feet of one of the dead men. He was plump, just over middle-aged, and dressed in a loose fitting, gray jumpsuit. What Ren had thought to be a rifle from a distance turned out to be a silver staff longer than her arm with a shiny, hooked flaying knife at the end. The knife at the end of the staff was just for show; the real danger was in the flaying knives concealed in the pockets of that jumpsuit.

A spasm ran down Ren’s spine. The men were Reapers, and where a Reaper was found its master was sure to be close by. Ren fidgeted with her scarf and scanned the horizon, fully expecting the grotesque shadow of a Doctor to appear.

! THE WATCH52

Evie bent over the dead men and rummaged through their pockets, chucking the dozen flaying knives she found over her shoulder indifferently. Sloan poked his head out of the door to the black building and barked, “There are three more floors we have to clear, Ren. Get in here and help. Jasmin will give you a gun.”

“I d-don’t think that’s a good idea…no, thank you…”“What’s the problem?” Sloan asked roughly. “Sorry to see

Reapers die? They work for the Doctors, you should hate them.”“I know what they do,” Ren snapped. Heat rose on her neck

and cheeks. “They didn’t need to be killed. We could have just turned around or found some other route.”

Finn and Jasmin joined Sloan at the doorway and gaped at her. Evie mumbled, “Oh, look! This one has a full canteen.”

“How many Bridges do you think there are?” Sloan scoffed. “We’ll have to clear the building ourselves, then, since Ren is too upset over seeing these repulsive men die. Why don’t you go off, clear your head, and refill our canteens?”

“I can’t!” Ren exclaimed, aghast. She was certain there must be Doctors nearby,. Separating from the group would be suicide.

Before she knew it, she was juggling five canteens in her arms and Sloan was saying, “There’s a small river a mile south of here. Just follow the coast and your compass. Keep your scarf on.”

He turned on his heel and, with Finn and Jasmin following along obediently, the three of them disappeared again into the black building. Ren could hear their fading voices, Finn anxiously asking how the Doctors could have gained control of the Bridge and Sloan answering with a curt, “It was definitely quicker than I expected.”

Ren stood with her arms full with the group’s canteens and boiling, raging indignation making her face redden. The Reapers always traveled in packs of six or seven and never strayed out of earshot from their Doctors, and yet Sloan wanted her to prance off by herself because he was too lazy to get his own water. His parting, haughty smirk had burned itself into her mind’s eye.

���53

Overnight she had apparently transformed from someone not to be trusted to someone Sloan felt justified in punishing.

Sloan knew that Ren would inevitably listen to him because she was desperate to join the group and be protected from the Doctors. She wouldn’t do anything to instigate him into changing his mind about keeping her alive, though she hadn’t realized that would involve meekly following his orders. Ren grit her teeth and promised herself this would be the first and last time she allowed Sloan rule over her actions. She turned on the Watch, accessed the compass, and rushed to the south.

The riverbed was nothing more than a shallow dip in the dirt with a feeble flow of water trickling down the center. It swerved around boulders and struggled through clumps of stringy grass, and tasted good enough to Ren when she tested it. Not too silty, so it should be fine to drink. She crouched over the meager stream holding open her canteen. It took unbearably long to fill her canteen, every breeze making her flinch and peer over the top of the riverbed in despair of seeing a Doctor. It would be so easy for Reapers to surround the riverbed and trap her on lower ground, for a Doctor to use the water to wet his flaying knife before peeling off her skin…

Her canteen filled and, in her hurry to cap it, she dropped it and spilled the water back into the stream. She cursed, pulled out a tuft of grass in outrage, and started to refill her canteen again. When all of the canteens were finally full, she doubled checked that all their caps were screwed on tight before hoisting herself out of the riverbed and making a mad dash for the black building.

Ren dropped the canteens and shrieked when Finn’s loud cry of, “Evie!” shot through the quiet morning. Ren pressed her palm against her chest, willing herself calm. She was being ridiculous. She was being ridiculous. She was being too ridiculously afraid. She had made it back to the black building without meeting a Doctor, there was no reason for her to be so foolish.

Finn was striding out of the black building and bellowing at his sister, who teetered on the edge of the coast trying to get a

! THE WATCH54

look at the sea below. He jerked her away from the edge by her arm and dragged her to the building. “I can’t breathe as it is, do you really need to give me a heart attack as well?”

“I wasn’t going to fall,” Evie whined, squiggling out of her brother’s grasp and flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. “I wasn’t even close to the edge.”

“If you saw the sea, then you were too close,” Finn said definitively. Evie fell into a broody silence.

Ren melded into the group and returned each canteen to its owner. When she was left with only her own canteen to worry about, the pressing danger of being caught had waned. If there had been more Reapers and their Doctor anywhere in the area, they wouldn’t have taken so long to find the group at the black building, especially with all the noise the group was making. Ren wasn’t sure if she should take this as a good sign, or a sign that the Reapers were changing their methods and would no longer be so easily predictable.

A stiff wind slid Ren’s scarf backwards off her head, but before she could so much as raise her hands to catch it, Sloan shot forward and grabbed it. Ren jerked away from him furiously, slapping his hand aside and fixing it herself.

“Inside,” he commanded, the continued presence of that haughty smirk succeeding in making Ren even angrier.

“We’re just going to leave them here?” Ren asked, pointing at the dead Reapers.

“What would you like to do with them?” Sloan cocked an eyebrow.

Ren stared down at the bodies. She had known a handful of people in Hythe that had joined the Doctors’ ranks because it was the only way they could get food. They hadn’t been bad people, nor would they have deserved to be slaughtered without an explanation.

“They might not have killed us, you know,” Ren said quietly. “Most Reapers are just regular people looking for a steady supply of food and water.”

���55

“Most, but not all.”“How can we judge what category these two would have fallen

under after they’ve already been murdered?” Ren asked. “If we had approached peacefully and talked to them instead of blindly shooting them, who knows what we could have found out.”

“The last time I crossed this Bridge,” Sloan said. “The Doctors were only in Ozryn and Azmarin, not stationed like guards at the entrance to the Bridge. Why would innocent men be armed? If they did indeed become Reapers for only the food and water, they didn’t stay innocent for long.”

“Well—”“I don’t have time for this. Get over your outdated sense of

morality and prepare yourself for a lot more killing. I can assure you, we absolutely will not make it to Base One without meeting more Reapers. I’m not fool enough to let them trick me into thinking they’re innocent. The fact that the Doctors control the Bridge is far worse news than you’re able to comprehend, so why don’t you just stay back and let us do the work.”

Ren’s tongue was dead with shock and incapable of using any of the retorts buzzing through her mind to defend herself against Sloan. He was the only one looking Ren straight in her blushing face, everyone else finding the ground, building, or coast infinitely more interesting. Ren was a Moon-soul; she was required by the monk’s instructions to be compassionate before anything else. She had always prided herself on her ability to know what was right and to argue for integrity, but Sloan’s jarringly disdainful, dark olive eyes held a thousand arguments more eloquent than Ren’s measly plea for humanity.

Sloan took Ren’s stunned silence as concession and barked at everyone to get inside. Ren clenched her jaw—it was no use having her mouth gaping open idiotically when her tongue was refusing to work—and promised herself that she would never grow as insensitive as Sloan or Jasmin. Finn put a gentle hand on her back and she stepped into the black building.

! THE WATCH56

It was barren inside with no windows or furniture. There was only an archway on the opposite wall that lead to the Bridge and a staircase tucked into the corner. There wasn’t even a floor to cover the dusty Earth. It smelled badly of rot, sweat, and salt.

“It’s the same on the rest of the floors. No bathrooms,” Jasmin said, pacing in front of the archway.

“We’d better start across,” Sloan said.There was a collective intake of breath. Ren was still gazing

over her shoulder at the bodies slumped just outside the door when Finn stepped through the archway. With one last glance and her thumb carving the sign of the crescent onto her right palm, Ren turned her back on the dead Reapers and followed Finn.

The black building was built on the very edge of the coast so that the Bridge connected directly with the archway. The Bridge was big enough for a dozen people to walk abreast and had high rails running on either side. The wind whipped up Ren’s scarf and stole her breath.

It was like the world had opened up before her, like she could see everything that mattered. The Bridge snaked over a tumultuous blue sea with a slight undulation, creating hills and hollows along its length. But the Bridge was just an insignificant hairline of brown compared to the vastness of the sea, which rolled on endlessly and with such a definite, established presence that Ren wondered how she could have lived on the coast for so long and never realized it before. She rushed to the railing on her right and leaned over, completely forgetting about the dead Reapers when she saw the sea.

It was only a mile or two down and churned with white-tipped waves that crashed into each other, the beams holding up the Bridge, and the coastal cliff. She felt as if she was seeing the sea for the first time; back at her ship, that couldn’t have been the same sea. She had hardly ever seen it back there because of the rock walls all but enclosing her ship. Here the sea was exhilarating and commanded the entire view so fully that the possibility of

���57

having it end with the Bridge somewhere to the south was utterly inconceivable.

There were small, frothy patches of dull-brown water spread randomly through the waves, but for the most part, it was a thrilling, sparkling blue. A gust of wind swept upwards from the waves and caught Ren off-guard, making her stumble away from the rail. She grinned, laughing to herself, as Evie came up next to her and moaned, “Oh, that’s too far down to swim in…”

The wind blew up from the sea with a howling force that shook the railing and leveled Evie onto her back. Ren shepherded her into the center of the Bridge before Finn threatened another heart attack. She kept her hands firmly on the young girl’s shoulders. Evie let Ren hold her without complaint, even with her brother eyeing Ren suspiciously. Sloan’s eyes lingered on Ren with too inscrutable a look, so Ren scrunched her eyebrows together and was satisfied with the return of Sloan’s frown.

“Stay in the center for now,” Sloan said. “The wind takes some getting used to. Merrigan, just take slow breaths…there you go, and again…”

Sloan talked Merrigan calmly through dizzyingly long breathless spells. Using his wrists to conduct the tempo of Merrigan’s breathing, Sloan centered himself on the Bridge and started walking. They fell in single file behind him, Ren jumping to grasp Evie’s shoulders whenever the wind rattled the railing. Ren turned her face to the sun and let the sensation of being in the middle of something so vast as the sea wash over and consume her.

! THE WATCH58

C H A P T E R F I V E

SEA

Moonrise had been Ren’s favorite time of day. It was soft, muted, and devoted to the moon and the fuzzy exhaustion that crowds the eyes like a swirling film of smoke. Before her parents had died, their small family would spend the moonrise outside on the dirt behind their house. Moonrise was nothing like the boisterous noontime dances and feasts of the Sun-selfs; it was quiet, gentle, and precious to Ren.

Her father would bring three chairs outside and arrange them so that two were facing one. Her mother would bring home a book from the library and take the chair set apart from the other two. Ren would jump onto her chair next to her father—who always took care to position their chairs facing the moon—and begin with the sign of the crescent.

Ren’s neighbors to the right were Moon-souls just as she was, but they were older, and without children, and preferred to simply open their blinds and mark the moonrise inside their house. The house to the left was a Sun-self house, so their fireplaces were always burning too brightly and spilling their light into the night.

Her mother would start reading. She liked to pick what she deemed ‘real’ stories from before the first outbreak of the Blood Plague and have Ren repeat certain dates back to her.

“Tonight, I’m going to read about a war that happened a long time ago. It started in the year 1914,” she would say, and Ren

���59

would repeat, “1914,” awed at the thought of something so long ago.

Or, her mother would say, “Tonight, I brought a book that tells the story of the Huntington family. Their last known descendent died in 6654.”

“6654,” Ren would say. “Again.”“6654.”Sometimes, her mother would make her repeat the dates six

or seven times before starting to read aloud, other times she was satisfied if Ren repeated it once. One thing she never did was let Ren go to bed at night without testing her dates. She had instilled the fear of forgetting anything about time in Ren early in her life.

Her mother would read, and Ren would say her chants in her mind, and her father would stretch out his legs and close his eyes. Ren couldn’t say what possessed her, at such a young age, to take up a religion that neither of her parents practiced. Looking back, she must have been so determined to make friends that she started going to rites by herself, but she seriously doubted that anything about being a Moon-soul had made sense to her at that age. Still, she took great pride in the fact that she had been a Moon-soul since childhood.

The first night on the Bridge, moonrise became something very different for Ren. She was in the middle of the sea, blocked in by dead Reapers behind and the surety of live ones ahead, and surrounded by people that considered murder justifiable. There was no way to escape if she needed to. Whichever of her fears decided to appear first would need to be faced with a strength she was beginning to think she lacked.

“The tent won’t stay up in this wind,” Finn said, struggling to hold on to the tent as it attempted to fly away. Sloan had stopped them right smack in the middle of the Bridge and ordered his group to make camp. Ren shivered against the chilly sea wind and looked around her. The view from the Bridge was beautiful in the

! THE WATCH60

moonlight. The waves glittered and swelled with silver on their caps, the sea itself seeming more passive than in the daylight.

“We don’t need it,” Sloan said. “The weather is normal and having the tent up won’t protect us from Reapers any more than sleeping in the open will. Keep it packed.”

Ren was seemingly the only one who wasn’t all that keen about sleeping out in the open in such a compromising, middle-of-the-road position. She was the last to unfurl the blankets she carried on her back and arrange them next to the others and the last to sit down on her half of Jasmin’s blanket.

“Get some rest, Ren,” Finn said kindly, sliding beneath his own blanket. He placed his stun gun next to his head.

The group responded to whatever Sloan asked of them ludicrously quickly, as if they were proud of such absolute compliance. Ren looked up and down then Bridge and shivered again. Jasmin passed out their dinner, Evie eating curled up in a tiny ball with her eyes closed, and one by one the group lay down to sleep. Jasmin slid under the blanket, but Ren stayed on top. The air was cool and helped to calm the jittering in her stomach.

Sloan sat on the blanket directly next to Ren. He placed his pistols in front of his crossed legs and withdrew his knife to sharpen. Ren turned over so that her back was to him. The whistling wind skimmed over her insistently and she tucked her knees closer to her chest. Jasmin had fallen asleep within minutes of laying down, her arms thrown above her head and eyes darting furiously beneath closed lids. Ren could feel the burn of Sloan’s eyes on her back. She slowed her breathing until her inhales and exhales matched Jasmin’s.

“Impressive. But, I heard you snoring last night. You should probably include a few of those to make your act believable,” Sloan whispered. Ren humphed and exaggerated a roll of her eyes before remembering that Sloan couldn’t see her face. She let her breath take control of itself again and listened to the wind.

The purpose of staying with these people is for protection, Ren thought to herself over and over, drilling it into her mind like a

���61

mantra. She shouldn’t be so nervous that a Doctors was creeping up on them in the night, so terrified that Sloan would take that sharpened knife and slit her throat, if her desire to be with this group hinged on them protecting her.

Ren shifted her head just enough to glance over her shoulder. Sloan was still sharpening his knife. Ren turned her head back and hunched her shoulders up to her ears. Then, she looked at the moon. She wouldn’t be able to sleep if she couldn’t reason away her fears, but she wasn’t going to let Sloan ruin her meditation with his scowls and impatience, either.

She folded her hands and gently made the sign of the crescent with her left thumb across the scar on her right palm, careful to make her movements small so that Sloan wouldn’t notice. She focused on the moon above her and fought to find a good argument for allowing herself to remain so vulnerable in the middle of the Bridge. All she could come up with was that, by following Sloan’s orders, she would be safe in the long run. She lapsed in and out of sleep, in and out of thought, never stopping the hypnotic sleep rise chant running through her mind and the movement of her hands.

“Don’t tell me you’re part of that ridiculous cult,” Sloan whispered, bulling over her concentration. “Now I understand why you reacted so strangely to killing the Reapers. Your beloved moon is supposed to symbolize a ludicrous amount of kindness, right? Do you think the moon is going to hop on down to Earth and whisk you away from the Doctors? You’re wasting your time with that nonsense.”

“I’m not asking for help, and I don’t think the moon capable of doing anything but rising and setting,” Ren said, the dreamy state of her mind sharpening with irritation. “The Moon-soul is logic, I hear the thoughts of intuition through its light.”

“You might want to consider converting to the Sun-selfs if being a Moon-soul requires the capacity to use logic.”

“Don’t you have religion in your Bases?” Ren snapped.“No,” Sloan chuckled. “There’s no time for it.”

! THE WATCH62

“That’s sad.”“Why? Citizens don’t need religion to muddle up their minds

and distract them from work. Maybe if the Disposables spent less time staring at the sky and more time working they’d be able to sustain their own economy without the Union’s help. But, I suppose you don’t know anything about that. I almost forgot the painful degree of your ignorance.”

Ren closed her eyes and pressed her trembling lips together. She drew a deep crescent sign into her palm with the blunt edge of her left thumbnail. She had felt annoyance only towards herself for so long that the fiery urge to scream at Sloan soaring through her blood was barely controllable. She was horrified at the tears making her nose tickle.

Sloan sniggered at her silence and rolled to his feet with a light groan. Ren heard his boot thump against something soft, then another groan.

Sloan said, “Wake up, Finn. Second watch. Sorry, I’ll take the end half of it so you can get more sleep, all right?”

Finn mumbled indistinctly through a monstrous yawn. Ren flinched when Sloan threw himself on his blanket, expecting him to continue teasing her. She held herself perfectly still, her hands tucked against her chest, and waited until she heard Sloan wake to take the tail end of Finn’s shift. With Sloan awake again, Ren slammed her eyes shut and forced a few quiet snores. She thought she heard him snigger before she drifted off to sleep.

*Moonset came swiftly. Ren melded into the morning routine

of the group before she noticed it herself, setting off south on the Bridge with her things packed without having consciously decided to do any of it. She fidgeted with the strap of her bag and hung it across her body to rest on her left hip so that she was different from everyone else, who had their bags resting on their right hip. Habits build and become who you are. Ren let the mantra run through her mind until she felt distinctly individual and capable of being disobedient.

���63

Ren’s boots clunked dully as she walked. Before midday her neck was sore from craning to see more of the sea (as if the whole expanse of it wasn’t as interesting as the part directly below the Bridge), so she veered from the centerline to walk next to the railing. The air was heavy with sprays of seawater and twisting, sharp gusts of wind. She turned her face to greet each spray of water. The salt snuck into her short hair, crinkled her scarf, and peppered across her brow and cheeks.

As the day progressed, Ren’s boldness at veering from the centerline spread and the others toed their way into a loose group walking where they would abreast the Bridge. Only Sloan and Jasmin stayed in the center. Sloan carried his impatience like a badge of honor. It was scribbled in the lines of his forehead, embedded in each movement he made, and sparkling in his eye like happiness. He swung his arms and shoulders in an arrogant saunter, his hair sticking up at odd angles from the wind. His eyes swung back and forth across the horizon, always searching ahead and never once checking behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed.

Jasmin held her rifle at her chest and shuffled along the centerline with her back hunched over, shooting distrustful glances at the railing.

“You don’t like the sea?” Finn asked her when a bout of wind sprinkled them all with seawater and had Jasmin cursing vehemently.

“No, I absolutely do not,” Jasmin growled.Finn laughed and tugged on Jasmin’s arm to get her closer to

the railing. Jasmin planted her feet and refused to budge, her eyes wide and jaw locked as if being any closer to the water than she needed to be would be the end of her.

“You still have so much of the Cloudlands in your thinking,” Merrigan said. “I’ve heard all the nebulae monks are so lost to the sky that they forget how to walk and swim.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jasmin said weakly, glancing again at the railing. “We can walk just fine.”

! THE WATCH64

“You’re a monk?” Evie laughed. She broke her dreamy contemplation of the waves to dance in front of Jasmin, hopping closer and closer to the left railing.

“Stop that! You’ll fall over! Evie!” A particularly fierce wave crested against the rail and splashed

them all. Jasmin screeched and pulled the trigger of her rifle. A resounding crack echoed through the air as a bullet lodged itself into the Bridge inches from Jasmin’s foot. Ren threw her arms over her head on instinct. The sound rang in her ears and she looked around with dread; anyone for miles would have heard it.

“It’s just water!” Sloan bellowed, eyes flashing. Jasmin hung her head as she swung the rifle safely onto her back. Finn and Merrigan had froze, eyes darting anxiously between Jasmin, Sloan, and a laughing Evie.

“Evie, shush,” Finn warned. Evie ignored him and instead took out a thin silver hilt from her pocket. It was just the hilt of a sword, yet Jasmin barked a laugh, plunged her hand down the bodice she wore, and withdrew a hilt of her own. At the same time, Evie and Jasmin both flourished their hilts in the air as if they were cracking a whip. From the bottom of each hilt slid a segmented blade. Once fully unleashed, the segments fused together with a loud hmmziip.

Jasmin held her sword loosely in front of her and Evie danced forward, her laughter swirling through the wind.

“Cedo nulli!” Evie cried. She darted forward, Jasmin barely managing to knock her sword out of the way.

“Your insistence on shouting those silly words is no less ridiculous than my fear of water,” Jasmin said, circling Evie.

“Then you are afraid of water?”Jasmin clicked her tongue and frowned. “My words are of House Lynch!” Evie cried with pride. “I

won’t have you besmirching their honor!”Evie was raising her arm to swing her sword at Jasmin for a

second time when Finn caught her wrist. Evie’s shoulders flew up to her ears and she let go of the sword hilt as if it had burned her.

���65

“How many times have I told you to stay out of Jasmin’s bag?” Finn yelled. He cracked the sword like a whip and the blade slide back into the hilt. “These are weapons, Evie, not something for you to play with.”

“Thankfully you weren’t hurt,” Merrigan said, taking the hilt from Finn. “I’ll just get rid of this. So you won’t be tempted again.”

With a grunt, Merrigan lobbed the hilt over the side of the railing. Jasmin exploded into shouts and curses at loosing a perfectly good weapon, Merrigan raising her chin and affirming there was nothing else to be done. Evie sulked with her chin against her chest and moved to stand next to Ren at the railing, shooting scornful glances at her brother. Merrigan and Jasmin carried on for so long that Finn had to interrupt and bring their attention to Sloan.

Sloan hadn’t moved since the gunshot. He was staring at Jasmin and Merrigan calmly, his expression drowning in the kind of exasperation Ren was growing accustomed to seeing directed at herself, the kind he reserved for people he regarded as inferior to himself. Merrigan’s face flushed redder than her hair and Jasmin bowed her head in shame.

“Are you done?” Sloan asked, his words drawn out with forced patience.

“I am,” Jasmin rushed. “I don’t know about her.”“Yes, yes,” Merrigan said, glaring at Jasmin. Sloan spun briskly on his heel and continued down the

Bridge. The group, including Evie, snapped to attention and marched after him single file down the centerline. Merrigan’s blush faded and Jasmin didn’t look so murderous anymore. Ren ogled at them. It was the most bizarre thing she had ever seen, and it took a face full of sharp sea wind to assure her that she was awake. She stuck to walking next to the railing with her face pointed to the sea to hide her expression.

That afternoon the second day on the Bridge, they reached a black building, identical to the one that had guarded the Bridge’s

! THE WATCH66

entrance, built into the centerline. Its outline was somehow sharper than the building on the coast, chiseled by the salt wind, and was made of actual black metal rather than being painted over. It occupied less than half of the Bridge and had two windowless stories.

“Great, we can sleep inside,” Ren muttered to herself. She flinched awkwardly when Jasmin said, “I couldn’t’ve taken

another night out in the open, either.”Sloan threw his arm out to stop Ren from hurrying forward

into the building, his arm colliding with her chest and forcing the air from her lungs in a high whistle.

“You’re lucky that ship you were hiding in was so far from civilization,” he said. “You never would have survived if you had to do anything but hide.”

“Apparently not,” Ren deadpanned.Sloan took out his pistols and bolted forward into the black

building. Jasmin stationed herself between the group and the building, her shoulders squared and rifle drawn. She didn’t breathe until Sloan called out, “Clear.”

Walking inside, Ren’s body seemed to settle harder onto the Bridge and her lungs expand without the constant pull of the wind. The dimness inside was a relief after the sun. The building was completely bare and windowless just as the one at the coast, and had an archway on the opposite wall that led to the Bridge. A staircase was tucked in the corner.

“The next black building is more than a few miles away,” Sloan said. “Five minutes here, any longer and we’ll be walking after sunset.”

“Moonrise,” Ren said. She was starved, exhausted, and couldn’t look at Sloan without clenching her fists in irritation. She could hear the stubbornness in her voice as she spoke, and wondered how she never knew herself to be so resentful. “Moonrise will be here soon. We could use the rest.”

“We,” Sloan spat. “Don’t need to rest. If you do, then be my guest and stay the night here by yourself.”

���67

“That’s not what she meant,” Jasmin said quietly, tilting her head towards Merrigan, who was patting her chest and pretending like she could breathe. Ren latched on to this idea and raised her eyebrows at Sloan daringly.

“Fine, but only if this is the last time that excuse is used. We’ll stop here for the night.”

Merrigan sighed and smiled at Finn, easing herself onto the floor and curling up without a blanket. Finn took her blanket from those on Ren’s back and unrolled it for her. She scooted beneath it with a quiet, “Thank you so much, Finn.”

Finn sat next to her and gazed through the archway that led to the southern span of the Bridge. The sky was a mix of orange and red with the low sun, though the heat of the day still sizzled against Ren’s skin like hundreds of tiny bugs. She was more than done for the day, the salt wind having carved out smooth bags under her eyes. Her leg muscles were cramped and tingling, but she didn’t settle down like the rest and waved away her share of bread.

Sloan separated himself from the group and slumped against the wall. He took a short drag from his canteen, swishing the water around his mouth before swallowing. Ren removed the remaining blankets from her back, taking her time so that she could compose herself. She sat down smartly in front of Sloan and cleared her throat.

“I don’t have an outdated sense of morality,” she said, speaking quickly in case she forgot what she’d prepared the night before. “You are simply so vile that you can’t resist the chance to play with people’s lives. It’s not your decision to make, who lives and who dies, especially when that decision is based solely on what someone appears to be.”

“Morality doesn’t matter anymore,” Sloan said. His eyes narrowed. “I’m going to protect myself, and the Reapers are going to protect themselves. You cannot survive with integrity. If you want to make it to Base One and the southern coast, you’ll have

! THE WATCH68

to get used to death or pretend you don’t notice. Otherwise, you won’t get what you want.”

“I don’t even know what being on the southern coast or in a Base means. How could I possibly want it badly enough to give up being a decent person? And another thing: who are you that I should trust you so blindly when you don’t trust me at all?”

“I don’t trust you,” Sloan confirmed. “But, I’m bringing you across the Bridge, am I not? I’m letting you share our food. What more do you want?”

“You don’t believe me about my mother being a Keeper of Ages,” Ren said, and, just as she had predicted, Sloan sat up a little straighter at the mention of her mother. “You didn’t know her at all, how could you possibly know if she was lying? I was her daughter, she had no reason to lie to me!”

“Keepers of Ages aren’t real.”“What do you know about her?” “Not much.”“You’re lying!”“Calm down,” Sloan said, rolling his eyes. “Believe it or not,

I’m trying to help you. Our deal, remember?”“You only proposed that deal after you figured out what it is

about my mother you won’t tell me. Something about her changed your mind, you were ready to kill me before that. Why won’t you—”

“All I care about is figuring out that Code.” Sloan jabbed the Watch roughly. “Making sure you’re well-educated in every decision I make means nothing to me. I’ll keep your stubborn, naïve, self-righteous ass alive until I get the Code, then you can go off and live your pitiful Disposable life with as much contempt for me as you want. You don’t need to know about your mother to be able to do that.”

With a smirk, Sloan got to his feet and strolled out of the black building.

���69

C H A P T E R S I X

VIRIDE

“I am not self-righteous!”Ren ran out after Sloan, fists clenched and scarf blowing back

onto her shoulders. Moonrise was pulling the sun towards the horizon, the sky a dim red shot with brilliant threads of pink. Sloan was leaning against the railing, his face gleeful with condescension. A fleeting, wild impulse to push him over coursed through her, shocked her, and she planted her feet in line with his toes.

“And, why do you keep calling me disposable if you’re so concerned about my Code? That doesn’t sound very disposable to me!”

“A Disposable is what we call anything that lives on the surface, outside of a Base.”

“Whose we?”“Really? We’ve been talking about these things for days now.

‘We’ are Citizens of the Union. ‘You’ are Disposable to ‘Us’.” Sloan could barely contain his glee as he spoke. His lips trembled with a snigger that snowballed into a guffaw.

Ren’s neck and cheeks were shaking, her mind a pit of fury, and her eyes felt like they were going to burst right out of her head. She was too slow for him; he had lurched forward before she could so much as form a coherent thought through her anger, dug his rough hands into her shoulders, and shoved her to the Bridge. Sloan stepped over her, drawing his twin pistols, and kicked her in the shin when she tried to get back to her feet.

! THE WATCH70

“What the—”“No closer,” Sloan roared. Ren looked to where his pistols

where aimed. Coming from the direction of the coast walked five figures, shimmering and indistinguishable in the moonrise. Ren sprang to her feet to stand with him, to fight with him in some way, but he nudged her with his shoulder and murmured, “Get Jasmin and Finn. Evie goes upstairs with Merrigan. Your scarf! Cover your face!”

Ren dashed to the black building, the wind whipping up her hair and her heart frozen in her throat.

“Finn—Jasmin—people outside. Sloan needs you,” Ren panted. She banged into the side of the archway and tripped inside. “Merrigan, we have to take Evie upstairs.”

“Are you mad?” Evie shouted and darted for the archway. Ren caught her around the middle and picked her up. Evie slapped her across the face, pulled her hair, then grabbed her ears and twisted. Ren howled in pain and confusion and dropped her, then quickly took hold of her arm. Merrigan grasped the other arm, and together they managed to drag Evie to the bottom of the stairs. Evie wasn’t particularly strong, but she was willful. She squirmed, thrashed, and threw herself around so that it was nearly impossible to keep a hold of her.

“Finn! You can’t leave me!” she screamed. “Please! Not like them! I can help, I’m strong!”

Jasmin and Finn dashed outside with their guns raised. Evie kicked the bottom step of the stairs and cursed in such foul words that Ren gasped. Ren couldn’t see out of the archway from where they stood and strained to hear anything around her chattering teeth and Evie’s cursing. Then, Sloan’s voice.

“I said no closer. Who are you?” “We’ll shoot!” Jasmin cried. A long moment. Then, the sound of Jasmin’s rifle going off

and a muffled scream. A group of voices Ren didn’t recognize rose up in shouts and threats.

���71

“WHO ARE YOU?!” Sloan’s voice reverberated through the black building, unnervingly fierce.

“Wait,” shouted a voice that sounded much closer than Ren expected. “Rian, is that—”

“Now, Jasmin! Finn!”Ren hunched her body over Evie as the sound of gunfire filled

the black building, putting herself between the door and Evie and covering the girl’s ears. Evie’s mouth was moving in slow motion, screaming for her brother, but Ren couldn’t hear anything but gunfire. When it finally stopped, her ears rang as she looked over her shoulder at the archway.

Sloan burst into the black building with Finn and Jasmin at his flank, all unharmed. There was a crazed, unsettled look in Sloan’s eye as he barked, “We’re leaving. Pack up. They were Reapers, they must have found the bodies on the coast.”

Ren let go of Evie, but the girl stayed at her side anyway, even when Merrigan scrambled away to gather her things together. Ren’s legs were shaking as she began to roll up the blankets; leftover adrenaline mixed with relief and dread formed a cocktail of emotions she couldn’t quite control. Evie followed her every movement, her hand on Ren’s leg as she hid behind her.

“Evie, really, you need to help,” Finn said, striding over to them and tucking his stun gun in its holster. “I know you’re afraid, but they’re all dead and we have to go. Evie…” He trailed off when he noticed Ren staring at him.

Ren couldn’t bring her lips to form words. She could only gape at Finn’s face and shirt. He frowned and glanced down, noticed the speckles of blood on his shirt, and wiped his face in a panic. He blinked slowly at the blood on his palm, then looked up at Ren.

“It’s fine,” he whispered. “Merrigan will treat me later.”Ren broke out of her trance and jumped forward to wipe the

rest of the blood from Finn’s face, careful not to rub it into his skin.

“It’s ok, Ren, really.”

! THE WATCH72

“There’s five miles to the next black building, we have to go now,” Sloan said. Evie wouldn’t detach herself from Ren, so Sloan took the blankets she usually carried and ran out of the building. Ren was still searching Finn’s face for any spots of blood. He pushed her arm away gently and nodded, as if he thought it possible to promise he wasn’t infected. He followed Sloan without bringing the blood to the attention of anyone else. Ren bent down and let Evie climb onto her back. They ran through the archway with Jasmin and Merrigan.

The black figures that had looked so menacing before were slumped in a pile a few feet from the building, their blood seeping onto the Bridge. The last light of the sun was lackluster and ominous, a dark red that made the metal of the Bridge turn the color of old blood. Ren sprinted as fast as she could to keep up with Sloan as he ran to the next black building, Evie bouncing on her back.

“You only stunned some, Finn?” Ren called out.“No. Jasmin took care of the ones I stunned,” he yelled back.“Then why are we running?” Ren asked herself. The Reapers

were all dead, then, and normally Ren would have attributed Sloan’s need to put distance between themselves and the dead Reapers for fear that their Doctor would arrive. But that hadn’t been the case on the coast at the first black building, so Ren didn’t think Sloan would assume they’d be followed. He might suspect the Reapers to be carriers. Or he could just have been spooked when that Reaper called him by name…

Ren tried to ask Evie if Rian was Sloan’s first name, but the young girl had begun to cough directly in Ren’s ear. The sound drowned out even the restless crash of the waves.

Moonrise came, but its silver light was dimmed by a forest of clouds and only let thin rays out at a time. Ren had started out running down the centerline, but then the railing was on her right, and then she was on the other side with the railing bumping against her left arm. She couldn’t make out anyone else

���73

by sight, but heard their wheezing and coughing, heard Finn urging Merrigan on, heard Evie’s hacking cough.

“Hurry!” Sloan called, his voice marking him as being very far ahead of Ren. She panicked and pushed her legs to go faster.

A ray of moonlight broke through the clouds and illuminated Jasmin. She had been running next to Ren, her arms thrown back and her torso leaning forward. Ren didn’t hear her cough or wheeze; even Jasmin’s boots didn’t make a sound as she passed Ren and melded into the dark.

Rising out of that gloom appeared a section of the night that was darker than the surrounding area. Ren found a second wind and flew forward, nearly colliding with Jasmin near the door to this new black building. Ren squinted through the darkness. She thought the building to be only one story with holes in the walls and a gaping, lopsided hole for a door. Ren pressed her hands against the building and let Evie slide off her back. Ren’s legs were threatening to buckle and her throat was on fire with thirst. Jasmin was breathing noisily through her nose and didn’t say anything; Ren guessed she must be too breathless to want to admit it. There was a slight stench in the air of something rotten, though Ren couldn’t put her finger on it.

A hacking, rattling cough preceded Merrigan and Finn’s arrival. Merrigan’s bushy hair brushed Ren’s arm and Ren steadied her as she bent double in her search for air.

“Evie, where are you? What the hell is that smell?” Finn grumbled.

“Where’s Sloan?” Ren whispered.“He went inside,” Jasmin sat through gritted teeth, her voice a

thin, whistling plea for air. “Merrigan, where’s you gun?” Finn asked. “Why don’t you

have it out?”“I must have left it back there…”“That was a beautiful gun!” Jasmin hissed. “I don’t lug around

a bag full of valuable weapons for you to throw away whatever you want.”

! THE WATCH74

“Evie, can you breathe?” Finn’s blonde hair, luminescent in the scant moonlight, moved closer to Ren as he searched for his sister. Ren heard Evie slap his hand away and snap, “Leave me alone.”

From the black hole that was the building’s dilapidated entrance came a blaze of fire. Splotches of white exploded in her vision and Ren blinked furiously until she could make out Sloan’s seemingly disembodied head leave the building and hover next to Jasmin. He was holding a fastlit torch in front of his chest.

“No threat inside,” he said. “Ren, I need you in here.”“Where did you get that?” Ren squeezed Evie’s hand tighter.

Fastlit torches were extremely rare, she hadn’t been able to get her hands on one for years. The fact that Sloan was able to whip one out of his little gray bag when it suited him was less than comforting.

“The same place I got our weapons. Dead Disposables. Now, come, it won’t stay lit forever.”

He retreated into the building. Evie let go of her hand and poked her hip. Merrigan said, “Go in, he won’t hurt you.”

Ren still hesitated, was even on the verge of asking someone to come in with her, but remembered none of the group would do something Sloan did not want. She ground her teeth and stepped into the black building alone. The smell that was only revolting outside intensified into a stench so repugnant that Ren slapped her head over her mouth and nose.

Sloan’s fastlit torch was bouncing tiny sparkles of light off the black metallic walls. He stood in the very center holding the torch over the decaying body of an old woman. Ren gagged and pressed her back against the wall. The woman was dressed all in black and curled up in a ball.

“Why do I, in particular, need to see this?” Ren said from behind her hand.

“It’s time you saw what’s underneath,” Sloan said. He pointed with the fastlit torch to a black bundle lying next to the old woman’s head. Ren inched closer, whatever strength was left in

���75

her legs evaporating when she saw that the bundle was black, billowy cloth attached to a long leather mask in the shape of a beak. Ren fell to her knees clumsily, her head spinning and stomach rolling.

“She was…”“A Doctor. It’s safe to assume they’ve taken the entire Bridge,

but this suggests there are at least some people on it still fighting.”

“That’s good, right?”“Maybe,” Sloan sighed. “I’m not counting on it.”Ren slid closer to the old woman, drinking in her face so that

someone would remember it. Her chest was tight, too tight for her to sit on the floor anymore, so she got to her feet and backed away. Sloan watched her with a frown.

“You pity her,” he said with disbelief. “You pity the thing that killed your parents.”

“She didn’t kill them herself,” Ren said, the sharpness of his tone making her feel more ignorant than usual. “The Doctors that killed my parents were strong enough to hold down my dad. An old woman couldn’t do that.”

“If I had to guess, I’d say she wasn’t older than thirty.”“That’s not funny.”“The mask ages them.” Sloan tapped the mask with his boot.

“She could have been strong enough.”“There’s no proof that it was her.”“She’s a Doctor just like they were. Even if she didn’t kill your

parents, she’s killed someone’s parents somewhere. The Doctors have chased you for more than half your life, why do you still pity them?”

“The Doctors that killed my parents did it for some other reason than infection, isn’t that what you said? The ones that are chasing me now are only doing it because those first Doctors put my name on the carrier list. I don’t agree with what they do and how they do it, but the fact remains that without the Doctors

! THE WATCH76

being so ruthless many more people would have died from the Blood Plague.”

“You’re only saying this now because you’re looking at someone beyond your help,” Sloan said. “You won’t care about their supposed contributions when you’ve been on the southern coast for a while.”

“You knew those Reapers,” Ren said. “He called you by your first name. Rian? Who was he?”

“No one you’d know. Will you help me get her out of here?”“No.” Sloan called the group inside. Finn, Merrigan, and Jasmin all

helped him lift the old woman and her mask. They carried her outside, then threw her over the side of the railing. Ren couldn’t even hear the splash her body made through the sound of the wind, the waves, and Merrigan’s coughing. They returned and started unpacking.

“We’re sleeping in here?” Ren asked, aghast. The stench of the woman still clung to the air, but that wasn’t as bad as the thought that she had died in that very building.

“There’s no blood,” Sloan said, brandishing the fastlit torch. “It smells, but you’ll get over it.”

The black building had only that one, dilapidated hole for an entrance. Jasmin hung one of the blankets over it and Sloan laid the fastlit torch in the center of the building. There were plenty of holes in the walls of the black building to give away the light of the fastlit torch, but after Finn proposed that they all sit close around the torch to block the bulk of its light and substantially decrease their chances of being found, no one seemed to think it a problem but Ren.

“How many of those do you have?” Ren asked. “Two more. I’m saving them for emergencies only.”“Tonight was an emergency?” Ren scoffed. “In my opinion, yes.”“Well, in my—”“It’s already lit so your opinion doesn’t matter, does it!”

���77

Ren pressed her lips together. She was dancing on the line of making sure Sloan didn’t think of her as someone explicitly submissive, as the rest of the group was, and arguing just because she couldn’t stand his constant need to prove how immorally superior he wanted to be.

They all sat around the fastlit torch, Ren and Jasmin sharing their blanket with Evie as she still refused to be anywhere near Finn. Just as Sloan predicted, the stench of the old woman eventually faded away, as if it had never mattered at all.

Merrigan was searching through her white bag furiously, shaking her busy hair so roughly it was a wonder she could see what she was doing.

“I don’t need to take it,” Finn insisted. “If I’d been infected, I would have shown symptoms already. You know that. Besides, they were Reapers. The Doctors wouldn’t hire carriers, now would they?”

Merrigan waved a hand flippantly and said, “I could fool a bioprobe if I wanted to.”

“What’s this?” Sloan asked. “Oh, Finn just informed me that some blood from those

Reapers got on him,” Merrigan said. “You need to take it to be safe, Finn. Not every reaction to Filavirus is the same, you may not show symptoms for hours and then it’ll be too late. Please.”

He heaved a great sigh and took an oblong white pill from Merrigan’s outstretched hand. He chewed it and swallowed it down with a swing from his canteen.

“What was that?” Ren asked.“Viride,” Finn said. “You have to take it as soon as possible

after blood exposure for it to work. It’s the only defense we have against Filavirus. Merrigan developed it herself.”

“I was with an entire team of researchers and I barely had any input at all.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Finn said to Merrigan. “You’re part of the cure.”

! THE WATCH78

“It’s not as powerful as it should be. It’s impossible to develop a complete cure for Filavirus, don’t let her think that.”

The two of them, completely forgetting about Ren, switched topic and began reliving their flight in the dark. Ren unscrewed the cap of her canteen with shaky hands. She allowed herself three long draughts to momentarily quench her extreme thirst, then one more sip as a personal comfort.

In her world, being infected with the Blood Plague meant a swift death, not treatment or hope. In her world, villages were left to take care of themselves, unable to rely on a Union for help. In her world, the supplies for making any kind of medication had long since dwindled away. In their world, hers was Disposable.

She slumped into a ball, her back against Jasmin’s thigh and her head next to Evie’s, and fell asleep, too overwhelmed by the events of the day to linger in resentment.

���79

C H A P T E R S E V E N

ACCLIMATION

“Did your parents worship as well?” Sloan asked.Ren was walking next to the railing by herself with the wind

and the sound of the waves, her mind barely out of the dregs of sleep. Sloan had woken them early and spurned them down the Bridge so quickly that breakfast was eaten as they walked. Sloan pointed at Ren’s right hand, and she jammed it hastily into her pocket.

“No,” she rasped, her voice still sleepy. “You never thought that was strange?” Sloan’s pompous smile

and ability to function normally after so little sleep was more irritating than the brightness of the rising sun. “Moon-and-Sun is supposed to be the basis of Disposable culture. You never thought it was strange they didn’t take a side?”

Ren squinted at the waves, imagining Sloan’s face being crushed beneath the gold-tinted whitecaps. “Plenty of people don’t worship.”

“How did you become the only person in your family to choose the moon, then?”

“I makes sense to me.” Ren whipped her head around to glare at Sloan and found the entire group staring at her. They were alternating between munching on pieces of bread and passing around the yellow bottle of sunscreen, their eyebrows raised and directing all their curiosity at Ren.

“You weren’t a very observant child,” Sloan said. “Didn’t you ever wonder why your parents’ skin never morphed?”

! THE WATCH80

“I don’t know what your talking about,” Ren said. “Of course their skin didn’t change, and mine doesn’t either.”

“Actually,” Merrigan piped up. “It does, you just don’t realize it.”

“My skin doesn’t morph!”Sloan smirked. He strode from the centerline, rolling back his

sleeve, and then took the liberty of rolling back her own sleeve. He held his forearm against hers. His skin was tanned, dry, normal, and hers looked no different. She shifted her arm slightly. A ripple of gold flashed across the skin, the exact color of the rising sun, and she gasped despite herself. She wrenched her sleeve down and glared at Sloan.

“I didn’t do it to you,” he laughed. “Humans evolve, it happens.”

Ren crossed her arms in front of her chest and squeezed herself, as inconspicuously and tightly as possible, just to be sure she was still there in her body. She was itchy, from the tip of her scalp to her blistered feet, as if her skin was trying to slither off her. She exhaled sharply through her nose and touched her arm. Her skin wasn’t the skin she thought it was. Without a direct comparison held right next to it, she would have never noticed her skin to morph. Hiding in that ship with only daydreams and the occasional, surreptitious trips into a village for food had made her oblivious to the goings-on of the world, but had she really failed to notice what her own body was made of? She exhaled again, sharper.

“Jasmin,” Merrigan said abruptly. “You didn’t put on sunscreen yet, here—”

“I’m good.”“You’ll get burnt,” Merrigan insisted. “Sloan, tomorrow we

cant’t start until everyone has their sunscreen on. Can’t we take a short break in Ozryn so that we can acclimate properly?”

“I’ll put it on,” Jasmin said, snatching the yellow bottle from Merrigan’s hand. “Stop pestering me.”

���81

“We’ll be in Ozryn tomorrow afternoon and spending the night,” Sloan answered. He strode back to the centerline of the Bridge. “We don’t have time to stop in Ozryn for more than a night. I’ve been thinking we should start before dawn everyday from now on, just to be safe. It’s not hard to put on sunscreen while walking. You’ll get used to it.”

“Finn!” Evie shrieked.Ren jumped and clutched the railing for support, her heart

hammering and mind jumping to imagine the worst, but Evie was bouncing on the balls of her feet giddily and pointing to the east.

Far to sea, something was bouncing up and down on the waves. Ren ran to the opposite railing and leaned as far forward as she dared, squinting against the reflection of the sun on the water. The railing shook as the rest of the group, save Sloan and Jasmin, joined Ren.

“It’s a ship,” Sloan said. “What!” Evie shrieked, positively vibrating with excitement.

“I didn’t know the Disposables still used them!”“Me neither,” Ren breathed. Her eyes were drying quickly

between the wind and her refusal to blink in case the faraway ship disappeared. She had no idea what it was like to live on a ship that actually sailed, or what kind of people she would find aboard such a miracle, yet her head was filling with fantastical visions of finding her way onto that ship.

“It’s a ship, of course people still use them. Can we move on!” Sloan barked. He stomped off down the centerline, all the joy he had gathered from teasing Ren returning to sour impatience. They followed him reluctantly, walking so close to the railing that their bags scraped the metal and clanged off the posts. Ren walked sideways, unable to break the trance the faraway ship had hypnotized her into. The ship was sailing closer (either that, or her daydreams were starting to infringe on her actual vision), and Ren could make out billowing white sails and a thin plume of back smoke snaking its way off the stern to smudge the bright blue sky.

! THE WATCH82

“Who travels by sea, Ren?” Evie asked.“I don’t know.”“How could you not know?” Jasmin asked testily. She was still

walking along the centerline, her top lip raised in contempt at Ren. “You’ve been a Disposable your entire life, there’s no way you’re this ignorant. Do you know nothing of the world except that wreck of a ship we found you in?”

“No,” Ren snapped. The trance of the faraway ship was slipping away, her bad humor returning quickly and with an added dash of petulance.

“You learned absolutely nothing of the world? Even before your parents died?” Jasmin arched an eyebrow.

“I was nine, how much do you want me to have learned?”“I just turned ten,” Evie cried, affronted. “Anyway, Hythe didn’t have a school,” Ren said. Heat creeped

up her neck and onto her cheeks. “My mother read to me about the past a lot. I know enough about that.”

“You were never curious?” Jasmin continued, her voice one long, exasperated sigh. “Even if you didn’t have anyone to teach you directly, you could have read on your own. Being an orphan is no excuse.”

“And where do you propose I could have found books?” Ren clenched her jaw. She was the ignorant one? Jasmin didn’t even know how rare books were, what did that say about her?

“Do you think it was easy to find weapons?” Jasmin rattled her bag for emphasis. “But, we found them. You could have found what you needed if you tried hard enough.”

“You can read, can’t you?” Evie asked.“Why would I need to?” Ren snarled. Her face pounded with

heat and shame at herself for not knowing until then that being unable to read was something other people would regard as incomprehensible. “I don’t have any books!”

“Hold on.” Jasmin stopped walking. She held her hands up, palms facing Ren, and shook her head slowly, pityingly. “Your

���83

mother claimed she was a librarian and yet never taught you how to read? The daughter of a librarian doesn’t know how to read?”

“What is your problem?” Ren shouted. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sloan kneading his knuckles into his forehead with barely-controlled agitation, and her anger spiked. “So what if I can’t read and don’t know about the sea-people? If I’m so disposable to you people, then why do you care how smart I am?”

“I don’t care how smart you are. I’m having trouble comprehending your ignorance and complete lack of motivation,” Jasmin said. “Your entire existence proves why the Union was right in choosing the title Disposable.”

“Not all of us were born to a cushy life with animals and food and all the books in the world!” Ren bellowed. Her fists were trembling and her feet longing to run away, to hide herself and go back to pretending her skin was one color and her knowledge sufficient.

“Jasmin’s from the Cloudlands,” Finn cut in. He stepped between them anxiously, holding his arms out as if Ren was about to rush forward and hit Jasmin.

“Good for her,” Ren said. “Do you even know where they are?” Jasmin smirked, crossing

her arms over her chest and jutting out her hip. “I’m assuming in one of your wonderful Bases.”“Seriously?”“The Cloudlands are on the surface,” Finn said. “They’re not

part of the Union. Well, not directly. Merrigan, Evie, and I were all born in Base Eight. Jasmin’s father was part of the Cloudland Recruitments. She was already three or four when she moved to Base Eight. Right?”

“Yes,” Jasmin said stiffly. “So then, you’re technically a Disposable, too,” Ren said. She

barked a laugh. “You’re a Disposable, but you grew up in the Union with everything you could ever want in life. You were practically a baby when you moved to Base Eight. I don’t think you have any right to lecture me on how I should have lived my

! THE WATCH84

life—you may think our pasts are similar, and that you were able to learn to read despite your poor, lowly, shameful birth, but I wasn’t magically whisked away to safety. I had to survive on my own, something you are clearly incapable of.” Ren swung her arm in a grand gesture at Sloan. “Why was the Union even interested in adopting from the surface? They don’t seem all that concerned about us up here.”

“The Cloudlands happen to be well-respected cultural tribes,” Jasmin said cooly. The edge to her voice had frozen over and her face had fallen still. “We’re an integral part of keeping diversity among the Citizens.”

“So, what, the Citizens come to your tribe to pick which people they think are worthy enough to join them in their luxurious burrows underground?” Ren was beginning to lose sense of why she was still shouting. All she was certain of was that the more she learned about the Union, the sharper her disgust grew and the less control she had over her words. “You probably think you’re so lucky to have been chosen. Your whole family was saved from destitution and—”

“Don’t assume to know me.” Jasmin’s hands clutched the strap of her rifle, her knuckles turning white, but her voice was still calm and cool. “My father and I were chosen because we deserved it. The Citizens only choose those they know will contribute to an actual, functioning society.”

“I suppose the rest of your family wasn’t good enough, then? You’ve never wondered what your life could have been like with them? Were they really worth giving up for a ‘functioning society’? ”

“Do you think I feel cheated? Of what? Of not knowing the savage woman who birthed me? Of living in a hovel and never learning how to read?”

Ren’s retort stuck in her throat. Sloan was standing in front of her and holding her shoulders, a vein in his jaw thumping wildly. Ren pressed her lips together and glared at him. She had gone too

���85

far, again, and for no other reason than she was annoyed with the continual discovery of her own shortcomings.

Sloan said, “Does it seem like we have all day to stand here arguing? Is this helping us in any way? If you cannot face the fact that you are regarded as a Disposable, then I will find another, less pleasant, way of getting your Watch. You are slowing us down.”

He then turned to Jasmin and the rest of the group and said, “Arguments over the degree of Ren’s Disposableness stop now. Not because I don’t enjoy them, but because we have no time. Cecelia needs a Watch to get us into Base One, and you all decided she would be a lovely addition to our group. Stop, now.”

As Ren expected, no one said anything to oppose Sloan. They resumed walking without another word, completely putting aside the argument, and Jasmin didn’t so much as shoot her a glare.

Ren had been old enough when her parents died to be reasonably intelligent. She excused herself from blame the first few terrifying, mournful years on her own; she had briefly thought her neighbors in Hythe would shelter her, but they turned to the Doctors the second they sensed danger, and Ren was forced to learn how to survive without a home. No one, not even Sloan, could expect her to have made any great strides in an area that didn’t involve finding food, water, and shelter. Yet, when she found her ship and established a relatively safe life, she chose to while away her time with daydreams and obsessing over the Doctors. She had never even asked the shopkeep she bought food from what the name of the village was for fear of seeming too suspicious. There was an entire world outside of her daydreams, and she had never thought twice about questioning what it held.

I’m alive, so I’ve done everything right, she thought, but even that sounded too feeble an argument.

Ren walked by herself in the rear, brooding and feeding her bad mood. She was exhausted from the previous day and hadn’t had the time to process what had happened before Sloan had started with her skin, Evie noticed the ship, and Jasmin thought it

! THE WATCH86

crucial to the flow of the day to mock her. She wanted to sulk at the back of the group and wallow in the injustice of her life, but the feeling didn’t stick. If she had grown up in affluence and safety, she was sure she would find the ignorance of an orphan disgraceful in much the same way the group regarded her. That aside, Ren couldn’t argue with the fact that she had spent six years doing absolutely nothing to move forward with her life. She deserved to be mocked for her ignorance.

Finn and Evie walked the closest to her. She watched them as Finn apologized for scaring her, Evie promised not to be rude again, and they both agreed that their fight was over. Ren enjoyed the way they spoke to each other. Finn never babied his words and Evie never hid her forceful character. He messed up her already knotty hair before taking her hand in his.

“Look,” Merrigan said. “The ship is sailing away.”“Sloan, do you know who the sea-people are?” Evie asked. “They’re called the Iasteni,” Sloan said. “They live on the sea

for their entire lives and only come to the coast once every ten years to raid villages for food and supplies. They’re not interesting enough to keep talking about. Let’s concentrate on getting to the next black building before nightfall.”

“Ten years,” Finn whistled. “What happens if they don’t get enough supplies on a raid to last ten years?”

“They die on their ship,” Sloan shrugged. “Or so the legends say.”

“I think I’d like to live at sea,” Evie mused.“No, you wouldn’t,” Sloan said. “I’ve met more than a few

Iasteni. Too many generations spending too much time on the sea…they aren’t what I’d consider human.”

“Really?” Merrigan perked up. “Aqueous adaptations? How fascinating! How would you describe them? Do they look like they’re evolving into a completely new species, or is it more like Ren, where she still looks relatively normal?”

“Excuse me?” Ren didn’t have the will to argue again, so her tone was much more resigned than Merrigan deserved.

���87

“The Iasteni don’t have physical adaptations,” Sloan said. He slid out of his jacket and tied it around his waist as he walked. His shirt clung to him with sweat. “Behavioral adaptations.”

“Do you think we could try to signal to them? Do you think they’d come?” Evie asked wistfully.

“Do they have a different set of laws from the Disposables?” Merrigan asked.

“We don’t have laws,” Ren mumbled before she could stop herself.

“You need them,” Jasmin said cooly. “Enough of the Iasteni. Can we please just focus on getting to

the next black building sometime today?” Sloan groaned. “Look, I can still see the one we left this morning. We’ve barely moved.”

The Iasteni ship crawled over and beyond the horizon with one last, strong puff of black smoke. Evie sighed as it did so, Finn patted her head, Merrigan didn’t watch, Sloan was too focused on plodding ahead to turn his head, and Jasmin hardly lifted her eyes from the Bridge, anyway, to avoid seeing the water. Ren made the sign of the crescent as she watched the group, trying to figure out why she was no longer afraid of any of them killing her for being so useless.

! THE WATCH88

C H A P T E R E I G H T

OZRYN

Ren’s fourth day on the Bridge started with extreme thirst. She barely ate breakfast to save her throat the pain and licked her lips incessantly, even though she knew it wouldn’t make a difference. When the group started walking for the day, she reassumed her position along the railing and shook her canteen next to her ear. It sounded like there was a good amount of water in there, but she had no idea how long this Bridge was and wouldn’t risk drinking too much too fast.

Sloan abandoned his position at the centerline and walked next to Ren. He was in a suspiciously calm mood, neither snapping at the group to go faster or mumbling to himself about how little time they had left. Ren couldn’t see any reason for it, and therefore didn’t trust it. He touched her scarf to make sure it was in place, then suggested she finish the breakfast she still carried in her hands, then tightened the knot on her scarf.

“It’s fine,” Ren said, swatting away his hands, uncomfortable with the thoughtless way he invited himself into her personal space.

“You can finish your water,” he said. “We’ll get fresh today, in Ozryn.”

“So we’ll be back on land?” Ren wasted no time in unscrewing the cap of her canteen and taking a sip.

Sloan sniggered and left it at that. Ren expected him to start badgering her, or continue to fuss about her scarf, but he merely

���89

sauntered next to her with his face pointed at the rising sun and his eyes half closed.

Evie was walking out in front, brandishing her arm as if she held a sword and hopped from foot to foot. “My lady,” she said, bowing to thin air. “I’m afraid we’ve taken over your ship.”

“Not so,” she cried out in an exaggeratedly high voice. She took the sword fighter’s stance again and spoke with a cruel smile directed at her imaginary opponent. “You have stepped into your grave, Captain, prepare to meet the sea. En garde! Prêt! Allez!”

Evie acted out a sword fight, bouncing between the Captain and the Pirate with cries of ‘Aye! You’ve broken my cutlass!’ and, ‘Aha! Aha, Captain’!”

“You never should have told her about the Iasteni,” Finn said to Sloan, who only shrugged and pretended not to be amused by Evie’s dramatic portrayal of the Captain dying. Ren smiled and enjoyed the encore performance, in which the first mate reclaimed the ship from the pirate.

“When we get to Ozryn,” Sloan said, keeping his voice low so that only Ren would hear him. “You need to keep your face covered. You can’t let anyone on the street see your face. I have a few friends in Ozryn, Citizens I knew before my Base was destroyed. We’ll be spending the night with them, but absolutely no one else can see your face.”

“Why are all these Bases being destroyed? Is it the Doctors?”“Did you hear what I said about your scarf? Absolutely no

one, Ren.”Ren didn’t even bother asking for an explanation. Sloan was

satisfied with her half-hearted shrug. Ren thought she saw the ghost of a smile soften his jaw and nearly cried out in shock, but it dissipated too quickly for her to be sure.

“Ozryn is going to be a bit of a shock,” he said. “I’m warning you now, so prepare yourself.”

“I think we both know I won’t be able to handle Ozryn no matter how thoroughly I prepare myself,” Ren said bitterly. “I’m

! THE WATCH90

really not in the mood to argue about my ineptitude again, so if you don’t mind…”

Sloan snorted. “You’re becoming more ornery every day. Getting comfortable?”

Ren humphed and pursed her lips. She was grasping for a good retort when she saw something far ahead. It looked like a black building, but it was much slimmer. She squinted and cupped her hands over her eyes to block the sun. Evie had noticed the building as well, and, after they had let Merrigan regain her breath and control her coughing, they rushed forward with barely controlled excitement.

The slim building grew and others popped up around it. Soon, there were more than Ren could count and were so tall she couldn’t even guess how many floors there were. Ozryn slid slowly out of the haze of distance, its details sharpening and multiplying without any regard for the fathomless disbelief Ren was falling into.

The Bridge quadrupled in width as the group approached Ozryn. The buildings were built directly onto the Bridge and mostly made of the same metal as the black buildings they had already passed. There were some buildings with entire walls of glass and others made of white plastic streaked with grime and soot. The buildings had windows, signs and paintings decorating their sides, and the edges of the roofs were pointed and shaped into grotesque monsters. Even though they were still a fair distance away, Ren could hear a gentle hum in the air that grew shriller and quieter in turn. It took Ren more than a few moments to recognize the hum as voices. She had never heard so many different voices in her entire life.

The buildings were squished right up against the railings, the right side adorned with a platform hanging off the railing and suspended by thick metal chains. Dozens of rickety staircases twirled from the platform to another floating below it on the sea. Large, majestic ships were circling and tethered to the platform, their sails snapping in the wind. Tiny figures dressed in dark

���91

colors and glinting metal swarmed all over both platforms, moving great crates onto ships, shouting to each other, and crowding the staircases.

There was no great gate or sign to mark the start of Ozryn. The buildings simply sprung up from the Bridge like weeds. Ren stopped a few feet from the first line of buildings and stared, lips parted, at the scene before her. Sloan and the group clustered around her. Sloan sighed impatiently and said they should keep going, but Ren ignored him.

Between the buildings were long, jagged, narrow streets teeming with people. The people closest to the edge of the city noticed their group standing there, but didn’t do much more than shoot them a dirty look or two and continue on with what they were doing. Ren heard laughter, shouting, and a baby’s cry all in the same instant. Ren had thought Hythe had been crowded, and didn’t particularly trust the reality of the scene before her. She wrung her hands together and shook her head slowly. How was it possible she had never known Ozryn existed? How could she have possibly missed the fact that cities were being built again?

“I never knew,” she breathed. “How is this even possible? Where did they get all this metal?”

Sloan put a hand on Ren’s shoulder and gently pushed her forward. “Perhaps it’s better to hold off on questions like that until you’ve calmed down. This is nothing, wait until you see Azmarin.”

Ren’s ankles were wobbly as she started forward. “What’s Azmarin?”

“The City of the Bridge. Close to five thousand in population, with a watchtower eighty stories high right in the middle of the city.”

“C-can’t wait. Assuming I manage to stay alive long enough,” Ren said. As she stumbled closer, the group inched along with her. “There has to be hundreds of Doctors in there…”

“More.”

! THE WATCH92

“If you won’t tell me how this happened, tell me when,” Ren begged. She forgot to be embarrassed at that moment, either from the enormity before her or the absence of Sloan’s scowl.

“Your people have made substantial progress in the past decade or two, I’ll give you that. Rebuilding isn’t easy,” Sloan said. “You really never heard of Ozryn or Azmarin in Hythe? Azmarin was finished by then, but Ozryn was still being built, there must have been people leaving to find work building.”

“If I did, I don’t remember.” “Excuse me if I’m not surprised. Your scarf is very important,

Ren. Don’t touch anything, don’t let anyone see your face, and make sure your hair is covered. I won’t be able to do much to protect you if a Doctor finds you in here.”

Sloan chose a street less crowded than the others and led them into Ozryn. There was no distinctive line to cross, no marker that signaled to Ren she was entering civilization. Only the wind changed. The tall buildings buffeted the wind and the smell of salt in the air was marred with the dirty tinge of metal. Sloan had them walk in a huddle with Evie and Ren at the center. Eyes peered out at them from behind curtains, the people they passed on the street covering their mouths and whispering to their companions. The street was so narrow they had to squeeze around groups of people who stood there firmly against making room for them to pass. Ren clutched at the knot in her white scarf in panic and walked practically on top of Sloan’s heels.

There were ladies dressed in tight bodices and pants with heeled boots laced to their thighs, others wearing slim, refined gowns and toting men on their arms wearing suits of sleek fabric. Each one Ren passed wrinkled their nose. She could only imagine how dirty they must look. If she had been wearing a dress of emerald cloth and wearing boots of shining black leather, she wouldn’t want some dirty outlander to come traipsing in front of her house and possibly getting dust in her curled, shiny hair. Even Sloan looked rustic compared to the sophisticated, uncomfortably handsome Ozryn men.

���93

They reached the end of the street and came to an intersection. Streams of ladies and men walked every which way and not giving a thought to walking in some kind of order, making the intersection a jumbled mess. Ren huddled closer to Evie and took her hand as the group weaved through the intersection. The ends of the street they were crossing were bordered by the Bridge’s railing. The wind barreled over the street with an alarming force. All the ladies clutched their feathery, elegant hats and all the men raised their voices to be heard over the whoosh of the wind.

Everywhere Ren looked, there was a clock. Dangling around the ladies’ necks on twinkling chains of gold, hanging above nearly every window, fastened on top of posts built into the middle of the street, swinging from the jacket pockets of the men. Each one ticked exorbitantly loudly, louder than a regular clock, and with a preciseness that seemed to shake the Bridge itself.

“What time is is?” Jasmin asked. Ren laughed feebly.“It’s something of a fad here,” Sloan said. “Comes with having

a port.”They made it through the intersection and continued down a

smaller, quieter street. There was no one on this street except a cluster of boisterous kids at the other end, at the entrance to another intersection. Ren heard Sloan groan under his breath. The kids saw them coming and picked up slabs of metal that had been leaning against a building. Fastened on the metal were pendants and bracelets, all with clocks.

“I want one!” Evie wriggled her hand from Ren’s grasp and darted around Sloan before either could catch her, then sprinted down the street to the clocksellers without a stitch of fear. Finn led them in running after his sister, Sloan cursing Ren viciously for letting her go.

The kids were dressed in rags, their shirts peppered with holes and their pants three sizes too big. The were thin as sticks, their faces smudged with dirt and sparkling with malice.

! THE WATCH94

“One please,” Evie chirped, holding out her palm. The clocksellers looked down at her with ravenous leers and the stench of easy money clouding their eyes.

“Ten bits, little lady,” said the boy closest to her. He held his metal slab of clock pendants under her nose.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, mesmerized by the pendants and barely paying attention to how easy a target she was making herself.

“Ten bits. They don’t cost nothing.”“C’mon,” Finn said. He took Evie by the shoulders and tried

to steer her away, but the kids had formed a loose circle around them, their clocks ticking away persistently.

“Here,” Ren said. She dug through her bag to the small purse she carried and took out two triangular bronze coins. The purse had been her mother’s as well, all the money she had owned before she died, and it was starting to grow worrisomely thin to Ren. She handed the bits to the boy and said, “Take your pick, Evie.”

“Really?” Evie beamed. She chose a large bronze clock pendant thicker than her hand. Its face was rusted around the edges with age and inscribed with hard-edged symbols Ren didn’t recognize. The symbols weren’t even arranged like a real clock. Evie turned to Jasmin and showed off her pendant, to which Jasmin blinked slowly, longingly.

“It doesn’t come with a chain?” Finn frowned. The clocksellers laughed and put the price of a chain at over twenty bits. Sloan scoffed and took Evie firmly by the elbow, steering her away from the kids, across the intersection, and down another secluded street. Sloan glanced at Ren, doing a double take and barking, “Are you kidding me! Your scarf!”

Ren cursed and pulled up her scarf from where it had fallen back onto her neck.

“What a great find,” Evie sang. “An authentic Western Cloudlands watch.”

���95

“It’s very beautiful,” Jasmin said, the slightest intonation of bitterness in her tone.

“You didn’t need to risk your life for it, however beautiful it might be,” Finn said.

Evie only rolled her eyes and asked, “Ren, what were those things you gave them? Bits? What are they?”

“It’s money,” Sloan answered her. “It’s something the Disposables use to buy what they want. It’s a long story and not really important.”

“Ok, well, thanks Ren, for whatever you gave them.”The deeper Sloan took them into Ozryn, the more people

they passed dressed like the clocksellers. The streets became even more crowded, and the people they passed wore filthy clothes and smelled vaguely of sweat. Some wore all black and covered their faces with masks, some woman wore sheer gowns and strolled down the streets calling out to the men, others wore layers of leather and metal with knives and guns hanging off their belts. The men, in particular, were loud, uncouth, and stared at Jasmin as if she was a jewel found in a sea of sand. Ren kept a hand firmly holding her scarf in place. She thought she saw one of the boy clocksellers ducking through the crowd, but it was impossible to distinguish him from the swarm of similarly dressed kids running amok. There were still clocks everywhere, with the added bonus of small children hanging from the clockposts and calling out the time every ten minutes.

There were so many more people in the interior of Ozryn that Sloan couldn’t find secluded streets to lead them down anymore, and no one let them pass until they had been thoroughly goaded.

“Lovely, more outliers.”“Not even showing her face, this one. As if something that

obvious works at being discreet.”“What’d’ya think, Jop, followers for the temple or the

Reapers?”

! THE WATCH96

“Hope the Reapers. I wouldn’t want to loose my chances at a warrior woman with a rifle like that to the sky.”

“Sloan,” Merrigan hissed as Jasmin slid between two men with ravenous eyes and only barely made it through untouched. “How much further?”

“Not far. Ren, by me. Finn, keep Evie in line. This way.” He turned down a wide street where the Bridge underfoot was painted with swirls of blues and yellow. The street opened up to a sprawling, ornate Moon-and-Sun temple with a stone sundial set above the entryway. It was made of metal, but painted white, its walls free of clocks or any adornment. Solar acolytes and Sun-selfs, those that worshipped the daylight, were leaving the temple in a tight line. Their bronze-painted skin and the firestones peppering their hair were lackluster in the dimness of the coming moonrise.

Through the entryway, Ren could make out dozens of chief Moon-souls settling themselves around a blank steel globe resting in the middle of an atrium. They wore navy robes with silver sashes and white slippers on their feet. Each of them were making the sign of the crescent into their palms as they sat and waited for moonrise.

Ren couldn’t help pausing in front of the temple. She felt her heart tugging forward, telling her to go inside and fully embrace her Moon-soul. Sloan couldn’t peg her religion as some oddball habit any longer, not when she had proof that it was something that held real possibilities. The chief Moon-souls had achieved mind balance through the way and the rite…hadn’t that been something she used to strive for?

“Which side do you fall on?” Jasmin asked. She was standing next to Ren, her gaze respectfully pointed to her feet. It was an unspoken expectation of anyone in the Moon-and-Sun that independents shouldn’t look upon any temple with the intention of understanding its importance. Ren had never met anyone outside of Moon-and-Sun who respected the temple, or even knew about this little expectation. Except Jasmin, apparently.

���97

“Without the night, we are forever dark, says the Moon-soul,” Ren recited, making the sign of the crescent on her right palm.

“Without the light, we are forever blind, cry the Sun-selfs,” Jasmin said. “Nebulae monks are proficient in all religions, even the Moon-and-Sun chants of the Disposables. It has its uses.”

“What kind of a monk carries a weapon like that?”“The mind is protected at whatever cost,” Jasmin answered,

tilting her chin upwards with pride. “There is no shame in being a monk and a warrior.”

“I didn’t say there was,” Ren said quietly. She turned reluctantly from the temple before Sloan got too far ahead of them. She chewed the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t thought of it before, but seeing the temple had made her realize something that should have been so obvious. Finding protection from the Doctors wasn’t as hard as she thought it was, not when she was a Moon-soul, and didn’t require her to put her faith in someone as erratic and cruel as Sloan.

Sloan turned down one street, then down another, then strode two paces down a thin alley. He opened and walked right through a banged up door in the back of a particularly shiny, ten story building. The room beyond held black drapes on the walls, a very large, empty vase, and another door. The group squished inside. Sloan knocked on the second door three times, waited, then called out, “Desmond!”

The door swung open. A man stood in the doorway. He was very tall, muscular, and dressed oddly similar to Sloan. His hair was peppered with gray and fell around his shoulders in a messy tangle. He cursed when he saw Sloan and pulled him into a lengthy hug. They clapped each other on the back and Desmond laughed. When they separated, Desmond ushered Ren and the group inside and shut the door smartly behind them.

This room was much brighter, with painted light gray walls and a matching table and chair set in the center. A large cabinet rested against one wall, a desk piled with scrapes of papers of clothes against another. Large white candles were burning in

! THE WATCH98

alcoves along the walls and filling the room with a homey glow. There were no windows, but there was a painted-white door next to the cabinet. It was quiet without the voices on the street and the incessant ticking of the clocks. Ren undid her scarf as she looked around and let it pool loosely around her neck.

“Just for the night, if that’s all right, Des,” Sloan said, dropping into one of the bright chairs at the tablet with the air of someone returning home after a long day.

“Back to charging for an escort across the Bridge, eh?” Desmond’s voice was deep and rumbly, and his eyes were a bright blue that seemed to twinkle with every word he spoke.

“This is Finnian and Evangeline Lynch—”“You can call me Evie, sir.”“Finn is good for me. Nice to meet you, Desmond.”“—Merrigan Clennan—”“You have a lovely home, sir.”“—and Jasmin of the Western Cloudlands.”Jasmin nodded curtly.“Shit, talk about important people,” Desmond whistled,

rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes lost their twinkle and squinted suspiciously at Sloan as he introduced himself to the group. “My name is Desmond Keir, former Keeper of Power, Command Division.” He bowed is head to each of them in turn, smirking when he caught Ren’s eye. “You forgot someone, Rian.”

Ren started. She had been so distracted by the new names attached to her once simple group to notice she had been left out.

Sloan said, “Her name is Seren of the Northern Cloudlands.”Desmond’s grin didn’t look like he believed Sloan at all. “You

lot up north always have such lofty names.”“I suppose,” Ren said meekly. Something about the way Sloan

was tapping his heel was making Ren even more nervous than she already was.

Desmond stared at her, the corners of his eyes slowly crinkling, then let out a booming laugh. Startled, Ren fumbled for something to say, but Desmond had already turned his back on

���99

her and was sitting at the table muttering, “Keep it secret then, old friend.”

Sloan’s face flushed as Desmond sat next to him. The group piled their bags and blankets neatly under the desk and took seats around the table, Ren sitting between Jasmin and Finn. She exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm herself, scooting her chair closer to the table so that she could rest her elbows on top of it. The group looked somehow strange indoors, and much dirtier than Ren thought possible. She was so used to seeing them red-faced under the sun and suppressing coughs that having them sit politely around a table and engage in small talk without arguing was jarring.

She didn’t know how to act in Desmond’s house, so she didn’t speak. There was nothing she wanted to say, anyway. The group was talking about Ozryn and everything they had seen that day with interest, and Sloan and Desmond were reminiscing and talking about people Ren had never heard of. She longed to be alone and think, but the only way she was going to be alone was if she jumped into that cabinet and locked herself inside.

The white painted door opened and every head at the table whipped around in alarm. In walked a slight, morose woman with heavily lidded eyes and thick, dark hair. She paused to take in the room, then said in a melancholic sort of voice, “I don’t have enough food for them all, Desmond. Why do you never tell me when you plan to have company over?”

Sloan jumped to his feet with a bright smile and encompassed the woman in a hug sure to snap her in half. “Masha, it’s been too long.”

“Oh, Rian, hello. I didn’t notice you there,” she said, her voice barely climbing out of its dreary tone despite the smile on her face. “How are you?”

“Fair enough. You don’t mind if we trouble you for a night, do you?”

“Stay longer, please.” Masha pulled out of their hug and glanced around the table. She didn’t trouble asking who they

! THE WATCH100

were. “I’m sure I can find another loaf of bread or two. Sit down, you must be exhausted. Excuse me.”

She drifted through the white door and returned a few moments later carrying a large metal tray. On it were three gloriously hearty loaves of bread toasted and topped with cheese, a large bowl of thin white broth filled with vegetables, a stack of smaller bowls, and a pitcher of water. Masha placed the tray in the middle of the table and began ladling broth into each little bowl.

“Why’ve you come back to Ozryn?” she asked Sloan as she cut the bread into even slices. Both she and Desmond had adjusted to having so many unexpected visitors suspiciously quickly to Ren. If it wasn’t for the fresh glass of water she held, Ren might have been worried.

“Passing through for the night,” Sloan answered, taking a bowl and a silver spoon from Masha. “We’re going to Base One.”

Desmond and Masha froze and glanced at each other. Masha shook her head sadly, and Desmond scratched his jaw. He said, “Even if they let you return, which they unequivocally will not, what makes you think it’ll be any better off planet? The Union is putting everything into this program of theirs without taking the time to find a viable system to populate. It’s not worth risking your life.”

“It’s better than staying on Earth,” Sloan insisted. “The Reapers have gained more ground in a month than I’ve seen entire legions of Keepers of Power do in years. The Doctors are taking over whatever bits of the world they want. They’re destroying entire Bases.”

“Well, then, I guess the Citizens will just have to get used to living on the surface,” Desmond said. “They’ll never take you back, Sloan. It’s ludicrous. What makes you think anything has changed after all this time?”

As Desmond spoke, he turned his gaze to stare firmly at Ren. He arched an eyebrow, as if expecting her to join the conversation. Masha, handing out the bowls of soup, wrinkled her

���101

nose and followed Desmond’s stare. It didn’t take her long to see something in Ren’s face to make her eyebrows shoot upwards and lips pop open. Ren’s heart raced. The only thing she could do was sit there silently and, hopefully, not give them the reaction they were looking for. If they weren’t going to tell her anything, she wasn’t going to start fighting them for information. She could agonize over the fact that Desmond had said ‘off planet’ perfectly well in silence. She tucked her hands under her legs to hide their shaking, willing herself not to cry out of sheer frustration.

“It’s taken care of,” Sloan said. “Will you consider coming with us? It won’t be safe here for much longer.”

“It’s not safe now, but we’re doing all right,” Desmond said, inclining his head to the table full of food. “All you need is a few friends and food and water are easy to come by.”

“Friends or not, the food is going to run out. What the Doctors did at our Base they’ve started with every other one they can find.”

“The rest of us were at Base Eight,” Finn said. “The Reapers destroyed it, then the Doctors came to test the survivors. Their version of testing is extermination, where Citizens are concerned. If Sloan hadn’t shown up, the Doctors would have found and killed us all.”

“The Doctors aren’t even the worst of it,” said Sloan. “Filavirus is getting out of hand again. The only option is to abandon ship.”

“I take it you’ve heard Cecelia’s been made Captain?” Desmond smirked.

“Of course I have,” Sloan said, rolling his eyes. “Eat, before it gets cold,” Masha said to Ren. “Right…” Ren said, jumping to pick up her spoon and dip it

into the soup. Her thoughts chugged along with a maddening reluctance to accept what she was hearing as true. She wasn’t exactly sure what Base One had to do with going off planet, or what Desmond was insinuating about the Union being unwilling to take Sloan back, but she was sure that she was the integral

! THE WATCH102

piece in Sloan’s plan. All three of them, Sloan, Masha, and Desmond, seemed to know something about Ren that made her valuable. It had to do with her mother, that was the only thing that made sense. Whoever her mother had been and whatever the Watch was capable of was going to get Sloan what he wanted—which was apparently to leave Earth.

Why am I letting myself be used like this? she thought. There’s no reason I have to trust Sloan for protection anymore. He’s just using me. There’s another option, I was so stupid not to have thought of it until now. I have the temple. I am a Moon-soul. The temple will protect me.

If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with her thoughts, she thought she might have enjoyed the soup.

���103

C H A P T E R N I N E

FLAYER

“What do you plan to do after Exodus?” Sloan asked between spoonfuls of soup.

“Same thing we’re doing right now,” Desmond shrugged. “The Union has left people to die because they weren’t ‘good enough’ before, and I won’t be part of it again.”

“That was something all three of us used to agree on,” Masha said, raising her eyebrows at Sloan.

“If you were in my position,” Sloan growled defensively. “You would be barreling through Base One’s front door to get to Desmond, the Union be damned. Once the Union leaves, there’ll be nothing left.”

“It’ll be nice to see certain merchants brought down a few pegs without the Union’s supplies, though,” Desmond said. “Don’t want to miss that.”

“The Union has contact with the surface?” Ren blurted out, too horrified to remember to be quiet.

“Where do you imagine those juicy vegetables came from?” Desmond purred, pointing to Ren’s bowl of soup with his spoon. “They came from the Union’s farms, sold to a handful of Disposables that know about the Union and agree to keep its source secret in exchange for exclusive distribution. Being the only man selling potatoes to an entire surface of merchants is worth confidentiality. I haven’t met a Disposable yet that knows where exactly their food comes from. The Union will do most anything in exchange for Disposable subjects for their

! THE WATCH104

experiments, including selling their food. Taking subjects by force is such a hassle, you know, you never know what might be exposed.

“The surface isn’t up to harvesting anything yet. Maybe in a few years, if it’s treated the right way, but who know what’ll happen now that the Doctors have decided they deserve to rule over everyone else.”

“So, if you’re saying the Union is leaving—” Ren clamped her mouth shut in fear of the look Sloan was giving her.

“Everyone will starve, revolt, die, the like,” Desmond said flippantly. “If you’re supposed to be from the Cloudlands, I’d suggest acting a little more learned of the world. You’ll blow your cover quicker if you don’t.”

Sloan sighed heavily. “What’ve you been up to, Masha? Still working at the port?”

“No,” Masha replied. “I’ve taken up something a lot more dangerous and satisfying.”

Sloan barked a laugh and said, “You used to be so dutiful, what happened?”

“You two,” she said, jabbing her finger at Sloan and Desmond. “And Anya. I’m surrounded by rogues and fugitives. What’s the point of being honest?”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Desmond chuckled and pinched Masha’s ear.

“I saw Morris the other day,” Sloan said. “He became a Reaper, did you know?”

Desmond whistled, long and low. “Leaving Seventy-Three was hard for him. He was here a few times to find work, but he never could get over losing his Ship.”

“He was the one who recruited us in the first place,” Masha said softly. “Ironic that he joined the Reapers in the end.”

“Sometimes, there’s no other way to find food,” Sloan said, looking at Ren. “I don’t think he truly became one of them, in the end. He had no other choice.”

���105

The three of them lowered their eyes, each distracted by their thoughts and memories surrounding the Reaper Morris.

Desmond broke their reverie by turning to Jasmin and asking, “When were you recruited from the Western Cloudlands?”

“When I was around four years old,” Jasmin said politely. She hadn’t lifted her eyes from Ren since Masha had recognized Ren for whatever it was that was special about her.

“I love it out west,” Desmond sighed, leaning back in his chair with a fond expression on his face. “I’ve been there a few times since Base Seventy-Three went down. You must remember the temples, at least?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”“Sir?” Desmond guffawed. “I suppose I’ll have to wear that

title someday, eh?”“That time usually comes when you’ve started growing grays,”

Masha said, twirling a lock of his salt-and-pepper hair around her finger.

“Hey, now!” Masha raised her eyebrows, her thin lips curled up in a smirk.

Desmond laughed louder than ever as he cupped her face with one hand and said something in an unfamiliar language. Masha and Sloan both burst out laughing. Ren watched them in barely concealed wonderment; the bitterness and envy that had cropped up at the beginning of the meal was quickly tucked away in favor of studying how easily the three of them laughed together so that she could emulate that herself, someday.

A distant knock stamped out their laughter. Masha flew through the white door next to the cabinet so quickly that Ren didn’t have time to properly grow nervous before the door shut behind her with a tidy snap. Desmond didn’t look worried, until he heard the tinkle of a small bell and shot to his feet. He opened the white door just enough to squeeze through, then slammed it shut.

Sloan had also stood up at the tinkle of the bell. He paced along the wall that held the white door, hands banging off his

! THE WATCH106

thighs. Finn was the one to finally break the tension and whisper, “What’s going on?”

“The bell is Masha’s signal for the Doctors. The Doctors must be going door-to-door down the main streets,” Sloan breathed.

The blood drained from Ren’s face and her head spun. Her dinner churned in her stomach and her throat itched. Had she touched anything? Left a fingerprint? Her scarf had only fallen off that once…and she had thought that boy clockseller was following them…Sloan had warned her to keep her face hidden. What if whatever was recognizable about her to Sloan and his friends was recognizable to strangers as well? Panic pooled behind her eyes and made her vision starkly sharp.

She had put them all in danger. “They’re here for me,” she said. “They won’t hurt any of you is

I surrender.”Ren was banking on Sloan to agree with her. He stopped

pacing, blinked at her a few times, then resumed his pacing without bothering to answer. Ren got to her feet and started for the white door, but a small hand encircled her own and held her back. Evie clutched onto her, shaking her head urgently, her eyes wide and glossy.

Sloan made a desperate shushing motion to the silent room. Footsteps were making their way to the other side of the white door. Sloan had his pistols out and Jasmin her rifle propped on the table when the white door creaked open with a low whine. Desmond’s head poked through.

“You need to leave. I’ve got a group of Reapers and a Doctor here looking for a girl they describe as looking strikingly similar to our lovely Seren over there. They received a tip that the woman they wanted was seen in the area. They know us, and they know we’d be the type to defy them. They’re accusing us of harboring such an infectious individual. Go out the back door, follow the alley to the third street, turn right, and knock on the third door you see. Masha’s sister Anya lives there, she’ll take care of you. We’ll ’comm her and tell her you’re coming.”

���107

As he spoke, Ren craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the room beyond, but it was only a dark hallway. Desmond clapped Sloan on the shoulder, they shared a long look, then Desmond’s head disappeared and the white door was shut again.

Evie dropped Ren’s hand and went through the other door, to the room with the black drapes. She opened the door leading to the alley and perched on the doorstep, keeping watch on the threshold. Sloan was struggling to get an equal amount of bags and blankets on everyone’s backs.

“Sloan, this makes no sense,” Ren said, trying to push him away. “Take the Watch and let me go to the Doctors. I don’t need everyone in danger for me.”

“Didn’t you hear Desmond? The Doctors are already accusing them of harboring someone infectious. Turning yourself over to them now would mean their death as well. Go, Evie’s already in the alley!”

Ren took what blankets he gave her and her own bag, then stumbled after Finn and Jasmin into the alley. The alley was black, the moon’s light hidden from them by the surrounding buildings. Ren grabbed Jasmin’s bag and followed her, Sloan’s breath on the back of her neck. The alley’s walls, already narrow to begin with, grew closer together as the group groped their way down the alley. Their bulky bags and blankets scraped along the walls. Soon enough, Jasmin was stuck, wriggling furiously and hissing, “I can’t fit with this huge bag. Finn—!”

Jasmin froze, her head looking at something over Finn’s shoulder. Ren felt her willpower dissipate slowly, painfully, as a shadow separated itself from the gloom of night. A Doctor stood sentinel at the end of the alley, its beak mask making a horrible, scratching, rattling sound as it breathed. Evie was closest to it, barely an arm’s length away, and Finn swore vehemently as he scrambled to pull her back. But, he was just as stuck as Jasmin and held back by the unwieldy bag that held the tent. His fingertips barely brushed Evie’s hair as the Doctor swooped forward to snatch Evie from the alley.

! THE WATCH108

“NO!” Finn bellowed, thrashing helplessly to disentangle himself from the tent bag. The alley narrowed so drastically that Ren, who was only a few inches behind Jasmin, wasn’t trapped yet. She slid off her bag and the straps of the rolled blankets without a second thought. She felt Sloan’s hands grasping for her as she clambered clumsily over Jasmin, but his hands slipped away without finding anything to hold on to. He yelled for her to come back, but she was already climbing over Finn. She fell in a squashed lump at his feet, then jumped up and slipped out of the alley and into an intersection. A muffled cry had her turning left and sprinting down that street. The moonlight was stronger there, she could just make out a solitary black, lumbering shape directly ahead.

Ren charged after the Doctor, her legs soaring and heart hammering so loudly that she couldn’t think of anything except going faster…then wisps of black fabric were hitting her face and she grabbed the Doctor’s cloak. She dug her heels into the Bridge to stop and yanked on the cloak with all her strength. The grossly tall Doctor stumbled backwards and fell on top of her.

Evie, dislodged from the Doctor’s arms in the fall, rolled to her feet. She took the beak mask in her small fists and heaved. There was a horrible, guttural moan coming from inside the beak as Evie pulled. Impossibly long, gloved fingers scratched at Evie’s face. Ren, trapped under the Doctor, dug her hands into the fabric surrounding the Doctor’s mask and held its head in place. Evie pulled again and ripped off the mask.

The air was filled with bloodcurdling screams as the Doctor writhed in pain. Its limbs flailed, knocking Evie over and smacking Ren in the head so hard she blacked out for a breath. Evie ducked and swerved around the Doctor’s flailing arms to help Ren out from underneath it. The two of them backed up against the cool metal of the closest building and watched the Doctor twist its body in agony. Evie propelled herself off the wall, reared her leg, and, with a frightening growl, kicked the Doctor in

���109

the face. Evie picked up the mask and walloped the Doctor in the side of the head until it stopped moving.

Panting and clutching Evie’s shoulders, Ren looked down at what used to be a Doctor. Its face was somehow young and elderly at the same time; it had baby cheeks, a fuzzy start to a beard, and a short forehead. Wrinkles lined its forehead and lips, its eyebrows and hair were gray, and the bags under its eyes were tinged a dark purple.

“Ugly,” Evie said as she stared at the Doctor. “You think I killed it?”

“I do, yes,” Ren rasped. She felt a familiar tug behind her eyes, the threat of tears, and tried to quell the pity that washed over her in waves. Pity for the murdered Doctor, but most of all, pity for Evie. She was a child and already considered murder excusable in certain circumstances.

Evie turned over the beak mask to look inside. It was lined with tiny tubes, flashing lights, and small knobs that released small puffs of air. The puffs alternated between a white cloud and a bright orange gas. Evie pointed at the knobs and said, “I bet they have sterilized air puffed at them, then look, that yellow must be from a Viride dissipator. A treatment built right into their masks. If we all had these, no one would have to worry about getting sick.”

“But then we’d look like that, all wrinkly and old from too much pure air,” Ren guessed, her voice thin with horror at how mutated a person could become from a constant supply of Viride. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, not yet. He was about to flay me and test my blood, but then he heard you coming and started to run. He must have thought you were someone more dangerous.”

“C’mon, we have to get back to the others before more Doctors find us.”

Ren took Evie’s hand, squeezed it tightly, and the two of them jogged back the way they had come. The alley behind Masha and Desmond’s house was easy enough to find. Finn’s body was

! THE WATCH110

hanging out of it, his arms swinging in the intersection, the tent bag holding him back.

“Evie! EVIE!”Evie ran to her brother and hugged him. Finn, dangling out of

the alley, pressed Evie to his chest and held the back of her head. Ren hovered next to them, pretending not to mind how sweet Evie’s voice sounded as she described just how thoroughly she had killed a Doctor.

Getting Finn, Sloan, and Jasmin through the alley, plus retrieving the things that Ren had left behind, took so long that the air was light with the coming of moonset by the time they all stood in the intersection. Ozryn was starting to wake up, the distant bang of windows being thrown open and buzz of voices heralding the morning. There was an energy in the air that was shattered with a horrified cry behind them.

“We left the Doctor back there,” Ren said, hurrying to strap on her blankets and slip on her bag.

“Are you sure it’s dead?” Sloan asked. “I have no idea,” Ren said, and decided that she would rather

think the Doctor only injured than Evie a killer. Jasmin lead them through Desmond’s instructions, her rifle

notched into her shoulder and ready for anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. Finn, Evie, Merrigan, and Ren huddled together in the middle with Sloan in the rear, jogging sideways to make sure no one was following them. Merrigan dug her palms into her mouth to repress her coughs. Finn and Jasmin trembled with the effort of keeping their wheezing silent. More cries and pleas for help shot through the air from the area they had left the Doctor. Jasmin skidded to a stop in front of a pale gray door and knocked.

The door flew open without hesitation and they filed inside. Ren, her foot poised over the threshold, glanced at Sloan. His jaw was clenched and his hands pressed against her back. Then, over his shoulder creeped long, gloved fingers. They clutched his throat and wrenched him back. Two Doctors had come from no

���111

where and were pushing him to the Bridge, a third pulling a glinting, silver flaying knife from inside its cloak.

“NO!” Ren screamed, turning from the door and letting it shut. She pounced on the Doctor with the flaying knife and they crashed to the Bridge in a mess of wispy black fabric. The Doctor scrambled beneath her, its body ghastly thin and bony. She rolled off it and landed hard on her back. The Doctor was on its feet in one swift swoop. It stood over her, eight feet of blackness. It had something in its fingers, something too thin to make out, and held it delicately between thumb and forefinger underneath its beak. It took a rattling, sickly inhale…Ren realized that it was holding strands of her hair…a tiny green light illuminated on the side of the Doctor’s beak…the beak had scanned her hair, had recognized her as a fugitive…

Fear stabbed her heart and she scuttled backwards, too numb to get to her feet and run. The Doctor let out a long, deep, terrifying laugh and surged forward to throttle her. The two Doctors that were holding down Sloan released him and swarmed around Ren instead. The heat of so much black fabric was suffocating her, she couldn’t scream with so much black in her face…their beaks caressed her, almost lovingly…they pinned her to the ground, one Doctor turning a flaying knife over in his long fingers.

“No, no,” Ren pleaded, not strong enough to fight her way through their grasp. They may have been absurdly thin, but they were also absurdly strong.

The knife cut through her sleeve and came down on her upper arm, hooking underneath her skin and peeling, stripping. Ren screamed, her head banging against the Bridge as she thrashed in pain, white pops and sparks fizzing in front of her eyes. The Doctor held up a long strip of her skin while another took out a bioprobe and scanned it. The probe flashed a frantic green.

Three sharp gunshots peeled through the air. The Doctors fell on her, crushing her into the Bridge and digging into her injured

! THE WATCH112

arm with vengeance. Their weight was lifted off her and she gasped, taking too much air at once and coughing hard enough to make her lungs quiver and burn. Sloan stood above her, face hard, fastening his two pistols back into their holsters. He blinked at her slowly, as if he didn’t understand why he had just wasted three bullets. The strip of flayed skin lay across her stomach and she jerked it off with a disgusted shriek. Sloan held out a hand and pulled Ren to her feet.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and, with a burst of nerve, looked down at her arm. It was covered in blood and pulsating with pain. Her head swam at the sight and her knees quivered, begging her to break down.

“T-took you long enough,” Ren said through a breathy laugh, trying to distract herself from her arm. “Couldn’t decide if you wanted to save me?”

“I was waiting to see if you’d kill one,” Sloan said softly, his eyes boring into her own.

“You…you were waiting?”“I was sure you’d kill one before they flayed you,” Sloan

shrugged, all nonchalance. His eyes traveled to her arm. “I saved you in the end, didn’t I? Don’t get all worked up.”

The gray door banged open so hard that Ren screamed, a few fat tears sliding down her cheeks. Out of the door ran a young woman with impossibly white, impossibly long hair.

“Let’s go, inside, hurry Rian, inside!” she hissed. Her hair streamed behind her as she shoved two hands against Sloan’s chest. “I’ll handle them, get inside!”

Sloan took Ren by her good arm and dragged her through the gray door. The white haired woman, whom Ren took to be Anya, ranted under her breath as she pulled the Doctors’ bodies one by one through a door further down the street.

There was a small entryway inside the gray door with a tight, spiraling staircase taking up most of the space. Sloan and Ren started up, passing seven floors of dizzying steps before coming out onto a landing that held a gray door identical to the one

���113

below. Sloan went through first and ran down a long corridor to another spiral staircase. This one was even tighter, with landings for each floor they passed. They ascended for three floors before reaching the top and another gray door. It opened before they could knock and Finn ushered them inside. Ren stepped into a sitting room filled with chairs, teetering stacks of books, and brilliantly bright paintings on the walls. Sloan slammed the door and leaned against it, panting.

Evie, Jasmin, and Merrigan were sitting in chairs next to a shuttered window. At Ren’s entrance, Merrigan jumped to her feet with a screech and pointed at Ren’s arm.

“You’re bleeding! Are you a carrier? I don’t remember what you said! Are you?”

She dug through her white bag without waiting for Ren to answer, looking for her vial of blue liquid. Finn had moved to stand in front of Evie, the both of them holding the collars of their shirts over their noses and mouths. Jasmin had slid to the far corner of the room and held her rifle halfway up, ready to shoot if Merrigan’s test failed.

Ren clutched her arm to suppress the bleeding, but only made it worse. Her blood was dripping onto the floor, its metallic smell making Ren’s head spin dangerously. She wavered, her eyes rolling as she stumbled sideways. Sloan caught her, his hand slipping into the mess of blood on her arm.

She stared at Sloan’s collar until it came into focus. Her head settled, the dizziness coalescing into a persistent pounding throughout her skull. Merrigan was at her side, tipping a few drops of blue liquid into the blood collecting on the floor. The liquid stayed blue.

“Ren, do you need to sit, or can you walk?” Merrigan’s voice slipped back into its normal, compassionate tone with the danger of infection lifted.

Realizing how weak she must look, Ren stepped away from Sloan and locked her knees to keep herself from swaying

! THE WATCH114

drunkenly. Blood was still oozing from her arm and she did her best to ignore it, lifting her chin and gritting her teeth.

“I’m fine,” Ren said, though her vision was blurry. “Sit, Merrigan can fix you up here,” Sloan said, taking her

elbow and directing her to the nearest chair. Ren pushed him away, her frustration doubling when she lost her balance and stumbled into a pile of books.

“Stay away from me,” she said, a fresh wave of blood washing down to her wrist. Sloan held up his hands innocently, eyebrows raised, and the sheer audacity of his entire person hit Ren like a punch in the face.

“Ren, he’s just trying to help,” Merrigan said. “I really have to seal that wound and take a look at your head. Sloan will—”

“He’s staying away from me,” Ren spat.Sloan rolled his eyes and dropped his hands. “YOU WERE GOING TO LET ME DIE TO PROVE A

POINT!” Ren roared. The effort made her arm bleed in earnest. A faint cry of protest sounded behind the wall Jasmin was standing against.

“You’ve woken one of them,” Merrigan mumbled. “Anya’s not going to like that. Ren, just follow me, all right? Sloan is going to stay here and Finn will help you instead, okay?”

Her sincerity was maddening. Ren didn’t want to be coddled, or taken care of, or do anything besides scream at Sloan until his smirk was blasted permanently off his face. Finn was at her side, his arm sliding around her back and gently nudging her forward. Ren envisioned herself pummeling Sloan to the floor, and made an attempt to push Finn away, but her head was spinning again and her body was too weak from blood loss. Finn had no trouble leading her through a door near where Jasmin was standing and into a short hallway.

The walls were covered with paintings, ceiling to floor, frameless and lapping over one another. There were smiling people, portraits of the sea, the coast, and the sky, swirls of blues and greens, and countless ships. A single window let in the dawn

���115

light. The paintings were alive and sparkling in the sun. Finn let out a low whistle as he looked around the hall.

“She’s very good,” Merrigan said, pausing for the briefest of seconds to consider the portrait of a young girl with a striking resemblance to Masha. “Through this door, I think…”

She opened a bright blue door painted with clusters of gold and silver stars. Inside was a large, blindingly clean room with tall windows and three rows of metal beds. Some of the beds were occupied, their inhabitants snoring peacefully, the closest bed to the door bearing an emancipated woman sitting up and staring at them. A rigid, flat scar carved across her face where her left eye should have been.

The one-eyed woman muttered to herself as Merrigan chose a bed at random and patted the cushions for Ren to sit down. Soon, her arm was cleaned of blood and Merrigan was applying a thick salve that sent shivers down Ren’s spine. Finn wandered around the room, peering out of the windows onto the streets below, and edging curiously around the sleeping patients.

“The only thing left to do is sleep and replenish the blood you’ve lost,” Merrigan said as she finished wrapping Ren’s arm in a tight bandage. “I’ll see what food I can find you.”

Since sitting down, Ren had felt perfectly fine, even a little foolish for how she had acted in Anya’s sitting room. Finn sat on the empty bed opposite Ren.

“I’m not tired,” Ren said. “I feel a lot better now, I can—”“No, no, no,” Merrigan said, planting her hands firmly on

Ren’s shoulders. “You need to sleep, if only for a few hours. Take these to help you.”

She handed Ren two minuscule, triangular orange pills. Ren rolled them around her palm and looked around the room, caught by the view of the ocean from the windows. “What is this place? Some kind of clinic Anya runs?”

“I’m not sure, you can ask her when you wake up,” Merrigan said. “Take the pills, Ren.”

! THE WATCH116

“I’m not going to be the only one sleeping and wasting time. I’m perfectly fine, see, all patched up. You did a great job. Now, let’s go.”

“If you don’t sleep,” Finn said, swinging his feet onto the bed and settling into the cushions with a sigh. “Then the rest of us can’t sleep, and I don’t really want to get out of this bed.”

Ren exhaled sharply out of her nose and popped the pills into her mouth, jamming them under her tongue and making a show of swallowing. Merrigan was satisfied and picked up her white bag with an annoyingly smug smile. Ren curled up on the bed as Merrigan bounced out of the room. The moment Ren closed her eyes, Finn jumped out of his bed and mumbled something about checking on Evie. Ren was left alone with the one-eyed woman and a dozen other snorers. Ren opened her eyes, spat out the triangular pills, and turned on her side to look out of the windows.

The ocean sprawled endlessly before her, and Ren frowned because the window glass was blocking its sweet salt smell. If she had stood up, Ren would have been able to see the streets of Ozryn in the morning bustle, but she couldn’t bring herself to lift her head from the pillow. She hadn’t slept on a real bed since leaving Hythe.

The one-eyed woman was still muttering something, perhaps trying to get Ren’s attention. Ren curled her knees into her chest. The bandage on her arm pulled taut and she concentrated on the pain of it, determined not to allow herself to become weaker than she already was.

���117

C H A P T E R T E N

ANYA

Her mother rushed into the room and knelt in front of the bed. She was pressing symbols on the black Watch around her wrist. She took a piece of black paper emblazoned with a swirl of lines from her pocket, a thumbprint, and pressed it to the Watchface. The Watch expanded and slid off her wrist.

“Come here, baby,” she cooed.Ren, suddenly aware that she was sitting on a bed, slid off it

and sat on the floor. She was wearing a gray shirt embroidered with little stars, like the one she used to wear as a child, only this shirt was four sizes too big and hung limply off one shoulder.

“Mother, what’s wrong?”“Take my Watch. It’ll protect you.”Her mother slid the Watch on Ren’s wrist, pressed the black

paper to the Watchface again, and the Watch constricted to the exact size of Ren’s wrist.

“Don’t let anyone take this from you Ren, can you do that for me? This is yours and yours alone, no one else can have it unless you give it to them. If anyone asks you for it, asks you to share it, don’t trust them. They’re not your friend. I love you, Ren. Remember me. The Watch will keep me with you. I love you.”

There was a distant crash and her mother’s face began to distort. Everything Ren could see was blurring and turning gray. She rubbed her eyes furiously, but nothing changed. Another loud crash, this time much closer. Her mother kissed her forehead and ran from Ren’s bedroom.

! THE WATCH118

“Wait…mother…” Ren got shakily to her feet, shocked when she looked down to find that her body was shrinking. She shrieked as her legs shortened and arms were swallowed up by the overlarge shirt. Distantly, she heard her mother screaming and a scratchy, chilling laugh.

“Mother! Mother! No!” She tried to run but she had shrunk so much that she tripped over the shirt and fell to the ground, banging her head…her mother’s screaming had stopped…the Watch was the only thing she could see clearly…everything else was so blurry…someone was saying her name…a man, what did he want?…

Ren woke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright and panting. She was still in Anya’s house in the room of many beds. The one-eyed woman was cackling at her. Sloan stood with Anya by the door, both staring at her in shock. Ren blushed and pushed her hair off her clammy face, cursing herself for having fallen asleep.

Sloan said, “You’ve been asleep for nearly an hour. Are you finished? We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

Ren scowled as he came to stand at the foot of her bed. The one-eyed woman was laughing manically and re-enacting Ren waking up. Anya settled the one-eyed woman back onto her bed, then drifted over to Ren.

Anya’s hair was a beautiful, opalescent white and fell at a very flattering angle across her pale face. Her eyes were a gray-blue that reminded Ren of the moon. She wore a fitted, light blue dress that cut off at her knees and dainty, heeled shoes. Dangling on a long pearl-and-steel chain around her neck was the luna charm of a Moon-soul.

“We can’t stop every time you get hurt,” Sloan persisted in complaining, even though he was examining Ren’s face with the most concern she’d ever seen his face express. “We’ll miss our chance if we let ourselves get distracted.”

“Our chance?” Ren snapped. Anya, eyebrows raised and glancing amusedly between the two of them, backed away to help

���119

a pair of stirring patients at the other end of the room. Ren continued, “Our chance at what, exactly?”

“What, are you still upset about the Doctors?”Ren spluttered in disbelief and anger. “I’m not apologizing for what I did,” Sloan said. He crossed

his arms in front of his chest. “I’m not asking you to!”“Then what are you asking?”For you to show a little remorse, Ren thought furiously. She

shook her head, banishing the thought. Arguing would get her no where. She needed to keep herself calm and focused on making sure Sloan told her everything that was going on. Getting angry would only distract her, and she would be left in the dark, again.

“You said we’ll miss our chance. I’m assuming that you’re talking about whatever Desmond was trying to persuade you not to do last night?”

“Yes. We’ve got a very limited window to get into Base One and the Union.”

“Can you stop assuming I know what your talking about? I have a pretty good idea from what I overheard last night, but you seem to have forgotten that I am the naïve idiot you enjoy teasing so much. No one’s even bothered to explain what the Union is.”

“The Union for Global Reconstruction and Restoration,” Sloan said, exasperated.

“Is that supposed to tell me anything? I don’t care about its title. What is it doing? How is it going to help us? Desmond said off planet—”

“Base One is global Union headquarters,” Sloan cut in. “Where the top Keepers and the entire Command Council now work. With the Doctors rebelling against the Union and Filavirus becoming unmanageable again, the Union established a secret program to solve all their problems in one go. The Exodus Program. I know someone inside Base One involved in Exodus that can smuggle us onto her Ship.”

! THE WATCH120

“So,” Ren said, holding up a shaky hand for him to stop. “So, all right, there’s a working global government hiding underground and hoarding all the resources from us lowly Disposables. A government that would rather build spaceships than fight a virus? I thought Merrigan was, what, part of the cure?”

“There’s a bit more to it than that. Viride isn’t as foolproof as it seems, and the Council doesn’t want to have to struggle to rebuild Earth when there are other homes waiting for them in the universe.”

“What about the rest of us!” Ren yelled. “The rest of us who weren’t lucky enough to be born in these ridiculous Bases! We’ll just be left here with the Doctors?”

“You are called Disposables for a reason.”“This..is just…” Ren put her face in her heads. She swung her

legs to rest on the floor. There’s another option, she told herself. You can leave these people and go to the temple. You are a Moon-soul, they will protect you. They have to.

“You need me to get into Base One, you need my Watch,” Ren said quietly.

“That’s what I’ve been told. We need a Thought Watch and its Code, but what part they play in getting us into the Base I’m not sure of. Cecelia has a plan. Since I gave my Watch away, I had to find another one.”

“You told me you lost your Watch.”“It’s the same thing,” he said. “So, what about Finn and Evie? Jasmin? Merrigan? Did you

plan on taking them with you? Are they needed to get into Base One as well?”

“No…not particularly. The importance of their contributions and that of their families are well known throughout the Union, so they deserve to be taken off planet. I’m lucky to have found them.”

“If they’re so important, why do they have to sneak in with the help of a Disposable?”

���121

“The Union will eventually come to see their presence as beneficial, I have no doubt, but first they will be regarded as contaminated. Citizens bound to a Base simply don’t go to the surface for extended periods of time. Some take brief vacations or missions among the Disposables, but they’re always protected with Viride dissipator belts. The Union wouldn’t take the time to test and decontaminate them when they have a launch to plan, so it’ll be easier to sneak them aboard Clarity and worry about protocol after we’ve left Earth.”

Ren worried at her bottom lip and looked down at the Watch. “Viride seems to be working just fine against outbreaks.”

“It won’t for long. Filavirus is evolving, and soon Viride will be ineffective. I’ve heard reports of substantial outbreaks starting up again,” Sloan sighed. “Every time Filavirus is close to being controlled, it proves itself to be something quite superior to the Union’s Division of Medicine.”

“And I’m supposed to just trust that you’re telling me the truth? Do you have any proof?”

“You’ve been with us for long enough to know that something is different about Finn and the rest of the group. They’re your proof.” Sloan paused. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked out the window. When he spoke again, the familiar impatient tremor in his voice had returned. “That’s what I know about what the Union’s doing. I can’t tell you much else.”

Ren scoffed. “Are you kidding? Tell me about my mother, for one. Tell me why you seem to be a fugitive of the Union, like I am to the Doctors. There is a lot more you can tell me, so don’t exert yourself in pretending you’re being fair right now.”

Sloan sniggered and inclined his head in admission. Just then, Anya finished with her patients. She weaved through the rows of beds with a polite smile directed at Ren and the occasional devilish glance at Sloan.

“Hello, Seren of the Northern Cloudlands,” Anya said. “Sloan told me all about you while you were sleeping. My name is Anya.”

! THE WATCH122

“Yes, uh, hello,” Ren stammered, a little put off by the melodic, omniscient-sounding tilt of her voice.

Anya sat on the empty bed opposite Ren. She held out her hands and, when Ren only stared at her blankly, clicked her tongue and said, “I’d like to see the Watch.”

Sloan sat down next to Anya and added his stern brow to Anya’s insistent eyes. Ren had no choice but to lay her left wrist on Anya’s outstretched hands. Anya curled her fingers around Ren’s wrist and pulled the Watch closer, right up to her eyes. She examined it with a fierce concentration, then turned it on and concentrated some more. Sloan watched her, unperturbed by the long silence. Ren was unable to keep her top lip from curling up as she glanced between the two of them.

“It’s real,” Anya proclaimed. “But this is the Watch of a Keeper of Space, not a Keeper of Thought.”

“You’re sure?” Sloan frowned, leaning forward to get a better look. “Can you tell what Division it’s from?”

“No, I don’t recognize the markings at all…strange…” “I need its Code. She’s useless, she doesn’t know it.”“There’s no need to be rude, it’s not her fault,” Anya said,

glancing sharply at Sloan. Her fingers danced over the Watchface, the Watch buzzing and beeping in turns, then she frowned and dropped Ren’s wrist.

“What’s wrong?” Sloan growled, grasping Ren’s wrist for himself and shaking it in front of Anya’s face.

Anya’s eyebrows raised slowly. She took Ren’s wrist gently and returned it to Ren’s lap. “What’s wrong with you, Rian?”

“What’s wrong is that I need a Code! Cecelia needs a Code for us to get on her Ship.”

Anya hummed, then said, “I can’t hack its Code. I’ve never seen programming like this before, and without access to my old tech, I can’t do anything more. I’m sorry, Rian, but there’s no need to be so upset. I know Cecelia just as well as you do. She’ll get you onto her Ship, even if she had to use a Watch that doesn’t meet her specifications. She’ll figure out a way.”

���123

“Right,” Sloan grunted. His cheeks were tinged pink with embarrassment. He said to Ren, “We’ll have to come up with some other way to figure out the Code.”

Ren swallowed heavily, preparing herself for the wave of fear she expected, but was met with only queasiness. Sloan wouldn’t kill her, but now that Merrigan had proved she wasn’t a carrier, amputation seemed like something Sloan wouldn’t bat an eye at.

“Are you a Keeper too?” she asked Anya, desperate to change the subject. She knew it wouldn’t suddenly distract Sloan from thoughts of amputating Ren’s arm, but at least Ren herself would be distracted from her anxiety.

“Was,” Anya said firmly. “I was ruled a dissenter with Sloan, my sister, and our whole pretentious little group, then escaped when the Doctors attacked Seventy-Three. I used to be a Keeper of Thought, Division of Design. I designed the software every Watch eighth generation or later uses.”

“Dissenter?” Ren looked expectantly at Sloan. Sloan tapped the side of his nose, overtly sarcastic. Anya

laughed prettily and shook her head at Sloan, but her expression revealed that she was too fond of him for Ren to consider her an ally.

Anya asked, “Whose the tall man in your group? The handsome one.”

“Finnian Lynch,” Sloan said, his eyes sliding slyly to the side and probing Anya’s face. “He was an apprentice Keeper of Thought, Cosmological Division.”

“Finnian Lynch,” Anya repeated thoughtfully. She flipped her hair out of her face with a sigh.

“There’s no other way you can figure out the Code?” Sloan asked.

“I’m sorry, but unless she finds the answer in her memories, the Code is lost.”

Ren touched the Watch delicately, remembering her dream. Most of what had happened in the dream coincided with the memory of her parents dying, except she hadn’t shrunk or been

! THE WATCH124

wearing a shirt big enough to trip over. She had run out of her bedroom to see her parents on the kitchen floor being flayed by Doctors. She couldn’t decide, however, if that piece of paper her mother put against the Watchface had been a product of her dreams, as the extra large shirt was, or if it had actually happened.

“So,” Sloan said, his chin resting in his hand and one finger tapping against his lips. “What do you think I should do with her?”

“Stop it,” Anya said, shaking her head apologetically at Ren. “There’s no need to tease her. Even if the Watch ends up being useless, her face certainly isn’t. You could go a long way with her parentage.”

“Well, Ren?” Sloan asked. He leaned towards her, his expression grave and voice flat. His eyes, already so dark, were magnetic holes at once repelling Ren and inviting her in. “Do you want a new planet?”

Ren’s mind was completely blank, wiped clean by the thrilling, frantic thumping of her heart. Her hands were hot and her jaw clenched. She wasn’t afraid, or excited, or angry. She was simply sitting there, staring into Sloan’s eyes, so thoroughly unable to wrap her head around everything he had told her about the Union that she could barely breathe.

“I don’t plan on killing you anymore, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” Sloan continued. “And you can keep your arm. Let us try to use the Watch and I promise you can have a spot on Clarity.”

If anyone asks you for it, asks you to share it, don’t trust them. They’re not your friend. Ren wished she could remember if her mother had actually said those words, or if that was only part of the dream. There was a faint whooshing sound in her ears, as if her head was draining of all rational thought. She couldn’t make a decision like this immediately. She refused to let herself spontaneously blurt out something she would regret, so she let her silence drag on until Sloan assumed her to be accepting his invitation. He nodded

���125

to her and smiled, or smirked, she couldn’t tell. The smug glint to his eye never flickered out, even when he seemed to be sincere.

The one-eyed woman jumped out of her bed and bellowed for breakfast, the words barely leaving her lips before Masha entered the room. She wore a dress identical to Anya’s. Ren noticed the resemblance in their faces and gestures, but Masha carried such a distinct cloud of melancholy about her that it was nearly impossible to think of the two as sisters.

“Good morning, Ms. Schmidt,” Masha said, rounding up the hysterical one-eyed woman and tucking her back into bed. “Desmond is cooking your breakfast right now. You remember Desmond, don’t you, Ms. Schmidt?”

“Tall, tall, tall,” said Ms. Schmidt. “Man.”“That’s right. Why don’t you relax until he brings it in? You

know how he enjoys talking to you in the mornings, Ms. Schmidt.”

Ms. Schmidt buried her face in her pillow so that only the side missing an eye was visible. Once she was settled, Masha made a beeline for Anya, her hands clasped firmly in front of her waist.

“Gerard hasn’t shown up with the shipment,” Masha said anxiously, twisting her hands together.

“It’ll be all right for one day, at least. We have enough food set by for everyone,” Anya said. She smiled reassuringly, tapping Masha’s twisting hands.

“Rian, Seren,” Masha said, nodding to them in greeting. She separated her hands, took a breath, then left to make a round of the rest of the patients.

“Masha,” Sloan called. “The Doctors aren’t still accusing you of harboring an infected? Everything’s all right after last night?”

“It was nothing we haven’t handled a dozen times before. Desmond and I have gotten quite good at directing the Doctors towards individuals more worthy of being regarded as criminals. Everything is back to normal.”

! THE WATCH126

“Who are all these people?” Ren finally asked. A spasm of pity rocketed through her as she watched Masha change the bandages on a young man’s arm, briefly revealing a chunk missing in his bicep deep enough to show bone.

“Casualties of the Reapers,” Anya sighed. “The Doctors don’t do much doctoring anymore. With half of Ozryn crazy for rebellion and the Reapers’ ridiculous policy against anyone other than a Doctor possessing medical knowledge, we’re the only ones in Ozryn willing to help. Luckily, my sister was one of the best Keepers in the Division of Medicine in the Union. She and Desmond do most of the hands-on stuff, I can’t do much except offer my house.”

“Are you ready, Seren?” Sloan asked abruptly. He stood, frowning out of the window at the sun. “We don’t have much more time to waste.”

“You’ve barely been here two hours, can’t you stay until tomorrow morning, at least?” Anya asked.

“Cecelia doesn’t tolerate tardiness,” Masha said from across the room.

“So true,” Anya said with a smirk. “You must in agony. When was the last time you saw her? Six years, since the trial?”

“I’m sure he goes into Myrrka,” Masha said. “I can’t imagine Cecelia lasting very long without him. Sloan may be impatient, but Cecelia’s downright unbearable when dissatisfied.”

“Seren!” Sloan barked. Anya and Masha laughed as Sloan stomped out of the room, Ren following him into the painted hallway, unable to hide her smile.

“Why did you make up that name for me?” Ren asked when the door had closed behind them.

“I thought it’d be easy to remember,” Sloan said. He led her to a door painted with crashing waves of bright green and gold. “If any of us slipped and called you Ren, it could just be a nickname.”

“I got that, but you said that you trusted these people. Enough to let them see my face, but not enough to tell them my

���127

real name? It seems like they were able to figure out who I am anyway,” Ren finished bitterly.

“How many patients did they have in that room? None of them may recognize your face, but they will remember a name if the Doctors come asking,” Sloan grunted in response and pushed through the green and gold door. They stepped into a small, tidy kitchen. Finn, Evie, and Merrigan were sitting around a triangular table with empty bowls placed before them. Desmond was at the stove stirring an enormous pot. Jasmin stood next to him, holding out a large container as he ladled a heaping portion of rice and beans into it.

“Morning!” Desmond boomed. He whipped the ladle around enthusiastically, narrowly avoiding smacking Jasmin in the face. “Have some breakfast, sit down for a while!”

“Sorry, we’re going to eat on the way,” Sloan said. Jasmin covered her container with a bright green lid and stuffed it into her bag. Merrigan, upon noticing Ren’s entrance, flew across the room with her white bag in tow and began drilling Ren with questions.

“Are you lightheaded at all? Confused? The relaxitive I gave you can cause serious side effects in people with low tolerance. Vision blurry? Good. How about your fingers and toes, can you move them? Are they numb at all? Just a bit…you’ve barely reacted to it at all, that’s great, but you could have used more sleep. Sloan, why did you wake her? She’s still very pale and, look! She’s trembling! I’ll have to give you some extra blood boosters to bring your cell count back up.”

“I feel fine.”“What she needs is medication to make her forget what

happened,” Jasmin said, rolling her eyes at Merrigan. “Her body will never recover if her mind doesn’t first. Don’t you have a pill for modifying memory?”

“No,” Merrigan said curtly. “And, I’m the one in the Division of Medicine, not you. Ren needs to rest and recover, then she can

! THE WATCH128

face any emotions the memory of last night may bring when she is stronger. Memory modification is a cheap trick.”

Jasmin snorted. Merrigan, lips pursed and cheeks pink, began to unravel the bandage around Ren’s arm. Ren’s jaw slackened. There was only a faint scar on her upper arm where, an hour ago, there had been jagged flesh and an unmanageable amount of blood. Ren touched the long, raised scar in amazement. A faint spitefulness rippled over her like goosebumps as she realized just how fortunate being born in a Base was.

“It’s not completely healed, yet,” Merrigan said. “Your body isn’t used to the curative salve I used, so the delay is to be expected. With some fresh sea air it should be all right. I’m worried that the scar will stay, though. I don’t have what I need to fix that. I’m so sorry, Ren.”

“I don’t mind,” Ren mumbled. Her scar was bumpy, wide, jagged, and ugly—she wanted to keep it that way. Somehow, she thought this gnarled twist of skin suited her dirty, Disposable clothes.

“Okay. I’ve a mind to peek in on Anya’s stores before we head off and see if she’d be willing to part with some medication. Excuse me.”

“Oh, no, we’ve lost too much daylight already,” Sloan growled. Merrigan ignored him and whisked through the door in a flash of busy red hair. Sloan clomped after her, grumbling under his breath.

With the door separating her from Sloan and all Merrigan’s questions, and Jasmin busy vehemently refusing the extra food Desmond was trying to force on her (“I was here when you and Masha were arguing over Gerard not bringing his shipment!” “We’ve got plenty of food coming tomorrow. You won’t reach Azmarin for a while so take it!”), Ren considered herself sufficiently forgotten about to lean against the wall, let out a long breath, and attempt to consider what she should do. She barely broached the thought of her main concern—that of Sloan’s questionable knowledge of her mother and how that could

���129

possibly help him board a spaceship—when Finn and Evie joined her at the wall.

“How are you feeling?” Finn asked. “I’m fine,” Ren said. “Are you two okay?”“We just wanted to…about last night,” Finn said, glancing at

Evie.“You don’t have to—”“Thank you,” Finn whispered quickly, as if this was the most

private thing imaginable and he wanted nothing more than to keep Jasmin and Desmond out of it. Evie was looking up at Ren with those big, dark eyes and Ren felt her cheeks burning. Finn continued, “You didn’t have to do that, but you did it anyway, and we’re both…”

“Right,” Ren said shortly. She couldn’t bear for her face to get any hotter. Evie slipped her hand into Ren’s and squeezed, Finn smiled, and Ren sincerely thought she would faint if she didn’t run away from them.

The floor under Ren’s feet rumbled and lurched without warning, and she stumbled in shock to grab the wall. Finn had taken Evie into his arms so fast that the young girl let out an oof of surprise. The rumbling lasted no more than a few seconds; the room was exactly as it had been before, nothing out of place. Ren looked around frantically for some clue as to what was going on. Desmond’s unconcerned voice picked up exactly where he had left off and insisted that Jasmin take an entire sack of turnips.

Evie slid out of Finn’s arms, jabbed him hard in the stomach, and said, “Don’t be so jumpy. It was nothing.”

Ren cleared her throat and let go of the wall. “That was definitely something.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Desmond said. “If Ozryn was in any danger, we’d know. We’re on the Bridge, sometimes the waves rough it up, and we also have a port with drunk captains steering their ships into the posts.” Desmond smiled at Ren and returned to his argument with Jasmin.

! THE WATCH130

Finn caught Ren’s eye and shrugged, but Ren stood firmly against the wall for support all the same. Sloan returned. Jasmin used Desmond’s momentary distracted at his entrance to escape from next to the stove. In his hand Sloan was carrying a long, gauzy black scarf. Ren started and nervously groped at her neck. She must have lost her white scarf the night before and only noticed just then.

“Do me a favor,” Sloan said, throwing the black scarf to her. “Keep your face covered this time.”

“I had my scarf on when we first got here,” Ren protested, uneasy with herself for having lost her own scarf. It had been with her since Hythe, and she hadn’t even noticed its absence.

“Just keep it on.”“Keep covered outside of Ozryn, too,” Desmond put in.

“Especially in Azmarin. You really don’t want anyone recognizing you in there.”

“Who, exactly, would recognize me?” Ren asked.Desmond laughed, bemused, and jerked his thumb at Sloan as

if to say ‘Is she joking?’ Sloan scowled and took her by the arm to steer her out of the kitchen, through the painted hallway, and into the sitting room. Anya was waiting for them there, standing next to the pile of the group’s blankets and a dozen extra canteens.

“Thank you again, Anya. You’ll know where I’ll be if you change your mind,” Sloan said. They embraced for a long time, Sloan cupping the back of Anya’s head and Anya digging her fingernails into Sloan’s back.

“I’m meant to stay here, I’m afraid. My place is with my sister, and hers is with the people she can help.”

“Will you at least consider meeting me at Base One? If Cecelia can get someone like me aboard, I know she can help you, Masha, and Desmond, too.”

“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll consider it.”They parted just as Masha drifted into the room, leading

everyone else. A flurry of goodbyes and embraces swept the room. Ren quietly stepped to the corner so that she wouldn’t be in the

���131

way. She watched them with a weight pressing down on her chest. Evie had just met Masha the night before, yet they were hugging goodbye as if they had known each other for years. It was the Union that tied them all together, Ren knew, and it was also the Union that kept her out of the way in the corner. If she stayed with Sloan and the group, she would be an outsider, a watcher-on. If she escaped them and joined the Moon-souls at the temple, she would be a watcher-on among other watchers-on.

Still, being a watcher-on with Sloan and the group didn’t particularly strike her as something she should avoid. That terrible, suffocating weight on her chest wasn’t from the fact that she was watching everyone else say goodbye. It was from the fact that she believed, if given more time, she could learn to be one of them. The weight was frustration, the weight was revulsion at herself for wanting to change until she fit in, the weight was having Finn wink at her while clapping Desmond on the back, telling her she was not forgotten.

“Farewell, Finnian Lynch,” Anya sang. She stood on the tips of her toes to snake her arms around Finn’s neck, who blushed and fumbled to wrap his arms around her thin waist in a timid hug. Ren covered her smile with her hand and met Evie’s laughing eye. Jasmin smacked her lips in Merrigan’s ear and Merrigan tutted, chin held high. Sloan shook his head at Anya and pried Finn from her arms, groaning that they were late.

The weight was knowing that her safety did not rest in Sloan’s hands and deciding to pretend it did anyway.

! THE WATCH132

C H A P T E R E L E V E N

COUNT

They didn’t leave Anya’s house until four hours after moonset, a time so unimaginably late that Sloan stalked through the backstreets of Ozryn shrouded in a cloud of vexation. The streets were just as crowded as the day before, but it was quieter, the Ozryni not as quick to stare at the group as they passed. They turned their backs whenever Sloan led the group through an intersection and moved out of their way willingly, without jaunts or voicing their suspicions to their companions. The finding of a dead Doctor had subdued the Ozryni into skepticism, and they wanted nothing to do with a group of bedraggled, armed outsiders.

The extra canteens, besides pushing the limit on what Ren could carry, clanged together nosily if she walked too fast. Along with Anya’s black scarf, she had received a bundle of clean clothes from Masha and a jacket from the bowels of Jasmin’s bag. The clean clothes Ren kept in her own bag until she wore out the ones she had on, but the jacket Sloan insisted she put on immediately. It was too large, suspiciously large, for such a petite person as Jasmin to own. Ren could barely keep it on her shoulders and had to use the straps tying the blankets to her back to keep it up. The sleeves were long enough to conceal her Watch, though, so it was perfect to Sloan.

“Keep up, Ren,” Sloan said, even though she was walking right beside him. “The Reapers will be on patrol for the murderer. Your scarf is slipping.”

���133

“Finn, you should put on your hat,” Merrigan clipped.Finn was oblivious to her. He was too busy looking behind

him every few minutes towards Anya’s building to notice the hot blush across Merrigan’s neck.

Sloan led them across a wide street crammed with people listening to a group of Reapers standing on a metal platform. There were six Reapers taking turns bellowing out instructions for every Ozryni on how to help identify and capture the murderer. Some of the audience watched the Reapers in rapture, nodding along eagerly to what they said, while a greater majority was more concerned with the time ticking away on their clocks.

Sloan pushed Ren’s head down with his hand and his other arm laid across her back, keeping her hunched over. He weaved through the crowd cursing under his breath and keeping Ren tight to his side. The Ozryni simply watched them sneak through, some going so far as starting in surprise and pointing them out to their neighbor. All they had to do was call out to the Reapers on the platform, yet none of them did. She tucked herself closer to Sloan, tripping and stumbling with their legs so close together, her heart lodged in her throat. Behind her, Ren heard Evie’s familiar cough.

“Not now!” Sloan groaned. They reached the other side of the street and Sloan thrust Ren down a side alley. She caught herself against the wall of a squat building, pressing her hand against her chest. Sloan stood at the entrance of the alley, shepherding the rest of the group inside. Finn was carrying Evie, his hand pressed firmly over her mouth.

“Quiet, Evie! Don’t draw the Reapers’ attention,” Sloan pleaded. He unscrewed one of his canteens and had Evie drink from it in long gulps until her coughing stopped. Sloan poked his head out of the alley and waved them on, saying, “It’ll take most of the day just to get out of Ozryn, but I’m keeping us in the alleys and the backstreets. We shouldn’t see any Reapers in them, and the Ozryni won’t give us up.”

“Why is that?” Ren whispered.

! THE WATCH134

“Most of them hate the Doctors. The rest don’t want to get involved. Go, stay by Finn. Merrigan, don’t even think about coughing. Inhale and exhale slowly, keep it paced.”

Sloan picked up Evie and carried her. He slid out of the alley and slinked down the street, hid in the next alley for a few moments, then continued. It seemed to take them forever to get anywhere, even the ticking of the clocks was muffled they were so far from the main streets. The only people they passed were men dressed in rags and sleeping in alleys or woman leading troupes of children to search through garbage cans.

They turned out of an alley and were met with a howling gust of wind. They had reached the abrupt southern end of Ozryn. Ren’s heart banged around her chest and rattled her ribs. The Bridge before her was bare and the sun was bright—they would be easily visible to any Reaper watching the border. Sloan put Evie down in favor of dragging his fingernails roughly through his hair.

“There’s only a few hours until moonrise,” Ren said quietly. “We should wait. We won’t loose time if we sleep now and walk half the night.”

“We could go back to Anya’s until it’s safe to leave,” Finn suggested.

“By the time we sneak all the way back there it’ll be time to leave,” Merrigan snapped. “Ren is right, though. Let’s wait someplace around here until we can leave the city with the darkness to hide us.”

Sloan growled, “Fine,” and turned his back on the tantalizing view of the Bridge. He pulled out his pistols and, together with Jasmin, turned down the alley they had just left. They found an abandoned building and, after Sloan checked each room three times to make sure it was indeed abandoned, the group filed inside. The building was made of a dark metal that seemed to be decaying right in front of Ren’s eyes, and the room she stepped into had a low ceiling and an assembly of sad, forgotten furniture placed haphazardly around the room. There were no windows, a

���135

door on each wall, and a fireplace. Finn searched through one of the dressers and threw the clothes he found into the fireplace. He pulled a box of matches from his pocket and painstakingly started a fire.

Sloan closed the door that led to the street and pulled one of the tables in front of it. In their search, Jasmin and Sloan had left the other three doors open. The other rooms were more or less identical to the one Ren was in, with the same jumble of mismatched furniture and windowless walls. There was no staircase.

Once Sloan had shut the door, the group began to settle in. The clothes Finn was burning gave off more smoke than light and smelled damp. Jasmin rummaged idly through the dressers and cabinets and found a half-empty bottle of fire whiskey. She sniffed it, deemed it acceptable, and tipped the bottle to her lips.

Ren unrolled the blankets she carried, set her canteens to the side, and sat down on hers and Jasmin’s blanket. Her eyelids didn’t want to part when she blinked. They lingered together, buzzing with weariness and crooning the soft song of sleep. Evie sat next to her, scooting close and nestling her head against Ren’s arm. Ren forced her lips closed against a yawn.

Jasmin sat down heavily on Ren’s other side, the bottle of fire whiskey never far from her lips.

“Don’t drink too much,” Sloan warned. He propped himself against the table blocking the door to the street.

“Why aren’t there any windows in here?” Merrigan asked. She was peering into one of the empty rooms and hugging herself tightly. “It’s creepy. Can’t you make the fire any brighter?”

“Not like I know what I’m doing,” Finn grumbled, rearranging and blowing on the smoldering clothes.

“And where are the stairs? This can’t possibly be the whole place.”

“Some Ozryni, like Desmond and Masha, have these safe rooms. The doors are hidden in alleys, or behind trick walls, and

! THE WATCH136

are used as hiding places from the Doctors. It’s as safe as we’re going to get until nightfall.”

“Well, if we’re all just going to sleep,” Finn said, kicking the smoking pile of clothes as the last flame burnt out.

Ren couldn’t tell if her eyes were closed without the fire. She thought she had been sitting up, but she wasn’t so sure about that either. She was used to darkness being accompanied with starlight and the moon. Even on her ship, the stars had peeked through the holes in the deck so that it was never fully dark. This blackness was disorienting. She could feel Evie’s hair tickling her arm, smell the lingering smoke, hear Sloan’s heavy, measured breathing and the fire whiskey sloshing around whenever Jasmin took a sip, but she couldn’t feel herself in such darkness. It was like the lines of her body had blurred and expanded, stretching out her exhaustion until she wasn’t sure if she was awake at all.

“This is so stupid,” Evie said. She jumped up from Ren’s side and went somewhere in the room. “We should have stayed at Anya’s.”

“This is a waste,” Sloan said bitterly. “I want to go back to Anya’s house,” Evie said, her voice high

and threaded with fear. “Shush,” Jasmin said. “Do you hear that?”Ren held her breath. Her ears felt hot, as if her desire to hear

something was intense enough to draw all the blood in her body to her ears. She could just make out the hushed sound of shouting. A scream, a wave of more shouting, then cheers.

“They found someone to punish,” said Sloan. Ren fumbled to find her own mouth, then pressed her palms

flat against her lips to keep from being sick. She was here, she was the one this was all about, and she was letting someone else get blamed. Another hushed scream. She was letting someone get hurt, probably flayed, to protect her. She may not have chosen the temple, but not because she wasn’t a Moon-soul, and a Moon-soul was not supposed to be as selfish as she was.

“Can we leave?” Ren whispered desperately.

���137

“Too late now, we have to wait,” Sloan said. “We should have kept going.”

“This was so stupid,” Evie whimpered. “We would have been safer at Anya’s house,” Sloan moaned, as

if the thought of waiting was physically painful to him. “Now, I suppose none of you will sleep and we’ll barely get anywhere tonight.”

The screaming intensified, then stopped abruptly. Ren let her tears fall freely down her face. No one could see her, so what did it matter how ashamed she was of herself? Was this how a Moon-soul should be living her life? Hiding as someone else assumed her blame? She made the sign of the crescent fervently as her tears dribbled off her chin and splashed onto her hands.

“What’s the time, Ren?” Sloan asked.She started. Her cheeks were dry and she was definitely lying

down. The blanket scratched against the side of her face and her legs were crumpled uncomfortably underneath her. She heard breathing, but it sounded like one person, not the five distinct inhales it should have been. The hair on the back of her neck and her arms stood up, charged with foreboding. Had she really let herself fall asleep? How could she, with all the guilt she was supposed to have?

“Hold on,” Ren croaked. She struggled to turn on the Watch. When she did, its light blared through the darkness like a freakish, uninvited spirit. Merrigan’s face was inches in front of her own, both she and Ren gasping at finding the other so close. Finn and Evie were huddled together by the dark fireplace, Jasmin sitting erect and attentive near Ren’s knees, and Sloan was still by the door that led to the street.

Ren accessed the clock on the Watch and said, “The moon should be coming up right now.”

“Get your stuff together,” Sloan said. He took hold of the edge of the table and started scooting it away from the door as quietly as possible. “It sounds quiet enough for now, we should be

! THE WATCH138

able to make it out of Ozryn relatively easily. Keep the Watch on for light.”

Ren held her wrist above her head and directed the Watch’s light to help the group find what they needed as best she could. Sloan cracked open the door and stuck his head out. He took out his pistols, then slipped out into the alley. Ren shouldered her bag, canteens, and blankets, then turned off the Watch. Moonlight wafted in through the open door, a much more comforting light than that of the Watch.

Sloan’s head reappeared and he whispered, “Come.”Ren fell into line between Finn and Merrigan as the group

filed from the building. Ozryn was steeped in moonlight. Ren looked up the alley and listened carefully, but there was nothing to be seen, not even a ray of light leaking into the night through a window. If she had been walking into Ozryn for the first time, she would have thought the town to be completely abandoned. A few seconds passed before sound crept into her ears. The familiar crash of the waves and the ticking of Ozryn’s clocks pervaded through the night like two armies in battle. The former was wild, careless, and prideful, the latter hypnotic, steady, and oppressive.

They creeped down the alley to the edge of Ozryn. Sloan paused there, his head thrown back as he searched every window he could see for signs of life. He frowned, looked at the group, then turned to the Bridge. Ren held her breath and took hold of the strap of Finn’s bag in front of her. Sloan stepped out of the alley and the protective shadow of Ozryn’s buildings. The group followed.

Sloan walked next to the railing, jerking his head over his shoulder every few steps to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. Jasmin, unable even then to bring herself close to the sea, walked on Sloan’s other side and backwards with her rifle directed at Ozryn. They sidled along the railing as Ozryn receded into the night, the metal of its buildings glinting forebodingly in the moonlight.

���139

The sound of their feet against the Bridge was deafening and the moonlight was so bright Ren could see everything around her without squinting, yet still nothing moved in Ozryn. The group continued on in complete silence until the tallest of Ozryn’s buildings fell out of sight and they reached a black building. As usual, Sloan went into the black building first before calling them all inside.

This black building was thin and long with the walls on each end missing. Ren sighed when she stepped inside. It wasn’t much to be comforted by, but at least it was relatively familiar. She caught Finn’s eye and arranged her lips in a shaky smile so that she would appear more confident than she was. Sloan decided they could rest there until dawn without loosing too much time, and the group began to unpack the blankets once again.

“I hope Anya and her sister are all right,” Finn said idly as he helped take the blankets off Ren’s back. “It sounded like some kind of revolution back there, and then there wasn’t a single person to be seen after sunset…”

“I’m sure she’s absolutely fine,” Merrigan said crossly. She had taken her blanket and was walking down the long building, far away from the rest of them. “She’s a Disposable now, didn’t you see her ridiculous necklace? I’m sure she can take care of herself. And if not, she’s a Disposable. They have that title for a reason.”

“It might be better to stop mentioning Anya,” Ren whispered to Finn.

“I can’t stop thinking about them,” Finn whispered back. He took the canteens Ren carried off her shoulder slowly, his eyebrows scrunched together. “Anya, Desmond, and Masha all know where we’re going and what’s going to happen. The Union is leaving Earth because it is the only way for our race to survive, and yet Anya is choosing to die on Earth willingly. Why? I can’t understand it.”

“That’s what happens when you have a real home, I suppose,” Ren said. “You don’t care whether you live or die, so long as you’re there.”

! THE WATCH140

Finn looked at her thoughtfully. “Wasn’t that ship we found you in your home?”

“I thought it was, but it was too easy for me to leave it for it to have been my home.”

“I don’t know,” Finn said, shaking his head. “Home shouldn’t be such a hard thing to have. You shouldn’t have to die for it.”

Finn walked away, taking a blanket and Evie to a spot against the wall. They sat and mumbled quietly together, passing a canteen back and forth. Sloan joined them. Merrigan had curled up into the furthest corner of the building, so far that Ren could barely see her in the dim light. Jasmin took out her blanket and coaxed Ren to sit down. She pulled the bottle of fire whiskey from her bag and offered Ren the last of it. Ren raised her hand, but let it fall back to her lap. Jasmin shrugged and drained the rest of the bottle.

Ren waited until she was sure everyone else wasn’t paying attention to them before saying, “I don’t understand Merrigan. Finn acts like they’re together, and Merrigan is so obviously jealous of Anya, but Merrigan doesn’t actually do anything to encourage him.”

Jasmin sighed. Her breath stunk of fire whiskey; hot, sour, and sharp. “Don’t get involved with those two. Finn may let his feelings slip through sometimes, but the two of them will never actually get together. They’ve known each other for years, and I suppose they’ve always had feelings for the other, but they were both training to be Keepers of Thought. They’re not supposed to be together.”

“Why not?”“There are laws in the Union,” Jasmin said. “Keepers couldn’t

marry someone in their own section. A Keeper of Thought would have to marry one of Power, Space, or a recruit. It was supposed to promote diversity.”

“They aren’t in a Base anymore, they could be together if they wanted to.”

���141

“We’re going to Base One, Ren. Besides already being thought of as contaminated with the surface, arriving there involved in an illegal relationship won’t work well for them. Even if we weren’t going to Base One, we were raised to think we could only be with certain people. It was drilled into us. It’s instinct now, and instinct is a hard thing to ignore.”

Ren was entirely unconvinced. Anya had grown up in the Union, and yet she was able to defy her ‘instincts’ to wear a luna charm and be intrigued by Finn. If Anya could be the person she wanted to be without laws, there was no reason Merrigan couldn’t—except that Merrigan wanted to return to the Union, and Anya didn’t. Ren was going to a place where she would have to obey laws, where she would undoubtedly have to pretend to give up her Moon-soul and love only those she was told to. Ren made the sign of the crescent and watched Sloan talk quietly to Finn, allowing herself the time it took to make ten crescent signs to wallow in doubt about not seeking refuge in the Moon-and-Sun temple. After those ten crescent signs, Ren rested her hands in her lap, confident that she would find some way around following the Union’s laws when the time came.

*The days after Ozryn blended together in one stream of

mundanity to Ren. She woke up, ate whatever portion Jasmin gave her, walked until her feet throbbed and the moon rose, again ate whatever portion Jasmin gave her, then went to sleep. Ren hadn’t seen another black building in four days, since the first one after Ozryn. The Bridge was barren, the sea restless, and the wind crisp. No one seemed to talk much with so little going on, and no matter how desperately Ren wanted to ask Sloan the questions poisoning her every thought, she couldn’t bring herself to break the numbing routine that had crept through them all like mist.

“We left Ozryn four days ago,” Ren said to no one in particular on that fourth morning. She was sitting in the center of the Bridge taking careful sips from one of her canteens and massaging her thighs. She squinted against the unusually bright

! THE WATCH142

sun and groaned as she got to her feet. They started walking; Sloan and Jasmin marched down the centerline, Finn walked just behind Ren, Merrigan along the opposite railing, and Evie flitted among them all, complaining or fooling around depending on who she was closest to.

Merrigan was still bursting out in breathless spells at random intervals throughout the day and wouldn’t waste the little breath she did have on talking. Finn hummed and sallied Evie’s teasing, occasionally sparing a word for Ren, but was more often occupied in gazing listlessly at the sea. Jasmin and Sloan marched with utter and chilling purpose. Ren found herself dipping back into the regular daydreams she entertained on her ship, but was quick to catch herself and cast them away. She didn’t want to get caught up in yearnings, she wanted to have a conversation, especially since she wasn’t being ostracized by the group any more.

“Four days since Ozryn,” Ren said at midday. She looked around expectantly for an answer and was met with absolutely nothing.

“Tomorrow will be five days since we left Ozryn,” Ren said that night, when the group had stopped and was eating dinner.

“Can you stop with that?” Jasmin moaned, throwing her head back dramatically and consequently slapping Ren in the face with her hair. They were huddled on Jasmin’s blanket taking turns eating the food Desmond had given them. The rest of the group was splayed out near them, weary and half-asleep. Jasmin continued, “We don’t need a constant reminder of how far we still have to go. My feet are blistered and I’m hot. I’d rather not think about how much longer I’ll have to endure the surface.”

Ren pressed her lips together. She had been counting days since she had left Hythe, it was the only thing she had to talk about that wouldn’t step into the subjects Sloan would inevitably squash. It was something her mother had taught her, something that kept her busy and sane, and evidently something that would annoy the group.

���143

“Why do you do that anyway?” Merrigan asked through a yawn.

“I’ve always done it.”“You don’t need to,” Evie said. She lounged on the blanket,

her eyes closed and lips barely moving as she spoke. “Sloan knows what day we have to get to Base One by. Don’t you, Sloan?”

“Of course.”“See, Ren, you don’t have to count.”“I’ll stop saying it aloud,” Ren said glumly. “Sorry if I bothered

anyone.”“You’re still going to count to yourself?” Evie chuckled,

though she wasn’t amused enough to open her eyes.“I’m counting how long it’s been, not how far we have left to

go,” Ren said. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Of course they were going to ask why she was counting. Of course they would regard anything about her that wasn’t the Watch as something foolishly Disposable. “It’s different. Forget it, though, I’ll stop.”

“How long have you been counting?” Sloan asked. He leaned towards her, his eyes probing her face with a look too close to sincere interest. Ren blushed harder.

“I started officially when I left Hythe, but my mother was counting my entire life.”

“How long has it been since you left Hythe?”“Five thousand one hundred and forty-nine days,” Ren said

automatically. “Sure about that?” Finn laughed. “More than I am about anything else.”“Why do you do it?” Jasmin asked. The irritation had dropped

from her voice and her eyes mimicked Sloan’s in their intensity. “It’s just something I’ve always been afraid of. Getting lost in

time. My mother was always so terrified of what day it was, and I guess it rubbed off on me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jasmin said promptly. She passed Sloan a helping of Desmond’s food and scoffed at Ren, shaking her head sadly as if Ren was a child.

! THE WATCH144

“Yeah, you can’t get lost in time. It’s not something you…have a direction in other than the future? How can you get lost if there’s one direction?” Evie shrugged off her half-thought-out argument and sighed. She snuggled closer to Finn and drifted asleep, still sniggering at Ren. Jasmin laughed and Finn failed to hide his smile. Ren turned away from them and lay down to sleep, stroking her fears like tiny pets in her mind to make sure they were real.

The group’s amusement with Ren’s fear of being lost in time didn’t last long. Two days later, while Jasmin was serving them each a measly portion of Desmond’s food for breakfast, Finn slid up behind Ren and whispered, “How many days is it since we’ve left Ozryn?”

“Six, Finn.”“How many was that?” Sloan asked. He was concentrating on

his food, and though he wasn’t looking at Ren, his face was tilted towards her. She looked around her to find the group avoiding her eye with unconvincing disinterest. Ren said, “Six days since Ozryn.”

“This is your fault, you know,” Jasmin huffed. She sat on her blanket and crossed her arms. “We can’t exactly go on oblivious to the count of days when you’ve gone and put it in our heads that we’ll lose track.”

The next day, Ren woke to Jasmin and Merrigan arguing over the yellow bottle of sunscreen. She sat up groggily, rubbing her eyes, and took Sloan’s hand when getting to her feet. She smiled at him, a kind of good morning, and he responded by scowling and roughly shoving her hair under her black scarf.

“Ow—stop—I’ve got it,” Ren said, swatting his hands away. “Then fix it, and keep it fixed,” Sloan said. He glared at her

and she crumpled under his gaze, fixing her scarf and hurrying to roll up the blanket.

“Come, Jasmin, you’ve got to use it,” Merrigan said, brandishing the yellow bottle wildly in the air.

���145

“I won’t be using that today, thank you,” Jasmin said haughtily, her chin raised. “It’s a waste. I barely put on any yesterday morning, never reapplied it, and was fine at the end of the day. I’m acclimated.”

Ren was about to point out that even though she thought the group was improving—Merrigan had only stopped four times the day before, the others not needing to stop at all—their skin was still tinged red by the end of the day. She kept this to herself, though, since Jasmin’s chin was raised so very high and demanding no questions.

“I don’t need it either,” Evie piped up.“Yes, you do,” Finn said. He spread a dollop of sunscreen over

Evie’s face before she could protest any further. “It’s seven days since Ozryn,” Ren said. “An entire week,” Sloan groaned. “We’ve wasted too much

time. Ren, I thought you were fixing your scarf? Get it right and we can go.

“No one’s going to see—”“Quickly, Ren, fix your scarf. No stop at noon today, we can’t

afford it.”They didn’t come across a black building that day, nor did

they see a sail on the horizon or a cloud cross the sun. Sloan gave them something new to think about that day, however: he had returned to his long speeches of impatience and frustration that they weren’t walking fast enough. He only allowed Merrigan one break that day, insisting that she would acclimate faster if she pushed herself. To her credit, Merrigan did make an effort to suppress her coughing, but in the end she spent the entirety of that afternoon wheezing and coughing incessantly. Finn looked to be on the verge of bridging the bitter wall Merrigan had put up between them to help her as well as undermining Sloan’s tyranny by calling for a break, but after a lot of sighs and glances in Merrigan’s direction, he did nothing more than grumble unintelligibly under his breath.

! THE WATCH146

“Seven days since Ozryn,” Ren said at moonrise. Sloan stopped their procession and they began to set up for the night.

“I’m just going to sleep, I think,” Merrigan coughed, declining the food Evie offered her. Tears rolled unbidden down her full cheeks. “Thanks for the count, Ren. A week-k-k-k-k.”

Merrigan may have been able to let her tears flow as they would, but Jasmin certainly wasn’t about to admit her weakness so easily. Evie and Sloan helped Merrigan roll out her blanket and Finn busied himself with fiddling with the cap to one of his canteens. They didn’t dare look at Jasmin, and even Evie knew better than to say, “I told you so.”

Not putting on sunscreen that morning had proven Ren’s theory that the group wasn’t as acclimated as they thought. Jasmin was burnt to a crisp. Her skin, already naturally tanned, was a deep maroon color. Tiny white blisters lined her chest and the bottom half of her stomach, where her armor-like half-shirt ended. Her lips were swollen and the skin around her eyes curiously white compared with the rest of her body. She eased herself onto her blanket slowly, cringing at its softness.

“Why do we never walk by moonlight? You wouldn’t get burned,” Ren said. Finn looked at her in alarm, as if he couldn’t believe her audacity at speaking to Jasmin at this critical time.

“Do I look burned to you? I’m not sunburned,” Jasmin said roughly.

“They won’t acclimate if they’re not given the chance,” Sloan said. “They’ll stay as weak as they were when I found them in Base Eight. They need to toughen up.”

“They’re going back to a Base, why do they have to acclimate to the surface?” Ren asked under her breath, relieved that Sloan didn’t hear her.

Ren’s count became an essential part of the group’s routine. At moonset, they lingered until she announced the count and only then started walking. At noon, and if Sloan decided they were making good progress, they took a short break after her count. At moonrise, her count signaled to Sloan that the group

���147

was too worn out to go on. She had infected the group with her fear of getting lost in time, and Sloan didn’t even scowl when she announced the count.

On the eleventh day since leaving Ozryn, Sloan waited for Ren to announce the moonset count before addressing them.

“We’ll reach Azmarin by the afternoon. Ren, you absolutely cannot slip up again. Azmarin is the City of the Bridge. It was the first place the Union sent the Doctors because of how easily infection spread there. The Doctors will be everywhere. There are street checkpoints with bioprobes set up throughout the city and Reapers patrolling the streets and testing whoever looks suspicious to them. There are ways through the buildings that will keep us off the streets, for the most part, but don’t panic if we get stopped. I’ll handle it.”

“Are we staying with ex-Citizens again?” Merrigan asked. “There’s a safe house in the center of the city run by friends

of mind. They’re not Citizens, but they’re just as reliable.”Just as Sloan had predicted, the sun was on its way down to

the horizon when a cluster of tall shadows rose from the Bridge ahead of them. A group of clouds were crawling their way across the sun, so they couldn’t see much beyond the shadows. Ren felt the presence of something else on the Bridge like a magnet dragging her forward. Evie skipped ahead in excitement. Ren tightened the knot in her scarf and double-checked that all her hair was covered, a bubble of nervous excitement filling up her chest.

The wind shifted and brought to Ren the smell of fire. She frowned and squinted to make out something of the city besides an indistinct collection of shapes. Sloan grabbed the back of Evie’s collar and motioned for them all to stop. The clouds passed and released the dim red light of the sun. Ren gasped. Sloan cursed.

What was left of Azmarin lay before them in ruin. Collapsed buildings teetered on the edge of a smoking, gigantic hole in the Bridge. Fire peppered the city, the smoke covering Azmarin in a

! THE WATCH148

gauzy haze. There was the watchtower Sloan had told her about, standing like a metal carcass piercing the sky, its entire frame smoking and crippled by fire.

���149

C H A P T E R T W E L V E

AZMARIN

“I thought the Reapers only used flaying knives,” Ren said weakly.

Sloan was pacing the width of the Bridge, occasionally crouching to inspect some inconsequential pile of smoking debris as if it had the power to explain what had happened. Azmarin’s buildings were husks of metal that crumbled when the wind blew and spilled their contents onto the streets. There was no ticking of clocks or beautiful ladies to gawk at, no hope of a good meal or fear of being found by the Doctors. The wind carried embers and the sharp stench of death in its wings as it howled through the broken buildings like a child at play.

Azmarin’s border started up abruptly from the Bridge as a distinct, straight line of wreckage. Jasmin was prowling the line of wreckage looking for some path through the ruins, Finn, Merrigan, and Evie were milling around helplessly, Sloan was pacing a short space of wreckage with such ferocity that he seemed to burn a hole straight through the Bridge, and Ren was frozen in one spot, staring blankly at the city and trying to comprehend what her eyes were telling her.

“Obviously, that’s not their only weapon anymore,” Sloan snapped.

“Do we know for sure that it was the Reapers?” Sloan fell to his knees, his interest suddenly and completely

consumed with inspecting what looked to be a charred loaf of

! THE WATCH150

bread. Jasmin jogged towards them, her rifle held loosely in front of her chest.

“I think I’ve found a way through,” she said. “It should be relatively simple, though there is quite a big hole near the watchtower…”

Sloan nodded curtly, looking around at their pale, haggard faces with a grimace. Ren thought she saw his hands shaking, but he ran them through his hair too quickly for her to be sure. Eventually, he nodded at Jasmin again and asked her to lead the way.

Jasmin arranged them in single file and brought them to the path she had found. It must have been an exceptionally broad street at one point, but the crumbling buildings on each side had reduced it to nothing more than a sliver winding its way through the wreckage. Jasmin slung her rifle across her back and, with her face set into such confidence that suggested she had been preparing her whole life for a moment such as this, assumed Sloan’s position at the head of the group and lead them into Azmarin.

Ren barely lifted her feet as she shuffled down the street. She clenched the strap of her bag with both hands and cringed whenever the wind smacked her with tiny bits of debris. There wasn’t a single building in Azmarin that had escaped the destruction. Whatever, or whoever, had done this had been thorough. There were small holes blasted into the Bridge through which sharp sprays of seawater sprouted up like geysers. Ren skirted around them as best she could. She had spent days clinging to the railing and longing to be closer to the sea, but it took the threat of accidentally falling through one of these holes for Ren to realize she should be longing for solid ground. She didn’t know how to swim.

As they walked deeper into the city, the bodies started to appear. It was one or two at first, hanging out of a broken window or half-buried under a pile of rubble, and then there was an entire family lined up along the street and burnt to a crisp, and then a

���151

veritable heap teetering on the edge of a hole in the Bridge, and then they were everywhere Ren looked. Their smell, of crisped flesh and decay, choked Ren and made her eyes water. She trembled and made the sign of the crescent, biting down hard on her lip to keep herself from being sick.

Evie covered her eyes and walked blindly down the street. Ren touched the top of her head and Evie whirled around, her eyes huge and swimming in confusion.

“Why aren’t you angry?” she demanded, stomping her foot. “These were your people, why are you just standing there?”

“What do you want me to do, Ev?” Ren asked in surprise. “When my Base was destroyed, it looked just like this. And I

was mad. Aren’t you mad? Don’t you want to kill whoever did this?”

“No,” Ren said gently. She smoothed down Evie’s hair and wiped a tear from the girl’s cheek.

“Then you’re stupid,” Evie said. She continued walking down the street, but slowly, so that Ren’s hand stayed on her shoulder.

The wreckage on each side of the street creeped closer. Ren pulled her scarf to cover her mouth and nose. From up ahead, Jasmin called, “There’s a big hole in the Bridge coming up. It’s going to be a squeeze, so keep close.”

The wind picked up and the street fell away in front of Ren. The watchtower was before her. Its base was rooted in the seafloor independent of the Bridge, and it rose up from the waves like a charred, twisting monster. It was blackened by fire, crippled with gaping holes in its sides, and appeared so precarious that one good flick would collapse the whole thing. At its apex was the skeleton of a massive clock.

Surrounding the watchtower like a moat was a hole the in the Bridge encompassing nearly its entire width. The only thing keeping the Bridge from snapping in two were the columns located below each railing and in line with the watchtower; they had been, fortunately, unharmed and stood strong. Through the

! THE WATCH152

hole, Ren could see a magnificent, red-hulled ship drowning beneath the whitecaps.

The group bunched together where the street met the edge of the hole. Jasmin was clenching her jaw so tightly that a muscle was jumping on her cheek. Her eyes were wide and drinking in the sight of the sea with undisguised fear and her mouth was pulling her sunburnt skin down into a formidable frown.

“Right, so,” she said. “Follow me and we should be able to make it around the hole to the other side. Step exactly where I step. Unless I end up falling, then you probably shouldn’t step there.”

Jasmin went first, then Merrigan, Evie, Finn, Sloan, and, finally, Ren. They edged off the street and onto the sliver of Bridge that acted as the rim of the hole. It was barely wider than Ren’s foot. The rubble of Azmarin’s buildings and the odd decaying body pressed right up against her ankles, though never threatened to breach the foot-wide rim. It was as if someone had cleared the space for the purpose of making it around the hole.

Ren took two steps on her own, but one compulsive glance at the hungry sea to her right had her jumping forward to bury her fists in Sloan’s jacket. He swayed precariously, startled, and looked over his shoulder at Ren. Ren tightened her grip on his jacket and stared fixedly at the leather. She couldn’t bring herself to lift her gaze from the leather and face what was around her; the burned faces poking out of the rubble, the waves tearing apart the red-hulled ship, how wide the hole was, whatever scornful look Sloan had decided to adopt. Sloan reached back and patted her awkwardly on her side. Ren smiled weakly at his jacket and followed him around the hole, her toes scraping against his heels and her face so close to his jacket that not even the wind could blow away the smell of leather.

Ren’s world narrowed to Sloan’s jacket. She blocked out the sound of the waves calling her to jump, she ignored the urge to look at the dead faces near her feet, she pretended that she could hear the ticking of the watchtower’s ruined clock. She memorized

���153

the folds and worn lines of Sloan’s jacket until they were old friends. The crescent scar on her palm rubbed against the leather and tickled.

When Sloan stopped, Ren bumped into him and stayed there. Sloan took her fists gently and pried them off his jacket. He said her name so quietly she thought it may have been the wind, but the wind wouldn’t make her blush so angrily at herself.

She gritted her teeth and looked around her. Somehow, they had made it to the other side of the hole, where the street they had left on the other side sprung up from the jagged rim of the hole and continued its narrow, winding way through Azmarin. Sloan studied her face, his own a strange balance of concern and contempt. He said, “Your scarf.”

Ren fixed it so that her hair was covered and wiped away the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

“L-let’s go on, shall we?” Finn asked shakily. Jasmin nodded fervently and took off down the street. Ren stayed in the back, counting and recounting the heads bobbing in front of her, unable to shake the fear that one of the group had fallen silently through the hole and been forgotten. But, everyone was accounted for and moving swiftly through the ruins. The moon climbed into the sky and sunk them into a dim, watery light. Merrigan walked with her hands against her mouth and shoulders shaking with the need to cough. Jasmin indulged each of her own tiny coughs with passion, as if she was trying to expel something else with them.

Evie squealed with joy when they reached the southern border of Azmarin. Ren sprinted forward just to pass the last pile of rubble and breathe in the sight of the open Bridge. She made the sign of the crescent, her thumb slipping clumsily over her sweaty palms.

“Look, is that a black building?” Jasmin asked, pointing down the Bridge. There was a shadow against the moonrise not a mile away, a shadow with the faintest glimmer of metal.

“Yes,” Sloan said. “Let me check it out first, Ev. Don’t run.”

! THE WATCH154

“Come on, come on, come on,” Merrigan panted, speed-walking to the black building.

Sloan jogged ahead of them, slipped into the building, and called out, “It’s all right, come in.”

The group all surged to the entrance at once, getting jumbled and squished against each other. Ren laughed nervously and backed up, waiting her turn to step inside. The building was small, triangular, and built against the railing. When she finally stepped inside, the walls were so thick that the sound of the sea was blocked from her ears, along with the lingering smell of fire.

The black building was barely big enough to hold them all, a fact that swamped Ren with relief. She would rather be cramped up in a tiny ball than left out in the open, especially after what she had seen that day. She leaned against one of the walls and closed her eyes, then said, “Eleven days since Ozryn.”

“I’m going to take first watch,” Sloan said, rubbing his eyes. He stepped out of the black building, walked a few feet away from it, and sat with his back against the railing.

Ren’s teeth chattered. Her scarf smelled of burnt skin and metal. She ripped it off and crushed it into her bag, releasing a stream of sweat to snake its way down her spine. She shook out her hair, relishing in the feeling of having cool air against her scalp. She savored the darkness inside the black building and the fact that she could only make out dim outlines of the group and the whites of their eyes. Ren took off her bag, the blankets, and all her canteens in the hopes of lifting the suffocating weight on her chest. Instead, she felt unbearably light and began to shiver violently.

The sheen of Jasmin’s metallic clothes moved closer and her rough hands took Ren by the arms and eased her to sit. Jasmin sat next to Ren, almost on top of her, and Evie sat on her other side. Finn’s knees bumped into hers and Merrigan wiggled in between Jasmin and Finn. Ren hugged Evie closer to her. Ren knew she was going to have to sleep at some point, otherwise she wouldn’t make it very far the next day, but couldn’t come up with a way to

���155

close her eyes without the image of burned, tortured faces immediately popping up in her mind.

“Ren?” Evie asked. “Didn’t your mom used to tell you stories?”“All the time.”“What kinds did she tell you?” Her big eyes were luminous in

the darkness and more impressionable than Ren had ever seen them. Evie curled her knees into her chest and leaned heavily against Ren.

“Would you like to hear one?” “Please,” Evie said, sniffling slightly. “My favorites were from this huge book my mom had. A

History of the Family Huntington.”“Are there any Doctors?”“No.”“Wars?”“Of course.”“Blood?”“In some parts.”“Were any of the family warriors?” Evie asked excitedly. “I

don’t want to hear a sissy story. I want a good one. A good one that I will like.”

“One of the them was a warrior, in a way.”“Was she a girl?”“Yes, her name was Cara Huntington. I think you’ll like her

story,” Ren said. It was nothing to remember the chapters on Cara Huntington. They had been thrilling, an emotional roller coaster that even her young mind had appreciated whenever her mother took out the Huntington book, and Ren could remember the story perfectly. She could almost see her mother again, seated before her with that huge book in her lap, her words drifting from Ren’s memory and out of her mouth.

“Cara Huntington was a beautiful princess—”“What?” Evie interrupted in alarm. “I don’t want a princess

story!”

! THE WATCH156

“Shush, Ev, this will be better,” Merrigan yawned. “We don’t need a sad story after today.”

“This better be good, Ren,” Evie grumbled. Ren smiled to herself and started again. “Cara Huntington was a beautiful princess a long time ago,

when there were millions and millions of people on Earth and there was nothing to do all day long but eat good food and go on adventures. Her family was extremely rich and very well respected in the world, and Cara was their most valuable possession.

“Everyone thought she was the absolute loveliest woman in the world, but besides that, she was also extremely smart and incredibly generous. She was a healer, and traveled the world helping sick people and sharing her money with everyone she met. Though she had everything anyone could ever need, she was always lonely. She was always looking for someone to love, and eventually, because she thought she was running out of time, she decided to let a horrible man love her.”

“This is when it gets good,” Evie whispered.“This horrible man only wanted her family’s money. She was

beautiful, so he didn’t complain, and she was intelligent, so he was cruel to her when no one else was around. He threatened her with her family’s death if she ever left him and demanded to be given all the money her parents had. Cara hated this horrible man, but she hated herself more, for allowing him in her life.

“One day, the horrible man decided that the money she had given him wasn’t enough. He wanted to be as famous as her parents, so he forced Cara to marry him and killed her entire family, so that he owned everything. Cara may have been willing to sacrifice her happiness in the face of loneliness, but when she learned that he had killed her family, she transformed from the generous princess she was into a ruthless warrior. She killed the horrible man. She changed her name and appearance, then went back to traveling the world. Instead of healing and supporting others with her money, she offered herself to those looking for

���157

vengeance. People who had been wronged, or who had had their family murdered like hers, sought her out. She was an assassin for hire, always looking for the next horrible man that she could kill.”

“What kind of story was that?” Merrigan grumbled. “Well, it put Evie to sleep,” Finn said. “Thank you, Ren.”The story had only worked its magic on Evie, though. The

dark silence pressed against Ren like a hot blush. She worried her bottom lip and wished she could erase Azmarin from her memory. Merrigan sighed every few seconds, long low sighs that carried a distinct tremor of sadness. Jasmin and Finn might as well have been sleeping for all the noise they made. Ren found herself peering out of the black building’s doorless entryway to where Sloan sat against the railing. He had shifted position so that he was facing the rising moon. Was he as affected by Azmarin as she was, or had he seen enough of the world to not be bothered by something as trivial as the destruction of a city?

“Do you think Sloan would let us rest here for half a day tomorrow?” Ren wondered aloud. It was easier to talk about Sloan than to sit there wallowing away in the memory of Azmarin. “I don’t think I’m going to sleep at all tonight.”

“Not a chance, we have to get to Base One,” Jasmin said. “I hope he’s not planning on reaching Base One the day of

the Launch,” Merrigan said. “That’s too much pressure.”“No, his plan is to reach the surface village closest to Base

One a week before the Launch. Cecelia will meet us there. I guess she’ll need a few days to get us into the Base safely,” Jasmin said.

Ren looked down at the Watch absentmindedly. “Do any of you know Cecelia?”

“We know she’s going to get us on her Ship,” Finn said. “Her full name is Cecelia Laine,” Jasmin said. “That’s it? That’s all you know about this woman who is

apparently going to disregard the Union to let fugitives aboard her Ship? None of you have ever met her before?”

! THE WATCH158

“Sloan sometimes says her names in his sleep,” Merrigan offered weakly, as if that was proof enough they could trust Cecelia.

There was a pause. Ren’s heart had started to race; the group wasn’t being held back by Sloan’s silent commands to keep quiet. She cleared her throat and asked delicately, “How much do you guys know about Sloan, anyway?”

“A fair bit,” Jasmin said, her voice rough and defensive. Ren flinched, worried that she had ruined her chance by being too blunt.

“Though, not as much as we’d like,” Finn whispered. “We know enough to trust him with our lives,” Jasmin said

loyally. “He wasn’t a member of Base Eight, though,” Merrigan said.

“He showed up after the Doctors attacked and said he could help us. Well, technically he said he could help Finn.”

“What?” Ren raised her eyebrows. She glanced out of the doorway to make sure Sloan was still against the railing before continuing. “And how did he know how to find you?”

“We were all still in what was left of Base Eight when we found us. I don’t know how he knew what happened, but he did,” Finn said. “He found Evie and I first, and as we were leaving we came across Merrigan. Sloan decided she had better come too, since she knows so much about Filavirus. Jasmin kind of…forced him to take her.”

“I threatened to kill him if he didn’t teach me how to breathe in the surface air,” Jasmin said lightly.

“So then, you did know him?” Ren asked Finn. “No, we’re apparently distant cousins. Our mothers were

close, though, and before his mother died he promised her he would find me one day. I guess he figured out I lived in Base Eight the same time the Doctors attacked it.”

“What was he doing on the surface in the first place?” Ren asked. She was unsettled and vaguely frightened. Sloan was using

���159

the memory of her mother against her…was he doing the same to Finn?

“I have a guess,” Merrigan said. “Based on what he said to Anya, Masha, and Desmond back in Ozryn. They must have been part of some insurgent group in the Union and imprisoned when the Doctors attacked their Base. They managed to escape, but they’re fugitives of the Union. That’s probably why Cecelia has to sneak him on as well as us. Since we’re contaminated, and he’s a fugitive.”

Sloan stepped into the building and they all jumped guiltily. Sloan only sighed and asked Jasmin to take his place on watch. Jasmin hurried to obey, and Sloan eased down in her space next to Ren. He shimmied out of his jacket and used both the wall behind them and Ren’s shoulder in getting comfortable. Ren froze. There was something odd about the way he was searching for the children of specific women, but Ren wasn’t sure if his intentions were sinister or simply coincidental. Sloan and Finn did possess a passing resemblance, after all. The more time she spent with Sloan, the less she was convinced that he was as unscrupulous as she had originally thought. There were moments where she saw genuine concern on his face, not only for herself but for the rest of the group. If she was right in such judgement, then she could hope to one day get an honest answer about her mother out of him. First, though, she would have to admit to herself that her mother had lied about the Watch and had kept the Union a secret from her.

Ren leaned her head against the wall. She made the sign of the crescent on her palm as the air in the black building grew sleepy and thick. Merrigan was snoring. Ren was glad of the uncomfortable way her body was squished between Sloan, Evie, and the wall. She didn’t deserve to be comfortable when she could still smell the embers of Azmarin in Evie’s hair. Telling stories and discussing Sloan’s questionable background was understandable enough in the way of distraction, but Ren couldn’t comprehend

! THE WATCH160

how they could sleep so peacefully. They had left her to agonize over Azmarin alone.

She finished her crescent signs and poured all of her concentration into listening for Sloan to say, “Cecelia,” in his sleep. He never did.

���161

C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N

TWINS

Ren regretted teasing Jasmin about her fear of the sea. The relentless crash of the waves against the columns of the Bridge and the horrifically sharp smell of salt nearly drove her mad. Walking close enough to the railing to see the waves was utterly inconceivable. All she could picture was the ferocity of the waves when she had looked down on them through that gaping hole in the Bridge. They had tossed around eagerly, awaiting the next poor soul to fall from the safety of the Bridge. How many Azmarini had been eaten by the sea when their homes were destroyed?

Ren walked in the centerline near Jasmin that day after leaving Azmarin. Before noon, Ren’s sleep-deprived and mangled nerves were stretched to breaking. Jasmin gasped and groaned whenever she stretched her sunburned skin too far and jumped to clutch the strap of her rifle whenever the wind carried a spray of seawater over them. Merrigan’s voice was so cheery as she babbled on about lasting a few hours without a breathless spell. Finn and Evie were reminiscing over some extraordinary day in Base Eight and laughing carelessly. Ren could heel her face contorted in disgust, but didn’t realize the extent of it until Sloan came to walk beside her.

“That’s quite an appalling look you have going on,” he said lightly, which only made her sink deeper into her mood. “You can’t blame them for wanting to forget about yesterday. Not

! THE WATCH162

everyone is capable of expressing the tragic brooding you are so adept at.”

“You are so ridiculous,” Ren scoffed. No sooner had the words left her lips than she was blushing furiously.

“Oh?” Sloan laughed. He touched her scarf to make sure it was in place. “When we stop tonight, you really need to get some sleep. You’re stumbling all over the place, not to mention the fact that your usually excruciatingly dim arguments have really taken a hit.”

Ren fumbled over her words, blushed even harder when Sloan chuckled at her struggle, then said, “I guess I’m a bit tired.”

Sloan hummed in amusement and touched her scarf again. “We’ll be at the coast by nightfall. It’ll be close to another week before we get to Myrrka, the town we’ll meet Cecelia in. Then, another week before the Launch. I can’t have your sleep deprivation making us late.”

“No, one should never be late for Cecelia,” Ren said. Sloan’s lips grew thin as if he was about to smile.From behind them, Jasmin asked, “Are you sure you have the

right day, Sloan? Before Ren, I don’t remember you doing anything in particular to keep track. When was the last time you even saw Cecelia? How do you know you haven’t lost count?”

Sloan didn’t answer. The gentle upward tilt of his lips and the fierce glint that flashed across his eyes was a firmer argument for his devotion to Cecelia than anything he could say. He would never forget something Cecelia said, much less lose track of his countdown to their reunion.

“You’re just as bad as Finn,” Jasmin said, rolling her eyes. Sloan snorted and raised his voice to address the whole group.“I don’t expect we’ll be able to walk peacefully onto the coast.

If the Reapers were guarding one end, they’re most certainly guarding the other. Jasmin, I want you up here with me as front guard. Finn can take the back, and Merrigan will be responsible for Evie’s safety. Ren, why don’t you stay somewhere close to me

���163

and not contribute to the protection of the group as usual. Fix your scarf! Honestly, it’s as if you want to get caught.”

They were three hours from the coast by Sloan’s estimate when Jasmin slid her rifle off her back and aimed it down the Bridge. Sloan had his pistols out and Finn his stun gun, all three of them staring fixedly ahead where a shimmering, fuzzy shadow barely indistinguishable in the intense sunlight hung over the Bridge.

“What is it?” Evie whispered.“People?” Jasmin peered through the scope of her rifle. “A lot

of people walking towards the coast. Where—?”“From Azmarin,” Ren blurted out. “They must have survived

whatever happened in Azmarin.”The Azmarini were completely oblivious to their approach.

They ambled down the Bridge seemingly without worry. There were no guards to protect the rear, no sign of weapons, and no order to the way they stumbled along. Despite the obvious lack of threat, Sloan and Jasmin ran forward with their guns raised. Ren twisted free of Merrigan’s white-knuckled grasp to jog after them, resolute in keeping them from harming anyone innocent.

Jasmin ran up to the closest man, pressed the muzzle of her rifle into the back of his neck, and pushed him to kneel. The man was covered in blood and soot, his clothes torn to tatters, and the bottoms of his bare feet were blistered and burned. He was surrounded by close to fifty people who looked just as bad or worse than he did. Sloan, finally catching on to the fact that there was no threat from such a group, lowered his pistols and nudged Jasmin with his elbow. Jasmin removed the muzzle of her rifle from the man’s neck.

The man turned to look at her. His face was covered in burns and set in a look of haunting agony.

Sloan, grimacing, bent down and asked, “Are you from Azmarin?”

The man nodded.

! THE WATCH164

“How long ago was the city attacked? Who attacked it? How?”

The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Sloan jammed his pistols back into their holsters and twisted his fists into the man’s shirt. The fabric ripped off and the man fell to the Bridge.

“Tell me!” Sloan growled, taking the man roughly by the throat and lifting him in the air.

“Sloan, what’s wrong with you?” Ren muttered. She squeezed passed Jasmin and pried Sloan’s fingers from the man’s throat. She helped the burned man to his feet and smiled at him kindly.

The Azmarini had stopped walking and were watching them silently. There were more than enough of them to overpower their little group, even with Sloan and Jasmin’s weapons.

A young boy pushed through the crowd, brandishing a flaying staff wildly over his head. “Back up! BACK UP! I’ll hurt you!”

Jasmin sniggered and Sloan’s hands jumped automatically to grip his pistols. Ren took a step towards the boy before either of them could do something rash. Her hands were shaking as she held them up innocently and said, as calmly as she could, “We’re just trying to get to the coast. We’ve traveled from the north end of the Bridge and through Azmarin. Is that where you’re from?”

The boy glowered at her. He couldn’t have been much older than Evie, which was impressive considering the weapon he had stolen. He asked, “How many are in your group?”

“Six,” Ren said, pointing to herself, Sloan and Jasmin, and Finn, Evie, and Merrigan hovering a few feet away.

“Why are you crossing the Bridge?”Ren bit her lip. She opened her right palm and showed it to

the boy, saying, “The sun and moon meet in the sky. The sun is blocked, the moon is black, the greatest of fears subdued. Here stands a Moon-soul, running from seclusion.”

“Here stands a Sun-self, happy to be blocked.”I was right, Ren thought triumphantly. The boy held himself

like a Sun-self, with broad shoulders, agile feet, direct words, and

���165

an incorrigible boldness practically oozing off him in waves. It wasn’t much to go on, and Ren probably would have better luck connecting with another Moon-soul, but it was close enough. The boy lowered his flaying staff.

“We don’t want to bother you, and we don’t ask anything of you,” Ren said gently. “We are just trying to get to the coast. May we walk with you?”

The boy nodded. Ren smiled and looked at Sloan. His eyebrows were raised as he stared at her, faintly impressed. Ren waved on Finn, Evie, and Merrigan and walked forward into the crowd of Azmarini. She was jittery, light-headed, and slightly hot around the neck. The group was letting her take the lead, even Sloan, and the Azmarini around her, though their appearance was anything but promising, were alive. There were too many expectant eyes focused on her for her to form a coherent thought. Luckily, the Sun-self boy shouted out for the Azmarini to move on, and the whole pack crawled forward at a maddeningly slow pace.

The group stayed together, surrounded by the Azmarini refugees, and only Merrigan flitted out of the safety of the group to one Azmarini or another at the slightest moan of pain or smallest of stumbles.

“Merrigan, take it easy,” Finn said, trying to grab Merrigan’s sleeve. “You don’t want to have a breathless spell in the middle of these people, do you?”

“Why are you worried about me? I’ve got people to help,” Merrigan clipped. “Worry about Evie or Jasmin for a change.”

Ren, when the attention of being in the lead became too much for her to handle, paused so that Sloan could walk next to her. His eyes shifted over the Azmarini with distrust and lingered especially long on the Sun-self boy that shadowed his every step.

“We can’t walk with them,” Sloan mumbled to her. “We have to stay at our own pace. It’ll take us a century to get to the coast at this rate. Come closer to me, I don’t like the way that guy is trying to see under your scarf. He may recognize you.”

! THE WATCH166

Ren glanced to the man Sloan was talking about, but saw only a sad pair of curious eyes, nothing to be concerned about. She asked, “Would it kill you to show a little compassion for what they’ve been through? We can stay with them as far as the coast to make sure they reach it safely.”

The Azmarini were in a uniform, thorough shock that made them seem like corpses who just so happened to be walking. Some watched Ren with suspicion and grumbled under their breath, but even more didn’t seem to care about the group’s presence at all. Most were burned and bleeding, others, including the Sun-self boy, had only torn clothes and dirty faces. From what Ren could tell, none were carrying any kind of food or water.

Sloan stayed so close to Ren’s side that her wrist kept bumping into the holster of one of his pistols. He prowled at her side as if he was expecting a Reaper to spring up from the metal of the Bridge and flay her where she stood. The Sun-self boy eventually grew tired of being behind them and pushed forward to walk right up against Sloan’s hip, separating him from Ren. Sloan stared resolutely forward, though a muscle in his jaw started to twitch erratically.

The flaying staff was taller than the boy’s entire body and he struggled to hold it upright without tripping over it. Sloan lasted no more than two minutes before snapping his neck to look down on the boy with ferocious irritation, growling, “What do you want?”

“Watch your tongue!” the boy cried, swinging the flaying staff inches from Sloan’s face. “I don’t have to let you walk with us. I can still throw you over the side of the Bridge!”

“I’m sure,” Sloan muttered. “Can you make these people move faster, or just get them out of our way? We don’t have time to be held up like this.”

“No, I can’t!” the boy screeched, drawing the attention of at least twenty Azmarini.

Ren hastily bent down and looked the boy in the eye. “I haven’t introduced myself yet. My name is Seren.”

���167

The boy stopped waving his staff and squinted at Ren. He had very pale, ghastly skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun before. His hair was a black mess of curls, his eyes round and so dark they were almost purple. His clothes were badly ripped and burned, his feet bare, and his arms covered up to the elbows in tiny cuts and bruises. The flaying staff was the only formidable thing about him. Without it, he would have faded into the background of nondescript refugees perfectly.

“This is my friend Sloan,” Ren continued. “He may not seem like it, but he’s not all that bad. Have you been leading all these people to the coast since the attack on Azmarin?”

“No,” the boy said. His eyes narrowed even more. “We were in the city for a while after the bombs until this guy Ivan rounded up the survivors and said we should get to the coast.”

“Take me to Ivan,” Sloan demanded.“He died a few days ago,” the boy said, refusing to lift his eyes

from Ren’s face. “We put him over the side of the Bridge and I took over. No one else wanted to, and I have a staff. I can put anyone I want to over the side of the Bridge.”

“I know Sloan doesn’t have the best of manners,” Ren said. “But, we could really use your help in getting to the coast. My friends and I have somewhere really important to be, and if you don’t trust them, you can trust me. You and I are both Moon-and-Sun, we should help each other and not throw each other over the side of the Bridge. All right?”

“Of course we’ll help you,” said a young girl. She stepped out of the crowd of Azmarini and stood next to the boy. She wore a gold chain around her neck with a stopped clock in the shape of a sun dangling from it, and spoke to Ren like someone infinitely more mature than her age suggested. “It would not do to refuse friendship to anyone looking for it in such hard times. You are welcome to share our journey to the coast, Moon-soul, and I promise my brother won’t threaten you again. I’m afraid he is partially in charge here, and the rest of our people wouldn’t hesitate to throw you over at his request, unless I say otherwise.”

! THE WATCH168

Ren blinked, taken aback. The two children could have been the same person. Their purple-black eyes, pale skin, and even the clothes they wore were perfectly identical. The only difference between them was the girl’s waist-length hair, the necklace she wore, and the boy’s flaying staff. Ren’s mother had once told her that, long ago when women were healthier, some siblings were lucky enough to be born at the same time. She couldn’t believe her luck at meeting twins.

“I’m Seren,” Ren said to the young girl. The girl bowed and said, “Pleasure to meet you. My name is

Wynn and this is my brother Cole. I apologize for not being able to provide your with our proper surnames. We were raised in an orphanage and given very little information on our parents. I generally refer to myself as Wynn Graycott in honor of the Graycott Orphanage where we were raised. My brother does not share my wish to commemorate our time there and is simply known as Cole. If you’ll excuse us?” Wynn turned her dark eyes to her brother and said, “There is a lovely girl our age just over there, if you’d care to meet her. I believe her name is Evangeline.”

The twins walked away promptly, Cole glancing over his shoulder to bare his teeth at Sloan.

“How bizarre,” Sloan said. “She’s impressive,” Ren responded, somewhat defensively. She

stood and resumed walking at the Azmarini’s pace.Sure enough, the twins had made directly for Evie and Finn.

Cole took up an impressive strut for someone so small, but he was unable to keep his staff steady and came very close to whacking Evie with it more than a few times. Finn kept a firm grip on Evie’s shoulder and a consistent frown directed at Cole. Jasmin hovered behind them, her hands clasping her rifle tightly and eyes following every movement the twins made.

“They’re harmless,” Ren said. “Cole may be a bit of a show off, but they’re not going to hurt anyone, so you can stop glaring at him like that. They’ve been through a trauma and need kindness.”

���169

“I don’t agree,” Sloan said. “Wynn talks like a Keeper of Thought, yet she claims to have been raised in an orphanage? She wouldn’t have had access to any kind of education in an Azmarini orphanage. She should sound more like you.”

“She could be a solar acolyte,” Ren snapped, her voice rising and causing the Azmarini around her to flinch.

“It’s too suspicious. Cole wouldn’t have found that flaying staff by pure luck. Most Reapers would die before giving them up.”

“Most,” Ren emphasized. She lowered her voice, suddenly nervous that the Azmarini around them were listening to their argument.

“When did you become our elected diplomat, anyway?” Sloan grumbled, following Ren’s cue and lowering his voice.

“Since you forgot how to act like a decent human being.”Sloan clicked his tongue. They walked in silence, Ren’s wrist

still bumping into the holster of one of Sloan’s pistols every other step. Ren tried to offer a few Azmarini some water from her canteen, but they looked at her as if she was deranged and scurried away. Her excitement upon first realizing there were survivors was quickly curdling into unease, and she blamed Sloan for his influence of distrustfulness.

Ren felt the coast before she saw it. It was a magnetic pull, as if the Bridge was deliberately nudging her forward. The crash of waves grew louder, as if the sea, too, was eager to throw her off its back. She made the sign of the crescent. Sloan noticed and tsked at her.

“If you don’t agree with it, then ignore it,” Ren said sharply. “Your own advice, if I recall correctly.”

Sloan was looking at her and didn’t notice that the Azmarini woman in front of him had stopped walking. He bumped into her, recoiling with a curse. All the Azmarini in front of them were grinding to a slow halt, stopping the entire procession.

“What’s going on?” Merrigan called out from behind Ren.

! THE WATCH170

Ren rocked onto her tiptoes for a beat, trying in vain to see over the many Azmarini heads. A knot twisted in her chest and she bit the inside of her cheek, heart pounding. She caught Sloan’s eye and bit her cheek even harder when she saw him take out his pistols.

There was a shout. Silence, then a peel of gunfire. The Azmarini surged backwards and Ren stumbled against the sudden press of bodies, her ears ringing with screams.

���171

C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

LASSHOT

The Azmarin refugees scattered, shoving each other in a desperate attempt to run back up the Bridge. People were thrown out of the way and over the side of the Bridge, flattened against the railing, and trampled over without a second thought. Sloan caught Ren by the waist when a raving Azmarini man shoved her out of his way. Gunfire rang through the air and drilled a fierce terror into Ren’s head. Sloan turned his back to the fleeing Azmarini and held Ren in front of him, hunching over her like a shield. Jasmin found them and stood next to Ren, her rifle raised as she shouted threats at any Azmarini who came too close to them.

“Ren,” Sloan shouted into her ear. “You have to get back to the others, to Finn. I have to fight with Jasmin. Stay with Finn.”

He shoved her from his arms and swung around to face the oncoming Azmarini. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Jasmin, both of them with their guns raised and aimed south. They advanced through the fleeing Azmarini slowly, conserving their gunfire for what waited at the coast.

Ren spun on her heel and let the flow of Azmarini carry her north to where Finn, Evie, and the twins were against the railing. Finn was shouting at Cole and fighting to wrench the flaying staff from his hands. Cole had such a grip on the staff that Finn was able to yank the boy into the air and shake the staff vigorously without Cole losing his grip.

! THE WATCH172

“There are Reapers at the coast, they can’t see you with this!” Finn screamed. Ren fought her way out of the Azmarini to stand next to Finn. Wynn was jumping between Finn and her brother, begging them both to stop and focus on the actual danger at hand. Evie had her back turned to all three of them, her tiny fists raised as she shouted a slew of obscenities at any Azmarini who got too close to her brother.

“IT’S MINE!” Cole shouted over and over as he bounced in the air, refusing to let go of the staff.

Ren, with the fervor of the Azmarini at her back and her heart thumping so loudly she couldn’t hear the gunfire anymore, grabbed Cole around the waist and pulled. The boy was so startled by her intrusion that his grip faltered just enough for Finn to finally yank the staff from him and chuck it over the Bridge.

“NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? MY FATHER’S STAFF!” Cole roared. He thrashed in Ren’s arms, whacking her in the face so hard that she dropped him heavily onto the Bridge. Cole sobbed and screamed at Finn, and would have jumped on him if Wynn hadn’t taken hold of her brother’s arms and held him back.

“Finn,” Ren grasped his arm and shook him until Finn looked her in the eye. “Sloan went to fight. I’ll watch Evie, can you please just go and—”

Ren turned to pick up Evie and show Finn she could handle her, but found that Evie had vanished. Finn plunged into the crowd of Azmarini, shouting for Evie. His stun gun had also vanished, so he punched, kicked, and shoved aside any Azmarini he could get his hands on to clear a path. Wynn and Cole were still fighting each other. Ren let them be and climbed the railing to get a better view.

What had set of the Azmarini was a horde of Reapers. There had to be at least thirty advancing in a double line and shooting identical double barreled shotguns. Sloan was darting through the crowd, his twin pistols leaking plumes of smoke as he picked off

���173

the Reapers one by one with confident ease. Jasmin was using the Azmarini for cover as she took the time to aim her rifle properly. Each bullet that left her rifle met a Reaper square in the forehead. Finn had found Evie, she was against the opposite railing, shooting Finn’s stun gun alternatively at the Reapers and the Azmarini she thought deserved it.

Wynn and Cole bolted from the railing and into the crowd before Ren could climb down and catch them. They found Jasmin’s discarded bag and each helped themselves to a knife. Ren stumbled as she jumped off the railing. She sprinted after the twins, but she blinked and lost them. Some of the Azmarini were returning with renewed courage, taking shotguns from fallen Reapers and fighting back. Ren was jostled to one side and the other, fighting desperately to stay on her feet and not get trampled. She had lost sight of the twins, of Evie and Finn, and hadn’t even seen Merrigan yet. She wanted to scream for the sake of screaming and couldn’t think straight with so many hands shoving her around.

One Azmarini man took her roughly by the shoulders and all but threw her into the air. She grit her teeth and closed her eyes, expecting to land on the Bridge and crack her skull, but she crashed into another Azmarini and was thrown forward. She tripped over something on the Bridge—Jasmin’s bag. Suddenly, Sloan was at her side, covered in blood and panting. He threw his smoking, spent pistols to the Bridge and took from Jasmin’s bag the most sinister gun Ren had seen yet.

“Get out of here, you’re only going to get yourself killed,” Sloan barked. “Where the hell is Finn? Why aren’t you with him? Run up the Bridge, Ren. Run as far from here as you can and I’ll find you when I’m finished.”

Sloan took her chin roughly and hissed, “You’re just going to make a mess of things here. Run away and I will find you. Don’t trust anyone and wait for me.”

With that, he returned to face the line of Reapers, aimed his new gun, and pulled the trigger. A series of bright red pellets of

! THE WATCH174

light erupted from the muzzle and connected with five Reapers simultaneously. They crumpled to the Bridge, dead on impact.

“What do I do, what do I do…” Ren mumbled to herself. She stood over Jasmin’s bag and fought to keep her feet as the Azmarini thoughtlessly shoved her. She couldn’t bend down and take a weapon from the bag without risking being trampled, but she couldn’t simply stand there much longer.

Finn had joined Jasmin after regaining his stun gun from Evie. He darted in and out of the Reaper ranks so quickly that Ren had trouble keeping track of him. He would stun a Reaper, then, after they had fallen frozen to the Bridge, he would take their shotgun and shoot them cleanly through the knee. He, Sloan, and Jasmin scattered the Reapers easily. They moved in coordinated, meticulous attacks, shouting directions to each other and pushing the Reapers to retreat. In comparison, the Reapers were obviously poorly trained and Ren would be surprised if half of them had ever used a gun before.

Ren shed her canteens, bag, and blankets and ran from Jasmin’s bag to the far railing without taking a weapon. Evie was standing back-to-back with the twins, all three edging steadily towards the fighting, Cole and Wynn with their knives and identical expressions of wrath. Evie was nothing but blood head-to-toe and bony fists. Ren was just about to reach them when a bundle of red hair overtook her.

Merrigan was there, her thin fingers digging into Ren’s arms and dragging her away.

“Help me, Ren, this man! I think Jasmin shot him by accident and I can’t move him out of the way by myself,” Merrigan said, dragging Ren towards a curled up Azmarini in the center of the Bridge.

“What does he matter?” Ren growled furiously, fighting out of Merrigan’s trap and suppressing the urge to slap her across the face. “Evie’s more important, the twins have her going straight to the Reapers. Merrigan, don’t grab me again. Merrigan! Let go!”

���175

“We need to help this man. We can’t fight Ren, don’t be stupid.”

Ren clenched her fists and darted out of the way of Merrigan’s hands. She didn’t have to cater to Merrigan’s need to show off her medical knowledge or hide like Sloan wanted her to. She could at least protect Evie, she was capable of that, wasn’t she?

Evie and the twins were so close to the fighting that one of the Reapers Jasmin had shot seconds before nearly crushed Wynn in his fall. Ren jumped over a dead Reaper and seized Evie, folding the girl into her arms and covering her head. Cole rounded on Ren and started kicking her shins.

“Ow! What the—STOP IT!” Ren stumbled away from Cole, trying to put her body between the twins and the fighting. Ren screamed, “You three need to stop and come with me! STOP! Evie, I’m going to put you down, don’t you dare run away from me!”

Just as Evie’s feet touched the ground, Sloan appeared at Ren’s side.

“What are you doing here?” he bellowed, so distracted with her that he didn’t notice the Reaper behind him. The Reaper pulled the trigger of his shotgun and, when he found his bullets depleted, cracked the butt of his gun on Sloan’s head.

Sloan crumpled to his knees, too dazed to avoid a second swift jab to his ribs. The Reaper threw his shotgun to the side and unsheathed a brass and black leather revolver. A manic smile broke over the Reaper’s face as he shot Sloan in the leg with a stream of blue light.

Sloan screamed and rolled to the side, the light burning across his thigh. Sloan’s pant leg caught on fire and he beat it out, howling in pain. The Reaper stood with his boots against the top of Sloan’s head and aimed the laser revolver.

Fire erupted in Ren’s chest and suddenly she couldn’t hear anything but the echo of Sloan’s screams, couldn’t see anything but the ugly face of the Reaper, couldn’t feel anything but a sizzling need for vengeance. Without a weapon, there was

! THE WATCH176

nothing Ren could do but throw herself into the Reaper’s chest. He fell to the Bridge with Ren’s throat in his hands. He rolled on top of her and crushed her throat, digging his thumb into her windpipe. She wheezed as white pops of light fizzled in her vision and fought to wriggle out from his oppressive weight.

The Reaper was twice her age and three times her size. His face was tanned and crisscrossed with dozen of faded scars. His bulbous, dry lips were stretched into a smirk so hatefully triumphant that Ren wondered how she could have ever believed Sloan to be malicious when he smirked. She felt her lungs quivering in her chest and tried to buck him off her. His hands slipped, just for a second, and Ren was able to jerk her forehead forward to collide with his. The Reaper recoiled and Ren slipped out from underneath him. She rolled to her knees, summoning all the strength she could into the fist she would pummel right into his ugly nose, when Jasmin quietly put the muzzle of her rifle to the Reaper’s chest and shot him.

“Sorry Ren, I didn’t want to shoot him while he was on top of you in case the bullet went through him,” Jasmin said. She held out her hands and pulled Ren to her feet.

Ren didn’t let herself linger on the thought that she had just been part of a murder. She vaulted over the dead Reaper to where Sloan was laying on the Bridge. He was pressing both palms into the laser burn on his thigh, his teeth clenched and the tendons of his neck sticking out grotesquely. Ren looked around her quickly to make sure there wasn’t another Reaper approaching before falling to her knees and pressing her hands on top of Sloan’s.

He cursed at the pressure on his wound and growled, “I told you to get away from the fighting.”

Sloan swatted her hands away and cursed again. Ren gaped at him, her dizzyingly sharp adrenaline clumping like dead weight in her blood. Sloan’s nostrils flared with each inhale and he screwed his eyes shut, pressing his hands harder into his leg.

Ren wiped her hands on her pants and stood. Her voice was mortifyingly shaky when she said, “I just saved your life.”

���177

“Jasmin saved my life,” Sloan said through gritted teeth. With a tremendous groan, Sloan struggled to stand on his one good leg, bent double and trembling in pain.

“Why are you trying to stand up? Merrigan needs to treat you,” Ren said. She reached forward to keep him steady, but he pushed her hands away again.

Ren took three steps back, closed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She felt like she was diving off the side of a cliff, weightless and terrified, and any second the ground would smack her in the face. She opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the dead Reaper, the one she had had a hand in killing. The rest of the Reapers were dead or dying. Jasmin was prowling the Bridge, picking off the Reapers that Finn had only stunned or shot in the knee.

The Azmarini who had come back to fight were sprinting for the black building that marked the start of the coast, their arms full of the dead Reapers’ shotguns. The Azmarini that fled had made impressive progress up the Bridge, as Ren had to squint to make them out. The group, plus the twins, were the only ones still amongst the dead.

“They were stationed at the black building, yeah?” Finn panted. He was pressing his palm into his chest and wheezing. Jasmin and Merrigan were similarly flushed with the effort of breathing. All their faces, their entire bodies, were speckled with blood.

Hysteria rose sharply in Ren’s mind as she looked down at her own arms and saw her skin tainted with brilliant splotches of red. She told herself there was no reason to panic, that Merrigan would save her with the Union’s medicine, but it didn’t help.

When Finn caught his breath, Sloan leaned on him and said, “Jasmin, go make sure none of the Azmarini are staying in that black building. It’s ours. Get them out.”

Jasmin ran to do his bidding. Between Finn and Merrigan, they were able to help Sloan hobble into the black building. Evie skipped through the dead Reapers to collect Jasmin’s bag and the

! THE WATCH178

things Ren had discarded. She couldn’t carry everything at once, so she made two trips to the black building, all the while staring at the twins. They had backed up to stand against the railing and were whispering to themselves, Cole pointing furiously at Evie.

Ren took her scarf off her head and turned her face the wind. It was cool and light, swirling through her hair and over her face, washing away the grime of guilt and anger. With her eyes closed, it was all too easy to pretend like she wasn’t surrounded by dead Reapers—and yet, the guilt stayed. She felt horribly about the death of so many people, but her guilt was dominated by the fact that she was afraid she was on her way to being desensitized to such things.

She opened her eyes and put her scarf back on, though she kept the knot loose around her still-sore neck. She walked cautiously to the twins, trying not to move too fast and spook them. Cole shushed Wynn loudly and tapped the blade of his stolen knife against his thigh.

“You need to clean that blood off,” Ren said. “Let us help you. We have water, too. Are you thirsty?”

Wynn looked at her brother, then at Ren. Cole looked at Ren, then her sister. Wynn’s face was serene and disturbingly calm given what had just happened, and Cole looked as if he was praying for a Reaper to come back to life and give him someone to fight. Ren held out her palm, her crescent scar facing up, and Wynn took it.

“Ren,” Merrigan called from the doorway of the black building. “Come inside so I can clean you up. Hurry, please.”

Ren pursed her lips and tugged on Wynn’s hand, pulling her forward. The twins walked reluctantly, their arms locked together and eyes squinting distrustfully at the black building. Ren said, “You two are quite the fighters.”

“We’ve learned what’s necessary to survive in this world,” Wynn said airily. “We are nothing compared to them, however.”

“Yeah, what are they?” Cole asked. “I don’t think they’re normal. They took on all those Reapers by themselves and won.”

���179

“They aren’t normal,” Ren said. She stepped carefully over the arm of a dead Reaper and swallowed the urge to be sick. “But, that doesn’t mean they’ll hurt you.”

The black building that led to the coast was the first with actual furniture. There were bunks built into the metal walls, a long table without any chairs, a well in the corner that tunneled straight down to the sea with a bucket to bring up water, and a spiraling staircase in the very center of the first floor. Jasmin had cleared the building of any Azmarini as Sloan had asked, and was arranging the group’s things on the table. Ren’s own stuff was there, splattered with blood, her bag trampled and ripped but still usable. When she was finished, she stationed herself at the archway that led onto the grassy, southern coast of the Bridge, looking out for Reaper reinforcements or Doctors.

Jasmin had washed her face and hair free of blood. Merrigan was at the well dipping a cloth into the seawater she had collected and washing Evie’s face. She had her white bag propped up against the well, and gave Evie a Viride after she was all cleaned up. Sloan, himself clean and with a stark white bandage wrapping his injured thigh, had taken one of the bunks. He still sat up, but his eyes were half-closed and cloudy, as if he had had too much fire whiskey.

“Absolutely not,” Sloan said, upon seeing Ren enter with the twins. His words were slurred and his hand trembled as he lifted it to point at the door.

“They’re just children,” Ren said defiantly. She put one hand on each of the twins’ shoulders and steered them to Merrigan.

Merrigan wrung the cloth in her hands and worried at her bottom lip. She said, “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Ren? I had to give Sloan a strong relaxitive to help him through the pain, he isn’t coherent enough to make any sound decisions.”

“I don’t believe I asked his permission for anything,” Ren snapped. Was she the only one capable of recognizing innocence? The group was acting like the twins were criminals intending to

! THE WATCH180

kill them, when the twins were perfectly right in being afraid of them.

“Take them next,” Finn said. “There are more buckets, I can wash myself.”

“The Viride is right there,” Merrigan said, giving in and kneeling to wash the blood from Wynn’s face.

Finn found two more buckets and filled one for himself and another for Ren. He handed Ren’s bucket to her, full to the brim with seawater, and gave her a small smile. He set his own bucket down near one of the bunks and splashed seawater onto his face.

Ren took her bucket and her bag from the table, then, with her chin raised and indignation burning in her eyes, she climbed the stairs. The next floor was an exact replica of the one below, except for the well. She set her things down and exhaled slowly. She didn’t know how to convince herself that everyone had survived the day, or that Jasmin wouldn’t shout out the approach of more Reapers.

She rummaged through her bag and took out the clothes Masha had given her. Black pants, a black, long-sleeve shirt, and a belt. She washed herself free of blood, then scooped up handfuls of water to soak her hair. She changed into Anya’s clothes, topping them with Jasmin’s jacket, and left her own clothes in a dejected heap on the floor. She zipped up Jasmin’s jacket and folded the black scarf carefully over her arm. She left her clothes on the second floor of the black building and returned to the group.

Merrigan was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, and shot forward to jam a Viride between her lips. Ren gagged in surprise, but Merrigan then shoved a canteen against Ren’s mouth and forced her to drink. Ren swallowed the pill reluctantly, grimacing.

“There,” Merrigan said proudly. Her cheeks were red and raw from washing. “Now everyone will be alive tomorrow, too.”

Ren humphed and put her bucket full of dirty seawater back where it belonged. Everyone had chosen a bunk and was nestling

���181

into it, even Cole and Wynn. They peered at Ren nervously, as if they expected to be thrown out of the building.

“I’m on first watch, Ren,” Jasmin said from the entryway. “I doubt any more Reapers will come in the night, there’s no way for them to know about us so soon. You can go to bed.”

“It’s not even dark yet,” Ren said quietly. Moonrise had barely even started. The light in the black building was red and failing, but it wasn’t close to nighttime yet. Ren took her bag and her canteen to the bunk next to Sloan’s and set her things down. His head had fallen onto his chest and he snored quietly. His bandage smelled of rot and was darkened with pus.

“He just needs to sleep it off,” Merrigan said. “His wound will be fully healed in a few hours, just like yours. Don’t worry.”

Ren humphed again and climbed gingerly into her bunk, unconsciously touching the flaying scar on her arm. Jasmin brought her some food—nothing but stale bread and withered, uncooked vegetables—and Ren ate greedily. She craned her head out of her bunk every few minutes to check on Sloan, but Merrigan’s medicine had knocked him out. Ren finished her measly dinner and burrowed into the corner of her bunk.

She was at once explosive and exhausted, ready to jump out of her skin and fall dead asleep. She dug the sign of the crescent into her palm, pushing down harder than usual. A Moon-soul is patient, is full, is mindful. A Moon-soul is calm, is calm, is calm. Tears stung her eyes and she let her hands fall listlessly to her lap.

She was sitting safe and sound in a semi-comfortable bunk, cleaned and fed, while Reapers rotted just outside the door, while Sloan groaned in pain between snores, while Wynn’s tiny sniffles broke up the silence of the building, while the moon was just scratching the horizon, and still, somehow, she fell asleep.

! THE WATCH182

C H A P T E R F I F T E E N

REVOLVER

Ren woke the next morning in a cold sweat, vaguely unsure of whether or not she was still asleep. She scooted to the edge of the bunk and peeked her head out. Jasmin and Finn were at the table whispering to each other and condensing the water the group had left into fewer canteens. Evie hovered near the doorway that led onto the Bridge, twisting her hair around her finger and chewing on her bottom lip. Merrigan sat cross-legged against the wall with her white bag in her lap and rummaging through it idly. Ren rubbed her eyes blearily and climbed out of her bunk, a fresh wave of cold sweat marching onto her skin at the sight of Sloan’s empty bunk.

“Where’s Sloan? And Cole and Wynn?” Ren asked. “Why didn’t anyone wake me?”

“Sloan said to let you sleep,” Finn said. “What’s the count?”Ren ignored him and strode across the room and through the

doorway onto the Bridge. Sloan was in the middle of the undisturbed carnage of the day before. His leg was still bandaged, but he walked with only the smallest of limps and didn’t seem to be in any pain. Ren pressed her hand against her stomach to silence the butterflies there. She picked her way around the bodies as carefully as she could without looking too long into each departed face.

“Merrigan doesn’t get enough credit,” Ren said in lieu of greeting.

���183

“The medicine does the real work, not Merrigan.” Sloan looked at her and his mouth immediately twisted into a frown. “You’re not wearing your scarf.”

“I’ll put it on in a minute.”Sloan sighed heavily and limped closer to her. “You have to

stop ignoring what I tell you to do. I’m not doing it because I want to, I’m trying to keep you alive. Yesterday, I told you to get away from the fighting, and instead you almost got me killed.”

“I did not! I was the one who jumped on the Reaper—”“Ren,” Sloan said. His frown had smoothed away and he

averted his eyes from her face. “You need to realize that, despite your good intentions, you have absolutely no combat experience. You did more harm than good yesterday. Jasmin and Finn are Citizens and therefore well-trained in combat, and do a much better job helping me if I need it than you could. I don’t need, or want, you to save me. What I need you to do is try and keep yourself from dying before we get to Base One. From now on, if you’re going to fight someone, only do it to protect yourself.”

Ren dearly, dearly wished the heat she felt forming on her cheeks was just an illusion. He was right—if Jasmin hadn’t been there, Ren probably would have gotten them both killed. She realized how idiotic jumping on the Reaper had been, but at the time she hadn’t possessed a single thought besides doing something to save Sloan.

“The Union trains all of its Citizens to be battle heroes?” Ren asked weakly. “You three killed all these Reapers on your own. It was kind of scary to watch, actually.”

“Yeah, well, the Union doesn’t want to worry about the possibility of losing a war, so we’re given a lot of combat training,” Sloan said. “If the Disposables ever found out about us, we’d have to be ready to eliminate them for good.”

Sloan spotted a pistol on one of the dead Reaper’s belts and claimed it for himself. He then turned to Ren and pulled a revolver from inside his jacket. It was the one he had been shot with.

! THE WATCH184

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her.Ren took it gingerly and let it lay across her palms. The

revolver was covered in so much blood and grime that its brass barrel barely flickered in the rising sun.

“Try not to use it,” he said, and limped away to the black building.

The revolver was heavier than it looked. Ren imagined that, where the metal touched her skin, she could feel little zaps of electricity pulsating into her hand. She slipped the revolver into the elongated thigh pocket of her new pants and turned to follow Sloan. Her heart fluttered around her chest. She had taken the revolver without question or hesitation, and was so worried about considering why she had done so that she forgot to argue with Sloan against his giving it to her.

Cole and Wynn were sitting on the Bridge near the doorway to the black building; Ren must have stomped right passed them on her way to Sloan. Cole jumped to his feet as Sloan approached and stood in front of his sister. Jasmin left the black building just as Ren joined them. Both Jasmin and Sloan were eyeing the twins with severe and unfounded distrust.

“Who attacked Azmarin?” Jasmin blurted out. She drummed her fingers against her thighs. “Why was the city destroyed?”

The twins both looked at Ren and, when she nodded her head encouragingly, Wynn said, “Someone was infected.”

“What? Infected with Filavirus?”“Yes, and the infection was starting to spread. I heard it

started by the watchtower, where the most luxurious homes were. The Doctors and Reapers assembled there to burn everything and everyone possibly touched by the virus to minimize its chances of spreading through the entire city. I will admit to being ignorant of who bombed us. The sirens went off in the early morning when the fires began, and by the time the rest of the city was being evacuated to the bioimpervious shelters, things started falling from the sky. I’m sorry I can’t explain what they looked

���185

like, I was too worried about finding a safe place to hide as the city exploded.”

Ren made the sign of the crescent as sweat prickled the back of her neck. Jasmin had closed her eyes and was muttering what sounded like a mantra, but it was in a breathy language Ren wasn’t familiar with. Jasmin was praying. For a moment, Ren thought the action as inconceivable as another large-scale Filavirus outbreak until she remembered that Jasmin styled herself a monk.

Jasmin said to Sloan, “We can’t waste any more time.”“Finally, someone agrees with me.”“Why would an outbreak large enough to destroy an entire

city just pop up out of no where?” Ren asked, her voice thin. “Where did it first come from, centuries ago?” Sloan argued.

“The Union still has no clue about its origins.”“This could speed up the Launch,” Jasmin said. She and Sloan

were speaking as if they didn’t think the twins capable of understanding them, despite the curious look on Wynn’s face. Jasmin continued, “The Union will want to leave as soon as possible to eliminate the chances of Filavirus making its way onto a Ship. We have to get to Base One before the Union finds out about Azmarin.”

“They knew before we did,” Sloan said. “Oh, yes, I suppose it seems that way,” Jasmin sighed. “We need to get moving,” Sloan said. “We can’t waste time for

anything, Ren, so you need—”“To get my scarf and make sure no one sees my face,” Ren

finished for him, crossing her arms over her chest. “If you’d just tell me who else, besides the Doctors, I should be looking out for then I could definitely keep from making any mistakes and holding us up.”

Sloan clicked his tongue reproachfully and went into the black building with Jasmin. Ren looked apologetically at the twins. She drifted her hand over the pocket of her pants, even

! THE WATCH186

more ashamed that there was a revolver inside with children’s eyes on her. She said, “Come on, we’re leaving soon.”

When they didn’t immediately follow her into the black building, she continued with, “You don’t have to be afraid. None of them will hurt you, I promise.”

Still, the twins didn’t move. Ren gave them her most confident smile and went into the black building, hoping that all they needed was to follow her on their own. She took her bag, the blankets that had become her personal burden, and the canteens Finn designated to her. Finally, she covered her head with her scarf.

“What’s the count, Ren?” Finn asked again, anxiously this time.

“Thirteen days since Ozryn,” Ren said. She glanced at Sloan twice, still not convinced that he was completely healed. He caught her and arched his eyebrow, patting his newly stolen pistol in its holster. He turned on his heel and stomped through the southern archway. The group followed as predictably as ever. Ren waved the twins on and they toed into the black building, but didn’t dare venture further than the well. Ren beckoned them again, then stepped through the southern archway.

The southern coast of the Bridge was greener than the north. The grass, though patchy, was vibrant and stood taller than Ren’s ankles. The horizon tumbled on the backs of a forest of rolling hills, each one greener than the next. The air was fresh, dewy, and thick, so very unlike the thin, dusty air on the north coast, where every breath felt hollow. Here, Ren could take deep inhales and feel the air blowing through her blood like a storm determined to wake her from the grays and browns of her memories.

“It’s just like the greenrooms,” Finn beamed. “This is remarkable. Who knew the surface could be so normal?”

“Not normal enough,” Sloan said bitterly. “There’s no road, so we’ll need to use the compass on the Watch, Ren. I don’t want to chance veering off course and falling behind schedule.”

���187

The Azmarini that had chosen to stand up to the Reapers, and had also been unceremoniously ousted from the black building by Jasmin, were scattered around the area surrounding the Bridge. They were huddled into small groups that inched forward eagerly when the group began to walk away from the black building. They were hesitant, but not hesitant enough to care about Sloan casually taking his new pistol out of its holster.

Ren accessed the compass on the Watch and held it out for Sloan to see. He squinted at the Watch, then set off on a distinctive path through the grass without a second glance at the Azmarini. Ren fell into step beside Jasmin. The twins had followed her through the black building, but they were enchanted by the grass and didn’t follow right away. The Azmarini collected around the twins, pointing at Sloan’s back with fervor.

“I don’t know about this,” Jasmin breathed. “This doesn’t feel like it’s going to end well.”

“They’re probably too terrified of being shot to come anywhere near us,” Ren said. “I hope they do, though, so we can try and help them. They don’t seem as lifeless as they were on the Bridge.”

“That’s not a good thing! They could recognize you for whatever is exceptional about you, or they could attack us for our food, or they could draw too much attention and ruin our chances of getting into Base One.”

“What do we do about them?” Merrigan asked Sloan. The Azmarini and the twins had started to follow them through the grass, though they kept at a great distance.

“There’s nothing we can do. Disposables from Ozryn and Azmarin rarely ever venture to the coast, so they just need somewhere to be,” Sloan said. His voice was strained as he whipped his head around every few seconds to scowl at the advancing Azmarini in growing frustration. “We have to lose them as quickly as possible. Faster, come on.”

“We don’t have enough to share with them,” Merrigan said, clutching her white bag to her chest and jogging after Sloan.

! THE WATCH188

“They’re not going to steal your bag,” Finn said airily. “They’re no more of a threat than Ren was when we found her.”

“Yeah, the problem with her started much later,” Jasmin laughed. She turned to Sloan and slid her rifle off her back. “Want me to?”

Sloan contemplated Jasmin’s rifle too long for Ren’s comfort, but in the end he shook his head and said, “There’s a small village between here and Myrrka. If we pass through it, we should be able to loose them. They just need somewhere to be. The village will be perfect for that.”

“And if it’s not?” Jasmin asked. Sloan only sighed. “Evie, stop that,” Merrigan scolded, catching the young girl’s

hand mid-wave. “The whole lot of them will think they can join us.”

“I’m waving to Cole and Wynn. They’re allowed to come with us, aren’t they?” Evie asked, but Sloan only sighed at her as well.

“Let go of her hand,” Finn said. He put his arm gently around Evie’s shoulders and steered her from Merrigan, who scrunched up her nose and mumbled to herself in pique. Sloan barked for them all to jog faster.

They climbed the grassy hills as fast as Merrigan could manage, but still, the Azmarini followed. Whenever Merrigan coughed, or if Finn seemed to be straining for breath as they ascended a particularly steep hill, Sloan would say the same speech:

“I know it’s hard, and that the fighting yesterday probably set back your acclimation, but we cannot stop. We cannot let them think they can intermingle with us. They may follow us as far as the village, but if we let them think we’re friendly, they won’t let us get to Myrrka by ourselves. Take deep breaths and focus on the destination. We cannot stop, control your breathing.”

Ren jogged with the group, but her mind was back with the Azmarini. Had she become so cruel and selfish that she couldn’t help these people? Sloan’s gift bounced in her pocket with every other step she took, a gross reminder that she had changed

���189

enough since meeting him to allow herself to carry a weapon with only a slight degree of nausea.

“Stop looking back at them,” Sloan said to her later that day. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

“This is wrong. We could at least try and explain to them that they have to find a new place to live, we don’t have to tell them about Base One to do that.”

“This is the problem with having a religion. You can’t face your true desire, of getting to Base One no matter the cost, without wasting time and energy thinking you shouldn’t be selfish. How do you plan to survive without being selfish? They’ll be fine so long as you forget about them.”

Sloan had them walking well after moonrise, and still, the Azmarini continued to follow them. Eventually, when Evie very nearly fainted from overexertion, Sloan conceded that they could stop for a few hours. None of them were much better, including Sloan. Ren’s legs felt like overcooked noodles and her head spun wildly even when she sat down on the grass. The group stopped on the crest of a relatively flat-topped hill that gave them a sprawling, wonderful view of the land around them.

They had been going southwest by the Watch’s compass and were long out of sight from the coast. The smell of the sea had been replaced by the sweet, intoxicatingly heady aroma of dewy grass. The hills continued rolling further than Ren could see in every direction. The moonlight was so bright that Ren could almost make out the faces of the Azmarini, and she had no doubt they had no trouble seeing hers, howsoever much it was shadowed by her scarf.

When the group stopped, so did the Azmarini. They collected in a small valley three hills behind the one the group occupied, and seemed to be settling in for the night. Ren watched them listlessly as she was given food and told to drink from her canteen. Her body felt like it was melting into the grass, but as soon as she took her first bite of stale, crusty bread, her eyes seemed less heavy.

! THE WATCH190

“Do we dare put up the tent?” Finn asked. “Better not, they might get ideas about stealing it,” Jasmin

said through a mouthful of nuts. “Look, they’ve started a fire.”Sloan whipped his head around to glare down at the tiny

flicker of firelight and shake his head in slow disbelief. As the group watched, shouts rose up from around the fire. The Azmarini were all banning together facing two of their own, shouting and throwing their arms around wildly, their shadows long and frantic in the firelight. The two that stood apart shouted back, until one of the opposing Azmarini stepped closer to them and held up what appeared to be a shotgun. The two sprinted away, at first attempting to climb the nearest hill, but swerving along its side and coming into the next valley after the one with the Azmarini. Evie whistled, and the twins came straight for the group.

“Are you crazy?” Merrigan gasped. “They were just threatened by their own people and you want them here?”

“Evie,” Sloan said sternly. “You cannot be doing things like this. Finn, would you tell her? We don’t have time to sleep tonight, let alone entertain her friends.”

“Please?” Evie clasped her hands together and looked up at Sloan with her eyes wide. “They’re just like me, so you will like them. I know it.”

“We’ll see,” Sloan said through gritted teeth.Cole and Wynn ascended the flat-topped hill warily and

huddled around Evie. Ren greeted them and offered them one of her canteens, which Cole snapped out of her hands greedily.

“Why didn’t the rest of the Azmarini want you with them?” Finn asked.

Wynn opened her mouth to speak, but Cole slapped her arm and she pressed her lips together apologetically. Finn raised his eyebrows, repeated his question, and was still met with icy silence.

“Sorry, Evie, I’m not going to talk to him,” Cole said haughtily. “He’s the reason I’m going to forget my father.”

���191

“I didn’t mean to upset you, but you were going to get yourself killed with that staff. Even if it did belong to your father.”

“I’m not talking to you.”Finn scoffed and rolled out his blanket on the grass. Merrigan

took her things, originally occupying the spot in the grass next to Finn, and chose a different spot further away from the twins, who had sat with Evie in front of Finn.

“Are you hungry?” Ren asked the twins. They nodded eagerly, and Jasmin gave them each a small bit of bread and a carrot to share.

Jasmin took her blanket near Merrigan, though not two seconds later Jasmin was rolling her eyes and arguing with Merrigan in a whisper. Finn and Cole took up a repetitive back and forth that consisted of Finn asserting he had done the right thing, and Cole repeating, “I’m not talking to you,” for every word Finn said. Evie and Wynn were the only ones smiling and joking with each other.

“Are Reapers trained that young?” Ren asked Sloan. Sloan tilted one of his shoulders up and said, “Only if they

have someone in their family that was a Reaper. Cole probably grew up in that orphanage hearing over and over how his father had been a Reaper and was conditioned to pick up his staff as soon as possible.”

“It’s good he’s with us now,” Ren said, ignoring Sloan’s mumbled remark about her presumptuousness. “We can help him find his own life. Show him that his father wasn’t a man to look up to.”

Sloan sighed heavily. “How can we judge what a child will do with their life? If he think he’ll make his father proud, there’s no reason for you to step in and change the memory of his father into a bad one.”

“That’s noble, but it means nothing if the child is blinded by the path they’re forced on,” Ren said sharply. “What if he’s in danger and can’t decide how to act because he doesn’t know the truth about what his father was involved in? Shouldn’t he be able

! THE WATCH192

to choose for himself whether he wants to follow in his father’s path?”

“You’ve changed sides in the middle of an argument.”“Yeah, well, I realized something.”Sloan chuckled and strode across the hilltop, setting his

blanket down next to Merrigan and Jasmin. Finn and Cole’s argument, Merrigan and Jasmin’s bickering, and Evie and Wynn’s laughs slowly dwindled away as the pull of sleep drifted across the hilltop like a spell. Ren took her usual spot on Jasmin’s blanket and watched the stars. Finn was first on guard that night. He would be easy to give the slip.

Ren propped herself on her elbows. Everyone but Finn was, without question, asleep, their mingled snores and deep breaths giving Ren complete confidence they would not see her. Finn’s head was bobbing on and off his chest as he fought to keep awake. Ren rolled off the blanket and crawled over the side of the hilltop. She waited there, listening to make sure she hadn’t woken anyone, then ran hunched over along the hillside to the other side. The bright fire of the Azmarini combined with the moonlight allowed her to easily pick out the most direct way to get to them. She ran down the hillside.

“Ren?” Finn’s voice was outrageously loud in such stillness. Ren dropped to the grass as if a gun had been fired, her heart hammering against her ribs. Finn was standing at the edge of the hilltop, his arms spread out helplessly as if to say, ‘Betrayer.’

Ren put her finger against her lip, then jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the Azmarini. Finn ran lightly down the hill to meet her, his eyes flashing with adventure and his stun gun out. He grinned at Ren and they ran to the Azmarini together.

The Azmarini were much more concerned about their safety at night than the group was. Those sleeping were huddled near the fire as ten guards patrolled around them in a circle. They marched in harmony, and each one carried a shotgun stolen from the dead Reapers on the Bridge. The moment Ren and Finn stepped into the warm firelight, they were surrounded by five of

���193

the guardsmen. The other five roused the sleeping Azmarini and shepherded them out of the valley and up the nearest hill, small shouts of panic and sleepy threats stirring their camp with palpable fear.

Ren held her hands up instinctively and struggled to say something in her shock. An Azmarini guard came right up to her and held his shotgun not two inches from her forehead.

“Go back to your camp,” the man growled. He had a number of grotesque burns peppering his face and hands.

“We wanted to make sure you are all okay,” Ren said weakly. Whatever pity that had driven her to seek out the Azmarini had curdled into a sour ball of regret in the pit of her stomach. She cleared her throat and forced herself to continue. “We have food and water to share, and we can help—”

The man pushed his shotgun against Ren’s forehead and repeated, “Go back to your camp.”

“Take this animal with you,” another Azmarini piped up. She was baring her teeth at Finn and had her gun pressed to the back of his neck.

Ren’s blood rushed to her ears. Finn had four Azmarini guns fixed at various points of his body. His eyes were calm, but wider than normal, and his face was a stark white canvas for the firelight to flicker on. He held his body utterly still and waited for Ren to do something.

“I think you may be misunderstanding us,” Ren said, returning her gaze to the man pressing his cold, cold gun to her head. “We’ve come to offer you our help. We’re not going to hurt you! I’m a Moon-soul, look, I have the scar.”

The Azmarini man lowered his shotgun and spit in Ren’s face. He guffawed and jammed the shotgun back up against her forehead before she had the chance to wipe the spit from her eyes.

“We aren’t looking for help,” the man said. His voice was gravely and thickened with scorn. “We don’t know what you and your friends are, but it isn’t normal. We saw how that one fought

! THE WATCH194

the Reapers like some kind of machine. Keep your food and your water, we don’t want your alien leftovers. As for your scar, half the Doctors are Moon-souls now, and the other half love the sun. We’ve elected to not trust anyone too interested with the sky anymore, starting tonight. Those rascal twins were too much of the sky for us, and you’re even worse.”

“Why’re you wearing that scarf?” asked one of the Azmarini holding his gun at Finn. “I can barely see your face, and you want us to trust you?”

“The Doctors are looking for me,” Ren said, eliciting the same reaction out of all five Azmarini. Their faces fell into lines of horror and they stepped back from herself and Finn, glancing at each other nervously. Ren backed away slowly from the man still aiming his shotgun at her, taking Finn’s arm and bringing him with her. She said, “They’re looking for all of us. That’s why there were so many at the end of the Bridge.”

“Carriers,” one of the Azmarini breathed. “We don’t want to be infected, we didn’t mean to insult you. Go back to your camp, and we’ll stay in ours. No one needs to get sick.”

Ren wasted no time in spinning around and sprinting back to the flat hilltop. She never let go of Finn’s arm, nor did she wipe the spit burning her eye until she was safely on Jasmin’s blanket once again.

���195

C H A P T E R S I X T E E N

MOUSE

“Fourteen days since Ozryn.”“We’ll reach the village today, the one where we can divert the

Azmarini,” Sloan said as the group started walking. “Don’t forget about your scarf, Ren. I doubt we’ll run into too many Disposables at all, the village is very small, but just to be safe. Also, don’t get any ideas into your head about the Azmarini. Under no circumstances will I allow them to follow us out of that village.”

Sloan looked pointedly at Jasmin, who nodded and patted the strap of her rifle. Sloan waited for Ren to respond, probably hoping that she would show off her blind morality again. Instead, Ren lowered her gaze and watched how the long grass curved over her feet with each step she took. The Azmarini were still following them, but Ren was confident they wouldn’t attack. Even if they thought Ren might have been bluffing about the group being carriers, no sane Disposable would spill blood unless they were absolutely sure there was no threat of infection.

Ren hadn’t spoken to Finn since running from the Azmarini camp. She felt like she was obliged to apologize to him for the night before, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. If Finn was going to let her stew in self-hatred at her own never-ending naiveté, she was happy to oblige. She was beginning to think that Sloan was right, that she was expecting too much from other people. Before meeting the group, she never would have thought there to be

! THE WATCH196

anyone in the world who would refuse an offer of food, for any reason.

Cole and Wynn walked next to Evie quietly. If it hadn’t been for their giggles at seeing the sunscreen bottle passed through the group, they would have been as good as invisible.

“I’ve been thinking about the Azmarini,” Finn said to Sloan. “If they have no notion of what the Union is and what it’s capable of, they must believe the Doctors to be the ones behind the bombing of Azmarin, in some way or another. What if they start a rebellion against the Doctors?”

“It’ll never work,” Sloan said. “The twins didn’t think it was the Doctors that bombed them.”

“They’re children, they have the capacity to believe in something other than what they’re used to. These Azmarini are adults with long grudges against the Doctors. They’ll jump to conclusions.”

“Why are you so interested in them? Even if they form a resistance group and start a world war against the Doctors, it makes no difference to us. What happens after we leave Earth doesn’t matter.”

“I’m interested in them because I can tell what’s going to happen once the Ships leave. We’re accountable to give them a fighting chance!”

“No, we’re not. When I took you from Base Eight, you knew exactly what you were agreeing to.”

“We can’t leave the rest of humanity to die off !”“There’s nothing I can do,” Sloan said roughly. “Cecelia wasn’t

planning on me showing up with so many passengers as is. How do you think she’ll pull off smuggling the Azmarini into Base One if it’ll be hard enough getting the six of us in?”

“She’s a Captain, does she really have no say in who she can bring aboard?”

“Why do you think we have to sneak on? Her Commander would have hand-picked her crew years ago. I’m trusting her to figure out a way to get us on board, through security checkpoints

���197

and regulation drills and biometric testing. As long as I bring her a Watch, she’ll be able to do it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be incredibly risky.

“What happens when we pass through the village, or through Myrrka, and you see more Disposables there? Are you going to be worried about their futures as well? How much time have you been spending with Ren?”

“What am I supposed to do with all these people, then?” Finn growled.

“Unless you want to give up your place on Clarity to stay here and stop this supposedly imminent rebellion, there’s nothing you can do at all.”

“I wouldn’t risk Evie’s chance of getting on Clarity, but—”“If you want to get off planet, you’ll have to live with knowing

what you’re leaving behind. Don’t make me regret revealing Exodus to you, Finn. Have you forgotten I was the one that told you about Exodus? Not your Base Commander or your Thought Mentor? I deserve more than being reminded of the lives we have to pretend aren’t there in order to survive. This is the last I want to hear of you planning to help the Disposables. If you get in my way or threaten my chances of getting to Cecelia on time, you’ll be left here with the other Disposables like you were going to be in the first place.”

Finn stormed off in a rage and didn’t speak to Sloan, or the rest of them, for hours. Several times Ren started towards one or the other, intent on arguing against their case, but would change her mind halfway there. She would go to Sloan, ready to strong arm him into helping the Azmarini despite the vile way they had treated her the night before, when she’d consider how doing so wasn’t worth staying on Earth forever with the Doctors. Then, she’d start off towards Finn to make him see sense, when she’d catch a glimpse of the twins walking alongside Evie and shy away with overwhelming shame.

Sloan turned the brunt of his irritation at Finn on Ren, demanding that she keep a running commentary of her count and

! THE WATCH198

check the Watch’s compass every half hour to make sure they were on the right path.

“The count?”“Sloan, I just told you five minutes ago!” Ren cried,

exasperated, the tenth time Sloan asked her. “Check the Watch, then, and make sure—”“We’re going in the right direction. Stop asking me.”Sloan rounded on her, his eyes livid and jaw locked. Ren

stumbled backward instinctively, blushing after she’d done so, and stood her ground against Sloan’s silent rage as best she could. He scowled at her briefly, then turned away and continued stomping through the grass without any regard to the blades he was killing with his heavy footsteps. He still asked Ren for the count and direction with every other breath he took, and she resolutely ignored him.

Each new hill they clambered over was greener than the last. Tiny shrubs started popping up randomly through the grass. The hills weren’t very steep, but they nevertheless slowed the group’s progress. Ren was next to Sloan, bouncing between distracting him from complaining about Evie’s slow pace and ignoring his pleas for the count and direction, when she stepped on something squishy. A tiny squeak sounded from under her boot. She lifted her foot and yelped in surprise when a fluffy gray something darted out from under her boot and zig-zagged across the grass.

“Oh, oh, what was that?” Ren groaned. “A mouse…” Sloan mumbled, stooping down to watch the

fluffy zig-zagger dive into a tiny hole in the grass and disappear underground. Ren wiped the bottom of her boot on the grass in case the fluffy zig-zagger had left behind some poison or tracker.

“What are you doing? Relax,” Sloan said, rolling his eyes. “We’re close to Base Sixty-Six, the mouse must have escaped.”

“You really do keep animals in the Bases?”“Glad you could put that together on your own.” Sloan called

out to the rest of the group, “Come on!”

���199

He sprinted to the crest of the hill, the group following excitedly. Ren took an extra moment to frown at the mouse hole before climbing the hill. Sloan was pointing to the next hill over, where a great chunk of the side was cut out to reveal a dark tunnel burrowing into the ground. There was a door laying discarded a few paces away, one side of it gleaming white plastic, the other covered in fake grass to match the hill.

Ren blanched at the sight. The more she learned about the Bases, the sharper her bitterness grew, especially so that she had just been reminded that the Union hoarded all the animals of the world underground, leaving their designate Disposables to dream and wonder about a world with something more than humans.

“What is that?” Wynn asked. “Where does that tunnel lead?”“To where your food comes from,” Sloan said. “Are those fools

close?”Ren glanced over her shoulder and reported that the

Azmarini were still struggling over the crest of a steep hill more than a mile away.

“Just a quick look, Sloan,” Jasmin said, already sliding down the hillside towards the Base.

“Five minutes, the Azmarini won’t be any closer by then,” said Merrigan.

“The Azmarini absolutely cannot see the Base, or us leaving it,” Sloan said. “And someone will have to stay here with those two.”

“Why can’t they come?” Evie pouted. “Aren’t they with us now?”

“When did you hear me say that?” Sloan barked. He was inching down the hill after Merrigan and Jasmin, the pull of the Base evidently too much for him to resist.

“I’ll stay with them,” Finn offered. He was looking at the mangled, detached door of Base Sixty-Six with both fondness and distaste clouding his eyes. Evie proclaimed she would stay with the twins as well.

! THE WATCH200

“This is unfair,” Wynn said loudly, stopping Sloan before he could sprint down the hillside. “Why won’t you let us come with you? What are you hiding in that tunnel? We have every right to see what’s down there as much as you do.”

“I’m going,” Cole said, marching after Sloan with his chest puffed out and face set in outrage.

Evie caught his arm and gently pulled him back to where Finn was standing. She smiled at the twins and said, “I don’t think you guys want to know yet. I’ll tell you sometime, but I don’t think you’re ready.”

“That is absurd!” Wynn cried. “Evie, what are they hiding from us?”

“We’re not hiding anything,” Finn said. “There’s nothing special in the tunnel, only things to remind them of our old home. It was destroyed just like Azmarin was. Let them remember for a few minutes, and we can rest.”

The twins didn’t look happy, but they did let Finn lead them to the next hill without further protest. Ren hesitated as she watched Jasmin and Merrigan bolt into the tunnel of Base Sixty-Six. Sloan reached the bottom of the hill and called to her, “Hey, Ren, want to get a taste for what you signed up for?”

Ren knew that if she was expecting to be saved from the Doctors, she had to start acting less Disposable and more like a Citizen, so she went down the hill to the tunnel of Base Sixty-Six, her reason rolling in protest at being so easily manipulated.

The tunnel was short and wide. It was made entirely of hard-packed dirt and led to a plastic white door that hung glumly off its frame. There were dead Citizens cramming the tunnel, Citizens dressed in identical uniforms of different colors decorated with crusted blood and burns. Their weapons were thin and made of bright silver, entirely too elegant for killing. Ren gasped and bunched her scarf over her mouth and nose before she remembered that this blood was the blood of Citizens, and Citizens were only allowed to be Citizens because they had never

���201

been exposed to Filavirus before. The four of them passed through the plastic door and into Base Sixty-Six together.

Beyond the door was an immense white hall. Dead Citizens covered almost every inch of the metal floor, their smell rancid and stifling. Desks and chairs were thrown carelessly around, parts of the ceiling—panels of translucent plastic illuminated from within by a dazzling white light—flickered dying spurts of energy, while other parts still shone strong. Despite herself, Ren looked around the hall in wonder, dismissing the brutality of it and instead imagining what it would have looked like before the attack. Everything was either white, blue, or gray, the parts of the walls and floor free of blood still shimmering with an expert level of cleanliness. Compared with Hythe, even with Azmarin or Ozryn, the hall of Base Sixty-Six was obviously superior. It seemed to whisper to Ren, reminding her of the dark metals and rock used to build places like Ozryn and mocking her for dressing in such dark colors.

The far end of the hall was decorated with a carved archway that lead to a row of ten staircases, all spiraling downwards. The only sounds in the hall were Jasmin’s boots slapping roughly against the metal floor and Merrigan’s whimpering. Ren felt like she was being led into death, the bodies around her pulling her into such a horrified misery that she wasn’t sure if she would make it out of the hall alive.

Merrigan ventured slowly towards the archway, looking at the face of each and every dead Citizens she stepped over. Jasmin touched the tip of her rifle to as many silver weapons as she could, as if saluting them.

“The Reapers really went all out,” Jasmin said quietly. Nevertheless, her voice boomed across the hall and echoed. Merrigan sniffed and wiped her cheeks.

“How long ago could this have happened?” Ren asked Sloan, grasping for some sliver of hope. “Could there be survivors? The mouse came from here, after all…”

! THE WATCH202

Sloan was reading a sign hung on the wall and gave her only a curt shake of the head. There was a deep, faraway groan like the bend of metal, and the floor of the hall fell a hair of an inch downward.

“Let’s go,” Jasmin said, her voice high, thin, and so unlike her. “Merrigan,” Sloan said, ignoring Jasmin and wearing a

spectacularly inappropriate grin as he pointed to the sign. On it were lines of the same squiggly symbols as on Ren’s Watchface. “They bred manips here.”

“Oh!” Merrigan breathed. Her mouth formed a perfect circle and her tears stopped abruptly. “I’ve always wanted to study them. Base Eight was much, much too small for holding pens and climate chambers…manips…”

“Genetic manipulations,” Sloan explained, before Ren had the chance to ask. “Animal hybrids, human hybrids, animal-human hybrids. Anything that was feasible, really. I saw a few at my own Base, but I never knew what to think of them. Some were so perfect and beautiful that you were only confused as to why they weren’t like that naturally. And then the others, the ones they eventually rejected…”

Sloan finished with a shiver. Ren made the sign of the crescent and chewed on her bottom lip, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. She thought she heard a small bang from somewhere below the hall.

“The Azmarini will see this tunnel soon if we don’t lead them to the village,” Jasmin said. She hopped around the dead Citizens to the plastic door, accidentally kicking one of the tables thrown haphazardly around the hall. It collapsed onto the metal floor with a substantial crash that echoed through the hall, and was followed immediately with what sounded to be a roar.

“What the hell was that!” Ren shrieked, clutching onto her scarf.

“Manip!” Merrigan clapped her hands together. “The mouse isn’t the only thing that survived.”

���203

“If the mouse can get to the surface, so can whatever manip is down there. Run!” Sloan said. Ren wasted no time, sprinting for the plastic door and reaching it at the same time as Jasmin. Another vicious roar sounded from below and twirled up the spiral staircase like a gale of wind.

Sloan was dragging Merrigan forcibly to the plastic door, shouting, “Merrigan, I know you’re obsessed with these things, but we can’t wait around for it to find its way up. Without its handler, it will be impossible to control. We need to get to the surface right now.”

“What if it’s stuck down there?”“Hopefully, it is,” Sloan wrenched her through the plastic

door and into the tunnel with Ren and Jasmin. “I’ll let you study the twins, how about that? Study the twins instead of the manip.”

“Really? You’ve said it, you can’t take it back!”They stumbled out of the tunnel and into the searing sun.

Finn, Evie, and the twins were easily visible, waiting for them at the top of a nearby hill. Sloan hallowed to them and sprinted away from Base Sixty-Six.

“What is it? The Azmarini aren’t that close,” Finn asked as he joined their headlong run.

“There’s a manip in Sixty-Six that survived,” Merrigan said. “But, Sloan thinks it’s going to eat us or something.”

“Did it sound like it wouldn’t?” Sloan snapped. “Stop talking, we need to move faster.”

They ran up and down hill after hill, their frantic pace quickly sparking breathless spells for not only Merrigan, but Finn and Jasmin as well, though theirs were nothing more than small, repressed coughs. Cole and Wynn, completely dumbfounded as to why they were running, were even more astonished at the breathless spells.

“They’re fine, they just can’t run very well,” Ren said to the twins. She was sweating and panting herself, her thighs burning as she pushed them harder.

! THE WATCH204

Wynn looked at her as if she was an imbecile and put a sizable distance between herself and Merrigan. Sloan was forced to slow them to a jog when Merrigan collapsed onto the grass. She recovered quickly and caught up to them, apologizing profusely and rubbing her chest.

Ren jogged next to Sloan and panted, “Which manip was that?”

“How should I know? I heard it roar, just as you did, and got us out of there regardless of what breed it was. I don’t know why the Doctors are leaving the animals and manips alive after they attack a Base. If the manip hasn’t gotten out by now there’s a good chance it never will, but still, we shouldn’t stick around to find out.”

“Why would you do that?” Ren pumped her arms furiously to keep up with Sloan and a stitch popped up on her side. “Why would you change and ruin something we would have been happy to have?”

“ ‘We’ being Disposables?” Sloan cocked an eyebrow. Ren humped angrily. She couldn’t very well be angry whenever

Sloan distinguished between the Citizens and Disposables if she did it herself, however unconsciously.

“Why did we go into that Base?” Sloan groaned. “What a massive waste of time…Ren, your scarf…Oh, lovely, the Azmarini have spotted us. And they’re running, too. Great.”

*After being in Base Sixty-Six and feeling the power of the

Union quite tangibly even when it was reduced to desolation, Ren was filled with a resentment she didn’t feel safe holding. The group spent the remainder of that day reminiscing about Base Eight, and each comment about missing the air conditioning, or the swimming pools, or the food, beds, clothes, people, made her resentment boil and burble. She was terrified of blurting out how disgusting she thought it all was. Cole and Wynn were as silent as she was, though Ren followed the dawning realization spreading over Wynn’s face with unease. Sloan may have wanted to keep the

���205

secret of the Union from the twins for a while longer, but was he really that oblivious to how intelligent Wynn was, simply because she was a child?

Ren was so distracted by her thoughts that she only noticed the outline of a tiny village nestled between two hills when Sloan pointed it out. Moonrise was just beginning. Fog rolled over the hills and cast the village into a gloomy, eerie gray light. Goosebumps peppered Ren’s arms. The sight of the village, where it filled Ren with worry, zapped energy into Sloan’s impatience.

“We’re a half-day off schedule already. Who knows what’s going to happen between here and Myrrka? Faster, Merrigan, you can breathe just fine. Do you want to miss Cecelia? Do you want to be left on Earth? I said you can study the twins, but keep your questions for later!”

They reached the village after moonrise, when the fog had grown so thick that Ren felt as if she was walking through a solid wall of water. The village may have been silent, but it was positively crammed with people. They crowded the short streets and whispered so lowly it sounded like the wind. Every building showcased dim firelight hidden behind tattered curtains, and the very air itself felt overly congested with too many people breathing.

Sloan, taken aback as he walked through a soupy bit of fog to find himself in the middle of a busy street full of surprised villagers, stopped short. He took a sweeping glance across the street, must have decided that the villagers were harmless, and whispered over his shoulder, “Your scarf, Ren. Everyone stay close to me.”

Sloan led them into a seedy pub halfway down the street. The villagers let them pass through their sanctuary unharmed, their low whisperings buzzing fire in Ren’s ears. She shivered and held her arms tight to her sides. It may have just been the dense fog, but Ren swore she felt fingers brushing against her arms.

The pub was circular, cramped with too many tables, and held a fireplace behind the bar. The fire roared, filling the pub with its

! THE WATCH206

heat and crackling, sparking voice. There were only three men sitting at the bar, all of which turned with ruddy cheeks to leer at the group as they entered. Sloan went straight for the far corner, where the firelight left the dimmest of shadows.

“My, my,” said one of the men at the bar. His fire whiskey breath wafted over Ren’s face as she passed, making her cough. His words were slurred as he said, “Not too bad for seein’ only your mouth. Take off that scarf, love.”

Sloan wrenched Ren away from the drunk man. His friends cackled and turned their attention on Jasmin.

“If I ever did see a woman worth it all,” said the first man, whistling and making a grab at Jasmin. She caught his hand and flung it away with a growl. The man roared with laughter and thumped his fist on the bar, calling for another drink.

Their table in the corner was lopsided and had three chairs too many. Sloan kept his grip on Ren’s arm as they sat, his eyes narrowed and pointed at the men at the bar. The rest of the group spread out around the table, sinking into the hard chairs with sighs and groans. Cole and Wynn were so small their chins barely reached over the edge of the table.

When Sloan spoke, his voice was thick with barely concealed loathing. “This is why half your people deserve to be called Disposable. The Azmarini aren’t dim enough to follow us in here.”

“No, I think they have what they were looking for, now,” Ren said. “They just needed a place to be, like you said from the beginning.”

“Can we order some food?” Cole asked the table. “Or is that not allowed as well?” Wynn piped in.“Do I look like I have the time to feed you two?” Sloan

growled, his eyes never lifting from the men at the bar. Ren tilted her head and squinted at Sloan. When had he ever looked the twins in the face? His shoulders were hunched and directed away from the twins, as if he expected them to hurt him.

���207

“Will the Azmarini really stay in this village?” Merrigan asked the twins. “Won’t they just continue to follow us?”

“I highly doubt it,” Wynn said. “They didn’t like us in their camp because we are Moon-and-Sun, but we were there long enough to hear their plans. They don’t know the southern coast, so their first goal was to find a place to settle together where they could get steady food and water. After that, they talked of forming a resistance group against the Doctors.”

“I knew it,” Finn breathed the words like a curse. “Congratulations,” Merrigan said dryly, her round cheeks

pink. “Cole and Wynn, may I ask you a question? Did you know your mother?”

“Why do you want to know about our mother?” Cole snapped.

“Well, we know your father was a Reaper, but what about your mother? She must have been an extraordinary woman to have given birth to twins. Where did she grow up? Did she have any genetic defects?”

“I’m sorry, we have no answers for you,” Wynn said. She narrowed her eyes and glared at Merrigan. Ren was tempted to speak up, to tell the twins Merrigan meant no harm and had done the same thing to her, but she was too tired to be arguing.

“It’s been long enough,” Sloan burst out, jumping to his feet and dragging Ren with him. “The Azmarini should be in the village by now and sufficiently occupied. We can camp for the night a few hills over.”

“It’s barely been ten minutes,” Ren said. Sloan ignored her and bulled out of the pub to an empty street. The buildings were still lit by curtain-dimmed firelight, but most of the villagers had gone inside. Ren couldn’t see a single Azmarini, though she only really knew what the Azmarini man that had threatened her looked like, so even if one was standing right next to the pub she would have easily thought him to be another villager. Sloan waited for the rest of the group to leave the pub with his impatient fingers digging into Ren’s arm. When the group finally

! THE WATCH208

did arrive on the street, Sloan led them out of the village and to the south.

He settled on a foggy stretch of grass at the bottom of a hill a mile south of the village. It wasn’t until the group started unpacking for the night that he let go of Ren’s arm. She grimaced and rubbed her arm.

“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” Sloan said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“It doesn’t hurt at all,” Ren said. She dropped her hand and tried to smile at him, but the action itself felt odd. Unsettling. Especially when his face was half-shrouded in fog and his eyes were brighter than the moon.

“I’m taking first watch,” he said. He took out his pistol and walked a few paces outside of their camp, standing still and staring at the distant shadow of the tiny village.

Ren sat on Jasmin’s blanket. Jasmin leaned against her, shivering, and Ren shivered in response. Her clothes were clingy and damp from all the fog. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep with her scarf suffocating her, so she took it off and shook out her hair. Jasmin raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

“He can’t look at the twins,” Ren said quietly. Cole and Wynn were flattening out a patch of grass to sleep on after Cole refused to sleep anywhere close to Finn. “It’s like he’s afraid of them, like he doesn’t realize they’re just children.”

“After we first found you,” Jasmin said. “Sloan first proposed that we torture the Code out of you and leave you to your ship. But, he changed after he started talking to you, after he realized your were a person and not just a bump in the road. I think he was really relieved when you said you didn’t know the Code. We had no choice but to take you with us. He didn’t have to face leaving behind someone who needed his help.”

“He’s not too keen on helping the twins, or even the Azmarini,” Ren said. She pushed her hair behind her ears and smoothed down the top, trying in vain to tame the jumble of thoughts banging against her skull.

���209

“I think he’s more worried about the twins and the Azmarini than he lets on, but he’s right, we’ll never get onto Clarity with a whole horde of people behind us.”

“Maybe if he wasn’t so consumed with making sure he gets to Cecelia on time, he could figure out some way to help these people,” Ren said.

Jasmin chuckled. “He’s trying to get back to the person he loves most in the world. Would you act any differently?”

Ren pursed her lips. Jasmin patted her shoulder sympathetically and sunk down onto the blanket, grumbling, “Good night.”

! THE WATCH210

C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N

FOUND

“Fifteen days since Ozryn,” Ren said at the exact moment she first noticed the sun peeking over the horizon. She had been up for hours making the sign of the crescent and gazing up at the stars with heavy eyes. She wished she could sleep, but her thoughts were too busy for something as trivial as rest.

The fog had drifted away during the night. Its damp chill still clung to Ren’s bones like a ghost in mourning. She repeated the count and the group began to stir awake. Finn had been on guard and, as usual, had fallen asleep. Usually, Ren’s count had everyone jumping to their feet and hurrying around in a panic, but that morning was unusually slow.

Merrigan rolled to sit up and spent a good few minutes yawning before she pulled Jasmin’s bag and her own into her lap. She rummaged through them lazily, occasionally yawning so wide her eyes shut. Jasmin made the great effort of rolling onto her side, but beyond that she couldn’t manage much else. Cole and Wynn wanted nothing to do with Evie’s explanation that the group truly did wake up this early every morning. Finn idly picked dried drool off his chin and sipped from his canteen, and even Sloan groaned and held his head as he stood up.

“We’re running low on food,” Merrigan said. “I can’t promise more than…two days? Maybe three, if we really cut down our portions. How is everyone on water? I only have one canteen left.”

���211

“Anything else?” Jasmin asked, digging her knuckles into her eyes and using Ren to pull herself to sit.

“The sunscreen is finished.”“Are you serious!” Jasmin cried. She sprang to her feet and

yanked Merrigan’s bag into her own lap. She plunged her hands inside and searched desperately. “Why didn’t you take any from Anya? She much have had more than enough to spare.”

“We’ll have to deal with it,” Sloan said. He took Merrigan’s white bag gently from Jasmin and spoke soothingly. “We’re not far from Myrrka, we can make it without sunscreen. Finding food is more important.”

“Why don’t we buy food in the village?” Ren proposed. “I should have a dozen bits left, at least. That’s enough for a few loaves of bread and some grains.”

Sloan’s jaw tightened. “I don’t see any other option,” Jasmin said. “It won’t take us

more than an hour off schedule. We can walk until midnight tonight to make up for lost time.”

“I’m feeling much better today,” Merrigan said. “I won’t slow us down so much.”

“Fine,” Sloan sighed. “Hopefully the Azmarini will have found an inn or houses to stay in, but to make sure they won’t notice us again, I’ll go alone.”

He took the group’s empty canteens and then held out his hand at Ren. She had already dug her small pouch of coins from inside her bag, but she didn’t hand it over. She needed to make sure the Azmarini hadn’t been banished from the village or harmed in any way. Despite their treatment of her, she wouldn’t be able to get on Cecelia’s Ship knowing the Azmarini were orphaned on the unfamiliar southern coast.

“I’m coming,” Ren said. “It’s my money.”“You’re wasting time, give me the bits and I’ll be back within

the hour.”“Let’s go, then.” Ren skipped around Sloan and started

towards the village, bouncing the pouch in her hand.

! THE WATCH212

“The rest of you better be ready to leave as soon as we get back,” Sloan snapped. He jabbed his finger at the twins and said, “I’m not sure we’ll be needing you two any longer. This lack of food and water is because of you.”

“Sloan,” Ren warned.“We don’t want to be an imposition,” Wynn said. She took

her brother’s arm and started pulling him away from Evie. “Our survival doesn’t depend on continuing with you, though we are truly grateful for what you have done for us so far. Come on, Cole, let’s go.”

“You can’t leave!” Evie cried. “Where will you go?”“To get my staff back,” Cola said murderously, sounding much

too old and dangerous for his age. Finn sucked his teeth, vexed. “If you’re going to get more food now, then it really doesn’t

matter how much they’ve eaten already,” Evie said to Sloan. She stood with her hands on her hips and her eyes set in determination. It was the first time she had stood up to Sloan, and Ren could have sworn she saw the corners of Sloan’s lips twitch upwards. He decided not to answer her, simply handing half the canteens to Ren for her to carry and heading off towards the village. Evie watched them leave with a satisfied smile, even if Cole and Finn were still bickering.

Ren fiddled with the strings of her pouch as she and Sloan made their way to the village. She chanced a few furtive glances at him and flinched when he caught her.

“Go on, get it out,” he said. “What is it you want to berate me about now?”

“I understand not being able to get all the Azmarini who were following us onto a Ship,” Ren said cautiously. “But, the twins are only children. They don’t have a chance of surviving on their own. Wynn is so smart, she’ll be able to help us with a lot of things. And Cole is…tough. He’s got tough skin and fought against those Reapers like he was a grown man. They could both be an asset. Plus, they’re small, they can’t possibly require that much room on a Ship.”

���213

Sloan remained annoyingly silent and impassive the rest of the way into the village. The streets were empty of both people and fog, and still Ren couldn’t spot a single clue as to whether the Azmarini had actually entered the village or not. Sloan’s silence persisted all the way to the doors of the pub, where Ren’s patience fizzled out and she snapped, “Is Cecelia going to let anyone but you onto her Ship?”

“Yes,” Sloan said quickly, not meeting Ren’s eye.“Why do you seem so unsure of that all of a sudden? The

closer we get to her, the more doubtful you are.”“Because she doesn’t know that you’re all coming. She thinks

it’s just me and a Watch—”“And Finn,” Ren said, her teeth starting to chatter as a

freezing wave of panic washed over her. “Finn told me that you were looking for him specifically.”

“Ren,” Sloan groaned. He pushed open the door of the pub. “What matters is that I’m not going to leave any of you behind. Cecelia won’t either, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be angry at first.”

He strode into the pub and Ren followed, clenching her fists in a mingle of distrust and anger. The barkeep was wiping down the tables and jumped when they entered. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and took a step backward for each one they took forward, until she was safely behind the bar.

“Do you have food to sell? Water?” Sloan asked. Ren held up her pouch for the barkeep to see, then dumped the canteens on the counter. The barkeep filled each canteen with fresh water and returned them, then shuffled through a door behind the bar to get them bread. Ren could hear her moving around boxes and grumbling to herself as she and Sloan loaded their shoulders with the canteens.

Sloan propped himself against the bar and stared at Ren. She frowned and loosened her scarf to air out the sweat that had collected around her neck.

! THE WATCH214

“What is it about keeping your scarf on that you can’t remember?”

“Maybe if you told me why I need to hide my face indoors and miles away from the last Doctor we saw, I’d be happy to do it,” Ren said airily. She unraveled the scarf fully and let it slump around her neck, just for the pleasure of seeing Sloan’s eyes bug wide with fury.

He reached forward to fix her scarf, but his eyes caught on something over her shoulder and he instead moved to stand between Ren and the door. From the corner of his mouth, he whispered, “Put the scarf on.”

Ren ignored him and rolled onto the balls of her feet to see over his shoulder. A man had entered the pub. He wore only pants with a wide black belt buckled many times over a broad, muscular stomach. From the belt hung various knives and gun holsters that clinked against one another as he strolled into the pub.

“Never thought I’d see you again,” the man said to Sloan. His face was sunburnt and wrinkled, and when he grinned his teeth were blacker than his belt.

“Hello, Turner,” Sloan said. “I see you’ve left the Base.”“I don’t meet their requirements for travel,” Turner barked,

laughing. The air in the pub had turned sour and tense. The noises

from the back room had stopped. The revolver in Ren’s pocket seemed to thump against her thigh, humming in excitement at the erratic race to Ren’s heart. A bead of sweat crawled its way down Sloan’s neck. Seeing this, Ren’s head swam with fear and her heart felt likely to jump right out of her throat.

Turned continued, “Didn’t think you’d ever get this close to Base One again. Who are you hiding there?”

“A friend.”“You’re done with Celia?”“No.”“Let’s meet you friend, then.”

���215

Before Ren could so much as think of running for safety, Turner shoved Sloan aside with one swoop of his massive arm. Turner was twice as broad as Ren and easily six feet tall with arms thicker than her entire body. She stared up at him, her jaw locked in defiance against her own instinct to run and cower behind Sloan.

Turner bent closer and studied her face before letting out another barking laugh louder than a gunshot. He thumped Ren so hard on the arm that she stumbled sideways, colliding with Sloan.

“The hell did you dig her up!” Turner was smiling with all of his black teeth. His voice was icy and his eyes roamed over Ren hungrily. Sloan pressed his hand to the small of Ren’s back. His fingers were shaking.

“Someone like her,” Turner said. “Bringing her back to Base One…they’d rue the day they cut me out of Exodus.”

“Sorry, Turner, but I think you’ve mistaken her for someone else. I’m merely escorting her to Myrrka. Have to make money somehow, you know,” Sloan said. “So, if you don’t mind, we’ve got to get moving. If we don’t reach Myrrka by her deadline, I’ll have to take a pay cut.”

“What’s your name, girl?”“Seren,” Ren said automatically. “Of the Northern

Cloudlands.”“No, you’re no Northerner. You’re Sanna Grant’s daughter.

The resemblance is uncanny.”Ren winced at hearing her mother’s name and instinctively

grasped for her left wrist. She tried to disguise the movement by taking hold of the crook of her elbow instead, but Turner was already smirking.

“Sanna Grant?” Sloan’s voice was fake and flat, ominous. “Don’t be ridiculous. Come, Seren.”

“Grant and I were friends, once,” Turner said. He blocked their path to the door of the pub and flexed the muscles of his arms. “Good friends. She was the best Keeper of Space I’d ever met. We worked on a few missions together before she

! THE WATCH216

disappeared. Flew off the radar where even Commander Lake couldn’t find her. She disappeared right in the middle of the Bottom-Sea campaign and took that odd fellow Maro with her. Maro, and their little daughter. I heard that the Doctors had caught the trail of Sanna’s DNA recently, but it died out back in Ozryn—”

Sloan moved so quickly that Ren didn’t see exactly what he did. One minute, she was greedily waiting for Turner to continue talking about her parents, and the next Turner was on his back, clutching at a huge gash in his neck spurting long streams of blood. Ren gasped and stumbled away from Turner’s twitching body. Sloan returned his dagger to his belt, took Ren by the wrist, and dragged her outside.

“No,” Ren murmured, digging her heels into the grassy street and wrenching her arm free of Sloan’s grasp. He rounded on her, sharp distress pulsating in his eyes. Ren didn’t care that they were standing in the middle of the village in broad daylight, didn’t care that her face was uncovered for anyone to see. She had been so close…Turner’s voice pounded in her head with such strength that she couldn’t see straight…he had worked with her mother, said she used to be a Keeper of Space…but that was wrong, wasn’t it?…Sloan was pleading for her to run, to get away before anyone found Turner…

“What the hell was that?” Ren screamed, her voice vibrating through the sleepy village and calling the villagers to peep through their windows.

“We need to get out of here,” Sloan snarled. “Put your damn scarf on before you get recognized again! PUT IT ON AND COME WITH ME!”

Ren’s head spun and roused up a pit of nausea in her stomach. A burning sensation carved a path through her chest and limbs, flipping and twirling inside her, like a part of herself she didn’t recognize had come forward to take over.

A high-pitched scream sounded behind her. She and Sloan spun around to see the barkeep flying out of her pub and calling

���217

for help. She was sobbing and pointing at the pair of them wildly, screaming, “Murderers! Get the Doctor! Get the Doctor!”

Wordlessly, Ren and Sloan sprinted headlong out of the village. Doors were thrown open and shouts joined in with the barkeep’s screams. Sloan was too fast for Ren to keep up with. He was full strides ahead of her by the time they crossed the edge of the village, leaving her to pant and struggle behind him. As they grew closer to the hill where the group was camped and the voices from the village died away, a new bout of shouting started up ahead. Ren squinted, cursed in fury, and put all her effort into running faster.

Cole and Wynn were standing removed from the rest of the group. Cole was holding one of Jasmin’s spare knives and stood stoutly in front of his sister, blocking her from the aim of Jasmin’s rifle. He slashed the knife in the air and Jasmin inched forward, put her finger on the trigger.

Sloan reached them first and immediately stepped in front of Cole, shouting, “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

“He drew his knife on Evie!” Merrigan cried, just as Ren came to a shaky stop next to her. Cole darted out from behind Sloan, swiped Ren’s feet so that she fell over, and jumped on her with his knife at her throat.

“The coins!” Cole yelled. He was so small and thin that Ren could have pushed him off easily, but she had seen him work a knife against the Reapers. She held out the pouch she had never given to the barkeep and he snatched it from her.

Cole jumped to his feet and backed away. Wynn, shaking like a leaf with tears prickling her cheeks, ran to her brother and pleaded, “Give them back the money, Cole. We don’t need it. We can leave without it. Please, you’re making them mad at us!”

“You two need to leave,” Sloan said gravely. “Now.”“You’ll shoot at us!”“You have my word that we won’t.”The twins didn’t waste any time deciding whether they could

trust Sloan or not. They were sprinting up a hill to the east in a

! THE WATCH218

second, Wynn covering her head with her arms. Ren watched them go, swallowing her utter disbelief.

“He was going to kill me,” Evie said quietly. “For some stupid chunks of metal.”

Merrigan sank to her knees and cradled Evie’s face, cooing, “Don’t be afraid, Evie. It’ll all be okay. Jasmin would never let him hurt you.”

“If I ever see that boy again, I will murder him,” Evie snarled, her face contorting savagely and her entire body shaking with rage. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and said, “Aren’t we leaving already?! I can’t wait to live while those two get eaten up by the Doctors.”

Sloan helped Ren roughly to her feet and scowled at her. “Are you coming?”

“As if you’d let me leave,” Ren said, her voice shaking. “You need the Code.”

The group all turned to look at them in surprise, and Jasmin asked, “What happened in the village? Why didn’t you buy anything?”

“I’ll explain on the way, we need to get to Myrrka,” Sloan said. He looked almost sad, but Ren refused to let herself fall into the trap of pity he was undoubtedly setting for her.

“Who are all those people?” Merrigan asked shrilly, pointing towards the village. Ren could just make out the form of a group of people heading towards them and lead by a towering, eight-foot figure covered in black cloth.

Ren ground her teeth and forced herself to run with the group as they took off at a sprint up the next hill. Being captured by a Doctor definitely wasn’t going to give her the answers she needed, while following Sloan to Myrrka might, no matter how revolting she found him at that moment.

“Start explaining yourself, Sloan!” she called out after him. She didn’t need to put thought into running; her anger was motivation enough to propel her forward. “Otherwise you won’t find me so willing to help you get into Base One once we get there! The

���219

Watch is still mine, I don’t have to give it to Cecelia if I don’t want to.”

“What’s this?” Finn asked, glancing between Sloan and Ren with such disappointment it was as if Ren had already denied him entry to Clarity.

“You want to do this now?” Sloan panted, still running at the head of the group and denying Ren the decency of talking to her face. They started up a particularly steep hill, Ren stumbling and cursing the tall grass in her rage.

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MY MOTHER? I WON’T LET YOU HOLD IT OVER ME ANY LONGER!”

“Ren, calm down,” Merrigan gasped.“YOU KNOW SOMETHING TOO! I KNOW YOU DO!”“Ren!” Sloan shouted. “I didn’t know your mother. I—”Ren cut him off with a shriek of pain. The Watch had started

to burn white-hot against her skin. She stumbled to a stop, not knowing how to stop it burning, only able to paw at it helplessly with her right hand. Angry red welts were popping up along her arm and her fingers thumped in pain. The Watch turned itself on and burned a bright purple, constricting even tighter around Ren’s wrist and burning hotter...hotter...

She was screaming, her skin surrounding the Watch breaking and bleeding in the heat. The Watch began to spin, twisting her skin as it gained speed. There was a flash of light and Ren was blinded. Her body was standing halfway up a grassy hill, surrounded by her friends and Sloan shaking her shoulders desperately, but her soul was ripped from the Earth and squeezed, pressed, stretched, cut by millions of rays of light. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel anything except suffocating heat.

Then suddenly she was back in her body. She could feel her feet on the ground and the air return to her lungs. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at her mother.

Her mother was young, no more than twenty-five years old, and sitting at a white desk in a small office cluttered with stacks of books, flyaway papers, and large, complicated diagrams filled

! THE WATCH220

with multicolored arrows and dots. She was dressed in a sharp gray uniform that looked clean enough to repel dirt on its own, and her hair was loose and fell about her shoulders in a dark wave. On her left wrist was the Keeper’s Watch that she had given to Ren. She hadn’t noticed Ren, her nose pressed up against the pages of a five-inch-thick book with absurdly small text.

“Mother?”Sanna Grant snapped her head up and connected eyes with

her daughter for the briefest of moments before Ren’s left wrist erupted into heat again and the sensation of her soul sucking out of her body returned. She tried to scream, grab onto her mother’s desk to keep her there, but it was no use. Soon she was back in weightless existence, being compressed and stretched and wrung dry, dimly aware of her mother’s voice.

She concentrated on the sound, desperate to pull herself out of agony. She became aware of having a body again very slowly, like she was drifting into it. Her mother’s voice was clearer. She wasn’t quite in herself but not entirely out when the sight of a long brown room came into focus. It held a single table running down the center with dozens of chairs lining both sides. Pacing one side of the table was a tall, stout man dressed in an identical uniform to her mother, only his was adorned with rows of silver badges on the right shoulder. He hadn’t noticed Ren, but Ren wasn’t sure she could be noticed. When she had seen her mother, she could feel and move her body. This time, it was as if the room was inside of her.

Sanna Grant slid into the room holding the five-inch-thick book Ren had just seen her reading. Her face was drawn and she exhaled sharply out of her nostrils as she approached the man. Following her into the room was an elegant woman with braided hair and pursed lips.

“Commander Stone,” said Sanna, and Ren felt herself being pulled out of the scene again. She struggled, willed herself to concentrate, but was only able to flit between the excruciating

���221

pain of the light plane and the brown room, catching only bits of the conversation below.

“... mission designate 546P, and I’ve got the Ship designs you wanted. They worked, I saw them lift off and exit the atmosphere...”

“... without the consent of the board, I cannot authorize this program... ”

“... ignore much longer! Maro has done the research, Filavirus will destroy us! The best he and his team can do is kill the infected before they start to suffer. We have to get off this planet, and Agent Laine has just shown you how. Humans have done it before, we can do it again... ”

Without warning, Ren’s body slammed into her soul and she burst out of the weightless, absorbing existence and dropped into her mother’s office once again. She landed on her back, dislodging stacks of books to fall on top of her and radiate outwards like an avalanche.

Someone was digging her out and fixing her to sit up straight. Glad as she was to feel her body again, it ached in every nook and crevice, her bones thrummed like strings, and her skin felt burned to a crisp. Her mother and the elegant woman, Agent Laine, were bending over her.

“Mother,” Ren said again, her voice croaky and slow. Sanna Grant blinked in surprise and leaned backwards. Laine looked between the two with shrewd eyes and snatched up Ren’s wrist like a snake. The Watch was no longer there because her mother was wearing it, but there was a solid burn mark where it used to be.

Streams of light glimmered in front of Ren’s eyes. She burst into tears and begged not to be sent back. Before her mother could do anything but stare at her in utter shock, Ren was sucked swiftly through the light plane and shoved into her body once again, this time landing on warm grass with Sloan’s face above her.

! THE WATCH222

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

TIME

Ren wasn’t sure if she was crying or screaming, only knew that her bones were splitting open with pain, her muscles twisting and jerking out of sync, and her lungs were so full of dirt that she choked and heaved.

After what felt like years, the pain began to subside, gently guttering out like the flicker of a candle. When she could focus her eyes again she found that she was laying half on the ground and half in Sloan’s lap, Finn holding onto her arms and blinking into her eyes with blank terror. Evie was hovering over her feet, crying silently, her hands pressed firmly into her mouth like she was suppressing a scream. The same old blue sky was above her, as was the dirty leather of Sloan’s jacket. Jasmin and Merrigan were in the background clutching the white bag between them.

“Ren,” Sloan said softly. She turned her face up at him, letting all her muscles sag at once so that he and Finn had to scramble to keep her up.

She looked down at her left wrist. Other than a few inches of red, irritated skin surrounding the Watch, nothing was wrong with her arm at all. The burns and welts had vanished. Her body was returning to normal, any pain subsiding to a dull ache deep in her bones.

“Ren, what happened?”She couldn’t bring herself to speak. Her whole body shook

violently and set her teeth to chattering so roughly that forming any words was impossible. She watched the muscles of Sloan’s

���223

throat tighten and bend under his skin, then watched Finn get to his feet and rush over to where Jasmin and Merrigan were arguing under their breath.

“She doesn’t need burn cream, look, her arm is pretty much better! That little bit will go away like the rest. She needs a relaxitive to get her through this next bit.”

“ ‘Pretty much better’ is not ‘healed’,” Merrigan hissed. “What do you think is going to happen next, exactly? Is something going to fall out of the sky and heal her burns?”

“They’re not burns! Her skin is just red. She’s going to go through shock next, we should be focused on preventing the brunt of that.”

“I’m the one who's trained to respond to health problems, you just wave your stupid rifle around—”

“Just wave—You’ve got to be kidding—”“No one is giving anything to Ren right now,” Finn finally

said. “Both of you stop bickering! She needs quiet.”Ren, through her continually chattering teeth, asked, “W-w-

what hap-p-pened to m-my body?”“You vanished,” Sloan said, still talking softer than a whisper.

“Your arm started burning, then you just vanished into thin air. We looked for hours, then all of a sudden Jasmin saw you pop back out of the air in the same spot you disappeared from. You’ve been unconscious since then.”

“I went b-back, I th-think. S-s-s-saw my mother.”The shaking stopped just as quickly as it had begun. A

crawling, chilly sweat inched over her body and she sat up. She was unable to tear her eyes off the Watch, fully expecting it to start flashing purple again. When she eventually looked up, Evie was stuck in the same spot, whimpering.

“I’m all right, Evie,” Ren smiled weakly. Evie let out a sob, dropping to her knees and scuttling forward to pinch Ren’s arm, then held her hand.

“You sure about that?” Jasmin asked skeptically.“I think.”

! THE WATCH224

“Because you looked—well, you were, we checked your pulse when you came back...we were sure you’d died,” Finn said. Merrigan walked forward to join their huddle. Ren looked at each of them, guiltily surprised at how concerned they all were. Each one of them had horrible sunburn and bloodshot eyes. Only Sloan was calm, though his calm was tangibly delicate.

“Er...why don’t we give her some space,” Finn said. As if snapped out of a daze, there was a general murmur of

consent through the group as each moved a few paces away. Ren then realized it was moonrise; she had wasted the entire day. Sloan was the only one to move closer. He looked halfway between concern and apprehension that she might start yelling at him again.

“You wasted a whole day deciding what to do with my dead body?” she asked, a faint smile making its way across her lips. Her head was spinning so fast that Sloan looked stretched out and distorted. She was finding it hard to form a coherent thought, and somehow that was making her giddy. Sloan grimaced, rolled his eyes, and helped her lay back on the grass gently.

“You can worry about my motives tomorrow,” he said. “Merrigan’s going to make sure you’re all right.”

Merrigan and her white bag came to hang over Ren. She poked and prodded Ren up and down her sides, measured her heart beat, and gently dabbed a cool gel on the skin around the Watch. As Merrigan examined her, Ren felt like she was being sucked up by the grass and covered in warmth. The low, unintelligible voices of the group were even warmer than the grass. It was either a really dark night, or her eyes had closed.

“Try not to get up for a while. Sleep if you can. We’ll talk tomorrow, Ren.” Sloan’s voice wafted into her ears gently and she hummed in response.

The pain from the light plane hung over her body like noxious gas and the tug on her mind to fall asleep was too strong to be normal; it was a slithery, seductive whisper beckoning her into the darker recesses of her mind. By some burst of insight,

���225

Ren wrenched her eyes open and fought out of that murky, soporific trance as she would have fought to free her feet from a deep pit of mud. When she finally made it free, the reality of what she had just experienced pummeled into her with a wham so strong she almost heard it.

Sanna Grant and Agent Laine had been talking about Ships and leaving the Earth. They were trying to persuade that Commander to abandon Earth—had that meeting been the birthplace of Exodus? Had her mother been the person to suggest leaving the Disposables to themselves? What her mother had said about Filavirus matched what Sloan had been saying all along, but she had mentioned Maro, Ren’s father...there was no way he could have been part of the Union too, no one had ever said anything about her father…except Turner….did any of this have something to do with their murder?

Ren’s left hand cramped, the irritated skin around the Watch tingling in pain. She shot to her feet so fast that Jasmin, who was sitting at her heels, cursed vehemently and pressed her hand to her chest. The rest of the group was forming a loose circle around Ren, their blankets unfurled and bags deposited in a pile. Sloan reached out to take Ren’s elbow as she paced the same few inches of grass.

Ren wrung her hands, her heart ricocheting around her chest and every nerve in her body awake and fizzling with energy. Sloan’s hands on her arms made her pause. She looked down at them, trying to decide if they were real or not. They looked real enough, and they pinched her skin, so they must be real, but how could she be sure?

She lifted her gaze from Sloan’s hands to Sloan’s eyes. They were the same deep olive as always. She asked, “Was I really gone?”

Sloan swallowed heavily and said, “Yes,” his eyes boring into Ren with sharp worry.

“I really disappeared?”“And reappeared, and came back to life.”

! THE WATCH226

“So, I died.”“Well,” Merrigan spoke up, disentangling herself from under

her blanket and getting to her feet. “I suppose I must admit to it being possible that you were still alive, if your pulse was weaker than what I was able to perceive with my fingers. I don’t have any equipment for heart treatment in my bag.”

“But the disappearing part you can all agree on?”Sloan nodded, and the rest of the group followed. A tickling

hysteria crawled its way up Ren’s spine and made her shiver. She knew what had happened to her, but how could she possibly believe herself? It was such a ludicrous idea. She was surely going crazy. She hadn’t gone back in time, that was absurd. Utterly, utterly absurd. So absurd that it made sense.

Ren said, “I just realized. I’m so sorry. I lost us an entire day’s walk. Let’s go now, the moon’s bright and the Watch has a compass. We won’t get lost.”

“Sweetie,” Merrigan said, half-laughing. “We’re all tired and no one wants to walk in the dark. Lie down and have a good night’s sleep.”

Ren ignored her, turning on the Watch. It was warm to the touch and made the raw skin around it swell up, but she accessed the compass regardless of the pain. She turned southwest and set off on a determined march. She didn’t bother wasting time to notice what the group was doing, the feeling of their astonished gazes digging into her back was enough. She concentrated on driving her feet into the grass, that focus strong enough to draw her mind somewhat away from the panic of the realization of what she wore around her wrist.

When she didn’t hear the familiar thumping of boots behind her, Ren called out, “Sloan, are you really willing to give up an entire day’s walk? Who knows if we’ll make it to Cecelia on time.”

“We can make it just fine,” Sloan called out. “Get back here, there’s no way you’re well enough to walk.”

“You’re not, Ren!” said Merrigan.

���227

“Wait up, Ren, I’m coming,” said Evie. Finn scolded her, and Evie responded with a defiant, “Well, if she’s not going to stop, why don’t we just go with her?”

“Ren, please stop,” said Finn. “Oh, let’s just go,” said Jasmin. “She’s not going to stop, unless

you want to tie her up, Sloan? No?”“Ren!” cried Sloan. His voice already sounded far behind Ren,

and she marched on even more determined than before. Her eyes were wide and grasping for any ray of moonlight she could find. If she tried hard enough, she was sure she could run away from the idea of the Watch’s power for long enough to figure out a way to face it without losing her sanity.

She heard the whistle of grass against feet; the group was running to catch up with her. Even with Merrigan’s constant warnings that she was going to seriously harm herself and Jasmin’s snipes at Merrigan for being overly protected, even with Sloan walking so close to her that Ren may as well have had her hands bound again, even with Finn’s incessant yawns and Evie’s absurdly loud rumbling stomach, Ren had never felt more empowered in her life than she was then, marching under the moon and burying her fears in distraction.

*Ren hadn’t slept since the Watch had activated itself and

brought her back in time to see her mother. She didn’t like to stop moving, getting it into her mind that if she did, the Watch would wake up again and drag her out of her body. If she stopped, she would remember the things she should be attempting to understand. Whatever had activated it had been a singular event, though, and the Watch sat on her wrist just the same as ever.

The only time she spoke to the group was to announce the count. She, of course, knew the true count, but if she stopped and really thought about that, then she could only see the count as how many days it had taken her to discover who her mother had been. So, the day after the Watch had activated, she announced, “Three days since Ozryn,” in the hopes of tricking her mind into

! THE WATCH228

allowing her less time spent as an oblivious, gullible fool. Counting days must have become as instinctual as breathing, however, because she only felt more the fool for wanting to hide from herself.

“You must mean sixteen days,” Merrigan said brightly. Ren shrugged away from her and kept up her relentless walk. Her eyes were stinging from being held open so long and her head swam underneath miles of dizziness, but the exhaustion was intoxicating.

The only consolation she had was in no longer harboring doubt that her mother had been a Keeper of Ages. Her mother hadn’t lied to her, she just hadn’t had the time to tell her everything. That man Turner had claimed to be close friends with Sanna Grant, but how close could he have been if he didn’t even know she possessed a Watch capable of moving its owner through time? Whatever her mother’s supposed involvement in the Union had been didn’t matter now that Ren had her own proof.

In truth, Sloan showed more interest in the Watch than Ren did herself. He longed to hear a full recount of what she had experienced and hardly left her side as a result. He would have even followed her whenever she detached herself from the group to duck behind a hill for the bathroom if she hadn’t resorted to enlisting Jasmin to hold him back. The group followed the compass on Ren’s Watch, up and over hills, around and through valleys, and all the while Sloan drilled Ren with questions and hardly ever lifted his eyes from the Watch.

“What would be the purpose of going back in time? Why would the Watch self-activate? Why there? Did you see anyone else besides your mother? Did you see her at your home in Hythe, or in the Union? Aren’t you at all curious about what the hell is going on? Describe what it felt like when the Watch activated. Ren, describe it. Ren. I need you to describe what happened in full detail so that I can get a better understanding of this Watch.”

���229

“I don’t want to describe what it felt like, Sloan!” Ren snapped, not bothering to lift her eyes from the compass on the Watch. Southwest, she must keep them going southwest.

It had been two days since the Watch activated and her mind was wound in a sharp knot. She had been driving the group exceedingly hard, barely letting them rest for more than an hour before anxiety would creep up her spine and prompt her to find a distraction. She and Sloan were a full hill ahead of the group, the tense air brought on by Sloan’s incessant questions pushing their feet faster than the rest.

“Try to understand that if you did go back in time, you may have subliminally activated the Code, or you might have learnt the Code when in the past, if that’s really where you went—”

“What do you mean?” Ren rounded on him. “How else would I see my mother? Of course I went to the past!”

“It’s just not possible, Ren. No one can travel through time on a whim. It’s ridiculous. The Union isn’t even close to that kind of technology. Something else must have happened. The Watch could have induced a hallucination—”

“It wasn’t a hallucination! I was there, I felt it. If it was a hallucination, then why would my mother be so surprised to see me? If I was hallucinating, why wouldn’t the Watch just skip to the part where I was actually doing something instead of popping me in and out of rooms for a few seconds?”

“Sure, that makes sense, but it’s far more likely that this was the Watch’s way of accessing your subconscious to make you realize the Code and—”

“I’ve already told you, I saw or heard nothing that could work as a Code.”

“You don’t even know what a Code is, how would you be able to recognize one? If it was accessed subconsciously you may still be unaware—”

“But—”“Would you stop cutting me off,” Sloan hissed. “Look, I know you

don’t trust me because you think I’m hoarding a bunch of

! THE WATCH230

information on your mother, but now is not the time to be petty. This Watch is what’s going to get us safely into the Base. I need to understand what’s going on with it. So, please, put aside your feelings for me and just tell me what happened.”

“First off,” Ren growled. She skidded to a halt and glared up at Sloan. “I’m not giving you a second-by-second explanation because I don’t understand what happened to me and can’t describe it. I’m not doing it out of spite. Second, if you knew my mother so well then you’d know whether she owned something as important as the ability to travel through time, so why you’re asking all these questions is beyond me.”

“I didn’t know your mother, though,” Sloan insisted. He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck, and sighed. He continued through gritted teeth, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the group wasn’t within earshot. “Well, not really. I saw her often enough when I was growing up, but I’ve never had a conversation with her. She was much too important to acknowledge my family’s rank, and I was too young to dare do anything but salute her. Your family lived in the same Base as mine. Cecelia’s too, her parents were incredibly, inseparably close with yours. My current knowledge of your mother came later in my life. Part of my training was studying past Citizen leaders, but even then not much was said of Sanna Grant other than that she had enormous influence when she was in the Union. She was about to be elected a Commander before she disappeared with you and your father. I was barely even Evie’s age when it happened, so I didn’t know her story until I started Captain training.”

“What is her story, then?” Ren asked, throat tight and palms clammy as she pressed them flat against her stomach.

Sloan shrugged. “She was very influential to the Council, like I said, and her status frightened most everyone into a kind of reverence of her. The details of what she achieved won’t make sense to you without knowing a good deal more about the Union. Suffice it to say that she was an expert in everything she decided

���231

to pursue. Intelligent, driven, ruthlessly ambitious. The same general story as any of the other Commanders, actually.”

“So, you thought that bringing back the Watch of a lost, famous Keeper would be enough to get you into Base One,” Ren said flatly. Her thoughts were sluggish and numb. How could it be a coincidence that Sloan had met her as a child and found her again so many years later? That Cecelia, the person who was about to take her from Earth, was the daughter of he mother’s closest friend? Ren glanced down at her wrist, a tumble of revulsion rolling her gut and driving her heart into a frantic beat. The power to control time would be an easy way to make fate masquerade as coincidence.

“Well...it will. Soon, I expect there will be people who can tell you more about her, but I can’t. You told me she was a Keeper of Ages and killed by Doctors, which makes absolutely no sense with my knowledge of her and of the Union. Someone at the Base should be able to explain everything to you, someone who actually knew her when she was alive and a Citizen. All I want to know about your mother is what she did to the Watch to make it...do what it did.”

“You mean Cecelia, don’t you? That she’ll be able to explain my mother to me?”

“I don’t think she’d know much more about her than I do.” Sloan raised his eyebrows. “What does Cecelia have to do with this?”

“When I went back, there was a woman there named Laine. She worked with my mother, they were trying to convince this man they called Commander Stone to start the Exodus Program.”

“It must have been Alma, Cecelia’s mother. The Commanders always took credit for Exodus, I had no idea…” Sloan mumbled, then frowned. “See, this is something I needed to know already! If you had just told me what you saw as soon as you came back I could have figured this out.”

“So, you believe me now? That I went to the past?”

! THE WATCH232

Sloan ran his fingers through his hair and, after noticing that the group was gaining ground on their hill, nudged Ren to started walking. He asked, “Why are you so sure that you went to the past? That’s an incredibly illogical conclusion to draw from all this. It’s not very much like a Moon-soul. The logical thing would be to discuss what you experienced with someone who has tangible knowledge of Watches, like myself, and draw a rational conclusion. You haven’t even entertained the notion that there could be another explanation for what happened, you just jumped straight to time travel.”

Ren couldn’t help but laugh, a sound as delusional and scornful as she felt. She held up her right palm and showed Sloan her crescent scar. It was red and raw from her frantic attempts at meditating on an explanation. “I’ve thought of every other possibility Sloan, trust me. Going to the past in the only answer. I’m well aware that it’s far from logical, but I’ve come to expect a considerable level of illogicality since I’ve met you. Getting on a spaceship to find a new planet to live on is no more illogical than traveling to the past. Both are equally ridiculous, but since one is already true, both are then equally as likely.”

Sloan simply shook his head sadly. Ren barely understood what she had said herself, and was far from accepting it, but it was all she had to go on. They walked in silence as the sky darkened and the stars twinkled awake. Ren took a sidelong glance at Sloan.

“You don’t know much, do you?” she asked. “No one seems to, other than the fact that we look alike. Desmond, that man Turner, and Merrigan. She recognizes me, doesn’t she?”

“She had higher security clearance than the rest of the group,” Sloan conceded. “She was further along in her Keeper training. I expect she knows as much as I do about your mother.”

The Watch flexed as she clenched her hands together, willing it to disappear. If only the grassy hills around her would change. She would even take a sudden bout of gray dirt over this endless monotony. There was nothing to distract her. The sky was

���233

cloudless, the group was so annoyingly, courteously quiet, and nothing was interesting enough to drag her attention away from her left wrist.

Jasmin caught up with them when the moon had fully risen. She was haggard and stumbling, drunk on exhaustion. She said, “Do you two realize that it’s nighttime? Ren, stop walking for a minute.”

Ren did as she was told and turned to Jasmin expectantly. Over Jasmin’s shoulder, Ren saw the group staggering to meet them, their heads hanging low and feet barely making it off the ground. Jasmin spoke gently, as if she was afraid of spooking Ren, and took off her bag and rifle as she said, “We all get it, Ren. Walking is good for you right now, and we’ve tried to keep up with you the past few days as best we can, but we need to rest now. Evie nearly fainted today, and Merrigan’s not doing well. We have to stop for the night and sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a trying enough day without sleep. It’s the day we’re meeting Cecelia, isn’t it?”

Sloan nodded, said, “We’ll be in Myrrka around mid-morning. She’ll be waiting.”

The group joined them, happily taking Jasmin’s cue and relieving themselves of their bags and blankets. Ren looked around at them with growing remorse. They were sunburned, panting through cracking lips, and nearly falling to the ground with exhaustion. Ren suddenly remembered she hadn’t thought to drink since the day before, and that she and Sloan had never gotten around to buying more food. Ren bit her bottom lip to stop its trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t realize.”“If we had had Ren driving us from the beginning, we would

have been in Myrrka weeks ago,” Evie attempted a smile, but she was so tired it fell off her face before she had finished laughing.

“C’mere, Evie,” Finn yawned. He had his blanket unfurled and was already snuggled underneath it, holding one corner open for Evie to slide under. Merrigan finished her coughing, mumbled

! THE WATCH234

goodnight to Ren, and unrolled her blanket next to Finn. Jasmin took off her rifle, bag, blanket, and boots, landing on the grass spread-eagled

“Who wants food?” Merrigan asked. Without getting up, she caught the strap of Jasmin’s bag with her foot and dragged it towards her. She took out the last of their bread and broke it into pieces, throwing one to each of them. Ren remained standing, shifting from foot to foot as she looked to the southwest. If she stopped, if she slept, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t fall back into the light plane.

Sloan took her elbows and eased her onto the grass. Her body was so tense that her knees cracked as she bent her legs and her back whined with soreness at finally being allowed to hunch forward. The skin around her eyes was sore from being awake for so long. The group slipped into sleep peacefully. Evie still had her chunk of bread dangling from her lips.

“I can keep watch tonight,” Ren whispered. Sloan was still sitting very close to her. She leaned towards him for the briefest of moments before realizing what she was doing and jerking backwards.

“I told you, you’re not to use that revolver,” he said. The moonlight dappled his face and sparked in his large, tired eyes. He shifted so that he was sitting facing Ren straight on.

“I won’t. Please, go to sleep, you’re exhausted.” “I’m fine.”“You know, what you’re doing,” he said. “Pretending that you

don’t need to understand what’s going on in your life to be safe, is a kind of stubbornness I can barely comprehend.”

“Perhaps it’s strength, and not stubbornness. I’m going where I’m taken, no matter what’s there when I arrive. There’s no time to try and understand everything.” She kept the part about being too afraid to ask certain questions firmly to herself.

It was nearly twenty minutes of contented silence between the pair before Sloan began to slump closer and closer to the grass. Eventually, his eyes drifted closed and he rolled forward

���235

with a snore. Ren moved forward to untangle him into a more comfortable position, then turned her face to the moon and used its light as a lullaby.

! THE WATCH236

C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N

MYRRKA

The town of Myrrka was a collection of low buildings arranged in winding lanes and covered in grass. At a distance, Ren mistook them for a group of small hills until she saw a man climb out of one of those hills and peel off down a lane between hill-houses. As they crested the last real hill before Myrrka, Ren could make out the villagers weaving between the lanes, the tiny windows inlaid next to grassy doors, and the overwhelming stench of fire whiskey.

Ren fixed her scarf before they descended the hill and Sloan had the chance to criticize her about it. Entering the town was like walking into the physical embodiment of a secret; the hill-houses were entirely camouflaged, excepting the tiny windows. If anyone had been traveling the hills and not specifically looking for it, Ren was certain they would have walked right past Myrrka. The only flaw in its chameleon facade was the smell of fire whiskey. It was embedded into the very air and grass of the town.

“Eighteen days since Ozryn,” Sloan said. “Myrrka is the only village in the world where the Disposables that live in it know about the Union. They can’t leave, of course. The Citizens come here for vacation sometimes, but only the ones who’ve learned to acclimate.”

“This is so strange,” Jasmin mumbled. Sloan had taken them down a side lane free of villagers, and Jasmin was squinting into each window they passed. “The houses are underground for us, the surface air for them. How confusing.”

���237

“I agree,” Merrigan said, wrinkling her nose. Ren glanced around at the others and resigned herself to the fact that she was the only one remotely impressed by Myrrka’s compromise.

Sloan slinked through the first few lanes of Myrrka, keeping his face down and hands resting on the hilt of his knife. When Ren did spot any villagers, they were dressed in gray uniforms identical to what her mother, Agent Laine, and Commander Stone had worn. They talked jovially in small groups and staggered through the lanes clumsily. Being so near Base One, Ren had the feeling that some, if not all, of the gray uniformed villagers would know Sloan and that his being near Myrrka would be suspicious.

Ren kept closely behind Sloan. He turned down a side street and took them out onto the main road. Ren adjusted her scarf again and fiddled with the sleeve of the jacket Jasmin had lent her, making sure it covered the Watch completely. Sloan was rubbing the back of his neck, slowing his usually headlong walk to a few hesitant steps, and came to a stop in front of a long hill-house.

There were many triangular shaped windows spread along the side, each emblazoned with ‘The Red Lounge.’ Through them, Ren could make out gleaming floors and rows of very neat tables. People, uniformed and not, were sitting around them eating plates full of fresh food while others dressed in bright red jumpsuits moved between the tables carrying plastic trays.

The difference between the Myrrkan and the Citizens were clear enough. The Myrrkan in the Red Lounge wore bright red jumpsuits and served copious amounts of food to laughing, joking, healthy-looking Citizens. Citizens that had time for a vacation and could see mice whenever they wanted. Ren made the sign of the crescent and glared at the Myrrkan just as hard as she glared at the Citizens. Sloan was rubbing the stubble on his chin furiously. He glanced at Ren, and she tightened her scarf obediently. The door of The Red Lounge tinkled softly as they entered.

! THE WATCH238

Compared to the immaculate, bright interior of The Red Lounge, Ren imagined them to look like the worst kind of vagabonds. Dirt followed them inside like a cloud, dissipating through the air and making the nearest Lounge patrons wrinkle their noses in distaste. Along the back wall there ran a bar peppered with half-drunk glasses and empty carafes of water. The bar was empty save for a woman sitting with her back against it, dressed in a gray uniform with her legs crossed in front of her.

Ren saw the resemblance to Alma Laine immediately in the stately way she held herself, the luxurious fall of her hair, and the slow blink of her vibrant eyes. Cecelia Laine curled her lips and got to her feet, standing in front of the barstool.

Sloan had begun to walk towards her, weaving through the tables with his eyes anchored on Cecelia. Despite the uncomfortable tightness that was pressing down on her chest, Ren couldn’t look away. Sloan reached Cecelia, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. If Jasmin hadn’t prodded her in the back, Ren would have stared at the couple for the rest of her life, voluntarily drowning in her rapidly closing throat.

“Go on,” Jasmin urged. Finn was starting to make his way through the tables of the Red Lounge with the rest following him, those Citizens at the tables now staring at the group openly. Ren passed three full tables of gray uniforms that eyed her covered face warily.

They reached the bar and fanned out around Sloan and Cecelia. The couple was standing close and smiling against each others’ mouths, oblivious to the room. Ren cleared her throat impatiently and Cecelia snapped her head around. She took a long moment to look over each of them, then smiled and turned to Sloan, her delicate eyebrows raised.

“I know it’ll be tough getting them all in,” Sloan said, touching strands of Cecelia’s hair. “They’re all useful, it would have been foolish to leave them behind.”

Ren frowned at the way Sloan’s ‘we’ had suddenly turned to ‘they’.

���239

“You have what I asked for?”Sloan nodded and Cecelia kissed him again. When they broke

apart, Jasmin spoke up, looking just as edgy as Ren felt. The tables of gray uniforms were still staring at them.

“Cecelia Laine, I presume?” Jasmin said. She stuck out her hand for Cecelia to shake. “Jasmin of the Western Cloudlands. Base Eight, trainee in the Combat Division.”

Cecelia ignored Jasmin’s hand, preferring to bow her head in acknowledgment. She then turned to Ren, frowning at the black scarf shading her face. Ren undid it hastily. Cecelia’s eyes suddenly burned bright at the sight of Ren’s face and she leaned closer. Ren smiled weakly and Cecelia’s lips curled in response, moving past a smile into a hungry, absorbing leer.

“It took you long enough,” Cecelia said. “I was beginning to think you’d died and left me alone.”

“I’m sorry?” Ren looked nervously at Sloan. His eyebrows were crinkled in confusion.

Cecelia held out her wrist and showed Ren the black Watch she wore there. Ren looked at it blankly, then back up at Cecelia.

“Go on, then,” Cecelia urged.“I think you may have me mistaken with someone else, what

do you mean—”“Ren Grant, if I give you a second, what do you give me?”

Cecelia withdrew her wrist and waited expectantly, her eyes so sharp they seemed to burn holes into Ren’s very soul.

“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re saying.”“Crew!” Cecelia cried out. Her face had fallen into severe

lines, her sparkling eyes suddenly harsh. The scratch of chairs against metal rung through the room. The three tables full of gray uniforms had gotten to their feet, a handful of them approaching and lead by a woman wearing an extremely pinched expression.

“All right, Captain Laine?” the pinched woman asked, coming to a stop in the space that separated where Cecelia and Sloan stood apart from the rest of them.

! THE WATCH240

“I’m not sure yet, Officer Cook. I’d like your opinion,” Cecelia said. “Do you see this woman here? Do you recognize her? It’s all right if you don’t, you’ll recognize her name. This is the lost daughter of Sanna Grant. What would you say is happening here?”

Officer Cook turned to Ren, sharp eyes boring into Ren’s face. Whether it was instinctive or not, Jasmin and Merrigan both moved slightly so that they were nearly blocking Ren from view. Officer Cook’s eyes darted to the rifle slung across Jasmin’s back and Ren’s stomach plummeted to the floor.

“They’re appealing for ransom of the prime object Grant,” Officer Cook said promptly, proudly. “They are Disposables who think some leverage will advance them in their sickly world. They are felons.”

Sloan let go of Cecelia and was shouting “NO!” when Cook withdrew a handgun and shot Merrigan.

The bullet went through the center of Merrigan’s forehead and she dropped to the ground at Ren’s feet. Ren could hear guns being drawn, bullets being fired, but the only thing she cared about was the gut-wrenching howl peeling from Finn’s mouth.

Jasmin took Ren roughly by the arm and pulled her behind an upturned table. Jasmin propped her rifle on the edge of the table and began a relentless stream of bullets aimed at anything wearing gray, each pull of the trigger accompanied by a muffled sob. The Union’s guns fired blindingly blue lasshots that cut through Jasmin’s bullets like a knife against flesh. The Citizens had assembled into neat operating units, each unit concentrating on a member of Ren’s group.

Finn, having thrown Evie over the bar and out of sight, was now shaking Merrigan and weaving his fingers through her red hair, clutching her lifeless body to his chest. Merrigan’s blood drenched his hands and the floor around him. Instead of aiming their lasshots at Finn, the Citizens tore up Merrigan’s body, the horror that had become her face throwing Finn into raving hysterics. He let go of Merrigan and pounced to his feet, his head

���241

connecting instantly with the heel of a Citizen’s boot. Finn was thrown backwards and his head slammed against the metal bar. He crumpled to the ground, completely still.

“CECELIA! CECELIA!” Sloan was bellowing and struggling against three Citizens that had him pinned up against the bar. He screamed, “REN! REN YOU HAVE TO RUN! HOW COULD YOU— CELIA—REN, NO!”

Ren had locked eyes with him and vaulted from behind the table before she knew what she was doing. A unit of gray uniforms stood between her and Sloan, their guns turning in slow motion to aim at her feet, to slow her down...

“Oh, just knock him out already,” called a lazy voice. One of the gray uniforms stepped forward to cuff Sloan across the head with the butt of his gun. Unconscious, the uniforms let him drop to the floor.

Ren skidded to a stop, surrounded on all sides by raised guns. Jasmin had followed her, snarling through tears and aiming her rifle at the growing crowd of Citizens.

Cecelia picked her way through the crowd daintily. She looked at Sloan’s unconscious lump of a body and tsked. Officer Cook stepped forward and tried to knock the rifle from Jasmin’s hands. Jasmin barked a manic laugh and threw Officer Cook to the ground. She stepped on the Officer’s chest and slid the muzzle of her rifle neatly into the Officer’s mouth, her eyes shining with bloodlust. The Citizens jumped forward just in time to save their Officer, a half-dozen needed to wrestle Jasmin’s rifle away.

“Orders ma’am?” Cook rasped, getting to her feet shakily.“Take him,” Cecelia said and waved vaguely in Sloan’s

direction. Ren and Jasmin both surged forward, and the Citizens closed in around them. Strong hands jostled and grabbed Ren everywhere, trapping her firmly in place, and she screamed to be let loose. She clawed and scratched and bit, but the Citizens were unyielding. She could just make out Sloan’s body being hoisted into the air and paraded out of the Red Lounge, Merrigan’s

! THE WATCH242

beautiful, beautiful red hair being stepped on and dirtied by black boots, and Finn’s forgotten body at the far side of the Lounge.

Ren sunk her teeth into the arm encircling her neck and ripped, flesh and blood coursing into her mouth. The Citizen let go of her and Ren flung herself towards Finn. She could see him breathing...and Evie was just over the counter, forgotten about and unharmed...Ren slid to her knees and had just grasped Finn’s shoulders when four thick hands enclosed around her face and yanked her backwards.

Her neck strained and back arched, nails scrabbling for purchase against the palm that was sealing off her mouth. She was dumped on the floor next to Jasmin, a uniform slamming his boot down on Ren’s ribs to keep her on the floor.

“Ms. Grant will come with me to see the Commander,” Cecelia was saying. “Take this one as well, if you can get her under control. She’s quite the shot, we may be able to reprogram her after decontamination. Make sure Rian Sloan is decontaminated at once as well.”

Ren was dragged out of the Lounge alongside Jasmin. They were wrested onto the grass as two Citizens with blue badges sewn on their uniforms stepped forward and slid a syringe full of grainy black liquid into each of their arms.

*Cecelia bent over Sanna Grant’s daughter and rolled up her

jacket sleeves. It was there, on her left wrist. The girl did look remarkably like her mother, it was almost eerie. Cecelia covered the Grant Watch carefully and stood back so that her crew could carry the hostages to Clarity. A vibrating, intoxicating surge of rapture pulsated through her heart. She looked frantically around for something to fix her gaze on and bring her back to the moment, anchor her from the wild joy of her thoughts.

Officer Cook clicked her heels and said, “The deceased young woman is Merrigan Clennan, daughter of Robin Clennan, the former Senior Keeper of Thought, Division of Medicine. What are your instructions regarding her body?”

���243

Robin’s daughter? Cecelia thought sourly. “Have it decontaminated and prepared for burial at the catacombs of Clennan-Rowel before we launch.”

“There are two of the hostage group still in the Red Lounge. They are alive. What should I do with them?”

Cecelia looked through one of the Lounge’s many windows. On the floor lay a tall, handsome man bleeding from the back of his head. A young girl was clutching onto his hand and sobbing, screaming for him to wake up.

“Leave them,” Cecelia said. Officer Cook nodded and joined her Captain on the long walk back to Base One.

! THE WATCH244

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y

CECELIA

Cecelia rolled back her shoulders and came to stand in front of his chair. Decontamination had never been an easy process. Nevertheless, he had been handled too roughly for her taste. His nose was broken and a rapidly swelling red bruise was taking over both his eyes. Blood dribbled from his mouth. Grime and blood and bruises littered his skin. She reflected for a moment on what he would have done if their situations were reversed, and felt satisfied in knowing that he would have behaved no differently than herself.

She waited for him to lift his head, knowing he would, and smiled when he finally did. Thankfully, his eyes were so swollen that she couldn’t see them fully. She had always been able to tell what Sloan was truly feeling through the expression of his eyes, and wasn’t keen on seeing what waited there now. She thought he might be crying by the shaking of his lips and the rough way he breathed, but without tears he could have simply broken a rib or two.

“I’m curious,” she said, her voice clear and thick with contempt, exactly how she wanted it. She strode forward until she could smell the blood on his shirt. The room was very small and bare except for Sloan and the chair he was tied to. It didn’t take much to feel cramped. “Was presenting me with five strangers to smuggle onto my Ship supposed to impress me? You haven’t changed at all.”

He coughed and spat a dark clot of blood onto the floor.

���245

“You were banished from the Union for objecting to the abandonment of the Disposables, resolved to follow my instructions to be allowed on Clarity, then slipped right back to where you started and acted the messiah.”

“You objected too...you went to the Council too...” “At first,” Cecelia corrected sharply.“I followed you. Everything you said, I did.”“No! I told you to find Finnian Lynch, who should have been

the last Keeper of Thought outside of Base One. I told you to steal his Watch and bring it to me. Instead, I’m given Finnian Lynch himself—still an apprentice and without a Watch—plus three Citizens that should have been dead.

“However, bringing me Sanna Grant’s long-lost daughter...that did impress me. I had thought she was dead, and the only way to proceed was with a Thought Watch. It was well-timed, I’ll give you that. I don’t understand why you captured her though, you have no idea what Agent Grant was doing.”

“She wasn’t my captive,” Sloan groaned, struggling to breathe around his broken ribs. “She had a Watch, I thought you might be able to use hers instead of Finn’s.”

“Oh...well, I suppose that whole mess in the Lounge was my fault then.” Cecelia shrugged. “She was surrounded by guns and hiding her face, every Citizen in there assumed she was someone dangerous. It wasn’t just me. The Council won’t investigate the matter too deeply.”

Sloan crumpled a bit more in his seat. Cecelia stopped walking and stood directly in front of him. She rolled her shoulders back again and lifted her jaw.

“I want to thank you for bringing me Ren Grant, even if you don’t know what you’ve done. Goodbye, Rian Sloan.”

“I love you, Celia,” Sloan whispered, eyes closed. “I love you. Were you ever planning to take me with you?”

Cecelia narrowed her eyes and restrained a scoff. Rian Sloan didn’t deserve an explanation. He began coughing again, spluttering out a fresh mouthful of blood. Cecelia spun on her

! THE WATCH246

heel and left the room before he could dirty her uniform. She stepped into a clean bright hall and locked the door behind her with a wave of her Watch. Two of her cadets were approaching, both dressed in uniforms denoting their training status. They halted in front of her, saluted, and said in unison, “Captain Laine.”

“Cadet Asher,” she addressed the young man on the right. He was very handsome, just recently of age, with sharp features and strong muscles, plus the familiar light pink blush that spread across his nose and cheeks when she spoke to him. “Make sure this man is treated of his injuries and encased in a pod bound for the Ship Ghost. Please refer to him as Smith Smith in all charts and records.”

“Yes, ma’am.”“You will be transferred to Ghost and accompany him for the

duration of Exodus.”“Captain?” Cadet Asher’s eyes widened and he blushed

deeper.“I am promoting you to Apprentice Keeper of Space, Division

of Containment,” Cecelia said impatiently, hoping that the boy wouldn’t let his attachment to her ruin her plans. “You are personally responsible for the protection of the prisoner Smith Smith and will continue to answer directly to me despite your position on the Ghost crew.”

“Y-yes, Captain Laine,” he said.Cecelia nodded her head in parting and swept around the two

boys. She walked the length of the hallway and descended a flight of stairs. Commander Stone would be waiting for her by now...she must make sure to keep her face calm...

As predicted, Commander Stone was waiting for her in the medical bay when she arrived. He had grown portly over the years and had adopted a ridiculous, bristly white mustache. The silver badges on his right shoulder had grown so numerous that they had begun to spill onto his back.

“Commander.” She saluted him.

���247

“Captain Laine.”They stood together on one side of a glass wall. On the other

was a row of white cots, white plastic medical carts, and a smattering of floating, screens displaying the medical information of the only two patients in the ward. Both were women, both asleep on adjacent white cots, both bruised and sickly pale after decontamination. Thick black tubes connected to the crooks of their elbows pumped the strongest relaxitive known to the Union into their bodies. Their personal effects were arranged neatly on a floating silver tray close to the glass wall. Their weapons, an ostentatious brass rifle with too many useless knobs, and a laser-CB revolver, were out of place in the medical bay. They were obviously Disposable and therefore crude compared with how the Union crafted such things.

“I hope you have a good explanation as to why you called me here. Not to mention why your crew was responsible for the murder of a former Citizen at the Red Lounge today,” Stone said. “Relations with the Disposables are only getting worse, we cannot risk an uprising before Launch. You have not helped the situation.” His words were always more threatening than his tone, which was a drawling, bored voice that begged for retirement.

“We were enjoying our last outing before Launch,” Cecelia began promptly. “When a suspicious group of people came into the bar transporting what appeared to be a hostage. Upon closer inspection, my crew and I discovered their hostage to be Ren Grant, daughter of Keeper Sanna Grant.”

Commander Stone jumped as if electrified, the bristly hairs of his mustache waving crazily as he stammered out, “Grant? Did you recover...ah, any Union technology from the daughter?”

“No.” Cecelia bowed her head, then continued. “I was keen on transporting Ms. Ren Grant to Base immediately, but her captors were equally as keen to keep their prize. I can’t say as to what they planned to use her for, but they became hostile very quickly and opened fire on my crew, who responded as they were trained to. We’ve taken their leader into custody. It’s Rian Sloan.”

! THE WATCH248

Stone raised his eyebrows. “You’ve caught Rian Sloan as well?”“Yes. I have my cadets preparing him for deployment on your

ship, Ghost, in the hopes that you will prosecute him for his crimes at a time you see fit.”

Here, Cecelia’s heart began to pound faster. If she could just keep her story together, she would have her own ship to command, access to Sanna Grant’s memories, and her revenge on Sloan all in one.

“And this other woman?”“One of Sloan’s. She showed exceptional skill with a rifle,

even if it was crafted in a Disposable factory. I thought we might benefit from reprogramming her as a sniper.”

“Yes, we need more of those,” Stone murmured, squinting through the glass. “Ah, it truly is Sanna Grant’s daughter, the resemblance is remarkable. After so many years, we’ve finally caught her. The daughter of a renegade and the first Doctor was too much a Citizen to have ever surfaced.”

“Agreed. I thought I might keep her on Clarity for treatment. She seems to be suffering from much mental abuse at the hands of her captors.”

“You’re sure she had no Union technology of any kind with her?” the Commander smoothed down his mustache.

“I’ve checked her personally several times. You are welcome to examine her personal effects. They are on that tray, there.”

The Commander hesitated and Cecelia’s heart drummed in her chest.

“She may remain here until the conclusion of Exodus. She is too delicate a subject to be put under any more stresses. I expect her fully cognizant and prepared for transfer to Ghost at the conclusion of Exodus.”

“Understood, sir.”“Ah, if you have nothing else to report, I’ll return to

Ghost...wait for Sloan’s pod to arrive... ”He shuffled through a set of hard white doors, moving slowly

and dazed. Cecelia stood patiently, looking over the two women

���249

with her hands clasped tightly in front of her waist. She had done it. Stone would not waste another inspection on Clarity before Launch. She was free of him, Sloan, and everyone else. Ren Grant was her key. A burbling, uncontrollable excitement grew in her chest and she beamed despite herself.

“Captain Laine?”Her First Officer of Thought, Vivienne Tran, saluted as she

entered the medical bay. Cecelia nodded back and together they waved their Watches across the glass wall. It confirmed their identity and slid open.

“We can begin making the adjustments to the Core,” Cecelia said, striding to Ren’s bed with her hands behind her back. “Commander Stone has visited Clarity for the final time.”

“Understood,” Vivienne stood on the other side of Ren’s bed. “I will begin adjusting the Ship’s Core to withstand the journey into hyperspace. If I may ask, Captain, how exactly will this woman help us? She looks too weak to be able to perform any significant duties.”

“She doesn’t have to, her mother did all the work years ago,” Cecelia said. She waved her Watch over Ren Grant’s left wrist and the holoveil’s lock lifted to reveal the black Keeper’s Watch hidden underneath. Cecelia picked up the girl’s wrist, careful to only touch skin, and showed the Watch to her friend.

“Sanna Grant and my mother, Alma, were the only Time Agents ever employed by the Union. The only ones who knew how to operate an Ages Watch. When it was time for them to flee the Union, my mother taught me to modify Watches for future projections and hid in the future. Sanna Grant hid in the present and gave her Watch to her daughter.”

“Will the synchronization of the Ages Watches truly be enough to open hyperspace, though?” Vivienne asked skeptically. “The amount of power needed...plus you two will need to keep the Watches on to operate them. How will you withstand the force?”

! THE WATCH250

“I could have opened hyperspace with just a simple Thought Watch accompanying mine. Opening it with another Ages Watch will only be easier.”

Cecelia let Ren’s wrist drop back onto the bed. The girl’s other palm was turned up, revealing a dark patch of skin in the shape of a crescent moon from a lifetime of rubbing. Clumsy Disposable superstitions, Cecelia thought.

Vivienne hailed one of the floating medscreens assigned to Ren and input a series of numbers. In response, the black tube fastened to Ren’s arm loosened and withdrew, coiling into a neat stack underneath a liquid-filled bag hanging from the bottom of the medscreen. Ren Grant open her eyes.

“Welcome to Clarity, Ren Grant,” Cecelia smiled, sitting on Ren’s bed.

Ren looked around wildly, panic creeping onto her face, and grunted with the effort of trying to move. Cecelia tapped a finger on Ren’s chest and said, “Your immobilizer hasn’t worn off yet. You will only be able to speak.”

“What...” Ren croaked. “What am I doing here? Where is everyone?”

“Your kidnappers are being apprehended for their crime. You are here because you have Sanna Grant’s Watch, and you’re going to help Clarity in its Exodus.”

Vivienne cleared her throat, a reminder to Cecelia that she should be more gentle, but Cecelia didn’t have the time.

“You have been granted permission from the Command Council of the Union to be part of the Exodus of Earth,” Cecelia continued. “Due to your questionable mental state at the moment, we have decided to retain you in the medical bay until Officer Tran can perform a full evaluation and clear you for admittance onto the rest of the Ship.”

“Where’s Sloan?” Ren asked. Vivienne typed something on the floating medscreen and the black tube of relaxitive got ready. “Finn... Evie... Jasmin... and Merrigan, you k-killed Merrigan.”

���251

“Jasmin of the Western Cloudlands is with you,” Cecelia said and moved briefly to give Ren a glance at the bed next to her. “Rian Sloan is a fugitive of the Union and will be tried for his crimes in a court of law. Your other companions chose to remain on Earth.”

The fear on Ren’s face slid away to be replaced with such a ferocious hatred that Cecelia was faintly impressed for a moment. Ren’s cheeks turned red and the veins in her neck strained and she tried desperately to move. When Ren spoke again, her voice had lost the dreamy haze of relaxitive and had acquired all the bite of someone stung with vengeance.

“Let me go to them. I’m no use to you, I don’t even know the Code to my mother’s Watch. Take it, I don’t care, do whatever you want with it, but let me go with them. I don’t know the Code.”

“You do not need to know the Code,” Cecelia said, a thrill running through her chest. “I am Sanna Grant’s Code.”

Cecelia picked up Ren’s wrist again, this time with her left hand. She enclosed her palm around the Grant Watch. The Watch began to burn with heat and flashed white, Cecelia feeling its warmth spread across her body and a part of her brain unlock, ready to command the Grant Watch. She let the energy flow through her, closed her eyes and pushed her mind forward into the Grant Watch. Once there, she saw the symbols of the Cipher flow like a film reel across her closed eyelids. She could feel the soft oscillations of Ren’s bones that spoke of a recent causal projection. She searched for the right command symbol, accessed the most recent file of usage, and watched a silent, sped-up reel showing Ren on the outskirts of Myrrka. The girl had reached a geovator, a specific location set by Sanna Grant decades ago to activate her Watch when passed. Ren Grant had gone back in time, saw their mothers working together and the beginning of Exodus... Sanna had put in a failsafe...Cecelia let go of the Grant Watch and her mind slid out of its hyperaware state back to normal.

! THE WATCH252

“You’ve seen my mother, then,” Cecelia said. “Sanna Grant placed that geovator to activate your Watch just before you reached Myrrka so that you’d understand. Our mothers were Agents, Keepers of Ages, and despite everything they’d done for the Union, the Union came to fear them. They were hunted, unjustly and brutally. Before Sanna Grant took you with her into hiding, she made me her Code and told me to wait for you. Don’t you see, Ren Grant? We’re the force to bring down the Union.”

Ren may have scowled and growled deep in her throat, but tears were beginning to prick her eyelashes. Cecelia repressed a sigh. She couldn’t deny being significantly disappointed in Ren Grant. Where was her partner Agent, the one person Cecelia was supposed to trust beyond anyone else? Ren didn’t seem to have a clue as to what her destiny was.

“You’ll come to grips with it eventually,” Cecelia said. “Sloan has you brainwashed to fear and respect the Union, but you should be looking down on it with disgust. The Union will be nothing to us once I train you to become an Agent. You’ll finally be safe from the Doctors.”

Ren opened her mouth and rounded up her breath, either to sob or scream, and the black tube jumped forward like an eager puppy to slide into the crook of her elbow. Relaxitive flowed into Ren’s blood and she was asleep again instantly.

Vivienne was staring, holding her breath. Cecelia turned away from Ren’s bed and to the window on the far side of the medical bay. Through it she could see the hanger and the twenty-two other Ships bound for Exodus. Full legions of gray uniforms marched between the Ships and performed last-minute duties. She could just make out the waddling figure of Commander Stone making its way through the crowd to Ghost and smiled at the thought of never having to see the man again.

“We’re really going to do it,” Vivienne whispered, more to herself than her Captain. “We’re going to survive the Exodus.”

“Of course we are,” Cecelia said over her shoulder. “My mother didn’t drag me through time teaching me how to make

���253

my own Watch for me to mess this up. With the Grant Watch, we’ll be able to enter hyperspace and survive the Exodus. The Command Council has no concept of the galaxy they will reach when they exit the Riuzak Wormhole and they won’t know how to enter the galaxy without being killed on sight. My mother was smart enough to figure out a way to enter the galaxy safely through hyperspace. I cannot wait to be alive, while the Council is not.”

“It certainly will be exhilarating,” Vivienne offered somewhat half-heartedly. Cecelia didn’t appreciate the apprehension in Vivienne’s eyes, but that was to be expected.

Vivienne and Cecelia left the medical bay, securing the glass wall behind them so that no one else would be granted access. Vivienne left to prepare the ship for hyperspace, and Cecelia went to the bridge to get a better view of the twenty-two Ships about to be destroyed.