Ms. Cowan was probably up all night worrying about how to be the most diplomatic in these decisions. Isaac thought with the vote over and done with that Sadina’s mom might be more relaxed, or less stressed, but the circles under her eyes looked darker than ever and she moved slower than Old Man Frypan.

  “Minho, can you steer a ship?” Isaac asked.

  “I can get us there.” Minho didn’t flat out say he’d never steered a boat before, but as far as Isaac was concerned if he could steer a Berg and a Grief Walker then he could handle the Maze Cutter just fine. Plus, enough of them had picked up details on the journey to the mainland to help him out.

  “We could stay close to the coast, and come in to hunt as needed,” Orange said while packing up.

  Ms. Cowan cleared her throat again, but this time said nothing.

  Minho and Orange led the way from camp, but the vote had slowly divided them into three distinct groups: Minho, Orange, Roxy, Sadina, and Trish in the lead, those who voted for Alaska. In the middle was Isaac, Ms. Cowan, and Miyoko, the three who thought the Villa was a better choice. And trailing behind were Jackie, Dominic, and Old Man Frypan, all of whom didn’t want to go anywhere and were moving at a speed to prove it.

  Isaac never paid much attention to the politics on the island because he never had a reason to. The sets of laws back home were kept and there was rarely an issue that divided anyone. The last real division in politics on the island had been when they added laws about being near the water during a storm after Isaac’s family’s accident. It was clear some people were upset that there weren’t laws made earlier and others were upset that there needed to be laws added and abided by. Isaac didn’t care either way, because no law in the universe could bring his family back. But he hated the feeling of everyone’s vote and differences in opinions now seemingly splitting the whole group apart. He hated it!

  He could barely see Sadina’s group ahead on the trail and he lost sight of Old Man Frypan’s group behind him ten minutes ago. He only knew they were somewhat close by hearing Dominic making up a ridiculous song about every single thing they walked past.

  “Hey, let’s rest a minute and let them catch up!” Isaac called ahead to Sadina’s group.

  Ms. Cowan cleared her throat with a nod.

  Miyoko whistled and waved Sadina and her Godhead-driven crew to fall back. It was almost as if once Sadina had decided to go to Alaska that she was going with or without the rest of them.

  Ms. Cowan sat on a log and pulled out her canteen. Isaac waited to see which group came back into view first, but something wasn’t right about the way Ms. Cowan drank the water, taking small sips, pausing after each one. The way she lacked the enthusiasm for conversation she once had. Maybe she was just homesick like the rest of them, maybe the guilt of those they’d lost still weighed heavy on her, but Isaac couldn’t help but wonder. “You okay, Ms. Cowan?” he asked.

  “Of course, why?” She looked up at Isaac from the log, but even the way she tilted her head seemed off.

  “You just seem out of breath. Or like it’s hard to swallow maybe?”

  And that’s when he noticed the mark on the woman’s neck.

  The trees stopped shaking their leaves. The wind off the coast stopped blowing. The birds stopped chirping. The only thing that didn’t turn silent in that moment was the rash on Cowan’s neck that seemed to scream obscenities. What was that from?

  She cleared her throat yet again, locking eyes with Isaac.

  Panic rushed through his mind. The Flare. The variants. Infection. He couldn’t unsee the image of the half-Cranks. Of Jackie killing one with her bare hands. Isaac couldn’t help but clear his own throat. The thought of a virus hit him like a hammer to metal on the forge, igniting sparks of fear in his gut; the heat of the unknown rushed through his body.

  The Flare. The variants. Infection.

  Isaac followed Ms. Cowan into the brush. Maybe it was just poison. Maybe the rash was just a rash. They’d been surrounded by plant life for days, plants they had never seen before, some with spiked weapons that attached to clothing and skin and some that Roxy claimed could kill you with so much as a touch. Maybe that’s all it was.

  He tried to catch up to her. “Ms. Cowan . . .” He waited for a response but heard only the sounds of vomiting. A sound he’d heard often enough from Jackie during the Maze Cutter voyage, but never a sound he heard from Cowan before. He followed the gut-wrenching noise. Bent over and heaving, Ms. Cowan’s body purged the evil from inside as she leaned her shoulder against a tree.

  “Shit,” Isaac let out before apologizing. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. Just allergies.” She quickly composed herself and fixed the handkerchief around her neck.

  “Ms. Cowan . . . you sure?” He pointed to the spot where the material covered her scabbed skin. Cowan touched the rash as if covering it with her hand might make Isaac less suspicious. “We’ve got to tell everyone and—”

  “No.” Cowan stood up taller. “Everyone will overreact. I’m fine.”

  “You can’t hide vomiting from the rest of the group. You remember how bad it was on the boat. Especially with Dominic.” He was trying to break the ice, reminding her of the Dominic-Vomit-Domino-Effect that ensued every time Jackie got seasick. Jackie barfed, and then if Dominic were close enough to hear it or see it, he’d throw up. And he barfed with such gusto that it usually made someone else in the vicinity throw up too.

  Cowan gave a pathetic smile. “Good times, for sure. It’ll be okay. I’ll figure this out, alright?” She cleared her throat, like a crack of thunder, and the sound of it made Isaac shudder. The smell of her vomit made him shiver. “And please, don’t say anything to anyone. Please.”

  Isaac could only nod.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Safety & Divinity in Numbers

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

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

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

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

  Orange frowned and raised her eyebrows. “I thought only the dumbest of soldiers didn’t.”

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

  “Sometimes rumors turn out to be true.” Orange said.

  “Name one.”

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

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

  “They still threw you off a cliff.”

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

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

  Roxy looked the saddest. “They what . . . ?”

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

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

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

  And he believed it.

  The Orphan named Minho was one with the Godhead.

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

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

  She was their God among men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dear Nicholas

  He knocked on Nicholas’ wooden door again. Two knocks, pause, two knocks, pause, and then a burst of knocks in succession. Then even harder, until the blood pooled within his skin and formed a fresh bruise along his pinky. Patience, dear Mikhail. That’s what Nicholas would say, but the panicked feeling had followed Mikhail around all morning, and now it intensified. He had the same dream again. The dream that only visited him when things were off course. Mikhail knocked one last time, ever louder. He tried the door. Locked.

  Nicholas’ intuition was so strong that all Mikhail had to do was think about stopping by for something, anything, and Nicholas usually met him at the door. He was always at the door. Well, unless he’d left on one of his trips. Was he gone? Mikhail searched his memory, but his memory was shit. Complete mush ever since Crank Palace. At least when he was a Crank he had all his memories. But now, even the things his brain remembered, things he knew for sure, he couldn’t pronounciate. Wait, that last word didn’t sound quite right in his head. That happened, a lot. Pronounciate?

  He reached for his keys to open Nicholas’ door, not wasting time to remember which key out of the six in his collection would work, trying them all.

  One by one, the keys failed, until the fourth, a red dot painted on the metal, did the trick. “Nicholas?” Mikhail whispered in case he forgot something he should have remembered again, but as soon as the name left his mouth, the overpowering smell of rot filled his every sense, gagging his throat. Mikhail coughed to clear his airway, he couldn’t find oxygen. Only decay, and he knew the smell of death all too well from Crank Palace.

  Ever since Mikhail’s senses came back to what Alexandra called “healthy again,” Mikhail believed that there were no good smells left on earth. His sensory nodes performed ten times what they did before and amplified all the worst stench of all the worst cities. Flare pits that smelled like charred skin and bones. Soggy, foggy days that reeked of moldy earth. The odor of sewer water that hung heavy in the air after a storm.

  But this . . . Mikhail choked on it.

  “Sir?”

  He walked through the great room slowly, immediately spotting Nicholas’ robe, lifeless on the ground, draped over a cushion. Nicholas would never have done such a thing, discarding his holy robe on the floor, even in his own apartment. Mikhail coughed again, using his own robe to cover his mouth. Finally, when his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of Nicholas’ apartment, he realized it wasn’t a cushion that Nicholas’ robe covered, but a bloated body. It took him a handful of seconds to realize what he was looking at—not because his brain was confused, but because he had never before this moment seen a body without a head.

  3, 5, 8, 13, 21 . . .

  Sitting at the table, she recited the numbers out loud as she pulled closer the hard-cased, red-leather briefcase with Newt’s blood inside. Despite having it in her possession, she still felt anxious. Alexandra tapped the glass case holding Nicholas’ head three times, then five times, then eight times while she waited for Mikhail. She understood the power of the digits better than Mikhail and Nicholas ever did. For one thing, Mikhail was too erratic to remember the numbers in their organized sequence. But Alexandra knew the infinite loop of numbers and could recite them at any length. It was as if the digits were born inside of her and she birthed them into existence with every reciting. Each number equaled the sum of the two before it, creating within the string of digits their own frequency sequence. The Evolution was always inside of her, and the time had come to bring it to others now. She’d guide them as their one true God, no longer a divinity of three.

  Even though she risked dropping the vial of sealed blood every time she held it, she couldn’t help herself as she whispered the digits and pulled out one of the vials.

  34, 55, 89, 144 . . .

  The small sealed tube grew warm in her hand, a warmth of possibility that fueled her through the coldest nights for the last thirty years. She’d waited for this moment when she’d finally no longer have to answer to Nicholas. When she could choose who was blessed and who would be changed like she once was. Never mind the irony that he’d been the one to choose her, after all.