“Well, I’m waiting for that.”

  “I’m with Trish on this one,” Dominic chimed in. “I don’t care if that lady eats puppies for lunch, I can’t stay stuck on this scrap of land when I know there’s a chance to get off.”

  Isaac turned and walked backward for a few steps to address him. “And you’re just fine with your dad waking up in a few hours, thinking he’ll probably never see you again?”

  “We’re coming back, man. They’ll be fine. It’s not like we’re going to the moon.”

  Trish grabbed Isaac’s arm, pulling him close to her. “Kletter said there’s a real possibility that Sadina has something in her blood, DNA, whatever, that might create a cure for a new version of the Flare. So it’s an adventure, yes, but mainly it’s a good cause!”

  Miyoko scoffed. “Seems to me like some of us are forgetting the histories. Wasn’t that the whole point of our ancestors being used and abused and having to escape in the first place? Because they thought they could find a cure?”

  Isaac was glad someone else had joined him in using logic.

  “This is totally different,” countered Trish. “We’re going voluntarily, and Kletter is immune just like we are. Supposedly are, anyway. She said it’s just some medical tests they want to run, that it’s totally different from the brain studies the Gladers had to go through. She used the word physiological, I know that. As opposed to psychological, maybe. Ugh, just wait until the damn woman explains it herself.”

  “Good idea,” said Dominic. “You really suck at explaining it.”

  “Wah-wah,” Trish replied. No one really knew what it meant when she made that noise.

  Isaac breathed a little easier. Trish’s point about it being an adventure had really struck him. It terrified him, yes, but it was also exhilarating to think that they could see the world—something he never thought in a million years would happen. It had been over seven decades since the Gladers had escaped what seemed like the apocalypse. Surely things back in the old world had been figured out, made safer. But his mind wouldn’t let him off so easily. Kletter, starving, had arrived in a boat, its deck littered with corpses, all shot in the head. By her.

  Isaac tried to out-walk his thoughts, wishing he could flip a switch and turn his stupid brain off.

  They gathered at the stern of the boat, on the big deck that a few days earlier had been covered in lifeless bodies. Someone—Isaac had no idea who—had gotten rid of the dead and cleaned the place up. He had a ridiculous image in his head of pirates with mops and wooden buckets, slopping and scrubbing with soapy water, singing as they worked. From a story once told by the old folks.

  “I know how to run this thing,” the woman named Kletter announced to the people who’d been chosen for the voyage. Isaac had no idea how they’d been selected, but he was glad to have some of his friends aboard. Kletter had put her monstrous weapon inside a locked chest, hopefully to show them that she wasn’t a threat. “But I’m going to need lots of help, and you’ll just have to learn along the way. We have barely enough fuel for the return trip, you guys stocked us with plenty of food, and hopefully this heap of junk won’t die on us before we get to where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?’ a man named Alvarez asked. He was a tall, thin man, dark hair, always sporting a goofy smile. Isaac didn’t know him very well, but he was a member of Congress who’d made the decision to support Ms. Cowan.

  “We’re heading for Los Angeles,” she replied. Isaac had heard of it but that didn’t mean a whole lot. “That’s where we’ve set up our medical clinics, just far enough away from the Godhead in Alaska and the Remnant Nation in the northern plains.” She obviously noted the blank looks on their faces. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that stuff before we get there.”

  The Godhead? Isaac thought. Remnant Nation? He didn’t know if that sounded promising or completely ominous. What were they getting themselves into?

  “People might start waking up soon,” Ms. Cowan said. “We made our decision, so let’s get going. Pull up the plank, Wilhelm.”

  “Wait!” someone shouted from the beach, just as Ms. Cowan’s second-in-command made a move for the long wooden walkway they’d used to climb on board The Maze Cutter. “One of you young whippersnappers come help me walk up this shuck thing.”

  Isaac looked. Everyone else looked. Everyone stared. Ms. Cowan stepped forward, her mouth open but as shocked silent as the others. An elderly man, his skin as dark as his hair was white, superbly healthy for his advanced age, put one foot on the edge of the plank where it stuck into the wet sand.

  “Now don’t bother arguing,” he said. “I’m coming, and that’s that. If I die along the way, then glory glory hallelujah amen.” He gave them a loud hoot at that, and then, without waiting for help—a good thing because no one had moved a muscle—he hopped up the bouncy walkway like he’d shed forty years just at the thought of an ocean voyage. An adventure.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dominic whispered, more words than Isaac could find.

  Old Man Frypan was coming with them.

  PART TWO

  Water and Earth

  I’m left to wonder about the future, and all I can see is the past. A past emptied of wonder, a future I’ll never see. That doesn’t make a lick of bloody sense, but it sounds brilliant, don’t you think?

  —The Book of Newt

  CHAPTER SIX

  Below and Above

  She sat in the cold, wet air of the . . . underneath. Underneath all that hung above, beyond the stone and cement and steel, beyond the barrier of what was and what would be. Somewhere, even higher, unseen at the moment, the real sky loomed like a dome, droopy and drenched, gray clouds billowing angrily. As if prepping for the torrent that brought both life and misery to the inhabitants below.

  It had been a week since she’d encountered Mikhail here, at the Box. A week since his revelations and pronouncements—terrible utterances of opening the Box and using its contents to erase everything they had built, or contrarily trying to increase the Evolution to such extremes that all may be erased regardless. In a word, danger. Too much danger to take these leaps now. Especially with the return of Nicholas Romanov, Glory in the Highest, God of All Who Tread, the One Above Two, He Who Sees, the Tip of the Spear . . . and so on.

  More like the butt of the donkey, she thought. Ass of the Ass. Oh, she longed for the day she’d finally say that to the man’s face. That day was coming. Soon. The buffoon had gotten far too big for his britches, what with these plans to utilize the contents of the Box, for good or external ill. The time had simply not come yet for those decisions. But she had to tread carefully. He still held the cards, if not the whole deck, and she had to play things right, keep to his rules. The day was coming.

  Her day.

  Alexandra shivered. The Box had been opened, its priceless artifact removed, all in the blue swift of night. Unless Mikhail had conspired with Nicholas—and he might have, she had no illusions about that—they were at a very serious crossroads. Decades of work, decades of planning, decades of protecting the Box and what it held within, decades of hunting down those who dared speak aloud hints of what they dreamed in their restless sleep. Words dribbling from their crooked mouths like saliva, spraying out through the snores and grunts and moans of those exhilarated by their traitorous dreams.

  All citizens, no matter their pedigree, no matter their accomplishments or education or proofs of loyalty . . . all had been treated the same. The Godhead loved their people, but they loved the ultimate survival of their people even more. Perhaps it was irony, but for the Godhead to survive, with subjects on whom they could bestow their love and grace and beauty, others—and this couldn’t be said with more clarity—others had to die. Those who dissented. Those who resented. Those who rebelled. Namely, the ones who simply did not understand the majestic leap of humanity the Godhead had planned. Planned for decades.

  Having come full circle with her thoughts, Alexandra shifted on her cool stone chair and stared with dry eyes at the black pane of the open Box, the doors slid into their side compartments. Darkness shone from beneath that open space, as if the negative of light itself, beaming into the air with thick, oily blackness that could destroy all brightness in its path.

  Alexandra stood up and walked to the squared edge of empty air, its depth impossible to discern in such darkness. But her servants had been down there, scoured its every inch, found nothing. She tried to clear her throat but a rough saw of ice had seemingly lodged itself there, making every breath painful. She needed to leave. Immediately. The sacred demeanor of the Godhead mattered most, even above her own desires, for now. She couldn’t show the slightest weakness. Digits, breathing techniques, whatever it took. Sometimes she laid her hands softly in her lap, as if a princess resting in peace, all the while digging sharp and deep into her own palm with a nail.

  Mikhail had promised her. Promised her. He swore not to open the Box until he, Nicholas, and Alexandra met together and made plans, set a path. She didn’t feel they were ready, and she had the raw confidence in herself to convince Nicholas of that, if not the ever-growing fanatic, Mikhail. Besides that, every decision made by the Godhead was supposed to be unanimous. Unanimous or nothing. That had been their creed and should always be their creed. So regardless of Mikhail’s unstable promises, the Box should not have been opened. Period. Not only had she not agreed to it, she hadn’t even been asked—at least not by Nicholas, their leader.

  They were cutting her out.

  A terrible thought. A wringing, horrible thought. But it hovered there, in her mind, almost a tangible, touchable thing. She could almost see it, floating in her vision, and it looked a lot like Mikhail. What had she done? Where had she gone wrong? Why was Nicholas hiding from her, making excuses not to see her? The glorious vision of her world seemed to be collapsing, the pieces falling, the pieces getting larger.

  She heard a cough.

  Her servant, Flint, and several members of the Evolutionary Guard, waited nearby. They packed together about a hundred meters away, cowering beneath an ancient tree that had been dead for many years. She didn’t have to look to know that each one of them had strained necks from gawking at the massive surroundings of the Maze cavern. None of them had ever been here— Alexandra had broken a sacred rule bringing them down, not to mention the risk involved. As she gazed at the vacant doors, so long closed, now open, she thought that other sacred rules might be broken soon. Very soon.

  Much of her life, she had acted a part, played a role. She returned to that now.

  Standing up, she summoned an odd mixture of rage and confusion, pulling in what she needed from the Flaring discipline. She marched toward her entourage with an inspired, terrifying gait, and enjoyed—not a little—the fear that sparked in their eyes. With a booming voice that belied her diminutive stature, she spewed an onslaught of words at them, high-minded nonsense purposefully designed to mean nothing while also geared to scare the living hell out of people.

  They jumped into position, surrounding her, matching her speed, wisely keeping silent.

  Nicholas was watching, of this she had no doubt.

  With less control, she might’ve smiled. But she didn’t smile.

  She raged. She needed to be alone.

  “Flint, after we get back, you have the night off. Everyone has the night off.”

  On they went, leaving the Maze behind.

  Land, as foreign as the planets.

  Isaac clung to the rusty flakes of the railing as salty spray blossomed in the air with each bump of the ship’s prow upon the shallowing waters. Droplets licked his face in icy patches, a thrill that almost matched the awe of seeing a world he’d only ever known from the lips of old men and women. From stories told around a flickering fire in the night, shadows alive with the possibilities of the past. Of horrors and fears, replacing the joys of once was.

  You sound like a grandpa, he thought.

  A long line of sandy beach awaited them, the slow creep of the ocean eroding the flat coast with endless patience. Beyond that yellow-white beach, Isaac might’ve expected what he’d seen all his life, rising swells of green forest and jutting rock, eclipsing the horizon with jagged peaks of volcanic stone. But instead he saw a vista of human-built invasions of nature, endless blocks and pillars of civilization, buildings competing with each other to be the tallest or the ugliest. He’d heard of cities his whole life, had even seen pictures in the few ancient books they possessed on the island he’d left behind, but never could any of that have prepared him for what lay before his eyes.

  A city. A real city, all broken glass and cement and wood and metal, each element dully reflecting the sunshine with a tired and lifeless lethargy. Although Isaac had never seen such a place alive and bustling, he could tell that it was dead all the same. Where once humans had roamed and ruled, nature was conquering its way back in. The closer they got to shore, the more trees and plants and vines he saw in places where they didn’t seem to belong.

  “Home sweet home!” someone shouted from behind, a voice lost in the roar of waves and splash. Isaac didn’t bother to look, determined to be the first one of their haggard crew to sight a . . .

  Crank.

  The word came up like a demon from the depths of his mind, from the darkest parts. He’d not meant it when the thought formed, he’d just been eager to see another living human being, a sign of movement, any sign of life.

  But Crank had formed in his mind, a word he associated with all the ills of the world, as clearly as if someone had carved it in the stone of his thoughts. It was an awful word, letters of the boogeyman, a sound that conjured images of bloodshot eyes and broken teeth and severed limbs—things that had been described to him but never seen. Still, he saw them. Somehow. In those dark parts of his mind from where the hideous word sprung.

  Against all logic, he’d hoped to never come across such a creature in this new world. This new world to which he’d been taken by Kletter and her depressing boat. He was in less than a chipper mood, despite the obvious excitement of finally completing the vomit-fest of a voyage. He’d puked up enough half-digested food to feed a village of fish along the way, unhappily spewing it over the side railings once or twice a day. Of course, some of it had been fish.

  He was cracking up. He needed to get off the damn boat, even if a welcome committee of hungry Cranks greeted them on the beach.

  “Can you believe this?” Sadina said right in his ear, and for a half second he thought he’d leaped out of his own skin. “What if I’d told you a month ago that we’d be here? Back in the world.”

  Isaac tried to relax, uncomfortable with the fact that he was so jumpy. Like a premonition that nothing good would happen once they landed. Sadina plopped down next to him and squeezed her legs under the lowest railing, letting them dangle over the spray.

  “You’ll get wet,” he deadpanned, as he was soaked from head to toe. “Might catch cold.”

  “Or the Flare,” she said. “I hear that’s a problem in these parts.”

  Isaac hadn’t fully realized his uber-sour mood until that moment. He just felt like total crap, all the excitement of reaching their destination having drained into the passing water. So many dangers. Not only Cranks, but the stupid virus that turned them into Cranks! Who knew if they were immune. Kletter surely didn’t. As smart as that lady acted and spoke, she seemed to have a hundred questions for every answer she dredged up. It didn’t help matters that she was still having a hard time with her recovery.

  “Come on, Isaac,” Sadina said. “We’re gonna land in a half hour or so and you’re acting like it’s the end of the world.”

  That got her a glare, and both of them knew she deserved it.

  “Bad choice of words,” she muttered, trying to hold back a smile. What the hell was she so happy about?

  “Just nervous,” he said. “Just anxious.”

  “Me, too. But excited. And scared. I wish we knew more.”

  They’d talked things to death over the two-week journey across the choppy sea, deciphering every bit of information from Kletter they could. But, mostly, their conversations consisted of guesses on top of more guesses. How many people were on the planet? How many of them were sick? Had the Flare mostly burned itself out? Were there any Cranks left, the walking nightmares of Isaac’s childhood campfire stories? They couldn’t blame Kletter too much for the lack of answers—she had lived a pretty isolated life, herself. That was the very definition of current human civilization, according to her. Life, isolated.

  Isaac started to say something, hesitated, then spit it out. “I keep thinking about Cranks.”

  She didn’t respond right away. The beach was only a kilometer or so in the distance now, the city behind it rising like the ugly teeth of a planet-sized god. The air smelled of salt and garbage and rot.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find Cranks,” she finally said. “Not like they were when our grandpappies and grandmammies barely escaped. I mean, it’s not like those crazy people fell in love and had a bunch of babies. Not the ones . . . past the Gone or whatever. What’s left are probably descendants of the few survivors or something different. Something in-between, I guess.”

  Isaac shivered with cold, and it wasn’t just the water splashing upon the wind.

  “Hell’s bells,” he whispered, having no idea what he meant.

  But it seemed to fit the mood just right.

  Kletter had been a crappy boat captain when they’d set sail, and she was a crappy boat captain when they “docked” at a long cement pier. The starboard side of the ship slammed into the pier then scraped along until sheer friction slowed them to a stop. Carson and Dominic had barely pulled their feet back before getting shortened for life, then recovered their wits and jumped onto the pier to tie them down. The whole escapade had put the fear of god in Isaac enough that he forgot about Cranks and viruses for a solid minute or two.