Reached

a poem. Where did he find it? Did someone give it to him? I meant for it to be shared, but not like this.
    “
Where
is the place over the hill, under the tree, and past the border no one can see?”
    When he asks the question like that, it sounds complicated, like a riddle. And it was only supposed to be simple, a song.
    “Who were you meeting there?” he asks, his voice clear and even. But Ky’s right. The Pilot
is
desperate. There’s no undertone of fear when he speaks; but the questions he’s asking, the way he’s gambling some of his precious time on the three of us—it all makes me cold with fear. If the Pilot doesn’t know how to save us from the new Plague, who does?
    “No one,” I say. “It’s a poem. It doesn’t have to have a literal meaning.”
    “But poems often do,” the Pilot says. “You know this.”
    He’s right. I’ve thought about the poem with the Pilot’s name in it and whether that was the one Grandfather really meant me to find. He gave me the compact, he told me the stories of hiking the Hill, of his mother, who sang forbidden poems to him. What
did
Grandfather want me to do? I’ve always wondered.
    “Why did you gather people at the Gallery?” the Pilot asks.
    “So they could bring what they’d made.”
    “What did you talk about there?”
    “Poetry,” I say. “Songs.”
    “And that’s all,” the Pilot says.
    His voice can be as cold or as warm as a stone, I realize. Sometimes it sounds generous and welcoming, like sandstone under sun, and other times it’s as unforgiving as the marble of the steps at City Hall.
    I have a question of my own for him. “Why did my name interest you
now
?” I ask. “People in the Rising must have seen it before. It meant nothing to them.”
    “Things have happened since you first joined the Rising several months ago,” the Pilot says. “Poisoned lakes. Mysterious codes. A Gallery built where people could gather and exchange things they’d written. It seemed your name was worth a second look. And when we looked again, there was a great deal to find.” And now his voice is
very
cold.
    “Cassia’s not fighting against the Rising,” Xander says. “She’s part
of
the Rising. I can vouch for her.”
    “So can I,” Ky says.
    “That might mean something to me,” the Pilot says, “if it weren’t for the confluence of data around the three of you. There’s enough to make
all
of you suspect.”
    “What do you mean?” I ask. “We did whatever the Rising wanted us to do. I came back to Central to live. Ky flew ships for you. Xander saved patients.”
    “Your small obediences did serve to camouflage your other actions to those in the Rising with less authority and information,” the Pilot tells me. “They initially had no reason to report you to me. But after you were brought to my attention, I saw things and made connections that were unavailable to others. As the Pilot, I have access to more information. When I looked closely, I found the truth. People died wherever you went. The decoys in your camp, for example, many of whom were Aberrations.”
    “We didn’t kill those decoys,” Ky says. “You did. When the Society sent people out to die, you sat back and watched.”
    The Pilot continues, relentless. “A river near the Carving was poisoned while you were in the area. You detonated wiring in the Carving, destroying part of a village that belonged to Anomalies. You destroyed tubes in a storage facility in the canyons, a facility that the Rising had infiltrated. You conspired to obtain and carry blue tablets. You even killed a boy with them. We found his body.”
    “That’s not true,” I say, but in a way, it is. I didn’t mean to kill that boy by giving him the blue tablets, but I did. And then I realize why the Archivist asked me about locations where tissue preservation samples might be stored. “You’re the one who wanted to know how much I knew about the tubes,” I say. “Do you really trade them?”
    “You
trade
the tubes?” Ky asks.
    “Of course,” the Pilot says. “I’ll use whatever I need to secure loyalty and resources for finding the cure. The samples are a currency that works when almost nothing else will.”
    Ky shakes his head, disgusted. I can’t help but be grateful that we were able to get Grandfather’s tube away from the Cavern. Who knows what the Pilot would have used it for.
    “There’s something more,” the Pilot says. “The Cities where you lived were among those who