Reached

pleasant. “Even if most of you die, there are too many of you for us to overcome. We’re ready to leave you all behind and go someplace you haven’t touched.”
    “Why are you telling me all of this?” I ask her. We’ve just met, so it can’t be that she trusts me yet.
    “It’s good for you to understand how much we have to lose,” she says.
    And I do understand. With so much at stake, she can’t and won’t tolerate anything that might compromise her goal. We’ll need to watch our step here. “We have the same objective,” I say. “To find a cure.”
    “Good,” Leyna tells me. She lowers her voice and looks at Ky. “So tell me,” she says, “when is he going to go down?”
    Ky’s pace has picked up a little. “It won’t be long now,” I say. Cassia is electric, lit up simply because Ky is near her, even though she’s worried that he might be ill.
Would it be worth it to have the mutation if I knew she loved me?
I wonder.
If I could trade places with him right now, would I do it?

CHAPTER 25
    CASSIA
    W hen it happens, everything feels sudden and slow at the same time.
    We’re walking along the narrow path when Ky goes down to his knees.
    I crouch beside him, put my hands on his shoulders.
    His eyes, unfocused at first, find me. “No,” he says. “Don’t want you to see this.”
    But I don’t look away. I hold on and I ease him down until he’s lying on the spring grass and I keep my hands underneath his head. His hair is soft and warm; the grass is cool and new.
    “Indie,” Ky says. “She kissed me.” I see the pain in his eyes.
    I should feel shock, I know. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is here, now, his eyes looking at me, my fingers holding on to him and touching earth. I almost tell Ky this, that it doesn’t matter, but then I realize that it
does
to him or he wouldn’t be telling me. “It’s all right,” I say.
    Ky sighs out in relief and exhaustion. “Like the canyons,” he says.
    “Yes,” I say. “We’ll come through them.”
    Xander kneels down too. The three of us look at one another; my eyes meet Xander’s briefly, then Ky’s.
    Can we trust one another? Can we keep one another safe?
    Near the edge of the path, the grass gives way to wildflowers, some pink, some blue, some red. The wind stirs the grass around our feet, sending a clean smell of blossoms and dirt into the air.
    Ky follows my gaze. I reach over and snap off one of the buds and roll it around in my hand. It’s so ripe in tint and texture that I half expect to look down and see my palm turned red, but it isn’t. The bud keeps its color.
    “You told me once,” I say to Ky, holding up the bud for him to see and then pressing it into his hand, “that red was the color of beginning.”
    He smiles.
    The color of beginning.
For a moment, a memory flickers in and out.
It is a rare moment in spring when both buds on the trees and flowers on the ground are red. The air is cool and at the same time warm. Grandfather watches me, his eyes bright and determined.
    Spring, then. The red garden day Grandfather mentioned on the microcard was in the spring, to have both red tree buds and red flowers at the same time, to feel the way it did. I’m certain of this. But what did Grandfather and I talk about?
    I don’t know that, yet. But as I feel Ky’s fingers tighten around mine, I think how this is always the way he is, giving me something even when most would think there was nothing left to do but let go.

CHAPTER 26
    KY
    K
y,”
Cassia says. I wonder if this will be one of the last times the sound of her voice reaches me. Can the still hear anything at all?
    I knew I was sick when I couldn’t keep my balance on the ship. My body didn’t move when instinct said it should. My muscles feel loose and my bones feel tight.
    Xander kneels next to me. I catch a glimpse of his face. He thinks he’s going to find a cure. Xander’s not blind. Just believing. It’s so damn painful to see.
    I look back to Cassia. Her eyes are cool and green. When I look into them I feel better. For just a second the pain is muted.
    Then it’s back.
    I know now why people might not try to fight very long.
    If I stopped fighting the pain, fatigue would win, and that seems preferable. I’d rather be asleep than feel this. The Plague was much kinder than the mutation, I realize. The Plague didn’t have the sores that I can feel forming around my torso and curving across my back.
    Small red-and-white flashes of light appear