Reached

contracted the live virus at precisely the right time. You’ll need to take both of those groups into account.”
    “All right,” I say. And, as I have had to do so often before, when I sort the data I must put Ky out of my mind. For a faltering, fragile moment, I want to leave this impossible task behind, let the numbers fall where they might, and walk over to the little room where Ky is and hold him, the two of us together in the mountains now after having come through the canyons.
    That
can
happen,
I tell myself.
Only a little farther now.
Like the journey in the
I did not reach Thee
poem:
     
    We step like plush, we stand like snow—
    The waters murmur now,
    Three rivers and the hill are passed,
    Two deserts and the sea!
    Now Death usurps my premium
    And gets the look at Thee.
     
    But I will rewrite the last two lines. Death will not take the people I love. Our journey
will
end differently.

    It takes me a long time, because I want to get it right.
    “Are you finished?” Rebecca asks quietly.
    For a moment I can’t look up from my result. Back in the Carving, I wished for a time like this, a collaboration with people who have lived out on the edges. Instead we found an empty village in a beautiful place, peopled only by papers and pages left in a cave, things treasured up and left behind.
    We are always fighting against going quiet, going gentle.
    “Yes,” I say to Rebecca.
    “And?” she asks. “How long before they start letting people go?”
    “They will have already begun,” I say.

CHAPTER 29
    KY
    S omeone comes inside. I hear the door open and then footsteps crossing the floor.
    Could it be Cassia?
    Not this time. Whoever this is doesn’t smell like Cassia’s flowers-and-paper scent. This person smells like sweat and smoke. And they breathe differently than she does. Lower. Louder, like they’ve been running and they’re trying to hold it in.
    I hear the person reach for the bag.
    But I don’t need new fluid. Someone just changed it. Where are they now? Do they know what’s happening?
    I feel a tug on my arm. They’ve unhooked the bag from my line and started to drain it. The liquid drips into some kind of bucket instead of into me.
    I’m turned toward the window so the wind rattling the panes is even louder now.
    Is this happening to everyone? Or only to me? Is someone trying to make sure I don’t come back?
    I can hear my own heart slowing down.
    I’m going deeper.
    The pain is less.
    It’s harder to remember to breathe. I repeat Cassia’s poem to myself, breathing with the beats.
    New. Rose. Old. Rose. Queen. Anne’s. Lace.
    In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In.
    Out.

CHAPTER 30
    XANDER
    I must have fallen asleep, because I jump when the prison door opens. “Get him out,” someone says to the guard, and then Oker appears in front of my cell, watching the guard unlock the door. “You,” Oker says. “Time to get back to work.”
    I glance at the cell across from me. Cassia hasn’t come in. Did she spend the whole night watching over Ky? Or have they made her work all this time? All the other prisoners are quiet. I can hear them breathing, but no one else seems to be awake.
    When we get outside, I see that it’s dark: not even early morning yet. “You’re working for me,” Oker says, “so you keep the same hours I do.” He points to the research lab across the way. “That’s mine,” he says. “Do what I say, and you can spend most of your day in there instead of locked up.”
    If Leyna’s the physic of this village, then I think Oker is the pilot.
    “Follow my instructions exactly,” he tells me. “All I need are your hands since mine don’t work right.”
    “Oker isn’t much for introductions,” one of the assistants says after Oker’s left. “I’m Noah. I’ve worked with Oker since he came here.” Noah looks to be somewhere in his mid-thirties. “This is Tess.”
    Tess nods to me. She’s a little younger than Noah and has a kind smile.
    “I’m Xander,” I say. “What’s all this?” One of the walls of the lab is covered with pictures of people I don’t know. Some are old photos and pages torn from books, but most look like they might have been drawn by hand. Did Oker do that before his hands stopped working right? I’m impressed, and it makes me think of that nurse back in the medical center. Maybe I
am
the only one who can’t make things—pictures, poems—without any training.
    “Oker calls them the heroes of the past,” Noah says. “He