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She let the syringe fall to the ground. It was done. It was finished. There was nothing left to do but wait for them. They would find her soon.

Her belly spasmed. She ran her hand over it. A reaction to the injection? A side effect? No. It was something else. Something stronger. Her pelvis had been tied in knots. Pain radiated around her entire mid-section. Once it was gone, she tried to stand, bracing herself on the metal handle. Before she could reach her feet, the pain was back again. Stronger this time. Larger.

It was too soon. It was too soon for this to be happening. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Her body was betraying her. The floor beneath her feet was wet. It hadn't been a second ago. This was all coming too fast. She'd thought she could wait for them to find her. She was wrong. She needed to be found, right now.

“Help!” she called. “Help me – I'm in the stairwell.”

The world went fuzzy. The stairs blurred in front of her. The door nearby opened and it sounded hollow and far-off.

When the people came in, their voices were triumphant at first, because they had found her. Then their voices were angry, because she had caused them so much trouble. And then finally – though the shift probably only took seconds, it felt like an hour – their voices were scared.

“Call an ambulance,” someone said. “Would somebody call a goddamn ambulance?”

A different person was slapping her on the face. Gently at first, then harder. She could feel it, the sharp sting on her cheek.

The ambulance must have arrived, because she was on a stretcher. It was covered in white cloth that was scratchy. They put a brace on her head. An orange one, made of foam. It made it impossible to turn her neck.

They wheeled her outside and it was cold. A snowflake fell in her eye. From the narrow vantage point of the orange foam brace, she could see an evergreen tree as they passed it, and she could see that it was strung through with tiny, colorful lights. These were the wrong holiday decorations. By the time her pelvis hurt like this there were supposed to be different decorations. There were supposed to be pink and red hearts, cut out of construction paper. There were supposed to be cupcakes with tiny cupid's arrows etched in the frosting.

February 14. That was the day she was supposed to be going through all of this. That's the day her doctor had given her. What day was today? She didn't even know. There wasn't supposed to be anything special about today.

“Please, can you get me my computer?” she gasped to the paramedic.

“We're going to take good care of you.” The paramedic was young, pretty, with freckles across her nose. They were probably the same age. “You're going to be fine.”

“I need my computer!” She heard how crazed her voice sounded, how sick-desperate. “Bring it to me,” she begged. “Not to those men who called you. Just to me.”

Maybe it was because she was young, because it looked like they could have been friends – maybe that's why the paramedic wrinkled her forehead and hesitated for only a second before turning and sprinting back in the direction of the building.

She was strong. She only had to stay awake for two more tasks now. She could do that.

The snowflakes burned cold on her eyelids.

Lona's body convulsed with sobs. Her face was cold. She reached up to touch it. Her skin felt warm under her fingers. Her face wasn't cold. Zinedine's face was.

She looked down. She was still wearing her coat, still holding the phone she'd pulled out to call Fenn. Just like earlier, at Zinedine's house, she hadn't fallen asleep before being sucked into the Path. She was still standing in the kitchen, though her knees felt like they were about to buckle. What was
happening
to her?

How many minutes had she lost? She checked her phone for the time. She'd lost more than twenty minutes standing there, split between realities. She was being ripped in two. She was there, on that stretcher, feeling the snow on her face. She was lying there breathing into an oxygen mask with her hand on her belly.

She knew what the password was.

Gamb was still sprawled on the futon – one leg dangling over the edge, his forearm thrown over his eyes. Ilyf's desk was empty – she must have finally gone to bed – but she hadn't shut off her computer. Lona clicked open a browser window, scrolling down to where Ilyf had bookmarked the page with the Julian Compact.

There it was. The empty prompt. Four tries remaining.

Behind her, Gamb sighed in his sleep.
If it's wrong, you still have three more tries
, she reminded herself. This wasn't her last shot. But it wouldn't be wrong. Slowly, pressing each key with deliberation, making sure her shaking fingers didn't strike the wrong ones, she typed in the numbers.

One. Two. One. Five.

Twelve fifteen. December 15, her birthday. The day that she was born, but shouldn't have been; the day that Zinedine lay on a stretcher and begged a young paramedic to get her computer so she could change one last thing.

Lona typed in the four digits of her birth year. Almost immediately after she struck the last key, the prompt disappeared, and in front of her was a brand-new document.

She laughed.

“Whattt?” Gamb stirred behind her. “Lona, are you in my bedroom?” he asked groggily.

She covered her mouth, but the giggling spilled through her fingers and then turned into hysterical chuckles. After all of her searching. All of the traipsing across the state. All of that and all she needed to do was remember her own birthday.

The only thing on the new screen was an address:

33479 Buxton Road

Laurel, Md.

“Is it almost over?”

He looked tired. “Is what almost over?”

“This. Whatever I'm here for. Whatever you brought me here for.”

“Does it feel like it's almost over, Ned?”

Her stomach had finally begun to settle. They'd been sitting in the room, silently, for more than an hour. Dinnertime must have passed. The boy must have told them not to bring anything. Now she was getting hungry, though. The opened ginger ale sat on the desk. She picked it up and took a few sips. The ginger felt spicy in her mouth but soothing as it traveled down her throat. When she set the can down, it was half empty. She was hungrier than she thought. The boy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a packet of soda crackers. They didn't sell those in the vending machines. He must have brought them himself.

Did it feel like it was almost over? That depended on what “it” was. It felt like her patience was almost over. Like she had to be reaching some kind of breaking point. But it felt like everything else was just beginning. Like whatever ball of yarn was sitting in front of her hadn't even begun to unravel.

“I think the beginning is over,” she said. “I always liked that quote. I think it's Winston Churchill, in World War II. ‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.'”

“You don't ever call me by my name,” he said. “Why is that?”

She was thrown by the topic change. Always keeping her on her toes, he was. “I don't know. Names feel awfully personal.”

“Mine's not.”

“I can use it if you want me to,” she said, but she found that at that moment, she couldn't. She opened her mouth to say it and it got caught in the back of her throat. He noticed.

“You thought you remembered a name. What was it?” he asked.

“The name I remembered
is
personal.”

“You're not going to tell me.”

She shook her head no, and she saw a flash of anger ripple through his body before he managed to control it. He stood up abruptly, though nothing he ever really did was abrupt. The movement was still fluid and cat-like.

“We're farther along than Churchill was,” he said. “I think this is the beginning of the end.”

She had an address. It was all she could do not to immediately drive to it.
Calm down
. She needed to think this through. Maybe the address wasn't meant for her. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with her.

Of course it did. It was an address she had opened using her own birthday as a password, an idea she had divined from one of her own dreams. This address was giftwrapped especially for her.

Zinedine
.

Was that it? Was that the whole purpose of the visions? To lead Lona to this address?

Maybe, she realized, she should start by figuring out what that location even was. She wasn't thinking clearly. The day had been impossibly long. When she woke up this morning she didn't know who Zinedine was, or who Maggie and Jeremy were. She didn't know what Fenn would sound like, flirting with another girl.

“I told you not to wish for that.” She whipped around at the noise. It was just Gamb, smacking his lips and curling his knees in toward his chest. “Told you to wish for a million dollars.”

“Gamb? Gamb!”

“Unhh?”

“Gamb, it's time for you to go to bed.” She wedged her shoulder under his armpit, digging her heels in deep and propelling him to his own bedroom, depositing him face down on his bed.

On the way back to Ilyf's office, she passed Fenn's room. The door had been closed since he left for school; she didn't want the pain of looking inside. Gamb had kicked it open as he stumbled down the hall. Inside, the bed was stripped of sheets, the shelves were emptied of books, and in his open closet there was only one shirt, longsleeved and brown with a zippered pocket. Why had he left that? It was one of his favorites.

Because I gave it to him
, she realized. They'd passed it in a store, and he'd said it looked like it would taste like caramel, and she'd bought it when he wasn't looking.

And also because, she realized, she was the one who had worn it last – it was the shirt he'd given her on Christmas Eve when she couldn't dress herself.
He left it because he knew he'd be trying to forget me.
She closed the door.

When she got back to Ilyf's desk, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and typed in the database Ilyf had taught her how to use when she was looking for the other addresses. It collected unpublished listings, so Lona should be able to find out who lived in Laurel, even if the address was private. It also could perform reverse searches, spitting back the owner's name even if she only had a street number. She waited.

Her answer popped up after a few seconds. The address wasn't private. The address belonged to the Pequod Corporation. That was Warren's company, the one responsible for building so much of Path technology. Next to the listing was a birdseye view of the street, dominated by a large gray structure with a flat tar roof.

My mother wants me to go here.
She wants me to find her.

What was this place
? She clicked another button to change the building view from birdseye to street level. Now she was standing across a four-lane road, looking across at pixelated gray stone. She tried to move closer, but the program wouldn't. The windows appeared to be boarded. There was a sign by the main door, but she couldn't make out the letters; it was faded and weather-beaten. She could make out a symbol, but just barely. Something round. Even without being able to see more, she already knew what it was: a big orange sun, rising over a small child whose face would be tilted toward the warmth.

This was the symbol of the Julian Path. This building must be the old lab.

Lona started at the ping coming from her computer until she realized it was just the chat function on her email. Fenn? Her heart jumped for a second, but it wasn't Fenn. It was Julian.

She paused, her fingers over the keyboard, trying to think of the best way to shortcut everything she was feeling. <
Crazy day>
she typed back eventually. And then, after a minute, <
Can I call you
?>

Her own phone rang a few minutes after she'd hit send.

“What's going on?” he asked as soon as she picked up. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Are you still in Pennsylvania? How was the wedding?”

“It was a wedding. Lots of bad dancing, lots of ribbing me for being the only one there without a date. Why did you want to talk?”

“Julian,” she asked. “Did you ever go to the lab that the Julian Path was developed in? The one in Laurel?”

He paused before answering. She knew it made him uncomfortable to talk about that period of time. “A few times,” he said cautiously. “Why?”

“I was thinking of going there,” she said.

“How did you hear about that place, Lona?”

“I'm just trying to understand my past a little better,” she sidestepped. “I don't know where my ancestors came from. This is my equivalent of going to Munich.”

“It's not there anymore, Lona. The building might be, but it's not like the lab would still be open.”

“I know. But I can still see what it looks like. There still might be ghosts of the place.”

“I wouldn't. It was in a bad neighborhood. Run down, lots of gang activity.”

“Maybe it's better now,” she said.

“Better after it's become abandoned?”

“I want to go anyway.”

She could hear him shifting his weight, sighing into the phone. “Then I'll come with you.”

She hadn't been expecting that offer, and she wasn't sure if he really meant it, anyway. Julian hadn't chosen this role, as he'd reminded her before. Julian hadn't meant to get tangled up with a bunch of government-issued kids.

“You don't have to.”

“Look, it's ninety miles east for you, and about seventy-five south from where I am now. I was going to be heading back in that direction anyway. I'll meet you in the middle.”

“Are you sure? I know you kind of want to be done with all of that. With everything related to the Path.”

“What are the chances of me ever actually being done with that? Okay?”

“Okay.”

She hung up the phone. Her skin was buzzing; it was hard to sit still. There
had
to be a reason that her dream always reverted to the same night. The same location. She knew every inch of those antiseptic halls now. She knew the precise number of paces it took to get to the stairwell. She knew which way the handles turned, and where the light switches were. In her dreams, Lona had walked those halls again and again. She was an expert on that memory. Someone wanted her to come there, and wanted to make sure she was prepared when she arrived. If Zinedine was still alive, Zinedine was in the lab.