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Elissa set her teeth, biting down the thoughts before they flooded her whole body with panic, before the instinct to run took over completely. All the time she’d been growing up, she’d had glimpses into this girl’s mind. Whoever she was, whatever she wanted, Elissa had never caught a hint of anything that indicated the other girl was dangerous.

Elissa put her hands out deliberately, keeping them steady, fighting back the panic, and clasped the other girl’s hands.

They were the same as hers. Which shouldn’t have been a shock—the girl had the same
nose
as her, for goodness’ sake—but was, nevertheless. She suppressed a wave of something more akin to revulsion than fear—this was wrong, it just felt
wrong
—and as she got it under control, she registered the second thing, that the girl’s skin was damp, and radiating heat like a glow that seeped out into the air around her.

The girl’s fingers curled around hers, clung. She blinked, focusing on Elissa’s face, and the girl’s face stilled suddenly. Something swept into it, a wave of something more than
relief, more than recognition, something Elissa couldn’t name. The girl opened her mouth. Her voice was ragged, scratchy and sore-sounding. “Lissa?”

She knows me. She knows my name
. Elissa’s stomach turned upside down. For the first time she realized what she should have thought of before, that the window she’d had into this girl’s brain hadn’t been just one-way. It was one thing to get glimpses of someone else’s life; it was something else entirely to think someone else had had glimpses of
yours
.

The girl’s hands tightened. “Please—don’t be scared. I swear . . . I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You know my name.” Elissa’s own voice sounded unsteady, not just frightened but completely off-balance.

The girl wasn’t listening. “I just wanted to see you. Just . . .” Her head dipped, but she brought it up with a jerk, her face tight with effort. “I haven’t come to ruin your life. I know you have parents. I know I can’t—I know I’m not legal. I just wanted . . .” Her voice faltered, her head sagging again. Her hands were all at once even hotter where they clutched Elissa’s, and a flush burned in her cheeks.

She’s really sick. She needs a doctor. But I can’t just call one. I don’t know who she is, or who the people are she escaped from. I can’t do anything the auto-repair, c that might let them know where she is.

Elissa bit her lip. She’d thought she’d felt helpless and out of control before, but that was nothing compared to how she felt now.

Okay. This is why I brought medicine. I can at least sort out the infection, get the fever down
.

She slid her hands from the other girl’s, slipped her bag off her shoulder, and dug through it for the meds and the half bottle of water left over from her day at school. She shook
two of the antifever tablets into her palm. “Here, take these.”

The girl’s eyes opened again, focused on the tablets—and she jerked back, so violently that the tablets flew out of Elissa’s hand and disappeared in the grass. The water slopped out over Elissa’s hand.

“What are you doing—” She broke off. The girl’s pupils had contracted to pinpoints; her whole body was stiff, her mouth clamped shut. With a sudden shock of cold, Elissa noticed the bruises that extended along her jawline, down onto her neck. Bruises that were an exact match to Elissa’s.

Elissa took a long breath, then spoke gently. “It’s all right. They’re just for the fever.”

“Sorry.” It was a whisper.

“It’s okay.” She shook out two more pills. “Can I give these ones to you? I brought some water to help you swallow them.”

The girl nodded. She took the tablets and gulped most of the drink down in one huge, gasping swallow after another.

Elissa watched her. She hadn’t brought enough water. And the meds she had brought—were they even strong enough? She didn’t know who the girl was, was completely freaked at her eruption into her life, but if she
died
because Elissa should have called an ambulance and didn’t . . .

“I’m just going to spray some medicine on your arm too, okay? It’ll feel cold, that’s all.”

The girl flinched when the spray hit her swollen arm, but she didn’t make a sound. She was obviously trying to drink the last bit of water slowly, but she looked as if she were having to make an effort not to gulp it down as she had the rest. Elissa found herself chewing the side of her thumbnail sore, trying not to look worried, watching for the signs the meds
were working. They were supposed to work within minutes, but the girl seemed so sick . . .

And what am I going to do with her? Even if these meds do work, if she gets completely better, what do I do with her then? I don’t know who did this to her, or how to keep her safe. I don’t even know where to begin
—

When the thought came, it was like a light switching on in her brain. How stupid was she? She hadn’t wanted to tell her parents about going out to find the girl because she hadn’t wanted them to think she was even sicker than they’d realized. But now . . .
She’s here, she’s real. It’s
not
me going mad. All along the doctors got it wrong. The abnormality in my brain, the thing they want to operate on to remove
—
it’s not what they said. It’s a link. A telepathic link with a real person.

All at once she was floating with relief. Whatever hat’s what you”rtawful organization had been keeping this girl, however crazy it seemed that
anything
like this could happen nowadays on a high-security, low-crime planet, it didn’t matter now. Her parents could fix it. Her dad would know who to call to keep the girl safe, to get the organization raided and shut down. Her mother hadn’t worked in a hospital since Elissa was born, but she’d still know better than Elissa what the girl needed. They might not even have to take her to a hospital—her mother could make her better at home, where she was safe and private.

Elissa looked down again at the girl. She’d finished the water, and the bottle had rolled out of her limp hand. She was lying with her eyes shut, flushed and damp, her breathing heavy. Her clothes—the torn hooded top and a pair of dark pants—were covered with darker stains from oil and grass, and her hair was filthy, hanging over her face.

She’d never make it as far as Elissa’s house. And she looked
like a vagrant—if they passed any police officers, they’d ask for ID for sure.

Elissa would have to leave her here. Once she told her parents, they could come out here in one of their beetle-cars and take her back home.

She cleared her throat. “Listen . . .”

The girl’s eyes opened. They were a little more lucid.

“Listen,” Elissa said again. “I have to go get you some more water. And more meds—I don’t think what I brought you is going to work fast enough.”

“You’re leaving? Now?” The girl’s whole face tightened, as if to meet a blow. The shadows under her eyes showed all at once even darker, as dark as if they, like the marks on her neck and under her jawline, were not just shadows but bruises.

“I have to,” said Elissa.

“Don’t tell anyone.”
The words were so urgent, they came out like a shout even though the girl was still speaking in not much above a whisper.

“I—” Elissa stopped. The girl was half-delirious with fever; anything that Elissa could say about how her parents would help her wouldn’t register, would just freak her out even more. “Okay. I just need to get you more water and meds, all right? I’ll leave these meds with you now, though, and I’ll be back in, like, less than an hour.”

The girl’s eyes stayed fixed on her, huge and dark, her face still tight, her cheekbones seeming to stand out even more than they had before. “You’re coming back?”

“Yes. I promise. You don’t need to worry.”

Finally the girl nodded. “I . . . I couldn’t find you. I thought it would be easy, I thought . . . Can you tell me where you live? So this time, if you don’t come back—”

“I’m going to come back.” For an instant the horror-movie thoughts poured back in. Elissa had already
said
she’d come back. Why did the girl need her address? What was she planning?
I don’t know her. I feel as if I’ve grown up with her, but I didn’t. She’s a stranger
—
a weird, secret-experiment stranger who looks just like me.

Then their eyes met, and after a split second Elissa bloodless where she was biting it. Art recognized what lay in the other girl’s eyes. She was afraid. Whatever had driven her to try to find Elissa, it was stronger than Elissa’s own motives for looking for her. And now she was terrified she’d lose Elissa again.

It didn’t seem right, or normal, but then, nothing about this whole situation was normal.

“You don’t need to worry,” she said again. “But of course I’ll tell you how to find me.” She gave instructions, as detailed as she could make them, directing the other girl back across the area around the spaceport and to the right slidewalk junctions.

“Our shelf is Acacia Sixteen. The slidewalks have the codes marked on them—A16. Once you get onto the shelf, we’re apartment twelve, right at the end, on your right. If you go around the side, you’ll be under my window.”

The girl’s lower lip was bloodless where she was biting it. “Okay,” she said.

Elissa hooked the bag back up over her shoulder.

“I won’t be longer than an hour, all right? You won’t need to come and find me.”

“Okay.”

Elissa gave her a half smile, uncertain, wavering, then turned to walk into the shadows of the ditch, looking for the steps that would take her back out.

It was twenty minutes of walking before she found them, but once she was up on the plateau, her journey back across the outskirts of the spaceport was easy.

Her house stood dark and silent, the blankness of a house whose inhabitants were all asleep. Elissa slid noiselessly in, the only sound her own heart beating high up in her ears.

Her parents would have been asleep for ages. And she wouldn’t be just waking them up; she’d be waking them up to tell them this beyond-crazy story. They’d probably think she was having nightmares, brought on by the stress of being pre-op or something. Elissa caught back a half-hysterical giggle and, aware she was putting off the moment when she’d have to wake them, went into the kitchen to refill a few drinking bottles with water and grab a handful of energy bars. Maybe the girl would need something to eat, too, before they even got her home.

She dropped the bottles and bars into her bag and came back out of the kitchen as she began to zip it up. Okay. She’d promised the girl—
and I can’t keep thinking of her as “the girl”; she must have some kind of name, mustn’t she?
—she’d be back within an hour. She couldn’t put off waking her parents any longer.

As she came out into the entrance hall, the zipper of the bag got stuck. She paused in the shadows of the hall, standing between the bottom of the staircase and the front door, fiddling to free the zipper from the loose thread it had snagged. It came free and she pulled it shut, hitching the bag strap farther up her shoulder.

“Lissa?”

Elissa jumped so violently she bit her tongue. For a moment she couldn’t even think where her mother’s voice was coming from. Then the landing lights snapped on, and
Elissa looked up and saw her, standing at the head of the stairs.

“Lissa, what’s going on? What are you doing?”

For a moment Elissa couldn’t make sense of the shock and anger on her mother’s face. Then she realized how she mus to fall and fall and fall . . .

And to add to the guilty picture she made, her brain had frozen too. She couldn’t find the right words to even begin to explain. Instead she stared up at her mother, pinned still, caught motionless like a criminal in freeze-beams.

“Edward! Edward, come here now!” It was a shriek, angry and frightened, the sort of shriek she’d give if Elissa
were
a caught-in-the-act criminal.

The note in her voice unfroze Elissa. “Mother, don’t. I’m not—it’s completely not what it looks like—”

Her mother didn’t seem to hear.
“Edward!”
She came fast down the staircase, hand hardly touching the rail, mouth set hard. “How dare you, Elissa. How
dare
you, when it’s all arranged. Where the hell do you think you’re going to go?”

“Mother, I’m
not
. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running
away
.” It was too crazy to even have to say it. Her mother couldn’t think she’d just take off. Since when had she ever done
anything
like that?

Mrs. Ivory grabbed her arm. “Don’t you
dare
think of moving. How can you
do
this, Elissa?”

Elissa’s father had come down onto the landing, looking half-dazed in the light. He walked down the stairs, tying the belt of his bathrobe tighter. “Laine? What’s going on?”

“Look! Look what she’s doing!” Mrs. Ivory’s hand tightened on Elissa’s arm. “She’s out here with a bag. With her operation in four days’ time!”

“No.
Listen
to me. I’m
not running away
.”

Her mother shook her arm. “You little liar, you’ve got a bag with you!”

A flush heated Elissa’s face. She didn’t lie to her parents. She
didn’t
. And her mother wasn’t even giving her a chance to explain.

“I’m not running away. I went out secretly because I didn’t want you to worry. I found something—”

“Found something? What on earth are you talking about? And what do you mean, went out? You’ve been out
already
? It’s past midnight!”

“You’re not listening to me!” Elissa raised her voice, the heat from her face flooding into it. “I’m not sick. It’s not hallucinations. There’s a girl—our brains are linked somehow—she looks just like me—”

Her mother’s fingers froze on her arm, biting through her sleeve into her flesh.
“What?”

“That dream I had—the dream I told the doctor about. It was real. The fire was real. Mother,
listen
, they’ve been doing awful things to her. She escaped, she came to find me. You have to help her.” She stopped. Her mother’s face had gone utterly still, her lips pressed so tightly together that the blood opened his mouth to sayeming to had gone from where they touched.