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Syd rested his forehead against the horse’s snout, holding it still with a hand on either side.

“Shh.” He stroked the horse’s snout. “Shhh. It’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay. You’re not alone.”

When he closed his eyes, he saw that bandit’s face when the EMD pulse hit her. She didn’t even have time to be surprised. She crumpled into the dust, her last expression caught between a sneer and spasm. Her face was quickly replaced by Egan’s, sweat just above his upper lip, his hair tussled, his chest heaving, torn open. He’d looked up at Syd, but he had no clever last words. He didn’t go out in a blaze of glory. He just went out.

Syd lifted his head from the horse’s. He felt its hot breath on his face.

“They’re tied up.” Marie came outside. Knox followed her.

Syd knew he owed her his life, but still, she made him uncomfortable. He found her faith in him unnerving. He didn’t want to be its object. Why’d she have to believe in him?

“So . . . what do we do now?” asked Knox. His clothes were dusty, his face was bloody, and he’d just witnessed two murders. He wanted nothing more than to be told what to do. He wanted to obey. Knox had crossed some kind of line back there in the cave. He’d started the fight that left Egan dead, and though he knew the bandits would have probably killed the kid anyway, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d brought it about. From the moment he’d gone out for that joyride in the CX-30, he’d become responsible for all this death. One dumb decision, that’s all it took. It was his fault.

“We take the horses and ride to Old Detroit,” said Marie, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. “We have to get Syd to the Rebooters. Nothing’s changed.”

“Nothing’s changed?” Knox said. “People are dead!”

She looked away from him. “If we don’t get Syd to the Rebooters, they died for nothing.”

Knox shook his head. He looked to Syd. “Should we, like, bury your friend?”

“What for?” said Syd. “That’s not Egan in there. That’s just a body. Egan’s not in it anymore.”

Knox wouldn’t argue the point. If Syd wasn’t the sentimental type, that was fine with him. Syd had his own reasons. Knox couldn’t bear to go back inside the cave either. He didn’t want to see what he’d done and what had been done because of him.

“Do we even know where Old Detroit is?” Knox asked.

Marie didn’t answer. Knox didn’t need to be skilled at reading body language to know she had no idea.

“People say there’s an old road on the other side of the canyon,” Syd said. “They call it the Interstate. Say it runs right across the desert to Old Detroit. If we can get to it, we can follow it all the way.”

Marie nodded, ready to go into the great unknown.

Knox, however, looked hesitant, which seemed to Syd like a more sane reaction.

“Do you know the way to this Interstate?” Knox asked. “I mean, are we going to hop onto these things—”

“Horses,” said Marie.

“Yes, I know that,” Knox grumbled at her. “Onto these horses and just ride out into the wastelands on some rumor of a road? I mean, you heard those thugs. What about flash floods? Earthquakes? Organ harvesters roaming the sand?”

Syd shrugged. “You don’t have to come,” he said. “You did your part. You got me out of the city, just like you promised. You can go home to your house and your father now. You don’t owe me anything.”

Knox shook his head and kicked at the dirt with his toe. “I’m not going back there.”

“You don’t even know how to ride a horse,” said Marie.

“I’m not going back to my father,” he said. It was that simple. On this point, there would be no negotiation.

“I’m not here to help you work out your issues with your father,” Syd told him. “This isn’t some patron enrichment program. I’m running for my life and the only person I’ve ever trusted is dead.”

“So trust us.” Marie stepped beside Knox. “We can help you.”

“I thought you hated him,” said Syd.

“I don’t have to like him to understand him,” said Marie. “We’re not so different.”

“We aren’t?” Knox asked.

“We both have a reason to help Syd,” she said, and then she changed the subject to cut off any chance of an argument. “There are four horses and we only need three.”

“Two,” Knox corrected her.

Syd nodded. “Fine, two . . . but we can’t just leave the other horses here.”

“We could let them run,” Marie suggested. “Maybe they’ll find their own way.”

It seemed like as good an idea as any. Syd untied two of the horses.

They didn’t run. They just stood and stared with their big dumb horse eyes. They didn’t know a good thing when they got it.

“Go on!” Syd said. “Run!
Heyup!
”

The horses didn’t move.

“Why won’t they run?” Syd asked. “They’re animals. They should run.”

Knox and Marie shrugged.

“Heyup!” Syd smacked one of the horse’s haunches. It looked down at him and snorted.

“Go!” he ordered it. “You’ll die if you stay! Just go!” He smacked the horse again, harder. “Go! Go!” He held up the EMD stick.

“Syd.” Marie grabbed his hand, stopped him from frying the horse’s nerves. “You can’t make them want to run. That’s not how it works.”

Syd lowered the stick to his side again, clutching it tight. He bit the inside of his cheeks and looked the horse in the eye.

It worked on me, he thought. I ran.

“I’m riding alone,” he told the others and climbed onto the back of the horse he’d been trying to set free. “You take Knox on your horse.”

“Okay,” Marie agreed, although she didn’t seem too excited about it.

Knox turned to Marie and smirked, a little trace of the old smart-ass coming back. “I guess you get to drive this time.”

[39]

MARIE CLIMBED ONTO THE large piebald horse and Knox heaved himself up behind her. He wobbled unsteadily as the horse shifted and grunted its objections to the new weight. The other two horses whinnied, as if they were gloating. Their horse tossed its head from side to side and circled, nearly tipping Knox off.

“Whoa!” he said, but the horse kept bucking. For a moment, he feared this would be Marie’s revenge for the car accident, but she leaned forward and whispered something in its ear. The horse calmed down.

“What are you saying to it?” Knox asked.

“I gave it a name,” said Marie.

Knox was glad that Marie couldn’t see his face.

He steadied himself, letting his hands fall to his sides. It felt weird, but he was so close to Marie’s back that if he lifted his hands he’d have to hold them all crumpled against himself. He couldn’t get comfortable. He stretched them forward and let them wrap around Marie’s waist as gently as he could. Why was that so much harder to do than when he rode with Syd?

“You have got to be kidding me,” Marie said.

“I just need somewhere to put my hands. It doesn’t mean anything. I rode the same way with Syd.”

“I noticed,” Marie answered, and there was more humor in her voice than he’d heard before. Maybe she was warming up to him. Or maybe she was just tired of being angry. There’d been enough misery in the past few days to last a lifetime. Knox figured it was time they both started acting human to each other. He resisted the urge to make a sarcastic comment back.

Once his hands settled, he had to admit that it felt much nicer holding the curve of her waist than it had Syd’s. He suddenly felt very aware of his hands. He focused on keeping them as still as possible so that she didn’t make him let go. The horse breathed beneath them.

Syd turned his horse toward the cave and looked into the gaping mouth of stone. Behind him, the stars burned their billion pixels. A golden glow started up on the horizon. A new day was coming and with it the heat and the long ride.

Syd spat onto the ground and then turned his horse at a quick trot in the direction of the sunrise.

“Here we go,” said Marie and she nudged her horse forward after him.

Knox felt the full weight of the previous two days hitting him. He’d stayed awake this long before, of course, but usually for a party and usually he had a little chemical help to make it happen. Now, he was running on nothing but willpower, adrenaline, and fear, like an animal.

There were other animal feelings too. His skin burned with a desire to squeeze Marie tighter against his chest.

At the same time, he wished he were riding with Syd again. He had the urge to explain himself, to tell Syd about his mother and his father, like that would justify why he didn’t move to help back there in the cave, why he froze up. Maybe he wanted Syd to forgive him.

Guilt.

That might have been the only purely human feeling Knox had left.

They had to ride single file through the narrow cuts in the canyon. If Knox had access to a datastream he could try to bring up a map to the Interstate. It wouldn’t be on any of the authorized streams, but someone would have posted it somewhere. Knox felt useless without a network connection.

The sound of the horses clomping kept a steady rhythm in his head. The bounce of their steps jostled his body and he had to keep his legs flexed to hold on to the wide flank of the animal. Each movement rocked him forward into Marie’s back and then back away from it so he had to hold on to her to keep from sliding off. It was a pulsing kind of touch, but it was enough to keep him awake as they rode.

Their path twisted and turned. Syd kept stopping and looking up, as if there were a datastream just over his head telling him where to go. Knox worried for a second that Syd was secretly wearing Egan’s old lenses and leading them into some prearranged trap. He beat himself up for not searching the dead kid to get the lenses himself. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. Corpse robbery wasn’t his first instinct. He guessed it probably wasn’t Syd’s either. The lenses were still back in the cave.

“He’s looking for the sun, I think,” said Marie. “Navigating by it. I’ve read about people doing that.”

“You think he knows how?” asked Knox.

“It’s not hard,” she said, pointing. “The sun’s right there. It rises in the east.”

“So what are we gonna do when it’s right above us at noon?”

The question stumped Marie. Up ahead, Syd was wondering the same thing.

The air in the deep canyon was cool and the high walls cut off the sun. Occasional breaks in the rock sent rays of light down to the trail and there was a pleasant warmth when they rode through them, followed by a deep chill when they trotted out.

They heard the buzz of drones flying over the canyons, but they were safe in the narrow cuts and channels below. Knox took a sip of the water they’d taken from the bandits. They’d taken most of the supplies, leaving only the horses with a bit of water. It was the closest thing those Maes goons would get to mercy and even that was more than they deserved.

The smugglers would know these canyons well, and if they escaped from their ropes, would find it easy to follow three teenagers. Syd doubled back a few times. No sense making it easy on them.

They reached a low arch in the rock in front of them, and had to dismount and lead the horses through on foot. Knox noticed that the dust on Syd’s face was streaked, as if he’d been crying. He climbed off the horse and let Marie lead it through the low opening. He rushed up to Syd’s side.

“Syd, I’m—” He wanted to say something to him, although once his mouth was moving, he realized he didn’t know what to say.

Syd looked back at him, waiting.

The way Syd had held Egan’s body and whispered to it made Knox wonder if the two of them had been more than friends, or if Syd maybe had wanted them to be. Or maybe that’s just how it felt to lose a friend. If Knox had seen Simi, Chey, or Nine executed in front him, he’d be pretty messed up himself. He tried to picture cradling one of their heads in his own hands as the life drained out of it, but Nine kept making faces and Chey just looked like she was sleeping. Knox never did have much control over his imagination. Or much connection to his friends.

“I don’t think anyone can follow us this way,” Syd said, his voice scratchy from the dry air and the long silence of the ride. Then he turned his back on Knox and led his horse ahead.

“Come on, Justice, come on,” Marie urged her horse.

“Justice?” Knox raised an eyebrow.

“I told you I named her.”

“Yeah, but Justice? They’re just tools, you know.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Okay, beautiful tools.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.” She smirked at him and he remembered their car ride, the snappy responses, the mischievous grin. This girl contained that girl. Whoever she was was also whoever she had been. The same was true for him, he guessed. He wondered if anyone really ever changed, or if stuff just piled on and on, covering up, but never erasing all the different parts. How deep would you have to dig to find who you started out as?

“So . . . Justice?” He patted the horse on the side as they walked.

“It seemed like a good name for her,” she said.

“Her?”

Marie nodded. “I don’t know a lot about anatomy, but I think this one’s pretty obvious.”

“I thought she was checking me out,” Knox joked. He was trying to capture some of that sparkle, the flirting, the banter. He needed it. Otherwise, he had no idea who he was anymore.

Marie rolled her eyes.

“Did you always hate me?” Knox asked her. “Even before the accident?”

Marie stopped walking with the horse. She looked him over. He brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. He knew it was a lame move, but old habits died hard.

Marie took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “I did.”

Then she walked the horse around a tight turn and disappeared. He followed and caught up with her in a great bowl-shaped cavern, with just a patch of sky in the center, two hundred feet up. The beam of light that pierced into it lit a perfect circle on the ground. Marie waited inside the circle for Knox to catch up.

“You aren’t so terrible when you keep your mouth shut,” Marie added as she helped him back onto the horse. Before he could open his mouth again, she smacked the horse’s side and gave a loud “Heyup!” They rode on.

When the sun was at its highest, they stopped to rest.