Long into the night, everyone except Elle is still wide awake. Delilah has rebraided her hair five times, and the fire has been reduced to glowing embers.

"I bet it's World War Three," Sky stands, finally bored of sitting still for so long. he announces. "All it would've taken were a few more countries, anyways, we were all in a big, bloody battle three years ago."

"We were?" No matter how hard I try, I can't remember any fighting between countries. But I guess I've been gone longer than Sky, and besides, no one tells a twelve-year-old brat that the world is about to be blown to pieces. Nobody even told me I was leaving home until it was a done deal.

"Yeah, I remember hauling tons of rice from the store and big cases of water, and my dad always had the news on some channel that showed all the places fights were breaking out." He swipes at an invisible bug near his ear. "Really fun stuff."

"Who was the fight with?" I ask, leaning back on my arms. Elle stirs slightly but stays peacefully asleep. The sheen of sweat on her forehead seems permanent at this point, and so does the shaking.

"America, mostly," Sky answers. "Buggers got greedy."

Delilah raises her eyebrows at him, lips pursed.

"Okay, more greedy. You know there was all that stuff in the history books about places like Syria and Iraq, and after so long everyone thought it was over, but I guess the big USA had different ideas." Sky flashes a mirthless smile.

"And Russia?" I ask,

"Russia promised to ally with America, but in the end we stood down," Delilah enters the conversation. "That military camp we saw shouldn't have existed."

If what Delilah says about Russia is right, then where does that leave us? And what reason would they have to stay out of the fight if they had the weapons and an ally like America, why stop unless... I think back to what Maverick said the night before he—before we went to get Elle. Heavy shit has been happening... we're right in the middle of it.

"Maybe it wasn't a stand-down, maybe they were stalling," I suggest, "maybe, they needed better weapons."

"To build us," Delilah says, realization dawning on her face.

"Bingo, why go nuclear and bring about death of your own country when you can." He waves his hands in the shape of a banner for effect. "Kidnap some children and turn them into your own personal supersoldiers."

"I guess that explains the military camp," Delilah says, her brow is knit. "And why that man was so eager to get his mitts on us."

"No kidding, and they're probably coming after us," Sky concludes. "I mean, if we were meant to be their ticket to winning a war, there's no way they'd let us slip through their fingers."

"Mm." Delilah bites her lip. "So we're fugitives now."

"We always were," I say. Some of us, like Sky, have been on enemy soil since the day we were first taken. Some of us, like Delilah, became hushed secrets when the first incision was made. Either way, we've been fugitives for a long, long time.

"Oh well," Sky mumbles around a yawn, "Now that we've discovered that, methinks it's time for some shut-eye." He stretches, wheeling his arms and rising on his toes. He makes a sound like a dying pterodactyl, then plunks down on the stony ground. Delilah crinkles her nose, smothering a yawn behind her elbow. She lays down with her back curled to the wall and rests her head on her arms.

"I can't decide," she murmurs with her eyes closed. "Whether this rock is more comfortable, or less now that I'm not drenched in the stuff. In the sky water."

"Rain." Sky yawns, eyelids millimeters from closing.

"What?"

"It's called rain."

Delilah cracks her eyes long enough to stick her tongue at him. "Sky water," she says again, and this time no one corrects her. Minutes pass, the embers grow dimmer. A snore comes from Delilah, and a quick glance at Sky confirms that he's dropped off too. Sleeping, he looks his own age. Luckily for us, there are no bugs out this time of year, the temperature still walks on the edge of too cold for them to survive.

I cradle Elle in my arm and add a couple dry branches to the fire to keep the embers alive. Outside a soft wind passes by. I still can't sleep, too much happened today and yesterday. I can't stop thinking about how fast Elle is going downhill. She's sick. She's so sick, and what do I have to help her?

A bottle of Tylenol and a ratty sweater.

Elle shakes in her sleep. I inch closer to the dying fire, hoping to feed her more warmth. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fix any of this. I don't. I was built to break others, not repair them. My thoughts spin faster and faster, my shoulders getting tenser with every passing breath. If Mav was here he'd tell me to ice it. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood, the taste of it rings in my skull. If Mav was here, he'd have a plan.

"My name is Trick," I breathe. "I'm nineteen. I'm a lab experiment. I have a little sister who's sick. I'm going to get her help." I finish. I feel calmer now, it worked. I'm beginning to understand more about the Sergeant.

"Neat trick." A soft voice says. I look up to find Sky watching me. I wonder how long he's been awake, or if he was ever asleep to begin with.

"Yeah."

"I'm glad I came back," he says, sinking lower against the cave wall. Suddenly he's more interested in a hangnail on his thumb. "I almost didn't, that first day out? Mave told me to follow the quad. It felt so good to run like that, without any walls or fences or 'coats. I could've kept running forever."

"Why didn't you?"

He bites off the hangnail, stress-lined eyes wandering over the splits in the glowing embers.

"Ah, well," he says after a long pause, "I guess Maverick looked out for mee too much in the Compound. Wouldn't've been right to leave him out to dry like that."

And now he's dead.

Heaviness drags over the insides of my chest, clinging to the meat between my ribs and making my heart lag. Orange and yellow flicker over Sky's face, deepening the shadows under his eyes and a new hollowness in his cheeks.

"You can run now, if you want," I say.

He shakes his head, "don't say that," his voice catches, he clears his throat. But I have to say it. He deserves to know he can leave, he can't be held here by the ghost of someone who I got killed. "Don't say that, if you do I might do it."

"You should." It's a difficult thing to get out. With Sky gone we will be that much more alone. Who knows if Delilah will stay. Who knows what 'staying' means for us. Sky snaps his fingers. "It's okay, don't worry about us."

"Don't worry about us," he mouths, gaze lost in the flames. He gets to his feet, snapping, shifting from foot to foot. He won't look up from the fire, but I can see on his face that he wants to run. That the thin line tying him to us is stretching thinner.

He looks up, meets my eyes, and I can all but hear the thread break. His chin wobbles, but he reigns it in and is gone before I even blink.

I stare after him, gnawing on the inside of my cheek, then I take off my glasses and rub my face furiously. Blazing stars, I'm so tired of this mess.

***

I wake up to the sound of crying. In the sleepfog that coats my brain, it takes a minute for my heavy thoughts to recognize the cold spot in my lap where Elle should be. Instead of light pressure and the heat of a feverish kid, there's empty air. She's not camouflaged, this time she's gone.

I bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. Not again, not again. It would kill us all. My frantic gaze lands on a small form right outside the dim circle of light cast by the fire. Delilah is already awake and kneeling beside Elle's small body, her expression is crumpled. The awful, choked sobbing is coming from Elle. I scramble to my feet, pins and needles humming up my rudely awakened left leg, and limp across the cave.

"What's wrong? What happened?" A pang runs up my back as I kneel beside Elle, reminding me that there's a time limit on the effect of the Tylenol.

"I thought it would pass, I didn't want to wake you," Delilah says, retreating to make room for me. Elle is hunched over, her fingers are splayed and clawing her head so hard the tips are white. Tears and snot run down her face into her twisted open mouth.

"It hurts," she cries, pressing harder on her skull and rocking. "Make it stop."

"Tylenol," I say, ask, demand. I put my hands over Elle's and brush her wet cheeks with my thumbs. I hate seeing her in this much pain, it scares me more than I want to admit. "Listen, Delilah is getting you painkillers."

"I'll just throw them up," she whispers, light bounces off the tears building up in her eyes. Her breathing is labored. Suddenly she droops, and a scream wrenches free of her.

"My head," she gasps. "Make it stop, please, Trick it hurts."

Sobs wrack her tiny frame. Delilah hands me a pill. I tip Elle's head back.

"You have to eat this, it will help." I press the pill to her lips. Reluctantly, she takes it and swallows it dry. A shudder goes through her, and she falls against me, shivering and trying to hold in her sobs.

"It's exploding," she cries into my shirt. "I think I'm dying."

"Don't say that," I say firmly, wrapping my arms around her.

A niggling voice at the back of my mind says that this has gone beyond a headache. I ignore that voice.

Pebbles skitter right outside the mouth of the cave, alerting us to intruders, Delilah jumps to her feet, palms out and ready to fight. Thankfully, it's a friendly face that enters.

"What's going on?" Sky asks. He stands in the entrance, sweat plastering his ginger hair to his forehead, gasping for breath. Behind him, the sky is a shade lighter, the sun about to begin its slow rise. "I heard screaming."

Delilah motions to Elle, Sky tracks the movement. He takes in Elle's trembling hands, and the tears glistening on her face and presses his lips into a thin, hard line.

"Headache," I say in answer to his question.

He comes further into the cave, his hand trails on the wall. When he stops, his fingers start to drum. In the fire, a spent coal collapses into a pile of ash. Elle has stopped sobbing but tears still spill past her half-closed lids, and she sniffles periodically. Her hands open and clench into fists, one bunching the fabric of her sweater, the other squeezing my own hand.

"We should go back," Sky says. Tension rips through the cave, cutting us to our bones like a chill winter wind. My blood solidifies to ice in my heart, and I hold Elle closer. Delilah recoils, too. Silent now, gnawing on her lip. Fear and memories flash through her pale eyes. She looks closer to the Delilah who held her dead husband on their first day of freedom than she has since escaping the military camp.

"It's empty, abandoned, but I'll bet there are supplies in the unburned buildings. We can get warmer clothes." He tips his head at Elle. "Medicine."

"How do we know it's completely abandoned?" I ask. For all we know, the Compound is swarming with army people, just like the camp.

"I was there," Sky says. His answer shocks me, but only for a second. We're so close to the Compound, if I could move as fast as Sky I would check on it too. "It's burned, mostly, not a soul in sight. The fence isn't live."

He pauses, considering something, then his attention is caught by something outside the cave. "The sun is rising."

We all turn to watch the sliver of sunrise that's visible from the cave. The turquoise-tinted sky brightens in increments, a rosy swatch slowly gains more and more space and the tip of the sun peeks over the horizon. In a different situation, it would be a beautiful scene.

As the frosty landscape brightens, Elle drifts off into a restless sleep once more. Her shallow breathing is the loudest thing in the cave. There's not much conversation to go around, even Sky seems subdued. The prospect of returning to the Compound is a grim one. Too grim. If there's any other option, I'd rather take it, but I'm afraid there isn't.

The last of the flames hisses out, a thin curl of smoke rising from the ashes. It's time to go.

"Kiddo, time to wake up," I say, shaking her shoulder. Her head lolls with the motion, her eyes stay closed. Yellow sleep dust is crusting in her eyelashes and salt tracks dry on her cheeks. "Elle, come on, rise and shine." I nudge her harder. Nothing. No response. I can feel a crease forming between my eyebrows. I give her another shake, panic worms into my head and spreads fast.

By now, the others have noticed what's going on. Delilah kneels next to me.

"I can't wake her," I say, pressing the back of my hand to her forehead. Her skin is searing hot and damp. Delilah puts two fingers to Elle's throat.

"Sky, how far away did you say the Compound was?" Delilah asks, reaching for Elle's wrist, too. Impulsively, I take her other wrist between my fingers and my thumb. Her pulse is weak and fluttery.

"Not far, less than a day if we hurry," Sky answers. He stomps out the fire hurriedly.

I scoop Elle up. She's ragdoll limp. Is this because of the Tylenol? I didn't think a single pill would do this, if anything it should have affected her stomach, right? Not her head.

Avoiding the Compound is no longer an option,she's too sick.