Jason drifted in and out of consciousness, riding the tides of pain, fog, and sleep to reach for the surface. Visions visited him like ghosts: memories of his sister in his arms, of a red-headed girl and a gun, of his mother laughing, of his mother screaming, of blood and rain and sunset forests.

Water passed between his lips, sometimes food. The world swayed like the ocean. A worried, chattering voice wound through the tides.

Once, he rose out of the visions into the backseat of a vehicle, his body stretched long across the seat. Slowly, his good hand snaked out of a blanket. It reached out to touch the back of the straight-backed chair right in front of him. The felt was soft beneath his half-curled fingers. It was close, too, like in a truck or a compact car. He had just enough time to wonder when his parents sold the SUV and where they were moving next before a new tide of pain-tinged fog pulled him back under.

When he came to next, his skin was hot, his arm only ached rather than roared, and his face was wet. Moonlight shimmered through the window. Rachel's shadowed face hovered in front of him, eyes narrow. "Finally," she said, slumping into the floorboard. A bottle of water crinkled beside her. "Do you know how long I've been driving, and you've been asleep this whole time?"

His sluggish brain struggled to discern if she was irritated with him, teasing him, or teasing him because she was worried and it was easier to pretend to be irritated. She did the latter often enough.

"Look," she said, "we've got a narrow window to work with here, so I need you to look alive, okay?"

"What's wrong?" he slurred. His tongue felt funny in his mouth, like it was too big to belong.

"What's wrong is that I got you to Arizona, but you never told me how you planned on actually finding these people. Listen. I figure it's going to take you at least a few more minutes to wake up properly, and then your latest pill is going to swing you into full sleepy-time about thirty after that. Like I said, narrow window. And we need a plan, or I swear, I'm taking you to a hospital after all." She pulled up on the seat to get to her feet, then dropped a bundle of clothes in his lap. "Get dressed." She hopped out of the truck and closed the door behind her.

Jason pushed slowly up into a sitting position. The blanket wrapped around him fell away from his bare torso. The familiar dizziness spun around his brain, and his fingers clutched the doorframe until it passed. Outside the window, the red sand of the desert stretched wide until it kissed the base of the patchwork mountains. The mountains' arms reached to embrace a million stars in the sky.

Jason tore away from his reverie and pulled on his jeans. Arizona. They'd really made it. Rachel must have driven all day to get here.

And she was counting on him for a plan.

He struggled to pull his brain from its haze as easily as he pulled on his jacket. In lieu of doing gymnastics with his shirt and swollen, aching arm, he simply zipped the jacket up and slid to the door she'd left through.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," she protested as he opened it. "Who said anything about you getting out of the truck?" She waved him back. "If you fall, I'm going to have the time of my life dragging you back in."

"I feel okay." The cold desert wind stroked his face, helping wake him up. He felt better, really, than he had in what seemed like a long time. How long had they been running? How many hours, how many days, how many weeks? Surely it couldn't have been a week yet, but maybe...

"What you feel," she snorted, and he startled back to focus, "is drugged. What's four times twenty?"

"Eight," he said, and her brose rose in contempt. He quickly corrected himself. "Eighty, I mean. Eighty."

She looked him up and down, hands on her hips. The wind teased her hair, setting strands aflutter. "Good enough for me."

She shooed him back into the truck, closed the door, then hopped into the front. "So," she said. "You had a plan?"

The still road stretched out before them, meeting the stars at some point on the horizon. Somewhere, out there, were the people he was looking for. Somewhere. His brain felt like a knife wrapped in cotton. It pressed against one idea after another, but never deeply enough to cut into the meat of it. As the minutes ticked by, his lip curled into a snarl. He almost preferred the blinding pain.

"You said something about them coming to us?" she tried helpfully. "Or something?"

His nose scrunched. Or something was about right. The idea rang hollowly in his head, like a bell missing the metal bit inside. He put his cotton-wrapped knife to work, testing ideas he couldn't quite grab hold of.

"Please," Rachel begged, "don't tell me we came all the way here for nothing."

"It would be nothing—it wouldn't not be—it would, if you just would not of—" The words sloshed in his mouth, and he said a word his mother would rather pretend was not in his vocabulary. "You drugged me," he accused in explanation.

She barked an incredulous laugh. "I'm sorry I kept you from writhing in pain for the last fifteen hours." Her head shook. "It's not like you were exactly functional this morning off the meds either. I don't know if you've noticed, but you're sorta playing ding-dong-ditch with Death's door."

Her voice was harsh, but her eyes in the moonlight were soft, searching, pleading almost. For the first time, he seriously considered letting her take him to real doctors. His body felt like a bag of rocks. His bangs clung to his brow, and his head spun, even as he sat still. But they were so close. And if he screwed this up now, if he wandered in front of the wrong person or the wrong camera, Adrian Foster would take him wherever his family was.

And Jason planned on seeing his family again. But not as a captive.

"You think," he started slowly, "that this other group, here, not Foster—"

"I know what you mean," she said, spinning her hand like go on.

"You think there's any chance they're looking for us too?"

"No," she scoffed. "I told you that before. If that was your grand plan..."

Of course they weren't, he thought as her griping went on. It had been a cotton-headed, wishful thinking. No one was looking for him. No one friendly, anyway. But maybe...

"Maybe we could make them start," he said.

Rachel cut off. She tilted her head at him, at first like she had when he'd failed her math test, and then slowly back the other direction, face opening up as his idea took root in her. Her fingers drummed against the back of her headrest excitedly.

"Back in Hampton," she started, "I knew a guy. Let's just say he didn't exactly walk the straight and narrow. Anyway, he always had people watch the streets, make sure no one was looking for him, warn him if the cops were coming to beat down his door. That kind of thing. If these people are as paranoid as your parents, you might be right. They might be doing the exact same thing."

Jason stared out to the horizon, and it seesawed unexpectedly in his vision. He grabbed onto a seat back for balance. "No one wants trouble at their back door."

"And I can definitely stir up some trouble for us." She sounded a little too excited about that. His eyes cut to her. She tapped the headrest again as she sucked on her lip. "Won't that bring Foster down on us too, though?"

"That's why they'll want to get rid of us."

Rachel scoffed incredulously. "You realize in most circles 'get rid of' means put a bullet in, not play animal rescue shelter with. Right?"

"Then we better make a heck of a commercial," he muttered. His head leaned against the headrest, and he pressed his hand against his face, trying to push back the drowsiness clinging to his thoughts. For a second, the cotton sheath slipped off—or thinned maybe, just a bit, just enough to cut into the soft edges of a real idea.

"We need access to the internet," he said. "And you need paper. Write this down."

Rachel whipped out her phone and started typing.

Rachel knew short of a hospital, a night in a clean, heated room would be the next best thing for Jason. Instead, as his eyes glazed, just on the verge of passing out again from the medicine, she coaxed him out of the truck and into a broken down building on the outskirts of the nearest town. He leaned on her heavily for balance, hardly able to keep one foot in front of another. She pulled them past the lock she'd already popped into a dusty hoarder-haven.

The space looked like it had been an old storage unit, or store maybe. There were some random pieces of furniture that were little more than trash now, some water damaged paintings, some electronics with the wires chewed. She found a mattress, but it was dirty and looked like the mice had gotten to it.

It'd be better than sleeping on the floor. Leaving Jason leaned against the door, she whacked the dust and debris off the bed, dragged it to the front of the room, went back out to snag the horse's blanket, and threw it down on top. He gratefully collapsed onto it, face white and legs unsteady, as if even the short stint standing had drained him. She expected some complaint—you sure know how to pick a place, Rachel—but he lay there without even a wry comment.

She bit her lip. "I'll be back. Okay?"

In answer, he shot her a lazy thumbs up. Her lip pinged as she sucked on it harder.

"Right," she said. "Try not to get into trouble while I'm gone." He didn't even snort. Blood tanged in her mouth. She laid their supplies by him, the water and food in easy reach of his good arm. "Try to eat something."

She didn't know why she bothered. She'd barely been able to get him to eat at all today, feverish and mostly unconscious. He'd be asleep before she walked out the door. I'm gonna kill him, she thought to herself for the hundredth time that day. He's going to wind up dead and it's going to be my fault.

But Rafe's voice snaked down her spine and she couldn't shake the commitment he'd instilled in her until she'd instilled it in herself. "We'll make due," she whispered, closing the door firmly behind her, "with what we have."

Then she got in the truck and drove into town.

First order of business was finding somewhere with wifi, which proved to be harder than expected in the small town she rolled into. She was used to being able to plop down in any cafe and get a connection. The closest this place had to a cafe was a little diner—shockingly, closed at one in the morning. There was a library—closed. A bar—open, but she doubted it had wifi. A McDonald's still had its lights on, so she pulled in there and gave it a shot.

The connection from outside was shaky, but enough to set up a new email account. She sucked on her lip, thinking of all the ways this plan could go wrong. Then she threw the car into reverse and parked it down the block from the bar she'd spotted earlier.

She pulled her hood up and quick-stepped her way down the dark road, shoulders hunched. Her fingers wrapped around the gun in the hoodie pocket. The bar's frosted windows spilled mellow light onto the sidewalk. She shouldered in.

It wasn't what Rachel would call a roaring crowd. A geriatric, pot-bellied barkeep leaned more than he cleaned. A group of five men had pulled extra chairs around a table that really didn't fit it. Three girls filming themselves danced around a digital jukebox. A few loners sat in booths, and one couple was eating each other's tongues in a corner that wasn't as dark as they probably thought it was.

Rachel raised the gun above her head and shot two rounds into the ceiling. The girls shrieked. The men startled, half out of their chairs. The couple was even polite enough to pause kissing. "Listen up!" she shouted.

With a hard edge, someone said, "I'm pretty sure we can talk without the gun."

Her gaze swiveled to the barkeep, who'd pulled his own gun on her. Her heart lurched. Well. That was inconvenient. That never happened in Virginia.

Oh well. She twitched her aim a few degrees and shot out the main light. Glass rained down. Sparks flew through the halflight. The girls screamed again, but by now, they'd managed to point their phones at her.

The barkeep cursed, and Rachel ducked below the counter. In a crouch, she ran around its length, coming up behind the barkeep as he fumbled with his safety. She stuck the barrel in his back. "Mine," she hissed, "is actually ready to fire."

He stiffened, and the few men who'd risen froze.

"Drop it."

The gun clattered to the floor. "The–the–the cash is in the register."

Her stomach twisted. Her eyes flicked to the machine at the end of the bar. Stick to the plan. This wasn't a robbery—even though their cash supply was down to less than a hundred dollars.

The jukebox girls had scuttled around behind it for some terrible shelter, but one of them still had their phone out, recording. Rachel pulled the old man's arm up behind him into a lock, freeing her to put the gun at his temple, where the camera could see it.

Her voice rose. "Blitz, superspeed. Sam Wiles, invisibility. Resistance. Email [email protected]. Password: Blitz's first name."

She shoved the man away from her, snatched up his gun, and guarded her retreat with hers. People shrieked and shrank back as her weapon swung toward them. Her back hit the door, and she spun out. Feet pounding against the pavement, she flew down the street, rounded the corner, swung into the truck, and took off.

She doubted the authorities would make it here in any less than two minutes, but she didn't stick around to find out. She also didn't think anyone would follow her, but she still took a circuitous route back to the shed. She parked behind the building, out of sight of the road, then found a tarp inside she could cover the truck with. Jason was asleep as she passed in and out the door, carrying loads of junk she could place around the vehicle, trying to make it look like it had been here just as long as the rickety building had.

Finally, she pushed the door to the shed closed behind her and dragged an old baby bed and a ridiculously fat and heavy television in front of the door as a barricade. Hardly any light passed through the dirt caked window. Her burning eyes begged at her for rest, and she collapsed on the mattress beside Jason. Her body ached—from sleeping in strange places, from supporting him, from driving from dawn till dark to get here.

His breaths rose and fell beside her. In the dark, with him medicated so heavily she was sure he could barely feel anything, she could almost imagine he was just fine. Her left shoulder brushed against his right one. She shivered and wondered if she should have saved the blanket for wrapping up with instead of lying on. But Jason radiated heat, his body fighting off the infection.

She curled up on her side. Her stomach curled in knots, and no matter how long she stared into the darkness, her eyes couldn't seem to close. She'd done what he'd asked, but there was no way of knowing if it would be enough. Even if she pulled the stunt a hundred times, there were no promises. What if no one came? Or worse...

What if they came and Jason was already gone?