We had to stop with the hoverboards once we neared civilization. Henry didn't explain, but I figured he didn't want to draw attention to us. Hoverboards weren't something everyone had. I recalled the time I spent at the Circuit's base in San Judo--they were high tech. Weird laser walls and strange medications. Hoverboards seemed to me to be something out of science fiction, but knowing what I knew of the Circuit, they likely had access to all sorts of technology that I couldn't imagine. They were secretive and pervasive, and who knew what resources they had access to? I certainly didn't know the depth of their capabilities, but what I had seen made me unsurprised that this stuff existed.

People became gradually more prevalent, first at campgrounds and a farm or two, then in residential areas that grew from sparse and rural to suburban and plentiful. We walked a lot at first but then took buses once we came across the routes. Henry didn't want to hitchhike, and I was in agreement.

While we walked, we said almost nothing to one another. I was used to his quiet by now, and frankly, I wanted the time to think of a plan to get away from him. I'd decided that's what I needed to do--just get away. The reasons I'd had for staying with Henry were voided at this point. First, the "saving Henry" thing was out the window. Second . . . well, that was a little less definable. It was Henry. I felt connected to Henry. I didn't know why, but it had been that way since we'd met. But what I'd realized over the course of the last several days was (and admitting it hurt) that I didn't feel connected to him. Not as he was. I found myself feeling more and more disconnected, in fact, each time he showed more of who he'd become. The only other reason I considered staying with Henry was that I didn't know where else to go, but staying with him seemed as precarious as leaving him, not to mention the immorality of his actions and my quiet complicity in them if I stayed of my own free will. Of course, I couldn't tell Henry what I was thinking. He surely would be angry if I left. For some reason, he wanted me with him. He didn't seem like the sort of person who would keep me for company or for my own benefit; he surely had some reason for bringing me along, and the more I was with him, the more I began to assume it wasn't an honorable reason.

There had been those few strange moments, the ones where Henry had been protective of me, but was that protection truly because he cared about me, or was it more that he wanted to protect whatever he needed from me? I was fairly certain at this point that it was the latter. He'd had plenty of opportunity to get rid of me--had even threatened to shoot me in order to get away from Paolo--but for all his crazy, he was keeping me alive and with him for a reason.

So how to escape him? It was good news that we were moving toward civilization. A city would offer me plenty of places to hide, plenty of people to mix into. All I needed was a crowd I could slip through, a busy street I could cross before he turned around, a shop I could sneak into and out the back of. Without that tracking device, I'd be truly free of detection.

We were on a bus, passing through houses that grew closer together and taller and narrower as we moved, when I made up my mind to take a hover device, too. Henry had stuck both in his bag, and I didn't know very well how to control one, but I could learn, and those things moved fast.

The people on the streets outside began to double, then triple. Neighborhoods came alive. Housing complexes mingled with shops and eateries. It seemed as if we were going into the heart of a big city, like San Judo, but then Henry had us catch a bus that began to lead away from the increasing activity, and I grew concerned. I'd have to rethink a get-away plan.

Ugh. My head was a mess. It had been that way for so long, me trying to put together puzzles with mismatched pieces, that I just wanted to get away from myself. Get out of my own thoughts. I pressed my head against the bus window and shut my eyes. Maybe if I wished hard enough, I could transport myself somewhere else. Anywhere else! Just to be alone. And as sleepiness crept behind my eyelids, Paolo crept into my half-dreams. That space between wakefulness and sleep. His eyes, his mouth, forming words I couldn't quite make out. The way his hand had felt pressed against mine. His arms. His laugh. But he'd known all along, Henry'd told me. He'd known about everything. He had never been a friend to me, certainly nothing more than a friend.

Paolo's face moved into the shadow of my fading consciousness. Half-asleep me was sorry to watch him go, but then my thoughts shifted somewhere as my physical body shifted position. I momentarily forgot where I actually was as I fell more into the dream, and a feeling of discomfort crept through me. Instinctively, I sensed that this was the stuff of the disturbing dreams I'd been having more and more . . . the dreams I couldn't remember upon waking but could feel vestiges of, spreading roots through my mind. And now there was a throbbing in my head, an ache, but more . . . there was . . . dread. And there was wind, wind that smelled of salt and sand. So much wind. My hair whipped around my face; my cheeks burned; my clothes billowed; and I fought against it. Where it came from, I couldn't tell--everything was dark at first, but even as I felt the darkness, the space around me began to lighten, to solidify--bright gray beyond, emptiness below, behind me . . . water moving in waves. . . and someone, a person, crying something to me, screaming . . . screaming . . . screaming . . . but what, I couldn't tell . . .

I was gasping for air, suddenly, sucking in deep breaths, and I realized I was on the bus. The fabric of the seat in front of me was patterned in tiny purple and black rectangles, I pointlessly noticed, and I stared down to find my own feet against the floor.

"Nadia, what is it?" A hand was on my shoulder, Henry's hand.

I jerked away from his touch. He couldn't possibly care if I were all right. Most likely he didn't want to draw attention to us, which I'd certainly done. The other riders were staring at me, but they were the least of my concern.

"What happened?" Henry tried again.

Angrily, I turned back to the window, but then I capitulated. If anyone could understand how I felt, it was him. I turned to him, feelings of terror mixing with excitement. "I think . . . I think it was a memory." I recalled how they'd felt before--when I'd begun to recall the night Henry had almost murdered Mr. Hines. They'd been frightening, coming in fits and starts. I'd been hoping and hoping for the memories to return, but nothing had happened. Could being with Henry again be what had brought this one? Was I going to begin remembering more of my life at last?

"What did you remember?"

"Why do you care?"

Henry sat back in his seat. "I don't."

Then why had he asked? I stared at him for a moment, contemplating. "I'm not sure what it was, exactly," I quietly told him. "It's like . . . surfacing from dark water. It was more a feeling than anything else. Wind--lots of wind. And the sound--someone was . . . screaming."

"Was it you?"

I scrunched up my face. "No, I don't think it was me. I think it was someone behind me, or maybe to the side of me." I gave Henry a glance out of the corners of my eyes; it wasn't as if I had anything to hide from him. The memory (if that was what it'd been) wasn't much. "There was nobody else that I could see, but I just didn't feel like it came from me. Henry--" I prepared myself to ask him something I'd wanted to know since meeting him, "do you remember anything else? Did your memory come back?"

He looked me up and down, seemed about to say something, but then he grew distracted by something out the window. "Time to go," he said abruptly, rising from his seat as the bus began to slow to a stop.

I, too, rose and followed him off the bus, curious as to where he'd brought us. We looked like a couple of wanderers, street kids. I was sure our clothing was dirty and we smelled a little too much like the outdoors. We'd neither of us showered in over a week, and we each had a backpack of our only belongings, Henry's bigger than my own. I would've bet the other people on that bus were eager to see us off it. But I thought little of them as I stepped down into what appeared to be a pretty poor neighborhood. There were chain-link fences setting apart houses and split-levels whose yards consisted of little more than dying grass and trash cans. Windows were boarded in many of the buildings, indecipherable graffiti marked strange places, a paint-peeling playground across the street had clearly seen better days and more children. We walked down the sidewalk, past a convenience shop with bars across the displays and fizzling neon signs for cigarettes and alcohol. A mangy dog urinated on a fire hydrant. A few random people lounged on stoops or in doorways, most of whom were probably down on their luck. San Judo had been huge and diverse and crazy--a big city with so much going on--but this place was nothing at all like anywhere I'd been; it was depressing. Who could Henry possibly be looking for, here?

I stayed a few steps behind him, following. He'd not answered my question on the bus, about whether or not he'd remembered anything, but I didn't want to bring it up right now. This place . . . it required concentration. He walked down the main street for a while and then turned to a side street. There were few trees, here, like you'd see in a nicer neighborhood, and the cars looked, for the most part, like they were twenty years old. Several we passed were booted. If I hadn't been with Henry, I would've been a little concerned for my safety, but I'd seen enough from him to know he was unafraid to use his gun (of course, that, too, was something to be afraid of).

After a short time, we arrived at a duplex and ascended a rickety stairway to its front door. Henry knocked, and we waited. It was late afternoon, and I was beginning to grow hungry.

Nobody came to the door, so he tried again, louder, more insistently, but again, nothing happened. He left the front door and went around to the back of the building, hopping a fence to get there. I kept up with him easily enough, and soon we were at another door, though this time, Henry forwent knocking and just kicked it in, and while I was surprised, I didn't know what I could possibly say to him that would convince him he couldn't just force his way into someone's home.

So, in we went, up some stairs, to an interior door, and there he banged again.

"Grant!" he shouted, clearly unconcerned that there were people in another unit across the hall. "Open the damn door!"

A moment passed . . . another . . . Henry yelled some more . . . and then came a timid, "Ok! Ok! I hear you. I hear you," and a chain clinked behind the door before it opened a few inches inward. "What is it?" asked a difficult-to-see face as it peeped through the crack.

Henry shoved the door hard, knocking the person backward, and just barged into the apartment. The place was disgustingly dirty--not just cluttered, but grimy, dingy. Broken blinds let in a dismal amount of natural light, and in the gloom of the weak lamps, there appeared to be a few people lying around on the floor or few pieces of furniture. They seemed for the most part to be sleeping or otherwise out of it, though one person was on her phone. The place smelled how you'd expect it would smell--like no one had left it or cleaned it in months. As rough as Henry and I looked, this place made me feel shiny and bright.

"No, no! I'm done with that!" cried the person who'd opened the door.

I turned away from the other people and looked at him. Through the poor lighting, I saw he was an average-size white boy, but his hair and scraggly beard were long and unkempt. He had on a knit hat but no shirt, pants but no shoes or socks. He was thin and sickly looking, with sunken eyes and nervous fingers that kept moving, even as he stood still.

"You're never done. You know that. Move." Henry pushed the guy out of the front room and into a better-lit kitchen, where plates and cups filled the sink and remnants of multiple meals scattered table and counters. "Sit," Henry ordered him.

The white boy sat. He was clearly afraid of Henry. I wondered why but said nothing. "Please," he begged. "I'm out of all that, now. Nobody knows I'm here--"

"Is that right?"

He must've recognized the stupidity of his statement, because he cowered and covered his face with his hands, pressed his fingertips into his forehead. "How did you find me?"

Henry didn't answer him. "You know why I'm here."

The guy lifted his gaze and glanced from Henry to me, and suddenly, he straightened up. He looked back to Henry and shook his head "no," but Henry nodded in return, and the guy started to whimper.

I watched this exchange in consternation and some disgust, and when the guy had turned to me, I felt a snap of recognition. His eyes--there was something in them. I'd seen him before. But where? When?

"Please . . . I'm trying to do more for myself. I'm trying to make some kind of life--"

"You call this a life? You're better dead."

"Henry--" I didn't know what to say to him, exactly; I didn't particularly feel sorry for this guy, but I also didn't want to watch Henry torment him.

"Stay here," he ordered me, and then he went over to the ragged-looking boy and pulled him up out of his chair. He literally dragged him across the kitchen and out a doorway which presumably led to a bedroom of some kind, and the guy pled with him all the way. I didn't know how to react. This could be a perfect opportunity to leave--to get away from Henry. Run out the apartment and get back on a bus. But a curiosity kept me from leaving just yet. I didn't want to go back into that room with those people in it, but I also couldn't stay, as Henry had told me to do. I wanted to know what he was doing.

So I waited a moment, and then I left the kitchen and found the closed door behind which the two had gone. Their conversation was muffled, but I could tell Henry was demanding something of the guy, whose voice continued to plead. Whatever Henry was saying, he wanted it to be quiet; even as I put my ear to the door, his tone was too low for me to understand. But the other guy seemed to become frantic. His words began to clarify as his voice rose, and I heard some of what he said.

"I left the Circuit" . . . "Does she know? About you--" (a cry of pain, then) . . . "I don't have it anymore" . . . "You can't have it! No! No!"

Then silence for several moments besides shuffling around, dull sounds, like thuds, as if they were struggling. Anxiety surged through me, but there was no way I was going to open the door. I noticed another door--presumably one that led out of the apartment. Maybe it was time to go. I made up my mind and was about to go for it when the door opened and Henry literally walked right into me.

I stumbled back, embarrassed that he'd caught me listening. He glowered at me but said nothing, and before he shut the door behind him, I caught a glimpse of the guy lying facedown on the floor next to an unmade bed. He wasn't moving.

"What did you do to him?"

"Let's go."

"Stop it!" I blocked his way back into the kitchen. "Where have I seen him? I know I've seen him."

Henry shrugged. "You probably did. Used to work in San Judo."

It struck me--Mr. Clean, Slim had called him! The eyes had told me. How different he looked, now.

I still hadn't moved, but when Henry held up his hands and I saw them, I gasped and stepped aside. He went to the kitchen, and I was left wondering whether to go check on Mr. Clean, run for the door, or follow Henry, whose hands had been covered in blood.

I chose the door.