It was like the woods, but different. The way we were together was calmer; the animosity I'd felt was softer. I hadn't forgiven him for what he'd done, and I didn't like who he'd become any more than I had before, but I was slightly more understanding. Maybe he'd just worn me down enough, or maybe it was because I'd given up on trying to figure out what to do. I had this feeling that even if I did attempt to run from him again, he'd find me. He wouldn't let me go. I still didn't understand why. I'd tried to ask him, hoping his promise to communicate more would work, but asking about his intentions with me was a dead end. He wouldn't so much as drop hints. He would say only that he wasn't going to hurt me, and I did believe him. I knew his words left room for him allowing someone else to hurt me, but as poor as my intuition had been during the short life I knew, I felt safe with him. For whatever reason he did need me, and he wasn't going to let anything happen to me until he got what he needed.

We drove for so long that I lost track of the days. It must have been a week at least. We would've probably gotten wherever he was going a lot faster if he'd taken highways, but Henry seemed determined to take only back roads. I didn't ask him why; I knew. He was afraid that they'd catch up to us, that they'd thwart whatever plans he had. Now that we were untraceable, the Circuit wasn't tailing us. Being around people--where we had no idea who was an enemy and pretty much no one was a friend--was dangerous. So back roads it was, and they were for the most part empty and dull.

When we had to stop, we did, but those things were also all done away from civilization. We slept in the car. We ate very little and only what Henry seemed able to scrounge up: packets of soup that soon ran out, fruits and nuts, an occasional wild animal that, thankfully, he never asked me to help cook. Fortunately, we didn't eat much. We didn't have to. I'd never thought much about my eating or sleeping habits, but ever since he'd mentioned it to me--asked me why I'd never wondered why I ate and slept less than everyone else--I thought about it all the time. But he wouldn't revisit that topic, either. Always found a way to change the course of the conversation.

And conversation? There wasn't much of it. Henry was as reticent as before. It was as if that first time he'd talked, in the minivan after dragging me out of Midnyte, he'd let out as much information as he was willing to share, and it would take some time before he divulged anything else to me. I just accepted it. Was he more communicable? Not really. But he was more civil, and that was something.

I thought often of Paolo. As far as we were, now, from the last place I'd seen him, or from San Judo, I was sure I'd never find him again. I hoped that he'd made it home all right, and I regretted being hesitant with him. I wished he were with me instead of Henry. I played over scenarios in my mind, wondered how different things might have been had I stayed with him, had I stopped trying so hard to find someone who didn't want me. Who'd forgotten me.

Henry had--forgotten me, that is. He never spoke of the time we'd spent together before the Circuit had reclaimed him. He didn't speak of what had happened to him when he was with the Circuit. He talked only about day-to-day necessities. It was so different from the road trip I'd taken with Paolo, where we'd talked of people, laughed, listened to music. The ride with Henry was silent and lonely, in spite of his physical proximity. I had a lot of time to exist in my own thoughts, to try to reconcile the image of him I'd wanted to the version of him I actually had. And it took some time, but I slowly understood that I was in mourning. That I was dealing with the loss of the old Henry, feeling as if the memory of him were dying, or already dead. This was an entirely different person with me, and I had to come to terms with that. The Henry I knew wasn't alive, anymore. His new appearance, the dark, longer hair, did make it easier to finally come to terms with that.

After several monotonous days and nights, Henry had us ditch the minivan. He said we were close enough that we could use the hoverboards now, and in spite of myself, I felt a little thrill of excitement. I'd loved using one in the woods weeks ago, and I wanted to try again without Henry holding me up the whole way.

The skill came back to me quickly. After a moment of figuring out my balance again, I was steady and able to keep up with Henry. I followed him through fields of long grasses and wildflowers, wide open and drowsy in the sunshine. We moved so fast I felt we kept up with the birds. It was beautiful out--so beautiful I forgot who and where I was, forgot everything terrible about the short past I knew . . . I even forgot about the hollowness of the person I was with. He was merely a guide in front of me; everything else was me and the wind and the sun and the sky.

At length the trees thickened, the fields thinned. I had to watch more where I was going and navigate around rocky outcrops, which became more prevalent, and then, nearly three hours after we'd begun, I saw something miraculous between the trees: sunlight on water. Dark blue water. We moved so fast that before I knew it, we were flying over rocks and sand and then . . . the ocean. There it was. I knew that it was the ocean and not a lake or river. Its color, its movement, the way it sounded as it breathed its waters back and forth. Even flying through the air, I felt the salt of it, the damp of it. Something awoke in me, then. This was not the first time I'd seen the ocean. This was a return home.

The exhilaration consuming me gave me an energy I'd never felt before. The dark cities and abandoned mountain towns and dark forests and too-clean halls of the Circuit and the depression that was Oliphant and even the cold comfort of the Hineses' house--all the places I'd been until now--none of them fit. But this . . . the ocean . . . this was right. I didn't understand how, but I knew deep within, some part of me that knew my entire past.

We sped along the coast as the sun began to sink in the sky, turning the neverending water a multitude of golds and reds. The beauty of it all was astonishing. Even the San Juan mountains couldn't compete. And it was my beauty. It connected to me in my very core. I'd never felt happier in the past months than I did in those moments.

Eventually, in the darkening distance, I saw a structure of some sort sticking up out of the ground. It wasn't too tall, really, but it had some height to it, and as we drew nearer, I realized it was a lighthouse. When we reached it, though, I saw that it was dilapidated, certainly no longer in use. The upper portion where the light would actually have been didn't exist at all; it had crumbled into oblivion. The base of the lighthouse looked solid enough, though, and that was where Henry stopped at last.

I pulled in to a halt beside him, breathless, my skin stiff with the salt and spray of the ocean. I reveled in the sound of it. The lighthouse was quite a distance from the water, on an overhang of land, but the view was spectacular. An old wooden door led into the base of the lighthouse, and Henry opened it with ease. There were no locks, nothing barring our entrance. The building was pitch-black inside, but Henry motioned me in anyway, and I followed, giving the dying light over the water one last look before I was enveloped in darkness.

It didn't last; he lit a small flashlight once the door was shut. It wasn't bright, but it illuminated the space enough to reveal a bare but solid, windowless room with a staircase leading upward to another level. I was hesitant to take the stairs, but Henry led the way, and the second floor felt as immoving as the first. One more level up, and we had to stop. The ceiling there had given way in some parts, and moonlight was beginning to peek through.

I was mildly surprised when Henry began to settle down, removing his pack and his jacket. This floor didn't seem quite the safest, but I let it go and sat down near a window which looked out onto the ocean. For the first time in so long, I actually felt at peace.

"You like it, here?" Henry's voice came softly out of the gloom. He'd turned off his small light, as the moonlight gave just enough for us to see one another.

I nodded, then realized he may not have been able to see it. "Yes. I don't know why."

"We lived by the water."

I nodded again, then gasped. "Henry--what do you mean? Do you remember? You said you didn't remember anything—"

"I said nothing useful to you. No, don't ask about it. I promise that I'll explain soon. Just—we spent a lot of time near water. This water," he added as calmly as if he'd just told me he was tired. "It's why I brought you back to it. Maybe it'll help your memory."

"But . . . we were together, here? I knew we were together before Oliphant! Henry, I've felt it all this time!" I was too excited and took a moment to calm myself. Henry didn't react well to strong emotions. With deep breaths, I managed to continue in as unenthusiastic a way as possible. "Please tell me everything you know about us."

"It's—I don't have much to say. There's hardly anything about us." He slid down against the wall across from me and began to fumble with his pack, but I couldn't make out exactly what he was doing. "The only time I remember being with you is a long, long time ago, by the ocean, nearby."

"So we weren't always in San Judo? But we knew each other more than what you remember, Henry. Do you remember? I told you I remembered being somewhere with you, talking about the murder the Circuit wanted you to commit."

I heard him sigh and wished I could make out his features. "No, that wasn't me."

"But--it had to have been." I recalled that memory, wherever we'd stood and talked, in light and shadow in some cavernous place. "I know it. You just can't remember." His lack of response discouraged me. "Henry . . ." I was hesitant. "What did they do to you, when they took you back?"

He waited so long to answer that I didn't think he would at all, but then he said, "I can't tell you that."

I was disappointed, but I wasn't surprised. He'd been withholding that information from me since we'd met in Animas Forks. I listened to the waves outside, closed my eyes and just felt the rhythm of them, as if it matched my heartbeat. He had to have been right; the ocean played a part in my past. What it was exactly, I didn't know. But I felt as if a door had opened in the dark hallway I'd been walking for months, shining some light into the blackness.

"Here."

I opened my eyes, a little startled to find Henry right in front of me, holding out something in one of the small cups we'd been using along the way.

"It's tea."

"Tea?"

"I've had it for a while, but I didn't want to use it until we reached here."

I took the cup from him, and it was warm. I hadn't been paying much attention to what he'd been doing, but I did know that he had a lot of interesting and useful gadgets in his pack, including that little battery-sized thing that heated liquids. He'd used it in our packet soups when we'd been in the woods. So he'd likely used it for the tea.

I didn't really want tea, but his gesture was actually kind, so I decided to drink it anyway.

"You said you had a goal," I said between sips (and I did sip a lot--the tea was warm and tasted like fruit and cinnamon). "Was this it? To get here?"

"Yes. To this beach."

"So . . . now what?"

He sighed in annoyance.

"I know, I know. You can't tell me. Just trust you. Whatever." My voice trailed into grumbling, but I wasn't angry. I hadn't expected him to tell me.

"Nadia . . . I . . ."

I waited for him to continue, but he didn't. "Yes?"

"I'm just . . . I know you don't want to be here. When I don't need you anymore, you can go."

That hadn't really been what I'd expected him to say. I'd thought maybe he was going to apologize for something--anything. I hadn't thought he'd tell me to shove off when he was done with me. In fact, I'd thought over these days that just maybe he'd begun to care about me a little bit again, but obviously, I was wrong. He didn't want me around at all. I was only a necessary part of whatever bigger plan he had, and when he was done, he would toss me like some leftover wrapper.

Utterly insulted (and, if I admitted it to myself, hurt), I tossed my empty cup toward him, laid down, got as comfortable as possible, and went to sleep, lulled by the in and out of the waves beyond.

The waves . . . the waves. There they were, so close to me. It was as if their sound had drawn me down from the lighthouse, out of the darkness, onto the beach and into the light. It was all the same as before: the calm, the laughter, the beautiful feel of someone else--a few someone elses, perhaps--there around me, though I couldn't see their faces. And then the wind came, as before, and the other-me-though-not-me was there, as before . . . all of it, just the same.

She stood in front of me, fear on her face, though the world around us wasn't melting away; it was still the sand, the water, the sky--but there was something past her. Rocky cliffs, and pines, and . . . yes. . . a building, huge and modern, with glass walls reflecting the sunlight. Was it a house? I couldn't tell. It was not what I'd consider a house, but then, nothing was clear, in this place. And as I looked back at her--the other me--her fear metamorphosed into terror, the scream that I'd heard in all of these memories. The scream sounded all around us, and she called out a name again--

Lucas! Tell Lucas!

I reached out my hands, took hold of hers, but the wind intensified everywhere, and our clothing whirled around us, and our hair whipped wildly, and the sea spray clouded everything. Above us, something spun and opened, like some sort of tornadic tunnel, and upward she was pulled . . . up . . . up . . . up . . . and I couldn't help her!

I called to me--her--whoever she was--and she screamed the name in reply--

Lucas!

I found the name on my lips when I sat up with a start. Henry was right there, next to me. Seconds passed before I understood that I was in the lighthouse, and it was night, and that I'd had another memory. Or the same memory, only more detailed. It was shaping itself out with every recurrence.

Henry's arms--one was around my back, holding me up, and the other's hand was holding one of mine. He was breathing heavily, his face inches from mine, his dark hair hanging so that it brushed my eyes, his forehead white and smooth in the moonlight. Something moved out of place inside of me, something didn't make sense . . .

"What did you say?" he panted, distracting me. "What did you just say?"

I hardly knew myself in that moment. I was shaking. But I remembered: "Lucas. Lucas!"

He took several excited breaths, the gleam in his eyes, the intensity of his expression stronger than anything he'd ever shown me. I didn't know what to make of it; it frightened me.

"What happened?"

"I--I don't know--I . . . there was sand . . . the beach, and the wind . . . she was me, but she was pulled away! Up into the sky, Henry. I--I don't understand, but she wanted me to tell Lucas."

"Tell him what?"

I pushed out of his arms and pulled back from him. My whole body shivered, whether from the memory or his behavior I didn't know.

"Tell him what?"

I knew, suddenly. It was so obvious I didn't know why I hadn't already figured it out. Looking right at him, his whole body suspended as if he were waiting in anticipation of my reply, I said matter-of-factly, "It's why you need me, isn't it? You need my memory."