He didn't realise how far he'd retreated into the shadows until he backed into something hard, pointed—too cold to belong to a jut in the sandstone wall. His mind flew to the best possible scenario—that he'd backed into the padlock on a gated fence. But the object in question was too precisely placed, and followed him when he shifted slightly to the right. When he heard an expulsion of breath, and felt the press of the pointed object move to the small of his back, he knew ...

Slowly, he turned and found himself nose-to-nose with a young boy who, by the light of the moon which had finally forced its way through the fog, was barely his sister's age and wearing the standard blue overalls of a factory worker. The cuffs of his pants dragged on the ground and his shirt dangled past his wrists. The reflective strips on his high vis vest flashed in the darkness, as did his eyes which had an anaphylactic puff of Desert Sickness about them. He coughed, sending a glob of half-clotted blood flying from his nose and catching the curve of his upper lip. In his hands was a sleek, rifle, matt black on the barrel, gliding to a glossy walnut stock end. It was a magnificent weapon, much too heavy for the boy, and much too powerful for firing at close range.

"Try anything n'ill shoot." The boy's voice was so raspy, it seemed like it had come from the smoke-hollowed larynx of an old man rather than the twelve-year-old he appeared. It was confirmation of what Dec feared. The boy was sick. And a desert-dusted mind was one that could too easily pull a trigger.

He raised his hands and saw Teegan do the same out the corner of his eye, taut strings of panic making puppets of their bodies. He heard himself say, "We're not going to hurt you," and registered how his voice rang weak and unconvincing.

The boy's puffy eyes narrowed, and his lips upturned into a cavity-riddled smile. He said, "Rat-holing from the demolition mission?" and did a half nod in the direction the construction vehicles had gone.

Dec frowned, demolition mission? and kept his eyes on the rifle, refraining from saying his thoughts out loud. Something told him it wouldn't be a good idea to let the boy know how little he knew of what had been happening in the city. "Why? Are you hiding from them?" he said carefully.

The boy tossed his head and laughed, sending droplets of sweat flying from his overgrown fringe and splattering Dec's face. His momentary distraction gave Dec a chance to catch his breath and find some rationale between his adrenaline-charged thoughts. He caught a flash of gold embellishment on the body of the gun, next to the boy's trigger finger. It was the deer head insignia, marking it as the same series design as the one his step dad used to use to blast foxes and the occasional rabbit to smithereens. A .22 bolt action rimfire rifle, requiring a license to own and which should've been kept securely under lock and key.

The bolt handle was pointing upwards.

And all of a sudden, the dream-like uncertainty that had been following him around since the memory recall with Rain lifted. As he stared down the barrel of that gun, he realised it didn't matter if he could make himself invisible, or recover other people's memories with a little bit of meditation, or hear voices. He couldn't rely on fancy tricks he couldn't control when his mum and sister needed him and when his city was on the verge of a civil war. He had nothing but his scrawny sun-deprived self, and a random scrap of knowledge he'd managed to retain from all those years ago on his farm.

With a surge of adrenaline, he gripped the barrel of the gun and twisted it out of the boy's hands with a surety that surprised even himself. In another swift movement, he had the gun against his shoulder, locked and loaded, barrel pointing toward the boy, whose mouth opened in a strangled cry. If shooting game with his stepdad on the farm had taught Dec anything, it was that the weapon wouldn't fire if the bolt handle was in the upright safety position.

He'd never been so glad for his stepdad.

Teegan gripped his arm, then let go of it, as though in fear of setting off his trigger finger. She hissed, "What are you doing?"

"Teaching him a lesson."

"He's a kid!"

Dec let her words drift past, replaced by one thought: Old enough to threaten someone with a gun, old enough to be shot by one.

Not that he was going to shoot the boy. He'd had an idea.

Pressing the barrel against the boy's chest, hard enough to leave a mark later, he said, "You're going to tell us exactly what's been going on in the city since the silent protest."

The boy, confidence gone and shaking now like a pegged sheet in an Autumn wind stuttered, "Y-you don't already know?"

"What we do and don't know is none of your business," Dec said. "You're going to tell us what you know."

The boy eyes disappeared beneath the anaphylactic puff of his eyes. He swallowed, licked his chapped lips and said in a voice like he was reciting a textbook he hadn't read very well, "T-the rebels have taken over the city. They're holding up Northern homes and offices. The Northerners have locked themselves inside, hoping the police and special forces will be able to get them under control. Only problem is the police and military are split between them who decided to fight for the Northerners and them who decided to break away and join the rebels."

Dec fell silent, letting the information sink in. In his silence, Teegan took up the momentum of the questioning. "By rebels, do you mean Southerners?" she asked.

"Yeah," the boy said. "Sick ones mostly. And members of the NYR. Night Riders, you know."

"Who's in charge of the Night Riders?" Dec said.

"Lazar Moto," the boy said. "He's their leader."

Dec stiffened. So Lazar had finally decided to take off his mask of complicity with the government and show his true motives. "How do the Night Riders have enough power to be a threat to the army and military?"

"They've been weaponised." The boy pointed at the gun in Dec's hands. "The NYR has been smuggling guns and stuff into the country for the past year. They gave them to their members after the silent protest got not even an eye blink from the government."

Weaponised? Dec frowned. Tommy. Lazar. The vision of the cave on the barrels supposedly containing ammunition came back to him now. "Where did they get the weapons from?"

"Bought on the blackmarket," the boy said, shrugging as though this was inference rather than fact. "Through the ports and the shipping places, I guess. I bet the navy's in on it. The army isn't the only armed force with Northern dirt under their nails."

Navy. Ports. Ships. Dec imagined the barrels of ammunition stored in the dingy cargo depths of the Cormorant and changed the subject before he could get stuck on the thought. "How did the NYR get the money to do all this?"

"On the news projections they were saying something about syphoning money off solar energy rebates for the past two years and using it to import the guns on the black market. Pretty hilarious, isn't it. Sols stolen from the sun to get back our sun."

"Hilarious," Teegan said dryly.

Dec was too busy replaying the conversation between Lazar and Tommy in his head to comment – the one where Lazar had congratulated Tommy for successfully connecting some sort of compact drive to the solar energy rebate system, funding the success of the revolution. The boy's words confirmed what he already suspected to be true. His vision had been real. Which meant his vision about his mother being in a coma was also true.

An image of Adele, draped in a white hospital sheet froze his mind, and might've overwhelmed him had Teegan not filled the gaping silence with more questions. "What were those wrecking vehicles for?" she said, referring to the convoy and the reason they were hiding in the first place.

The boy's look morphed from stuttering fear, to one of complete incredulity, "Where've you been? Outer space?" Then, as though only just remembering the gun still pointed at his chest, said, "The rebels plan to use them to bash down the Northern buildings and weed em out. They want a cure for the Desert Sickness and if they don't get it, well..." his voice trailed away.

"Well, what?" Teegan said.

"They're rounding them up and bringing them back here to lock in the warehouses."

He didn't have to say any more. Dec knew what the rounding up of Northerners into warehouses meant. His throat milled with sick and he had a sudden vision of the Overlands warehouse strewn with the bodies of Northerners, the black sheen of their hair tangled and matted with blood, their dark eyes blank and staring.

Again, he felt as though he'd been locked and lashed to the deck of a ship, bound to a predetermined destination just as he'd been after his father's ultimatum. Only this time, his destination was an iceberg appearing from the mist, too close to avoid.

The choice went like this: save his mother, save his city from the desert sickness, or save thousands of Northerners from being rounded up and killed.

It wasn't a choice at all. There was nothing he could do for his mum until sunrise. Until then, he would have to try and save his city from the desert sickness, and if he had time (only if he had time), the thousands of innocent Northerners awaiting their fate.

The boy was sneering at him, as though he could read his thoughts. Clearly, the threat if the gun had lost its potency. "It's not like last time. Us Southerners are armed. Most of us are dying from the Desert Sickness anyway so we don't care if we go down in a fight. There's nothing left to lose." His lips lifted and curled with distain. "It's over for you and your Northern sympathiser friends."

Dec adjusted the butt end of the rifle against his shoulder. "We're not Northern sympathisers."

"If you're not Northern sympathisers, where are your vests?" the boy said, eyes flicking down at Dec's shirt and suit pants, then over his shoulder at Teegan's lab coated attire.

"We've been out of town," Dec said, realising the orange high vis vest must've become the mark of the rebels. "We weren't aware that there'd been a change in ... dress code." He jabbed the boy again with the rifle. "How do we know you're not a Northern Sympathiser? Why were you hiding from the construction vehicles if you're on the same side?"

"I wasn't hiding," the boy said, recoiling slightly. "I was waiting for them to return. My brother's on the demolition mission, but he wouldn't let me go with him. Said I was too young to see people die."

Dec stared, wondering at how a twelve year old kid got to talking about death like he was talking about the weather. Then, he remembered he was not so different from this boy only months ago. He could've all too easily pushed over that gravestone in Memorium Cemetery and crushed Rain.

The thought was unbearable now.

"Come on, Dec," Teegan said abruptly, fingers pressing into his shoulder. "We've got all the information we need. Let's go."

Dec eyed the boy a moment longer before nodding and turning to leave. He stopped when a thought occurred to him. "Give us your vest," she said.

The boy took a step back and shook his head.

Dec growled and slowed down his words, "Your vest. Now."

But the boy still didn't move. Instead, he stared at Teegan like he's just seen a ghost. "What did you say his name was?"

Teegan frowned. "Who? Dec?"

The boy nodded. "Dec as in Declan Hancock?"

Dec stared as a thousand thoughts ran through his mind, centring around one question—How the hell did this kid know who he was? He studied the boy's face, looking for discernible characteristics. Should he know him from somewhere? Did they go to school together? Work at Overlands? After so many years of going unnoticed, it was more than disconcerting to be recognised be someone he'd never met.

The boy was speaking again, only this time, his voice came out wispy and thin as a de-curdling tendril of smoke. "I know you. You're the one they've been showing on the news projections. The one who helped that Northern spy escape. The one—" He spat a globule of phlegm at Dec's feet and wiped the residue spit with the back of his hand. "The traitor they've been looking for. I never thought the face of a traitor could be so ... forgettable. But you almost had me.

Traitor? Dec's arms shook so that the rifle trigger bumped against his finger uncontrollably. Somehow, footage of him and Rain on the street must've made its way to the news stations. And somehow, he'd been marked as a traitor, used as some kind of warning for all Southerners to pick a side or face public ostracisation.

He didn't notice Teegan had gripped his shoulder until he felt the bite of her fingernails against his skin. "Don't listen to him," she said. "Let's go."

But Dec was listening and he was more than a little bit annoyed. Sure, he had been working with the Northerner in the street. Sure, he had watched her leave for the port without doing anything to stop her. But the reason he was on the street in the first place was because of the NYR. The only reason he was in the city now was because he'd come to destroy the desert dust that was making his people sick, people like the boy standing in front of him.

Traitor, he was not.

He glanced back at the boy, considering him for the first time from all angles. He wasn't angry. Far from it. In fact, this boy wasn't so different from himself only a few months ago. He was nearly as lanky, with hair the same dusty mouse-back grey that couldn't quite decide if it wanted to be blonde or brown. But their main similarity was in their eyes. The boy's gaze held the same pent up resentments with the world as his had. Resentment for the North and what their presence in his city had done to his people, resentment for the state of his garage home which they couldn't even afford the electricity to light. And resentment for the daily grind of his job and the fact that he'd be sorting through picking slips his whole life. This was the person he would've become had Rain not saved him from the bot, and saved his mother's life that night during the dust storm.

"What's your name?" he said.

The boy screwed up his nose like he'd smelled something bad. "Name's Mark to you. As in mark my words you'll pay for what you've done."

Ignoring the gibe, Dec adjusted the gun on his shoulder, the weight of which was becoming harder to keep up the longer he held it. He pointed the barrel over the Mark's head and slid the bolt up and down demonstratively. "Mark, the first thing you need to know is that a gun like this won't fire unless the bolt handle is down. And never, under any circumstances, should the bolt be down, or the cartridge loaded unless you're about to fire it." He shifted so his weight was equally dispersed, with one foot firmly placed in front of the other. "Hold it like this," he said. "Keep your eye to the sight and make sure to relax. Remember, it'll give a good kick this one, so butt end firm or you'll be wearing a shiner." He bolstered the safety and turned the gun to give it back to Mark, who was so overcome by a sudden bout of coughing, he didn't have the strength to take it.

The words came out of Dec's mouth before he could think twice. "How long have you had the sickness for?"

"I'm not sick," Mark rasped, smearing blood on the back of his hand as he wiped his nose.

Dec gritted his teeth. The boy was too proud to admit to having the Desert Sickness. It's what he would've done himself. "Well, if you start feeling worse, find a way to get out into the sun." He stopped himself before he said too much. If he told Mark how he knew what he knew, he'd look like even more of a slime ball traitor than before—someone so close to a Northerner, she was letting him in on all their trade secrets.

Mark looked at him like he'd just grown another head. "Why are you helping me?"

"Because you're a good kid whose been given a gun too big and information too small and no one to show you how to use any of it." He rested the gun on the wall. "This city's a mess. Nobody knows who and what they're fighting for. Which is why you shouldn't trust the NYR, or the police... or even me." He turned to leave. "The only thing you can trust is your own instinct."

Mark let him walk a few steps before saying, "I wouldn't try to leave if I were you." He held up his arm. On his wrist, his palm pod was lit with a call. "I've called the NYR to come and detain you. They should be here any second."

Just as the words left his mouth, the sure-footed sound of steel capped boots arrived at the end of the alleyway.