"Rain! You're awake! Thank the sun for that."

Teegan appeared atop those footsteps, accompanied by the smell of something sour, slightly rancid. In her arms were two canvas bags, bulging with mysterious, oblong objects. She wore the same tea-stained lab coat from the night before and the dark pillows under her eyes suggested she was still running on old adrenaline.

Her gaze trapezed from Dec's open shirt, to the way his hands clutched his neck, down to the shattered trackpad, and up to Rain's wide open expression. Folding her arms across her chest like a school teacher bearing down a disruptive student, she repeated, "What happened?" and her gaze settled and narrowed on Dec.

Dec fumbled with his shirt buttons, while considering his answer. Should he tell Teegan the truth of what had happened with Rain?—How she'd called him hi-young and ranted like a mad person before demanding a patent and attempting to choke him to death? As he replayed the scenario in his head, he knew she wouldn't believe him. He would hardly have believed himself had he not had a set of bruises to remind him.

Rain watched him struggle for words and the intensity of her gaze caused him to fumble even more. The dagger-sharpness of that look bled the lie easily from his throat. "The trackpad slipped out of my sleeve while I was sleeping." The words glottal-stopped against his swollen voice box and he paused to ask himself, Why am I lying for a Northerner? before he swallowed and continued, "Rain just woke up then."

Teegan dropped the canvas bags, which made a suspicious clanking noise and took a few steps towards him. "Your neck," she exclaimed, fingers reaching to touch his bruises. "How did you get them?"

Dec pushed her hand aside and shrugged. "Back at the city. The police. It's a long story." He tried to distract her attention by pointing to the canvas bags on the floor. "Where have you been?"

"I went over the rise to get some supplies. There's a dump out there with hidden valuables if you're willing to look." She turned to Rain, who remained bolt upright in her stretcher, eyes tracking their every move, and said. "We needed that trackpad, right?"

Instinctively, Dec rose on his toes and took a step towards the chemical engineer, just in case Rain decided to try and choke her too. But Rain didn't seem to notice, nor did she appear to be the same barren-eyed stranger from only moments before. Instead, her gaze had filled with a watery glaze, which she stared through with such intensity, it was as though she was trying to see something far in the distance—so far that blinking would only get in the way. Her mouth opened and closed exactly five times before the words, "The trackpad isn't important," slipped between her lips. "I remember..." Her voice trailed away.

Dec and Teegan exchanged confused glances.

"Remember?" Teegan said.

Rain's head snapped up and she blinked, expression clearing. She rose from the stretcher and began pacing the cramped space, wincing every now and again when the movement tugged the clamp on her stomach. "We don't have much time," she said, addressing everyone and seeming noone. "Did you tell Declan about the luminite?"

Dec frowned.

Teegan replied, "Not yet. He seemed ... stressed. And I didn't want him to do anything stupid."

Rain nodded and resumed her pacing. "Better tell him now. If he tries anything, at least there's two of us to stop him."

Dec flung his arms in the air. "I'm right here, you know." He winced as the words chaffed his throat.

Both Rain and Teegan's heads snapped towards him, as though they really had forgotten he was there. Teegan pulled out a small plastic packet from her lab coat pocket and held it out. "Dec, do you know what this is?" she said.

Dec nodded. He certainly did. It was the luminite he'd sold her after Tommy's Smackdown. His cheeks warmed at the memory of what they'd done just before the exchange of the product and his eyes flicked to Rain. "What of it?" he said a little too abruptly.

Rain, oblivious to the rising colour of Dec's cheeks said, "It's not luminite."

Dec continued nodding, then stopped as her words sank in. "What?"

"It's not luminite," Teegan repeated and, as if by way of explanation, she raised the chalky-blue crystals to the long-fingered streams of late afternoon sun flooding through the window. For a second, nothing happened except the sparkle of pale-blue refractions on the stone walls. But then the luminite changed colour before their eyes, took on a brownish translucency before darkening to a sun-charred red. The rigid crystalline shards lost their sheen and when Teegan crushed them between her thumb and forefinger, they dissembled into a fine, chalky powder.

"Bad batch?" Dec offered.

Teegan glared. "Does a 'bad batch' do this?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter, holding it at arms length from the mystery substance while she flicked flame from spark wheel.

Dec drew back as the flame rose and bent towards the plastic packet, stretching long and thin like a worshipper sprawled prostrate. As Teegan orbited her hands around each other, the orange lick of fire swivelled like a compass, needle slanting towards her other hand by some invisible force.

Dec straightened, opened his mouth to offer an explanation—something along the lines of 'maybe all luminite does that'—then slumped at the missing backbone in his words. He'd seen teenagers lighting lumi-pipes before. And he'd never seen their lighters act so strangely.

Teegan let go of the fuel lever before the flame could make contact with the packet and said, "Nearly killed me this stuff. An ounce of it mixed with water and hooked up to an electrified copper wire and it blew up my apartment. That's why the police were after me."

"You could've died," Dec said, his horror emphasised by the increasing huskiness of his swollen voice. His mind went to the box of the substance still stashed under his bed, away from light and heat, but sickeningly close to his sister.

Teegan nodded. "And I would've come after you before Rain explained how it came to be in your possession."

Dec glanced at Rain, who was a few laps off treading smoke into the dirt from her pacing. Of course she'd been following him on that day too. "So, what is it?" he said, looking from one woman to the other.

Teegan took a deep breath, "If we tell you, do you promise not to do anything rash?"

Rash. Dec's mind flashed angrily at the word. Rash like wanting to save his sister from spontaneous combustion? Rash like wanting to warn his boss at Overlands that they were harbouring explosives?

A thought jostled its way into his head. What if Stanley already knew? What if the whole company was in on it? He remembered how Tim, his supervisor, had made a comment about the cargo's worth when Grubber had accidentally driven his forklift into the side of the delivery van. If it was so valuable, why hadn't it arrived via armoured guard? Why had it been unmarked? And if it was so dangerous, shouldn't it have been stored in a secure vault?

Clearly, someone had gone to great lengths to keep the package a secret, to disguise the substance as luminite, the harmless performance enhancing supplement, in the hopes it wouldn't blow up during transportation. But who? And why did Rain and Teegan think his knowing would lead to 'rash stupidity'.

Another thought crossed his mind like stepping stones over a tumultuous river. That powder in Teegan's hand had turned red like the desert, fine as the dust particles that had swirled during the storm. They'd said it was the natural effect of a dust storm for people to experience dry eyes and throats. But he couldn't remember so many people being affected by the last dust storm that had passed through the city, or the one before that. Something about this dust storm was different. Something ...

The thought dropped him on the banks of comprehension, cold and shivering. Could it be that the storm had somehow spread the disease through airborne spores? Or even worse, could the particles of dust have contained some kind of chemical weapon, a spore like asbestos that made its way into the eyes and lungs of the people of Atunda, drying them out from the inside and draining all sense from their minds? He thought of the bloodshot eyes of the protestors, the colourful scarves over their mouths, flimsy barriers against the mystery illness. They'd thought the virus had mutated and spread between humans. But what if that wasn't the case? What if the Desert Sickness was all around—in the air, in the wind, in the dust...

Teegan must've noticed the exact moment when his expression contorted in to one of comprehension, for she raised her hands and patted the air, as though to smooth out wrinkles in the space between them. "Dec ... " she said carefully. "We need a plan."

But Dec wasn't listening. His mind and body had finally found accord and he pushed past her to get outside and one step closer to Atunda. A porcelain hand gripped his shoulder before he could reach the entrance, stalling him.

"Don't," he growled without turning. He knew that hand—so small and yet so strong. He'd held that hand only moments before.

"You'll get yourself killed," Rain said, words as firm as her fingers.

Dec straightened to his full height and looked down at the crown of Rain's head. "I always knew your people were trying to kill us." He sneered with the satisfaction of knowing he'd been right all along. It felt good to place blame.

Rain released his shoulder and raised her chin level with his chest. She was so much smaller than him, and yet, her presence was like a draft of cold air oozing from all the invisible cracks in the walls he couldn't stopper up if he tried.

"What are you going to do about it?" she said. "Walk into the city and shout your findings in the ears of whoever will listen?"

Dec reached for the closest, plausible plan he could conceive in a heartbeat. He figured he had at least fifteen hours of walking to figure out the specifics. "I'll go to the news stations. I'll find Lazar. He'll know what to do."

"The NYR can't be trusted. You'll get yourself killed," Rain repeated.

Dec snorted. "Easy to advocate caution when your mother isn't the one dying."

Rain jerked like a leaf caught in an unexpected wind and Dec thought he saw something flicker behind those eyes, an emotion he hadn't seen before. Was it pain? Sadness? Anger? He couldn't tell, and when he tried to look closer, Rain had pushed past him and moved outside, putting a wall between them.

Teegan followed, calling out her name, and Dec heard the two women converse in muffled tones, followed by a long silence. As Dec found his legs again and stepped beyond the wall, he caught the tail end of Rain's words, "—want us all dead," and, "The people who created that dust would have us all gone. Not just your people."

"How do you know this?" Teegan said.

Rain shook her head, causing her raven hair to ripple in the sunlight. "I ... I just know. I'm sorry. I can't explain — "

Dec spoke up now, "If they wanted everyone dead, why are Nocturnals the only ones getting sick?" He surprised even himself at the rationality of his words.

Rain didn't answer. Again, she refused to look at him. So, Teegan answered for her, "In those canvas bags, I've got everything I need to run my experiments. If I can figure out why the 'desert dust' doesn't affect Northerners, then I can work out a cure. Nobody else needs to die. We don't need to fight each other."

Rain finally turned to look at him, adding, "And once we've got the cure, we can go to the city, save your mum and destroy the all those packages of dust."

"And then what?" Dec shot back. "We carry on living our lives as though nothing's happened? As though nobody's tried to wipe out our people?"

Rain glared at him through drawn brows. "No, then we turn our attention to True North—to the people who sent those boxes. They are the ones who need to be stopped." She turned back to the horizon, but this time, the glazed look was back in her eyes, as though she were searching for something very specific in the distance. "We can't do that while we're fighting each other."

All went silent while Dec chose his words, like pebbles, just the right size and shape for flinging. It was the question he'd asked so many times before in his head, but had never had the courage to say out loud. "You told me I'd never have to trust you again. Why should I trust you now?"

Rain ignored him and spoke directly to Teegan. "Do your experiments on me," she said. "You'll find a cure quicker if you have a test subject."

Teegan shook her head. "It could be dangerous."

Rain gave a curt nod. "We don't have much time," she paused for thought. "And what's science without risk?"

In the silence that followed, the rapid blink of Teegan's bright blue eyes was the only movement between them. Dec remembered what Rain had said in the tunnel—about lab rats and experiments and how his mother should've been honoured to put her body on the line in the name of science. Is that what Rain was doing now? Risking her life to find a cure for the Desert Sickness? Putting her life at risk for them?

Dec looked from one woman to the other as they began speaking in a rushed, technical language he didn't have the brain power left to understand. As their conversation droned on, he began to feel increasingly unsteady, as though the ground had become slick with water and turned to clay, making skates from his grip-less dress shoes.

The sun dipped horizontally to shine directly into his eyes, blanching everything into a pale, whitewash. Teegan and Rain's voices faded behind the thickening fug of his exhaustion, in which he realised he hadn't eaten in days, or drunk nearly as much water as he'd sweated out in the stress and heat of the morning.

Suddenly, the world went black as night, as though the moon had passed over the sun in a solar eclipse, and the ground slipped out from under him. With a sigh of relief, Dec let himself fall, realising as he went, it was the first time in almost three years he'd embraced, even welcomed darkness.