a deep, bloody gash on one thigh.
It’s Ryder, the little boy who had given me the shy smile, whose psychic parents were locked up by FuMA. The boy who came to Harmony rather than live in a city that might someday incarcerate him, too.
“It hurts, Angela,” he cries, thrashing his arms and legs as though he can battle the pain away. “Make it stop. Please make it stop.”
“Shh. You’re going to be okay,” she says, already dressing the wound. She rolls up a tube of antiseptic, squeezing out every last bit of ointment. “Mikey, didn’t you say you sent a runner to get a new shipment of supplies? Could you—”
“On it.” Mikey leaves even before she finishes her sentence. It’s like they know each other so well he can anticipate her needs.
“A new shipment already?” I murmur to Logan, as Angela whispers in Ryder’s ear. The little boy continues to moan, and a sheen of sweat shines on his forehead, but as she speaks to him he stops moving and lies still.
“We usually wait for the next fugitive to bring the backpacks,” Logan says. “But Mikey wanted to test his telepathy with my mom, so he sent someone to fetch the pack from the meeting point, where we picked up our boat. The runner just got back today.”
Mikey reappears with a navy backpack identical to the one we brought. Hurriedly he unzips it, and a dozen white tubes tumble out.
He picks one up. The logo of a smile gleams up at me.
“What. Is. This?” Without warning, he closes his hand over the tube and crushes it.
I gasp. If the tube had a life, it would be dead.
Logan picks up a tube, too. “It looks like toothpaste.”
Mikey slams the tube on the ground; he’d squeezed it so hard the tube split, and white paste oozes out.
“It’s okay, Mikey.” Angela places a large piece of gauze over Ryder’s leg. “We had enough ointment. Ryder will be fine.”
“It’s not okay,” Mikey growls. “Do you know how many scratches you can get here in the woods? A knife slips, like Ryder’s did today. A branch scrapes your leg. You nick your finger on a bone.” He yanks up his sleeve, revealing a nasty red scratch on his forearm. “I did this just yesterday. Any of these cuts can become infected. If they go untreated, these little infections can turn life threatening.”
He looks wildly around the fire pit, skimming over each face in the crowd, until his eyes land on me. “It turns out our stopgap measure has a leak,” he says, as if he’s addressing me alone. “I asked my mother to send us tubes of antibiotic ointment.” His lips press together in a long, thin line. “This is what she sent.”
My heart plummets. He was testing his communication with his mom. A simple message, a single concrete object—and it still didn’t transmit properly.
“You two,” Mikey snaps to Logan and me. “Come with me. Now.”
He dips a cattail torch in the flame of the fire pit and leads us to his hut. Still holding hands, Logan and I trail after him. My stomach sloshes around uneasily. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but it won’t be good. It can’t be good. I’ve never seen Mikey so angry, not even on the first day we arrived.
Once we arrive at his hut, Mikey drops the torch into a built-in holder. The flame flickers, making our shadows dance on the wall.
Two buckskins are laid out on the dirt. This must be where they’ve been sleeping, as opposed to the soft piles of moss that serve as my bed at Angela’s. I feel a pang as I remember the bed Logan made me out of pine needles during our trip to Harmony. He must’ve done that just for my comfort.
I look up to catch Mikey studying me. “You don’t like me,” I say.
He opens his mouth as if he would like to agree, but then snaps it shut again. “That’s not true. But your relationship with my brother will not work. I can’t allow it to continue.”
“What do you mean you can’t allow . . .?” But the words die in my mouth, strangled by what I think—what I know—he’s going to say.
Logan shifts behind me. His breath wafts against my hair, but the heat does nothing for the goose bumps that have popped up along my arms.
I lick my lips and try again. “Why won’t our relationship work?”
Mikey looks between us. His shadow looms behind