I found Jimmy Hubbley. They had killed him clean, as near as I could tell. A bullet through the head. Francis Marion, I remembered, had died quietly in bed, of an infection.

Campbell must have fought. His huge body blocked a corridor, bloody and torn, as if by repeated blows. He lay sprawled across the captured doctor. The doctor’s face looked both terrified and indignant; this was not supposed to be his war. His blood slid down the nanosmooth walls, which had been designed to shed stains.

Two bodies lay on the terminal room floor, when I had finally opened enough doors to find it. A woman named Junie, and a man I’d never heard called anything but “Alligator.” They, too, had died clean, of bullets through the forehead. Abigail’s bid for power hadn’t been sadistic. She just wanted to control things. To be in charge. To know what was best for 175 million Americans, give or take a few million donkeys.

I sat in front of the main terminal and said, “Terminal on.” It answered, “YES, SIR!”

Francis Marion had believed in military discipline.

It took me fifteen minutes to try everything Jonathan Mar-kowitz had taught me. I spoke each step, or coded it in manually, not understanding what any of them meant. Even if Jonathan had explained, I wouldn’t have understood. And he had not explained. The shapes in my mind darted quickly, palpitating, sharp as talons.

“READY FOR OUTSIDE TRANSMISSION, SIR!”

I didn’t move.

If Abigail had been telling the truth, I had thirty-seven minutes of life support left in the underground bunker.

Huevos Verdes, off the Mexican coast, could be here in fifteen. But would they be? Miranda had not come for me before now.

“SIR? READY FOR OUTSIDE TRANSMISSION, SIR!”

The dark lattice in my mind was, finally, opening.

It started to unfurl like an umbrella, or a rosebud. They have rosebuds now, genemod, that will unfurl completely in five minutes, with the right stimuli, for use in various ceremonies. They’re pretty to watch. The opaque diamond-shaped panes on the lattice lightened and widened, both at the same time. The lattice itself expanded, larger and larger, until it had opened completely.

Inside was a ten-year-old boy, dirty and confident, his eyes bright.

I hadn’t seen him, me, in decades. Not his sureness about what he wanted, his straight-line going after it. That boy had been his own man. He made his own decisions, undaunted by what the rest of the world said he should do. I hadn’t seen him since the day he arrived at Leisha Camden’s compound in New Mexico, and met his first Sleepless, and gave his mind to their superior ones. Not since I’d become the Lucid Dreamer. Not since I’d met Miranda.

And here he was again, that solitary grinning boy, released from the stone lattice that had encased him. A bright glowing shape in my mind.

“SIR? DO YOU WISH TO CANCEL TRANSMISSION, SIR?” There were thirty-one minutes left.

“No,” I said, and spoke the emergency override code, the one I’d been urged to memorize carefully and not forget, as Drew Arlen common Liver might easily forget, in case of emergency. She herself answered. “Drew? Where are you?” I gave her the exact longitude and lattitude, obtained from the terminal, and told her how to get the rescue force through the mucky pool. My voice was completely steady. “It’s an illegal un-derground lab. Part of the revolution that already released the duragem dissemblers. But you know all about that, don’t you?” Her eyes didn’t nicker. “Yes. I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you.”

“I understand.” And I did. I hadn’t understood before, but I did now. Since Jimmy Hubbley. Since Abigail. Since Jontcey. I said, “There’s a lot I have to tell you”

She said, “We’ll be there in twenty minutes. There are people already close by … just wait twenty minutes, Drew.”

I nodded, watching her face on the screen. She didn’t smile at me; this was too important. I liked that. The shapes in my mind left no room for smiles. The crying boy, the people — all the people in the world — inside the dark lattice. Inside my mind, inside my unwilling responsibility.

“Just twenty minutes,” Carmela Clemente-Rice said in her warm voice. “Meanwhile, tell us how the—” and then the screen went dead as Huevos Verdes picked up the signal, overrode it, and cut off my communication with the GSEA.

The morning the President declared martial law, him, was the same morning I found the dead genemod rabbit by the river. It was a week after we walked to Coganville and the government people came, them, to East Oleanta to blow up Eden. Only when Annie finally let me out of bed, I listened hard, me, to what everybody in the cafe said about the place that got blown up. Some people even hiked out, them, to look at it. And soon as they described it, I knew, me, that the government didn’t blow up the place my big-headed girl went underground. Not my Eden.

And I was the only person in the world, me, that knew that.

Still, I wanted, me, to go see for myself. I had to go.

“Where you going, Billy?” Annie said, breathing hard. She’d just lugged in a bucket of river water for washing. The government techs fixed everything, them, but two days later stuff started to break again. That’s when a lot of people left East Oleanta on the gravrail, before it could break. The women’s bath wasn’t working. Lizzie was right behind Annie, her, lugging another bucket. It broke my heart, nearly, with my own uselessness. The medunit said, it, that I wasn’t supposed to lift nothing.

“Down to the cafe,” I lied.

Annie pressed her lips together. “You don’t want, you, to go down to the cafe again. Where you really going, Billy? I don’t want you, me, taking no more walks in them woods. It’s too dangerous. You might fall again.”

“I’m going to the cafe,” I said, and that was two lies.

“Billy,” Annie said, and I knew from her bottom lip that she was going to say it again, “We could leave, us. Now. Before more duragem gets eat away on that train.”

“I ain’t leaving East Oleanta, me,” I said. It scared me to tell her no. Each time it scared me, each and every single time. What if Annie left anyway, her, without me? My life would end. What if Annie took Lizzie and just left?

But I had to stay, me. I had to. I was the only person who knew, me, that the government didn’t blow up Eden. Dr. Turner was the one that called the government to come to East Oleanta. Lizzie told me, her. Annie didn’t know. I had to stay and make sure Dr. Turner didn’t find that Eden still existed and call the government to come back and finish the job. I didn’t know, me, how I could stop Dr. Turner unless I killed her, and I didn’t think I could do that. Maybe I could. But I couldn’t go off, neither, and leave the dark-haired big-headed girl who’d deliberately let me know where Eden was in case I ever really needed it again. I owed that girl, me.

Only it wasn’t only that.

So I said to Annie, “Get off my back, woman. I’m going, me, down to the cafe, and I’m going alone!”

Then I held my breath, me, the sick fear churning inside me.

But Annie only sighed, her, and took off her parka and picked up a washrag. That was the wonderful thing about Annie. She knew there was things a person was just going to do, them, and she didn’t waste her breath arguing about it, unless of course the person was Lizzie. Actually, the next person I expected trouble from, me, was Lizzie. But Lizzie sat on the sofa with her library terminal, doing her everlasting studying, her, and glancing up at the door for Dr. Turner, ready to ask the doctor questions nineteen to the dozen.

That was another reason for taking my walk now. Dr. Turner wasn’t around, her. For a change.