“I am scared.”

I take a deep breath and look up. “I can’t imagine what it was like,” I say.

“One more entry,” Ben replies.

The next page is dated two weeks later. I read:

“It’s the first time I haven’t cried in a week. My family is dead, they told me. Nothing could have survived it. I don’t understand it all, but they say that it wasn’t the meteor that killed everyone. Mostly it was the oceans, which rose up and covered everything when the meteor hit. They say we are lucky to be alive. There they go with the lucky thing again. It bothers me, but I just listen.

“One kid asks when we can go back outside again. I can tell he’s scared of the dark. I’m glad I’m not, because it’s dark most of the time. They told him never. That it would be hundreds, or maybe thousands, of years before anyone could go back up. They told us this is our home now—in the caves.

“I feel so alone.”

I feel something tickling my cheek and when I touch my face with my hand it comes away wet. A single tear, filled with the girl’s desperate tale, moistens my cheek. I don’t know why I’m moved by something that happened five hundred years ago, but I am.

“Why did you show me this?” I ask, looking up.

Ben doesn’t answer right away and I think he may have fallen asleep, weary from the gunshot wound and our harried flight from subchapter 26. I’m about to ask again, but his eyes flash open suddenly. “I just wanted to change your perspective,” he says.

My perspective? My perspective is that my father’s a creep and he needs to be stopped; that I want to help; that I want to forge a new life for myself; that I want to get to know Adele better. What’s wrong with that? I puzzle over Ben’s words, trying to understand what he means. What does our fight have to do with a diary from five centuries ago?

Something clicks in my brain, and I realize how dense I am sometimes. Everything I want is for me, selfish. I want to stop my dad because he drove away my mom, and because he didn’t love me or her, not really. I want to help because I think it’s what Adele wants, or maybe because Roc thinks it’s my destiny, I don’t know. I want to forge a new life and be with Adele because I think it will make me happy. I want, I want, I want. I am stunned when I realize how self-centered I’ve been. It all comes together in an instant.

“You want me to see that this is bigger than just me, just you, just any of us.”

There’s an invisible smile on Ben’s face and I know I’m right, even without him saying it. “If we’re not doing this for the right reasons, we won’t make the right decisions,” he says simply.

I know he’s right.

Chapter Nine

Adele

“Mom!” I cry out, bumping Trevor from behind as I dash past him. She’s on her feet, moving around the desk, and we meet partway. And then my arms are around her and hers around me.

I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. I’m waking up for sure. Any second. Any moment. I’ll be back in the inter-Realm tunnel, feverish and delirious with Bat Flu. I’m not sure my heart can take the loss of my mom again, and I hold on tighter, willing her not to disappear.

I realize I’m crying, sobbing into her shoulder, my nose running like a faucet. Maybe it would be better if it was a dream. I don’t want my mom to see me like this.

“Adele…” the melodious and familiar voice murmurs. “You found me. You’re okay and you found me.”

Before I pull back so I can look at her, I wipe my nose and face on the shoulder of my tunic. It’s gross but I don’t care. She’s looking at me. My mom. Anna. The General? Reality flashes back and I have so many questions.

“Mom—what are you doing here?” I ask.

Her hazel eyes are full of compassion, just like I remember, soft and somber. She lifts a hand and gently wipes a lingering tear from my cheek with the backs of her fingers. “There’s so much I have to tell you,” she says.

Her head jerks to the side as she remembers we’re being watched. I follow her gaze and notice Trevor staring at us, his eyes narrowed, his lips contorted into a slight frown. An unwanted shudder passes through me. Tawni is behind him, smiling bigger than I have ever seen before. Or at least since before Cole died.

“Mom, I want to introduce you to my friend,” I say, motioning with a hand. She steps forward. “This is Tawni—Tawni, meet my mom, Anna.”

My mom releases me from her embrace and shifts forward, ignoring Tawni’s outstretched hand, hugging her. Tawni takes it in stride, hugging back.

When they pull away, Mom says, “Any friend of Adele’s is a friend of mine. Thank you for coming all this way with her.” The way she says it makes it sound like she knows exactly what we’ve been through—every challenge, every heartbreak, every success. But of course, that’s impossible.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Rose,” Tawni says respectfully.

“Call me Anna.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, Trevor,” she says, her eyes flitting to the door. One side of my lip turns up when he gets the unspoken message: You’re no longer needed here. His eyes dance from my mother to me and then back again, before he takes a slight bow and exits the room, closing the door on his way out.

“What is with him?” I say, not trying to hide my annoyance at our guide.

“Trevor’s okay,” Mom says. “He’s not the one to worry about.”

I search her once-young face for a mystery, but find only lines of age and hardship, despite having been away from her for only eight months. “Then who is?” I ask.

“There are many liars in our world,” she says cryptically.

“And Trevor’s one of them.”

Tawni laughs, high and musical. “She’s been talking like this since we met him.”

“You’ve done well in winning Adele’s friendship,” Mom says. “It’s not easy to come by.”

A comment like that should make me angry, but my heart is too full of excitement at having found my mom, and it just rolls off my back like the trickle from an underground waterfall.

“C’mon,” she says, tugging my hand to the side, where a stone bench sits, padded with something dark. We sit in a row, me, Mom, and Tawni.

I bite my lip as my brain pushes me to ask one of the zillion questions swirling around my head. As my mom smiles at me, her delicate features—a small, upturned nose, doll-like lips, and rosy cheeks—bring on memories of my childhood. I shake my head, willing them away. There’s no time for memories.

“We have to get out of here,” I say. “Dad said—”

“Tell me everything, Adele.”

I sigh, trying to organize my thoughts. My mom’s hand rests lightly on my leg and it gives me comfort. “Everything?” I ask.

“Take your time,” she says. “Everything is important.”

“But I don’t understand. Why are you here? Why are they calling you the General?”

“All in good time, honey. But first, I need to hear what you know.” I’m confused—so freaking confused that if my mom suddenly turned into a dog and started licking my face it would make just as much sense—but I just go with it. I know my mom too well. She’s a patient woman, not one to be rushed.

I start with the Pen, about meeting Tawni and Cole—my voice cracks slightly when I say his name—how we escaped the electric fence, the bombs, rescuing Elsey, Rivet’s attempts to capture or kill us. Unlike when I told my father, I don’t leave anything out, including Tristan. I tell her about my surprising feelings for him, how he followed us, saved us, pursued us on the train to subchapter 26. Tawni interjects from time to time, adding important details, but for the most part she is silent, just listening. Just before I get to the part about Cole’s death, she gets up and leaves. Mom raises an eyebrow and then turns back to me.