IT WAS A list that brought me to Nik Nik, and a list that took me away from him. I’ve written thousands of lists since Pax first taught me to read in the kitchen of the House during his off hours. Even when my mother was kicked out, the House was open to me. I’m sure Pax already knew I wouldn’t be cut out for the work, and he tried to make me qualified for something else, something lower-paying but easier to grasp. In my journal I’ve got a list written in Eldridge code of everything I know about Dell. It’s two and a half pages long. Not much, really, for six years.

    When my mother spun her last and Exlee told me I’d never make it as a worker, I made a list of options. There were only two.

Suicide.

Nik Nik.

I hid in the rooftops near his hangouts, and took note of the kinds of girls he never noticed and the kinds of girls he always noticed. He didn’t like sweet girls; he didn’t like girls who were quiet. But he didn’t sleep with the street-loud type, the kind you want in your corner in a fight. He’d recruit them as misters, or keep them as friends, but that was all. I became what he wanted, something in between. I put an x in my name and pretended I’d been there before. And it worked.

The hardest part was trying not to like it. I had to remind myself that his newly dead father had branded my mom like a cow and taught me what a broken bone felt like before I’d even learned to read. Remind myself it was Nik Nik’s runners who brought my mom her last dose. When I was in danger of forgetting, I made a new list, names of people who walked into his office but were found open-eyed and blood-drained in the wasteland.

My last night on Earth 22, my Earth, Nik Nik was drowning me because one of his runners had found my journal and told him about my lists. He wanted to know who was asking. He thought the governments of the walled cities had broken their implied agreement of mutual noninterference—we weren’t allowed to vote in their elections or freely visit their towns, so they didn’t ask taxes from, or offer policing to, us.

When I told him the truth, that I was doing it to remind myself who he really was, to keep myself from loving him, he’d looked…touched. Like he didn’t think it would be hard for anyone not to love him. It had more to do with me being broken than him being worthy, but he still kissed me before he left me in the mud. He still went home expecting me to follow. And if I hadn’t found my own dead body in the sand that day, I would have.

CHAPTER SIX

When I wake up again the sun has risen and Nik Nik is sitting in a chair at the foot of my—our, I mean, his—bed. He may have slept somewhere else, but he’s settled in like he’s been waiting a while even though the light tells me it’s not yet full day.

He sees my eyes open and smiles. “Good news, as of this morning you can be reasonably assured you’re going to survive.”

I ignore what seems to be genuine happiness in his voice and look at the book in his hand.

“Why are you pretending to read my journal?”

He adjusts his glasses—fucking glasses?—and tilts his head. “Sorry? I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I was trying to find out who you are.”

“Stop.”

“Stop?”

“Stop acting like you can read.”

That catches his attention. He’s shocked, but not angry. Or maybe he is angry and this Nik Nik knows how to hide his rage to strike later.

He slides a nail into the book to choose a page. The nail is long like always, but not filed sharp to a stiletto’s point or dipped black. He opens the book, and reads.

    “?‘Reasons I have lived: I don’t know, but there are eight.’?”

I try to sit up, but the pods beep at me. I slide a hand out to open the latch. I must be nearly finished cooking, because it only fights me a little and it’s turned off the paralysis. I get to my feet and reach for the journal. Everything aches.

“You can’t read that! That’s in code. And you can’t read!”

He holds me back as easily as he ever has, and I should stop. The journal isn’t even important, just another collection of lists I began as a way to practice Eldridge code. It holds no secrets grander than my own fears. But he’s taken so much—from me, from Nelline, from girls with my face on so many worlds—and I don’t want him to have this too. I shove at his hands and reach for the journal again. He drops it and grabs me, his hand as big as both my wrists. I flinch and close my eyes. I don’t know if I’m waiting for his teeth or the back of his free hand, but nothing happens. After a few breaths, I open my eyes. He’s looking down at me.

“What did you think I was going to do?”

“What you always do.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

That faux-innocent voice clashes with the image of Nelline’s twice-broken jaw. If I hadn’t read the file, I would believe that what stands before me is a man with unbloodied hands. Sure, I’ve heard of killers like this. The calm, well-groomed ones with mommy issues who always do weird shit like skin their victims to wear their faces. But I’d always thought it was a Wiley City problem. I mean, Ashtown kills, sure. But we kill. We growl and we fight and we avenge and we retaliate. We don’t do this polite coddling before we strike. We don’t lick the tears. I’m not saying it’s any better morally—a body’s a body—I’m just saying I don’t understand it.

I have hated Nik Nik for many things, but lying was never one of his sins. His enemies always know they are his enemies, and his friends always know they are safe. He doesn’t smile and knife you in the back. This Nik Nik’s behavior opens a new side to him, makes him not the man I know, or anything like him.

    “Yes you will. Because you hurt everything you’ve ever touched.”

I expect more of that chagrined smile, the one slowly making me believe I’m crazy. Or maybe for his mask to finally crack and reveal the rage of the man I know him to be.

Instead, he looks desperate. He picks my journal up off the floor.

“That isn’t true. What you wrote in here, it’s wrong. You don’t know me.”

Humans are unknowable, right? It should be easy to agree, to say I don’t know him, fly under his radar until I’m healed enough to traverse. But the letters on my back burn, and I can’t. I can’t forget that he broke Nelline the same way he tried to break me. Humans are unknowable, but Nik Nik is an animal.

“Listen well, Yerjanik: I’ve always known you, and there is no evil you could not commit.”

He shakes his head, less like he’s denying the content of my words than denying having heard it at all.

“You should get back in the pod. You survived the fever, but your breaks need more time.”

He leaves without waiting for my response, like he can’t afford to hear what I might say next. I don’t think he even realizes he’s still clutching my journal to his chest. He certainly doesn’t realize when I reach the door behind him, and keep the handle turned to stop him from locking it. He doesn’t try. I prop the door so that it looks closed but doesn’t latch, just in case, and then I change out of the pod gown and into my own clothes, left neatly folded on the chair by the bed. My pack is still missing, but it just contained food, backup tech, and emergency medical. The only real loss is the journal, and I’ll get over it. I take the collar from my vest and check for a signal, but the fortress walls are too thick. I need to get outside to be free.

I open the door.

I know I’m not healed enough to get through the trip home without rebreaking a few bones, but there are pods on Earth Zero, too, and people less injured and with less to hide than me have died inside the palace. I’m unsteady, so I keep a hand on the wall as I make my way toward the east side of the house. The front door is perpetually guarded, but the side doors were always just locked and patrolled. All I need to do is time it right.

    By the time I get to the side exit, I’m more than a little dizzy and weak enough to use the wall for more than just steadying. Still, I manage to stop and notice the shadows. They’re too dark, and when a runner steps out from each side, I’m only surprised I didn’t expect it.

One of the runners is a boy. He’s no more than twelve, but he’s already got his first mark: an eye tattooed behind his ear. The superstitious, and there is no group more superstitious than runners, used to believe the mark would improve aim while driving. I haven’t seen a runner with it in ages. But then, Nik Nik never let runners under fourteen take a mark, so this is all new ground.

His partner, probably his mentor though he doesn’t look much older himself, steps forward.

“No visitors on the log tonight. You trespassing?”

I can’t process the question. I can only whisper, disbelieving, “Michael?”

Using the name is a mistake, but here my stepbrother stands, marked in every visible place.

His hands tighten to fists at the name. “Mr. Cross,” he says.