

ANIMAL GRAPH

### Ami Blackwelder

### GRAPH WORLD: Book 1

ISBN: 9780463987810

### Smashwords Edition

### Copyright © 2017 by Ami Blackwelder

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or re-produced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any infor-mation storage retrieval system without the written permis-sion of the author except in the case of brief quotations em-bodied in critical articles and reviews.

M. Black books may be ordered through local book ven-ues and online retailers or by contacting the author. For more information, please visit her main website and her sister website:

http://MBlackDystopianThrillers.blogspot.com

http://AmiBlackwelder.blogspot.com

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are ei-ther the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Proofread and edited by Thomas Shutt of Main Line Editing

Copyedited by Eloquent Enraptures

Beta-Read by Kevin Steffen, Jenn Davis Bergthold, Mei Lau, Christina Blinn, Liz Baidinger, Katie Cook, Len Steele, Story Gnomes, Carol Brandon

Cover art by Eloquent Enraptures

If you enjoy this, try EXOTIQA and SIMULATION by M.Black.

Animal Graph is the third story from dysto-pian author M. Black (Simulation, Exotiqa, Ani-mal Graph). Her novels are branded Enter To-morrow with a focus on robots, artificial intelli-gence, simulations, wildlife, grafting, cloning, illusions, or futuristic technology.

This novel came to her in a dream.

Set in the Amazonian jungles of South America, M.Black weaves an action-packed tale in this original YA Amazonian Dystopia set for-ty-two years after a nuclear war. Jin, a prisoner of King Borran, and Adan, another Graphed, have to fight for their survival in a utopia gone wrong. In a world where animal cells and neural tissue have been grafted into humans, and hu-mans are connected by brain waves to chosen animals from the Amazon, will Jin and Adan survive? Will they ever find their Animal Graph counterparts? Can the Earth find harmony with humanity and the animals or will those wanting to destroy it all win?

Socially relevant, dark and sexy, with themes that hang on environmental concerns and animal welfare...ENTER TOMORROW with ANIMAL GRAPH. A novel along the lines of Hunger Games meets X-Men. If you're a fan of The Treemakers, The Sowing, Simulation, Age of Order, A Brave New World or A Canticle for Leibowitz, you may also enjoy this novel.

## Dedicated to the animals of the Earth.
Table of Contents

CHASE

WAKING

ADAN

CROSSING

FACILITY

ORINOCO

TRUEZUELA

TRUTHS

HOLLOW TREE

GUYANA'S GREEN

GUYANA

PARTS

KAIETEUR FALLS

ILLEGALS

SNIFFERS

SECLUDED

REFUGE

ALEXANDRIA

VISIONS

MACAPA

BORRAN

LEVERAGE

FREEDOM

HOME
CHASE

MY BOTTOM SLIDES DOWN the wet, slip-pery cliff at the end of the path of foliage, dropping me forty meters into the abyss below where I thrash, arms flailing about me in a sure drown, water flooding my tight throat in a struggle for air. As I fight to get my wits about me, my long auburn hair clings to my side like a second skin. I barely know how to swim, but I have no other choice except to sink downward to where I won't be seen. Soldiers on my trail and the choking gas has almost reached me.

Glancing skyward, under a thin layer of water, I see a cake of the pinkish fog choke the plants and moss above, moss that grows off dark stones there—the only elegance out here in this bleakness. Water cascades into a beautiful waterfall toward me in a steady stream when I hear the loud fog horn from my pursuers, alert-ing everyone in the vicinity that I'm nearby.

They'll need to find me before sundown or risk encountering the savage wildlife of the Amazon rain-forest, like Radguars, a mutated form of the jaguar which began to appear after the radiation hit. No one ever lives after facing one. They'll tear a man into shreds.

I hear them coming, five of them—they always come in fives. Thick boots hit the forest floor in a scratch-scratch as they approach the end of my path. I'm not even sure how I do this—hear them. The dis-tance is more than thirty meters away and the rush of water interferes with my ears. I never would have been able to do this before they took me.

Taken in the middle of the night by Borran's sol-diers while asleep in my cell, a two-by-three-meter room in which I'd been locked for a year, since I was sixteen, after I'd stolen a loaf of bread from a village vendor. Block D, Cell 47; D47 was my designation.

Hadn't heard my real name—Jin Maharaj—in a year. Even my cellmate referred to me as D47. By cellmate, I mean he shared the concrete cell next to me and we could speak only through a barred opening be-tween us, the size of my hand. We all got used to call-ing each other numbers.

From under the thin layer of water, I watch the edge of the cliff, forty meters away, where two soldiers turn their heads left and right in a frantic search for me. I can see so much detail I shouldn't, like the lines over their left chest pocket designating rank, and the mud splattered on the sides of their boots. Even the freckles splayed across the nose of one of them. They've been ordered to hunt me—to find me and then kill me, as part of soldier training. I feel weak, as if I could drown at any minute, because I can't hold my breath any longer; surely, I can't. My brain tells me I need to breathe, and breathe now! Yet I'll have to ig-nore the incessant thought creeping into my mind.

Maybe the water can take me, take my breath and end me, make it all come to a close. I'm exhausted, tired of running, and it's been a year since I've seen my mother, Ariana, and my younger brother, Carlos. They were forbidden to visit me in the cell, as all visi-tors are nowadays.

My padre and older sister, May, both died from illness six months before I was thrown into prison. It's easy to die in this world where medicines are kept only for the Prestige—the 3% upper class.

Villages only get to keep 5% of their catch—fruits, birds or fish. That's why I stole that loaf of bread for my brother. He'd gone two days without eating. Some villages grow flax or chia seeds, and others wheat or barley, still some lucky ones have chickens and eggs—but it's never enough. If we try hiding our fish or eggs, if caught—we're killed on the spot.

Suddenly, my skin feels satiated, my lungs fill with air, and I'm not sure what's happening or what I've done, but I can breathe. I take a breath and then an-other. I breathe as if I'm on land, except I'm not—I'm underwater. Then I suddenly remember I still have a chance at escape, because I'm not human anymore. I'm Graphed.

Two soldiers in my sight look over the cliff, their necks straining to get a better view, and then they turn away with a shake of their heads before retreating into the forest. I feel my chest ease with relief and take an-other deep breath of fresh forest air, nothing like the musty cell.

When I don't see soldiers after several minutes, I swim to the edge of the lake and slowly crawl out, my knees heavy, and black garb—standard prison issue—as cold and wet as my hair. My hands clasp my ears as I hear insects annoyingly buzz around me at an intensity I can't shut off, and crickets chirp, warning me of what's to come. Nightfall will be here soon, and I have to find a secure place to hide if I'm going to survive. I'll have to worry about my newfound Graph gifts later. Whether they've made me a freak or foe to the forest will have to come second to me finding safe cover for the evening.

After about ten minutes of searching, of pushing through tangled vines and large fanning leaves, and even almost stepping on a horde of bullet ants, I aban-don a ten-meter-high barrigona tree which won't pro-vide much cover even though it has good height. The huasai and palmito palms are surrounded by water, and I don't want to be above black caimans snapping at me all night. Finally, after twenty more minutes, I find a walking palm, and though low on the ground, the tent-like structure of the tree rods will act as protection around me while I sleep. I'll hear a wild animal—or solider—approaching before it gets me.

I drop to my knees and crawl between two tree rods shooting off the ground and find the tree's center. I relax my back against the far side of the rods and let my legs fan out before me over the grassy mound just as a heavy rain starts to pelt, spreading a fragrance of wet birch. Then, a crest of tomato-red sunrays wisps over me in a dying breath before disappearing alto-gether. I don't want night to come. I sit in the pitch black and can't believe I'm still alive. Do Graphed tar-gets ever make it past day one? My eyes again shift into something different from human. I feel the change like a wet sponge over my skin, and though subtle at first, the alteration soon becomes sure, and I notice anything that moves—a snake, a frog, a bird. My brain refuses to grow quiet, and I have to fight the urge to chase.

Like all of us in prison, I knew this day would come, that one day it would be my turn. Rumors circu-lated after hundreds of prisoners were taken to never return. Guards saw things, and prisoners overheard gossip. We all know the experiments won't ever end as long as there are prisoners and the King has more world to conquer.

When they first took me, I'd sit in my cell for hours daydreaming about my family, about Lila—our good family friend. She was married to a medicine man and tried to help Papa and my sister, May, when they got sick. I'd remember her words of encourage-ment, 'Nature has all the answers. Stick to nature.'

But I'd always be interrupted by our mandated chores: washing clothes, floors, toilets, gardening, or working in the shops to make rubber. Slop three times a day was pushed under the cell door to keep us alive for all the work.

Over the treetops, harpy eagles caw above me as I cower in the Amazon. The archaic sound soothes me somehow. I gaze up through the rods of the tree pro-tecting me, wondering what Mama is doing, or even my younger brother, what they've done without me for a year. I used to walk Carlos to the market vendors to get food. He was safe with me. My padre taught me how to fight.

I try to sleep—to let my Graph take hold of me ful-ly. I've discovered my eagle vision, which earlier al-lowed me to spot the soldiers' details from forty meters away; and my blue dart frog, which kept me safe un-derwater with oxygen absorbed through my skin. I've even stumbled upon my Bengal tiger's sensitive hear-ing and sight at night, both of which keep my mind more than active when I so desperately want to sleep.

Hiding between walking palm rods to keep safe from BAG—Borran's Animal Graph—soldiers set to kill me, I wonder how I'll get out of the Amazon. My lids are heavy and I shudder remembering that about forty-two years ago today, South America became a part of 'Americas the Great' after a series of intense invasions and economic pressures from Truss, called the Two Years War in history books that no longer exist.

A melodic caw of what could be a stretched harp sounds overhead. My gaze captures the large frame of another harpy eagle, and its majestic bow as it dives into the treetops, and I'm fixated on its white crest sit-ting on top of its gray head. My lids flutter, half dream-ing, as I stare at the creature, until suddenly a bellow-ing growl that could shake the Earth precedes a crack-ing crunch through branches. When a large red-spotted Radguar—with red eyes like blood—bangs against the rods of the walking palm where I've found my bed for the night, chills rush up my spine.

Each tooth is as large as the plant rods themselves are wide, and as sharp as a knife. The wild beast smells like wet leaves as I rise to my feet and jerk backward from its wide swiping paw. My instinct is to run, but I can't. I'm pinned inside the walking palm, but at least I'm safe—for now.

The animal paces and circles my bed while growl-ing in frustration, rubbing his head over the rods. I feel the coarse breath in my tightening chest, as if my lungs are shrinking. Is it my Graph, or am I just scared? When I wrap my hands around the palm rods behind me for balance, the Radguar on the other side pushes his nose between two of the rods, his facial features drawing dangerously closer. His head is too big to fit between the rods, but he pushes, his jagged teeth show-ing like razors. The weight of his body bends one of the rods with a crack and snap, and allows him to push farther inside to the center of the walking palm. Each step produces a louder crunch of leaves underneath him.

I'm going to die. This moment will be my last. I take comfort knowing that nature—or its irradiated ver-sion—will be my killer instead of BAG soldiers. The thought offers me a sense of relief, and I feel I can even resign myself to the beast's great power.

I'm ready to let him win, to give him one more victory over humankind.

He growls, a sound reverberating, and all I can hear is his sonorous roar telling me I don't belong here. When his nostrils flare and his head shakes—saliva squirting everywhere—I close my eyes ready to let him end me. But a wet nose nestles into my stom-ach like a tender kiss and my eyes flick open in my surprise. His head rests under my hands—as if he trusts me? I'm sure he'll bite me in a minute, take a large chunk of flesh with him to enjoy—this submission must be some kind of a trick. But he doesn't. He just sniffs and nestles, the wet nose wiping further against my skin. I'm positive now that my Graphed Bengal has just saved me, because tigers and Radguars mate at times in the Amazon, ever since their numbers were deci-mated, and I'm so grateful again that I've been Graphed.

I breathe heavily. I'm alive, not dead; and a Radguar who should have killed me, has not. As I look at this majestic creature who rules the forests and could kill a lion, I'm not sure if I'm fearful or curious. He could leave his deadly mark on me, but he hasn't, and I'm humbled by his docility instead, something I don't see much of in this harsh world.

Even King Truss Khan wanted to make his mark before he died. Seems all beasts do. Possess more land, more power—like a hunger that never ends. The world around us went into a frenzy when Truss took over South America forty-two years ago by force. Fear suffocated us all, of what he might do next. Soon, nu-clear bombs became the shorthand for F-you.

When the bombs finally stopped dropping, over half the human population and animals were killed—four billion people—and half of those still living devel-oped deformities from radiation poisoning. Most infra-structures of the world crumbled though space satel-lites remained for the purposes of control. A few vehi-cles and weapons were redesigned, but much of the old world was gone forever.

As I rest, I forget that the most dangerous beast of the Amazon—the Radguar—is in my lap when I let my eyes finally fully close. Hard to imagine something more dangerous than Truss Khan, that if they bumped into each other in the Amazon, Truss would be found with his head ripped off.

Maybe that thought eases me the most, gives me the most comfort—even if false. It's hard to sleep at night without something to ease me. Memories of my third night in the cell always invade me.

...My back to the wall, my hands hitting, flailing, as two nondescript guards in blue-black uniform seize my space. Their hard fists pound my body before one kicks me in the stomach and my frail form falls to the cold concrete ground, my hands clenching my sore belly.

My mind goes black. I try to push the harsh memories out and squeeze the irradiated animal beside me for comfort. Animals aren't like people; they don't hide who they are. You know exactly what they want when they come to you. The Radguar keeps to my folded legs and then to my side when I have to go pee. If he hasn't killed me yet, he isn't going to and I know I can trust him. The soldiers' fear of the wild—of Radguars—will keep me safe from them, at least during the night, but then I'll have to be ready to face the sol-diers by morning, a morning that took twenty-two years to heal from the damage of the nuclear war started by Truss.

When Truss finally died, his son, Borran, took over. Has been for the past four years, experimenting. Prisoners were the first to undergo the Graph proce-dure to enhance human abilities by grafting animal cells and neural tissue into human bodies. As a side effect, electrical pulses from animal brain waves would fuse—or Graph—into the human's brain waves and form an intuitive bond with the animal.

King Borran Khan wants to control the world and has finally perfected what my world today knows as Animal Graphing.
WAKING

THE SQUAWK OF THE harpy eagle swooshing in the sky awakens me as if to tell me danger is ahead, and I almost forget where I am. Yawning, I lift my arms skyward and open my eyes to what I expect to be another dismal day inside my dark cell. On cold and rainy days, it's even damp from cracks in the ceiling, and the moisture of the Amazonian grass furthers the dreamy illusion. I almost call out the name of my cellmate, D40 or Sunny, to greet him, as we usually do every morning. An ironic name for someone so dis-mal. Of course, living in a cell the past six years will do that to a man. He didn't want to bother learning my name, told me I'd be either dead or released soon and he didn't want to bother with formalities. So, I stayed an assigned number.

When my hands reach to where the Radguar sleeps on my legs, I'm jerked back to my current reali-ty. Day two of the hunt. Scurrying to my feet, I don't give the Radguar time to adjust and his head slips off me. After a yawn-growl, his oversized furry paws pad toward the cracked rods where he broke in last night and he makes his exit.

"Where you going?" I cry to him, but he ignores me and leaps over a hollow, mossy log before disap-pearing behind some palmito trees and foliage. "Dammit." This would have been much easier with him beside me.

Carefully, I tread over the forest terrain, aware of the many dangers lurking beneath me; like walking spiders, bullet ants, and Crunchandas. Those I don't want to run into. The radiation didn't just affect the state of the jaguar. The anaconda has gone mad and been justly renamed the Crunchanda. It will propel it-self at pretty much anything that moves. With two heads and jagged teeth, its bite is now often worse than its hug.

Still, something inside of me, behind my eyes and ears, keeps watch on it all—anything that moves, any-thing that makes a sound. Some primal instinct I didn't have before. My Bengal tiger is deep within and won't abandon me like the Radguar. And my harpy eagle will keep a watch up in the distant clouds.

As I duck under a dangling branch and very near-ly step on a hairy spider, my ears hone in on a familiar matted sound. The pat pat pat of heavy boots. Slowly, I place my foot away from the spider and spin in the op-posite direction of the patter. I race ahead, but my speed is not influenced by the cells the BAG facility infused me with, and I soon realize I'll have to rely on my own pace to save me.

Another defeat to face this dreadful morning.

My legs swing as fast as they can and I must have been running for ten minutes straight before I push myself further, and then I can push no more. My breaths are tired and my muscles are sore, and I just want to collapse, but I can't. I can't let them win. Even if just for the other prisoners inside that wretched pris-on, I can't lose. Maybe some of the others that the BAG facility hauled out here did escape the Amazon and found a way to live a normal life after all of this? Or maybe no one ever does?

I try not to think of my odds, of how it's five against one, and how at least two of them are Graphed as well, as I squeeze into a hole in the trunk of a tree and pull a fanned palm leaf over the entrance. The pat pat pat gets closer and the smell of some kind of alco-hol permeates the air as I press my back against the hardness of the wood. My toes curl under and I try not to breathe at all as they rush past me. One, two, three, four. All in green uniform.

Where's the fifth?

I wait. I can't risk coming out now, not when I don't know where the other one is. Minutes feel like hours as I watch a baby spider dangle from a web in-side the tree trunk and spin down to the forest floor. My legs itch, and everything feels like it is closing in on me. So, I close my eyes.

All I see is my cell. Four concrete slabs of prison to keep me locked up for one more year. Two years for stealing bread in the Americas. I was to be released after I turned eighteen. If the Prestige had to fight for food, maybe laws would change. But they don't care, and neither does King Borran Khan. They've never had to suffer, to do without. The Amazon is abundant with fruits and nuts, but unfortunately it all is part of Trussanda and village people aren't allowed in Trussanda or to eat the food in the Amazon. Borran and the Prestige have no idea what hunger can do to a person.

Then, I listen intently, and hear no one. My toes uncurl and my bottom pushes me toward the palm. I let my fingers slip over the leaf and tug downward so I can peek. I don't see anyone and haven't heard anyone for at least ten minutes.

Scraping to my feet, dirt piling under my nails, I move the palm to the other side of the decaying trunk and slowly put one foot in front of the other, staying alert. After I move away from the tree, I head in the direction from which I came until finding my walking palm. A breath of relief runs through me as the sight is somehow comforting, just before I hear the squawk of a harpy eagle.

When I step toward the mock bed, I squat just outside the rods and notice a boot print—and then I feel a heavy baton hit me over the head. I crumple to the ground like tossed paper as a cry of pain escapes my lips and my face hits soil.

A loud growl reverberates behind me, and I roll over onto my back, still in pain and half dazed. The Radguar leaps onto the soldier clad in green just before he lets out a high-pitched scream. His freckled face is hardly visible in the clasps of the creature's jaws, and when the bite finally slackens, the soldier's face is not recognizable. Blood drains from his neck and I can see his shoulder bones. The Radguar chews as if he's found his breakfast, and I almost throw up.

Gagging, my hand instinctively wraps around my mouth and I feel my stomach churn, but I don't vomit. I just stare at all the death before me and think about where to hide the body. The man who was about to kill me is now gnawed in half, and I know we have to get out of here. The others could have heard the scream and will be coming for me—for the Radguar.

After dragging the body into some foliage, I cover it with more branches and leaves. Then, a sigh pre-cedes my wrapping my arms around the Radguar as I tug him forward. "Come, we have to go. This way. They'll find you and kill you."

He doesn't understand a word.

A low growl breaks his silence, and I stomp my foot before taking off in the opposite direction of where the soldiers will be coming if they've heard. The Radguar reluctantly follows, as if keeping tabs on me is his burden. I turn my head to see him at least seven meters from me, keeping to the foliage of the trees.

Radguars aren't used to moving during the day. They're nocturnal animals, so I know he doesn't want to move now, but he has to. I can't let him get killed for saving me. So, I kick the grass in a quiet rant at him before slipping behind him and slapping his be-hind, which makes him growl, but speeds up his pace.

Trudging through dense forest can be exhausting, and dehydrating. I haven't had something to drink since the night I was taken. I keep looking for some fruit to hydrate myself. When I see a swarm of insects, I know we're close. Skirting around a tall barrigona tree, I finally see it. Water. A whole river of it.

I keep to the shoreline, taking care not to fall in—who knows what's lurking. I hold on to a broken trunk filled with termites as I lean over the water's tight edge and use my other hand to slurp. I drink for a couple minutes before the harpy spies beady eyes on the sur-face coming straight for me and squawks.

Suddenly, a black caiman about three meters long lunges at me, its snapping jaws sending me jerking backward as my foot loses balance, before the Radguar leaps fearlessly onto its scaly back. The two creatures snarl and snap and growl and hiss as they roll and roll, splashing water onto my face. And that's when I hear it.

The pat pat pat. They're so close this time. Just as I lean into the wind to listen better, the Radguar clutch-es his teeth between the black caiman's eyes, and the gator-esque sea monster falls limp. I only have seconds to think, to move or die. So, I jump into the water with the Radguar, hiding underneath the belly of the black caiman, and let my Graph breathe for me. I hate this. The water. The confining feeling. My blue dart skin flushes over my stomach—a smooth, moist texture—and lets air into my lungs. For a moment, I forget I'm un-derwater.

I hear the men yelling to each other, the deeper voice overbearing. "She must be here, somewhere. She left Max dead back there."

They found the body.

A hollow voice answers, "She's not here. Just this damn Radguar! Maybe it killed him the way it did that caiman!"

Just then, the Radguar splashes across the river to the other side, where he disappears again. I crane my head back around and focus on the soldiers, while still maintaining a tight grip on the feet of the dead black caiman.

Then, strangely, I hear a female laugh. Her laugh-ter is so deep, as if caught in her chest somewhere. Her voice is airy. "You lost her. You buffoons. No wonder BAG called me."

Silence falls over the forest, except for a scratch-scratch over grass growing farther and farther away until I don't hear anything anymore. I could stay un-derwater all day if I had to; I'm getting the hang of this amphibious skin. Still, I miss my body, and I miss dry land. More importantly, I miss my family.

I have to get back to them.

Letting go of my camouflage, I swim reluctantly to the other side of the shallow river. The coolness of the water is an appreciated break from the forest humidity and swarms of bugs. I crawl up and over the sloped, muddy bank and finally get to my feet where the Radguar had entered the forest.

Standing there soaked, I realize I have to push forward. The soldiers came from this direction, which means the BAG facility is likely to be in this direction, too. I shouldn't be heading this way. But then, maybe I should, because this is not what they'd expect. They'll think I've wandered farther out and keep looking for me out there.

Midday is rough, the heat almost more than I can bear. The sun feels as if it's right in my face, even un-der all this foliage, but at least I've scavenged some citrus fruits, which I've slipped underneath my tight shirt. So, after a couple of hours of walking, I decide to take a break and climb up a slanted kapok tree because it's the first I've seen that I could scale. Using a few dangling vines and other tree branches, and my own hands for support, I manage to climb at least fifteen meters before I reach up to where I might fall and hide between a few of the leafed branches to eat.

I haven't had anything like this in prison. Even in my village, I never ate forbidden fruits. Most vendors only sell breads, pastries, common fruits, and very few fish. Most fruit and other meat is typically found only with the Prestige, but for a high price you can some-times buy forbidden fruits in the illegal black markets that cater to villages.

People will fight to the death over food in the vil-lages. Once, I had to sock an older man in the stomach to get my bag of breads home. He wanted it; it was the last one at the vendor. I've seen faces scarred with knife blades and some necks choked to death at ven-dors. Needless to say, I usually went with my padre, at least before he died.

Most villages have a medicine man, but only some are good. Our village didn't have a good one. He be-lieved draining the blood would cleanse the body of sickness. It only made my padre and my sister weaker. Still, what they offer in terms of some plant and herbal remedies is better than anything King Borran Khan gives us.

He calls his health system Prestigious. The name alone told us that he had no intention of including vil-lage folk. Anyone included in the health system could receive medicine from a clinic by a trained doctor.

However, Borran said that the Burned could not be included because they could contaminate the clean-liness by entering a clinic. Any villagers wanting to en-ter a clinic had to come from a village where there was no cross-contamination and bring their documents to prove so. Yet, very few villages refuse shelter to the Burned, because village people understand the oppres-sion under Borran, and it's hard to keep the Burned out even if they are restricted. Since no doctors, which were all from the Prestige, would ever be found trav-ersing through a village, we essentially have no healthcare under Borran.

After eating my fruits, I feel for a tiny second that this mishap in the Amazon is somehow a blessing, a chance to savor most of what I never could back home in the village. I live on the coast of South America, in an area once called Guyana. After King Truss Khan took over the continent, the region was renamed Truyana. Most countries begin with the former King's namesake. Still, in the village, we refer to the land as Guyana.

I soon forget that I considered the Amazon a blessing when I deliberately drop from the kapok tree at the midpoint and land on my feet with a thud. The smoldering heat returns, and the desperate feeling of death lurks like a bad cough that won't quit.

Rain pelts as a storm of thunder breaks in the sky, and the squawk of a harpy eagle chimes again, alerting me to danger. My eyes widen and my neck cranes around as my stare shoots across the forest in search of what the eagle spies. I look to the ground, and then to the trees. My nostrils flare at the smell of some-thing—someone sweaty.

A large body thrusts into me, knocking me over, and whoever it is suddenly pulls me off my path. A meaty hand on my shoulder drags me deeper behind a set of ferny epiphytes growing off other plants. It all happens so fast, I only have time to kick and manage to throw my foot into his chin before he lunges over me, his chest over mine, legs pinning me on either side, and blueberry-blue eyes hanging just above mine. His garb isn't uniform, but instead some kind of tightly wound dark blue leather. I'm about to scream, when I remember I have more of these wretched bastards out there hunting me. Instead, I aim to bite his hand, which is oddly gloved like his body.

He shakes his wounded palm, the sting of it more than I anticipate, but he hides his pain. His grimacing face lets out a silent snarl before both gloved hands cover my mouth. I hear a pat pat pat and raise my head to look over his shoulder. From behind a pink orchid, I watch the march of two soldiers, their pres-ence keeping me still, even at the mercy of this new intruder. The two of us just stay there, as if bound to each other to keep quiet—at least until the soldiers pass, and then as they step farther away in the forest, he re-leases me.

I scramble to my feet, my back still feeling the piercing of twigs, and stand before him surprised, con-fused, maybe even angry. "What was that? Who are you?!"

"I just saved your life." His voice is gruff, like the stubble on his chin.

I huff and roll my eyes. "Saved my life?" I look up and down at this character in front of me who couldn't be that much older, maybe somewhere around twenty-one. "I had this. I've kept myself alive just fine for a day now."

"Wow, a whole day?" he remarks, and even un-der all this stress I can still tell what sarcasm is.

"How the hell did you get here?" I notice his strangely covered body, the suit concealing him from head to toe, even his hands. I barely see his neck. The blue suit matches his stormy eyes. "Are you like me? Are they hunting you, too?"

He pauses a moment, his eyes darting in the direc-tion of the soldiers. "Yeah. I got away, though."

I feel more at ease, as though I've found gold or something. More like me—out here! I'm not alone. "Thank God." I shake my head, stumbling over my words. "I mean, I'm not glad you're being hunted too...I'm just—"

"I know, I know." He looks back at me. "Now, we can do this together."

I stand quiet in front of him for a few seconds, just basking in this, because of all the things out here, I never expected to find a friend. "We have to get going. Night is going to fall soon and we have to find cover."

"Don't worry," he replies, "I know just the place."
ADAN

"MY NAME IS ADAN, by the way," he says as he leads me in the direction where he pulled me be-hind the plants.

"Jin," I say.

He half smirks, his head tilted toward me as he leads. "Jin, huh?"

I look at him point blank in a definite 'yes.'

His head turns back to the front and he talks qui-etly as he steps in a crunch over leaves and grass. "So, you survived a day?"

"Yeah."

He sounds surprised as he grunts.

"Is that good or something?"

"Just never heard of anyone getting past day two, and here we are."

My eyes squint as the sun descends over the hori-zon, casting a sharp glare in my eyes. "You survived too. How long?"

"Same as you."

"Second day, then?"

"Yep."

His stride is long, and he moves faster than me, and so I feel myself playing catch-up as we exchange stories. "Is it much farther?"

"No." His head shakes, his curly dark hairs swing loose over his thick neck.

"So, why are you all covered up like that, any-way?" I pry as we step over a log and head toward a river, the crunchy ground breaking beneath me.

"I have a problem...with my skin."

I stop. "Are you sure the river is the best place to set up camp? I mean, caimans live there." I feel my insides squish at the thought.

Broad shoulders and a wide chin with a dimple greet me when he turns around. "See that tree there?" He points to a tall, big-leafed mahogany. "We'll climb in. It's nice and snug. Promise."

Staring at him inadvertently for a few seconds longer than I should, doubt creeps into my mind, and then he turns away and continues onward. I follow be-hind, the only other human in this vast, dense forest that hasn't tried to kill me—yet.

When we reach the tree, I see him point to a few taller ones to the right. "Brazil nut trees." He scratches his unshaven cheek. "We'll feed on them tomorrow morning."

I listen, feeling strangely grateful to be surrounded by so many trees bearing fruits and nuts. Not anything like the destitute villages where nuts are never seen. The land is just not as fertile there. I'm not sure if I should thank him or just grab what I can get. There isn't much courtesy anymore in the Americas. People are too desperate to be bothered with manners.

Adan reaches for a tree branch to pull himself up, but stumbles and trips. Reaching my outstretched hand to him, I help him to his feet and try not to look smug. His face is expressionless. Then, I let him follow me up the tree, holding onto stray branches as we balance our feet one in front of the other. We manage to climb up farther and farther until we're finally tucked away inside the thick brush of leaves, and I ease.

I lie back against a strong branch and let my bot-tom relax over a wider one underneath me, my tail-bone feeling the bumpy hardness. He sits across from me relaxed, like he's done this a thousand times. "You rest while I keep watch, and then I'll rest while you keep watch."

"No, no." I stop him with my palm out. "You rest first. I'll watch." I don't know him, and I don't know how reliable he is. For all I know, he could hand me to the soldiers if that means his own survival.

"What difference does it make? I thought you'd be tired by now, with all that hiding in the river under the caiman."

My eyes dart to his almond shaped ones, catching on his square face. "How do you know what I did? You were watching me?"

He's silent. Then, he looks up at me as if he's sto-len a cookie from my house. "Well, yeah," he answers nonchalantly. "I noticed you this morning and kept tabs on you. I followed you from the walking palm and back again, and then to the river where you ditched Spider."

I sit there, in this revelation, that this man—this hunted Graph—has been following me since this morn-ing. "Wait, you've been what?" My face must have contorted like my mama says it does when I get angry and confused at the same time.

"I thought you might be able to use my help."

"Help?" I cringe. Nothing worse than taking help from a stranger. Not in this world, where self-reliance is everything. "I don't mean to be rude, but I don't need your help." I begin to stand as if I'm going to somehow make it down this tree and over the river with an ease he could never afford. "I've been fine, and if you hadn't come running in to 'save' me, I would have continued to be just fine, too."

"Really?" he remarks as I slide one leg down the branch. "Even with Spider on your tail?"

"Spider? What the hell is Spider?"

"Not a what. A who." He leans toward me as I draw my leg back over the resting branch. "A lethal combination of wits and a thirst to kill."

"What is she, another Graphed?"

"Yep, I suspect so. Saw her back at the river when you stayed hidden underwater." His voice is scratchy, as if he wants his sleep.

My chest rises and I feel my breaths getting tight-er. Nothing about this sounds good. "How do you know her?"

"Because I heard about her through the grape-vine. Wandering spider hands. They only send her when they really want something done."

"But why...why would they send her to kill me?"

He shrugs. "They must really want you dead."

I gulp and can barely swallow. "But I'm nobody."

"Maybe they're just real pissed that you got away the first day?"

"I suppose they can't have Graphs escaping the Amazon, living among the unGraphed."

He quickly picks up after me. "Yeah, those un-Graphed can hate mixing with us Graphs—like we're a disease or something." He leans his head back over the branch behind him as yellow-beaked toucans flutter behind and croak, sounding somewhere between a frog and a pig.

In truth, the unGraphed fear the Graphs because of what King Borran Khan will do to them. If an illegal Graph is found being harbored in a village or among the clean, then the whole lot of them are sentenced to prison. Borran wants control over his people, his Kingdom, and especially over Graphing. But the tight-er his fist gets, the more ravaged everything becomes.

Villages started springing up twenty years after the Nuclear Period around the coastline of the Americas. People became fishermen and eventually took to farm-ing once the soil replenished itself from all the radia-tion poison. A school was built in the mountains for the Prestige, since the Prestige refuse to leave the moun-tains, but a school was never built for the villages. In-stead, Truss left his mark—marble statues—everywhere to show everyone this land belonged to him.

People in the villages started Graphing themselves for all kinds of reasons once Borran's Graphing tech-niques leaked. Some became Graphs because they fear what Borran's soldier Graphs might do to them, and others because they have an illness and nothing to lose. Still others became Graphs to fight with the resistance, but some just Graph for the hell of it.

Borran can't control every illegal Graphing facility that pops up in the black market. 'Facility' is an exag-gerated word. They are more like huts in the middle of nowhere with just a few of the sophisticated technolo-gies needed to succeed: a table, computer, Graphing software, basic doctor supplies, DNA and blood equipment. Still, finding a trained Grapher is harder than finding an illegal Graphing hut, and even with both—the Grapher and Graphing hut—the techniques are primitive compared to Borran's facility. Most ille-gal Graphs have only one type of animal cell Graphed into their DNA and their gifts are minor. Some people even end up dead.

Adan closes his eyes and I know he's ready for rest. I'll take my watch first. The first couple of hours are not as lonely as before. Just having someone there, close by, is enough for now. To make me feel like I can do this, that I have someone on my side.

During the night, a slithering Crunchanda makes its way beneath the big-leafed mahogany. When it stops momentarily and its tongue teases with a hiss a few times, I worry it may have smelled or seen me. I don't even know if Crunchandas use their vision for any-thing—but I don't want to find out. I stay as still and as quiet as I can, until Adan snorts. I kick him in the shin and his head shakes as his breathing returns to normal. Then, the Crunchanda slithers onward and I sigh.

For the first time, I notice the stars above me. I keep my head leaned against the trunk, my neck tilted back as I gaze up at a few constellations my padre taught me when I was just ten. He said I needed to know them well so that I could always find my way in the world—no matter where I was.

I name them from memory in my head as I glance at a few now visible in the sky: Aries, Big Dip-per, Cancer, Cassiopeia, Leo, Little Dipper, Orion, Pisces, Taurus, Virgo...and the North Star.

He was a strong man, never taking crap from an-ybody, especially the royal family. He even taught me how to fight. Every other day, after I turned thirteen. Something I had to master before he'd let me walk alone, anywhere. I got pretty good at round kicks and punches. He was proud of me.

My eyes fall over Adan, so at peace, and I wonder if I'll ever get home again. His dark blue garb is wound tightly around his body, more like a wetsuit, and matching gloves keep even his hands from me—but I'm curious. I want to know what he's got under all those clothes that needs to be kept hidden, and why. After all, he's being hunted. I'd think anything that gives him an advantage should be used.

I slip closer to Adan at the other side of the wide branch, my bottom rubbing over the bark as my fin-gers inch me across. His breaths are deep, instead of shallow like they were when he first shut his eyes, and his head is tilted to his right, as his arms sit crossed over his stomach like my padre used to do when he was upset at me.

With Adan asleep, I feel in control—not like I had with the cell guards in prison. My right arm reaches forward and my hand finds his chest as my fingers at-tempt to slide underneath his collar. Curiosity driving me more than fear. When my fingertips make contact with his skin, suddenly my skin burns like I've touched a hot stove and I jolt backward, but not before Adan's intense eyes flip open and he grabs my wrist with his clutching hand. "I told you, I have a problem with my skin."

As my fingertips sizzle, my face grimaces and I tug away from his grip. "Sorry...what the hell hap-pened?"

"I've been Graphed with bullet ants." His legs slip down on either side of the branch. "All over my body, but not my face and neck."

"Bullet ants?!"

His gloved palms press onto the branch. "Yeah, did they Graph you to be deaf?"

He sounds cold, angry that I've invaded his space, his secrets. I keep quiet for a second and then ask, "How long will my fingers hurt like this?"

"Twenty-four hours."

"I didn't know they could do that to all of the body's skin."

"Well, they can and did."

"Can you ever shut the skin off?"

"No." His gaze hits the branch, trailing off from mine. "At least I didn't die like the first three they ex-perimented on. I was their great success."

I study his expression—a mix of hate and fear. "And now they want to see that success in action."

"King Borran Khan likes to kill whatever he can't control, and I'm not a soldier."

"How did you get here?"

"Prison."

I try to think of a polite way of asking but can't think of any but the obvious. "I know, but what I mean is...what did you do to get thrown into a cell?"

He takes a long breath, his chest and head rising and leaning backward as he answers. "I was fifteen, scruffy and sick of it all. Got into a fight with some boys that were teasing me about being an orphan, and I ended up killing two of them. I landed myself in prison soon afterward. Stayed there for four years until they took me. Now, as a Graph, the unGraphed will never want me to mingle with them. I can't return to my vil-lage like this."

"You were an orphan?" My heart sinks. In this world with no one to rely on, growing up must have been very hard.

"Parents died when I was nine, in a 'cleansing' King Truss Khan initiated in my area of Maracay. Too many Burned taking cover in the villages there, the king said. My parents fought alongside the Burned, and were shot."

I need clarity. "But Truss didn't care about the vil-lages. Why would it matter to him that Burned were taking refuge with them?"

He looks at me straight on. "Because we were next to a mountain he wanted to reclaim and a group of Prestige paid him a hefty price for the land there, to build their community. We were in his way and wouldn't move out unless forced. He had to come up with a reason to exterminate us."

"How'd you escape?"

"With three friends I knew growing up in Mara-cay. We made our way to Bolivar." His gaze spreads over the vastness of forest and river in front of us. "Sum is a Burned, born of Burned parents. I escaped with him."

I remember my padre speaking to me one day about the Burned. The Burned are what we call all those people who've been deformed by radiation poi-soning. They hide in the Fringe, which are the unwant-ed parts of the Americas, heavy with insects, disease and contaminated waters and animals—unless a village welcomes them in, which some do out of pity. But the Burned aren't allowed in the mountains, or near the Prestige. Any village that takes a Burned in is not al-lowed to speak with the Prestige or receive Prestigious health care...which is why villages rely on medicine men.

Adan continues. "Sum's family stayed in my vil-lage until the 'cleansing.' His parents were murdered as well that same day. Klen and Ostir are brother and sister; they gave shelter to us both after we lost our families. Then, we all headed to Bolivar. I wouldn't be here now if not for them." He looks at me. "Before I was hauled off to prison, Klen and Ostir had primitive Graphing procedures done by an illegal group that set up camp for a week in our new village."

"Did they make it?" I'd heard too many rumors of primitive Graphs going bad.

He nods. "Yeah. They were fine last time I saw them. About a week later, though, Truss's soldiers came marching through and nabbed me for double murder."

"Yeah, cause they care so much about the law of the village."

His voice is like sandpaper. "Any reason to get their hands on another prisoner for experimental Gra-phing. Besides, Borran's kingdom has to have the ap-pearance of order." Adan yawns and then slowly stands, his hands braced on the upper branch provid-ing him balance. "So, your turn to sleep, Jin? I've got this."

I smile slightly at his offer. I need to take it. I ha-ven't had a good sleep since I was taken. A few hours of dreams, knowing he's got my back, will do me good. Still, I don't fully trust him yet, and so sleep is not as easy as I would like. I try to close my eyes, to doze off...but every time I find myself peeking just to see what he's doing. A girl has to stay vigilant in a crazy world like mine.

When the sun finally begins to rise, the colors spread over the forest and me like a blanket of shim-mering warmth and I'm grateful for it—I even yawn. Somewhere in between all the peeking, I did manage to get some shut-eye.

Adan greets me with a handful of Brazil nuts. "Told you we'd be eating them in the morning."

"You did." I grin as I pick the nuts out of his palm and insert them between my teeth, using my molars to help me crack them. They are tough. After a surpris-ingly tasty crunch, I say, "They're good. Great, actual-ly. I don't think I've ever had one."

"Yeah, don't imagine you would have. The king likes to hoard all the good stuff for himself and his elite class," Adan retorts in his usual pissed mode.

"So, what's the plan this morning?"

Adan points over the river. "See that mountain with the purple hue in the distance?"

"Yeah?"

"We're heading there, toward the Guiana High-lands."

"Why?"

"Because the BAG facility is near it."

I stop crunching on the nuts. "What? Why would we want to head back there?"

"Because on the other side of the facility is the way out of here."

"How do you know?"

"Cause I was heading in that direction and saw the opening the first day they released me for the hunt." His gaze turns from the forest and back to me, rays of sunlight glisten over his high cheekbones and firm lips. "Before I saw you." His hands wave. "You were head-ing the wrong way."

"What makes it the wrong way?"

"A large electric fence on the outskirts of the for-est making it difficult for you to get out that way."

I stare at him like he knows too much as my trust factor begins to dwindle.

He looks hard at me. "I know because I saw the fence around the facility as I headed in your direction, but that direction leads to nowhere. North is home. North is where we need to go."

"But why would you turn back for me? You could have escaped."

"Call it an obligation to other illegal Graphs. I can't imagine you did much to land yourself in prison."

"Stole bread." My eyes roll.

His brows rise in an I-told-you-so fashion, and then he nudges my side. "So, let's get going. The sol-diers are probably up already."
CROSSING

"HOW DO THEY SURVIVE out here at night? I mean, they don't all return to the facility every night, do they?"

"Most do if they're nearby the facility, but if they're out too far, then they set up camp. They have a portable electric grid they post around their quarters for the night. Any animal that touches it fries."

"You've seen it, then?"

"Yep. Up close and personal that first night. Spi-der strayed too far from the facility and refused to head back with the others when the sun started falling. They didn't wait to argue with her."

We drop from the Brazil nut tree and Adan points to the murky river, his thickset jaw tightening. "We cross here. It'll help hide our tracks, and our smell from any Sniffer."

"Sniffer?"

He steps one foot into the river. "You know, Graphs with animal cells just for sniffing."

"Sure."

He grabs my wrist and tugs me forward and we both cross. The water just hits our thighs, and about a quarter of the way in I yank my arm from him and hurry ahead. I don't want to run into any caimans in here.

I notice my blue dart frog skin likes the water, craves it, and helps me to get even more oxygen into my lungs as we cross—but I've never liked water. By the time we reach the other side, I'm surprised we ha-ven't run into more caiman, and that's when I notice the beady eye of one of them staring at me just two me-ters to my right, near the shoreline.

"Adan." My eyes dart to the right to imply the danger.

He quickly yanks off his shirt and tucks the fabric into a loop on his pants as he dives into the river water and swims past me, his arms stroking. Suddenly, a thrash and a splash occur beside me, and then I see the caiman and Adan roll underneath the water in a spin for several intense seconds before the caiman floats to the top upside down. Adan's head pops up out of the surface before his body shakes and water flies every-where. He slips his wet shirt back on and then gestures with his forefinger for me to climb up the weeded ledge on the other side. "Well, come on."

I stand amazed for a few seconds just staring at him.

"What?" He shrugs as if he's done nothing.

"You just killed a caiman with your bare hands." I grin as I carefully pull myself up the ledge, holding on to any spare branches and twigs, and use my feet to push up the muddy side. When I make it to the top, Adan is already there waiting for me and he outstretch-es his hand to help me to my feet, but I don't take it. A damsel in distress is not attractive.

I follow behind him, my mind racing with where we'll end up. "So, what's the plan, besides heading in the direction of the Highlands?"

He doesn't stop his pace; a well-directed, fast speed, and doesn't turn his head to meet my eyes when he speaks this time. "Then we find the Orinoco River. It'll take us straight into Truezuela."

It's funny that he uses the term Truezuela and not Venezuela like most villagers do. I'd never seen or traveled on the Orinoco, but I've heard the stories of villagers selling goods from canoes on the river, taking products from one region to the next by waterboat. As long as villagers don't hit the Highlands or the Amazon forest, Borran's border patrol doesn't bother them.

"You're from Venezuela, then?" His almond eyes let me know as much.

"Yep," he answers.

Most Asian features of South America were forci-bly resettled into either Venezuela or Ecuador after the Nuclear Period. Truss wanted order, he said. There-fore, shorter people tend to come from Ecuador—Trucador. Guyana and Suriname features are strictly a mix of Latino and Indian. Latino-African features are predominately found in Colombia now, or I should say Trulombia—which is where Spider must be from. Uru-guay belongs to the Argentinians, or Trusgentinians, and they have strictly latino features. Peru, Chile, Par-aguay and Bolivia no longer exist—they have been swal-lowed up, along with Brazil, by Trussanda. We aren't allowed to say the name of our lands as they were once known out loud, but my parents always did, most in villages do in secret. Truss took enough away from us all. We didn't want him taking the names of our lands as well. If heard by a soldier, we can be reported and sentenced to prison. Still, many of us use the old names in the privacy of our own homes.

We head around a few thick trees with trunks as wide as several Adans put together, and then run into a swamp. "Why do we keep hitting water? This path seems dangerous."

"It'd better be to keep those soldiers off us. They won't take this route. It's longer. They'll go around and keep to land. We're safer this way."

"And Spider?"

"Can never be sure with that one."

I watch from behind as Adan doesn't hesitate to jump into the murky water, and why should he? With his bullet skin, any creature that takes a bite, or even touches him, will end up stunned.

"I'm not going in there." I stare at the mossy wa-ter surface, hiding anything that's beneath, and wonder how I'll ever get through without getting bit by some-thing.

"You have to. We're almost there. Besides, there's no other way."

I let my foot dangle in the water to test it out be-fore Adan grabs my arm and yanks me in. "Damn you."

"Had to be done. You're taking too long." He pulls me with him across a thickening grassy swamp before he continues, "Just stay close, my skin can pro-tect you too."

I clamp my hand over one of his shoulders and keep my eyes ahead on anything that might move. Boulders even seem to look like the heads of caimans until my eagle vision clears up the illusion. But when a sting on my ankle and then a sharp gash hits me, I jump. "Something is down there!"

"Probably piranha," he responds so nonchalantly.

"Piranha!"

He yanks me forward with a tug of my arm. "Nothing to worry about, we just have to hurry."

The putrid smell of the swamp water is enough to make me vomit. I locate the rotting sloth causing the malodorous stench as Adan and I push past the mid-way mark. It must have fallen in or was dragged in by a caiman. Piranhas feast on the decaying flesh now.

When we're almost to the shoreline, another stray piranha confused about its food source bites my ankle and I'm really pissed now. I stomp my feet as Adan and I rush out of the swamp onto the dry grass on the other side, soaking. "Damn things bit me twice."

"Don't worry. Once we get to the Orinoco, it'll be smooth sailing."

Sailing, now that's something my village knows how to do well, being based along the coast of the At-lantic Ocean. But I doubt there'll be anything smooth about this journey.

"How are we going to get past the BAG facility?" I ask, crunching over twigs beneath us, keeping up with Adan's long stride.

"We aren't making a pit stop, Jin. We'll go around. Keep to the forest."

My lips twist from his remark. He can be short. I brush it off to wanting to get the hell out of here. "Won't they have some kind of surveillance set-up?"

"On the facility, yep. On the forest, no."

I shake my head as I stare at his wide back. "But how do you know for sure?" I feel the lines in my forehead tensing.

"Because the forests are too dense, too vast. Be-sides, it would defeat the purpose of soldier training. They are supposed to learn how to track and kill. Bor-ran is training his soldiers for winning, and he can't do that by cheating."

His logic seems valid enough, but we can't be sure—I can't be sure. So, I'll have to be extra cautious, watching my back as we approach. Still, that won't be for some time.

As we walk for another hour, I can see the purple-hued mountains even better, but the BAG facility is still far away. "I thought you said we were almost there."

"We are." He knocks vines out of our way and I brush off a spider web that's landed on my pants. "But it'll take at least another day, because of the round-about way we took in getting here. And it'll take longer than that to get home to our villages. So, relatively speaking, it is."

Sometimes he really gets on my nerves, or under them—not sure which. Maybe that has more to do with the fact that he seems better equipped for this—this survival—than me. I always pride myself on my strength, at least inside of my village. But then, we are far from there now. At least I have someone at my side through this, though pride keeps me from fully appre-ciating him.

We start walking up an incline, must have been for hours, until my stomach grumbles and I have to eat and drink, or put something into my belly other than Amazonian air. "When can we stop?"

"You need a break?" He asks like it's coming as a surprise that I can't walk for hours on end without nourishment. "We can now, if you need to." He climbs a tree and reaches for the fragrant citrus fruits as I fiddle with a plant and grab a few cucumbers. "Damn, the Amazon is filled with food. I'm pissed Borran doesn't allow village folk to take from the for-est. We're starving."

"And relinquish his control over us?" Adan smirks. "Besides, fruits and nuts aren't enough to live on. At least in the villages we have bread."

I don't want to argue. The bread is never enough. So, instead I suck what little fluid my cucumber has, along with seeds. "Aren't you thirsty?"

"Yep."

I stare at him, like he needs to give me more, tell me more.

He continues. "But I guess I've trained myself to not listen to my body's pain. Since I lost my parents, I knew I had to be something more—something better—than the soldier Graphs."

I had to respect him for that.

We munch on the cucumbers and the citrus, their juices a relief to my dehydration. Even their leathery skins are a delight to my parched tongue. I toss two cucumbers to Adan after he gives me a handful more of citrus. "Here, fill yourself up. After that, let's push on. I want to make it to the top of the hill before dark. Then we'll rest."

He's always to the point. I respect him more for that.

The incline is arduous, and I have to push myself more than I had to since my release into this mad hunt, but I can tell we're getting closer because my eagle vi-sion is picking up more and more details of the moun-tains ahead.

When we finally reach the top, the view is amaz-ing—like something of dreams. We must be hundreds of meters high. I see a dirt trail leading into the base of the far mountain, and even the waterfall to my right where I first had my chance at getting away from the soldiers. They were sent an hour after I was released to hunt me, and kept on my trail—even gaining on me—several times before I stumbled upon the waterfall. That dive saved me. Released my first gift. Gifts I nev-er knew I had, until that moment.

As I sit there, Adan waves to me. "I'm going to go look for food. Be back in a few."

I shrug and nod. Then I return my gaze to the horizon that's streaming with yellow-blues about to break into a red-orange, and I can almost taste it like the citrus in my mouth hours ago. I let the breeze wash over me and flirt with my straggly hair before I prop myself up and search for food myself. Citrus will only fill you up for so long. I wander downward about twen-ty meters over twigs and grass and webs of bugs, and that's when I first notice her.

I just stare at her, as if she can't see me, but that is all she's doing. Seeing me. Scrutinizing me. Her hair is a matted black color and tied into twists at the top of her head, and her skin is a soft charcoal. Her cheeks are taut, her nose long. Blue-onyx eyes look straight at me—into me—when she rises from all fours to her legs from behind a large Brazil-nut tree.

Spider!

Her partner, a male with a bare chest and tattoos covering his thick biceps, lowers to his hands and knees to roll toward me with sharp spines ejecting from his back like a porcupine. Immediately afterward, she charges at me and I'm reminded of the Radguar. Her movements are so quick and regal that I barely have time to think. But I run. All the practice fighting I did with my padre growing up taught me that. If you don't know what to do, you run.

Leaping over the ragged log in my way, I don't hesitate as I dart up the grassy incline and toward the descending sun. I peek behind me to see Spider gain-ing, and even the porcupine rolls uphill with his spines acting against gravity's force. Spider is only ten meters away when her split tongue—a pink-orange lizard-like organ—swings out of her mouth, spitting venom at me.

My arms swing at my sides and my legs push for-ward as the soles of my shoes stomp into the soil hard-er and harder during my fearful dash uphill. When I make it to the top, I don't know what I'll do. I'll be stuck or fall to my death hundreds of meters below. Maybe Spider will kill me right here and now with her wandering spider hands, or maybe she'll slobber me to death with her tongue.

My feet slide to a halt before the steep ledge and my head twists to the side to see Spider leaping over another log in her path like some sort of gymnast and the porcupine right behind her—still rolling. She'll hit me in seconds if I don't do anything.

Just as the sun disappears behind the horizon and the sky goes dark, I feel a forceful push against my body. An arm wraps around my waist and legs hug me close to a warm chest as I fall over the hundred-meter drop. I'm not comfortable so close to anyone—being touched—but I can't do anything about it now. Then the arm releases me as only legs hold me tight.

"Grab me!" The voice belongs to my friend.

"Adan?!" I throw my arms around him, my fin-gers reaching his back. I've never had to trust someone this much before, this intensely—but if I don't hold on to him, I die. My chest presses against his, and I can barely see him in this darkness, just a light shadow of him in this darkness. Only under a sliver of red cast from the last shades of sun do I finally make out his full face and know it's him for sure. Then, I'm reas-sured.

"What? How?" I look over his shoulder, our de-scent in the air slower by the second, and I finally see a silhouette of a woman standing on the hill, her dark features more visible when I use my Bengal vision. The Amazonian backdrop fills my senses as we con-tinue to drop, drop, drop.

I tuck my head over Adan's shoulder, the comfort of the shirt on his body reassuring, when his arms spread out and my leg clasp tightens around his form—reminding me that not all humans hurt you. I notice a pair of leather webbed wings between his outstretched arms and sides. "Www...what are you?"

He flips us around so that I'm facing our fall, then ignores my question and answers a thought in his own head. "She's turning from the ledge and heading down the hill."

"How do you know that?" After all, bullet ants don't have the ability to see far or in the dark very well.

"Echo-location. The sound vibrated off the trees behind Spider."

"What?"

He finally clarifies, "I'm Graphed with horseshoe bat cells." I stay quiet as we continue to fall with a gen-tle nudge, and Adan continues, "Spider always comes with her companion, Prik. Don't get pierced by him. His spines are like knives."

I ruminate over his warning as I try to forget that we are going to hit ground without a parachute. We drop for what feels like forever as I remain in the arms of my protector Graphed with bat and ant—his wings managing to act like a glider. The view has never been more spectacular, and with Bengal vision I enjoy it even more. The landing is anything but graceful as we hit in a stumble and fall over each other, but at least we're not dead. When we stand, our feet finally on ground, Adan's wings retract into his sides and I notice the rips in the sides of his shirt from the wings.

"You have any more tricks I should know about?"

He shakes his head. "No, two Graphs is all they could manage because mine are substantive. All over my body." Adan turns his head to the mountains ahead. "We'll be there by midday tomorrow."

Our third night in this hellhole is something of a miracle, to say the least. But I'm glad to still be alive. I can't die out here, leaving my mother and younger brother to fend for themselves in this world, riddled with questions about what happened to me inside of prison. Most citizens refuse to believe that prisoners are being used for experimentation. PAPE-People Against Prisoner Experimentation-does what it can to get the word out. I wasn't sure about all the rumors until I made it behind bars myself.

We tuck ourselves between two thick trees at ground level and cover up with leaves. We need to rest. "If we get up at sunrise, we'll get about ten hours. Five hours of sleep each," I explain.

"You take first watch."

This time I trust him. 
FACILITY

MIDDAY HITS US IN a tsunami of sunrays, and I can't be more grateful for all the foliage in the forest to help us keep cool in the shade. The cucumbers we had for breakfast hardly hit the spot, but I'm used to going hungry for sometimes days at a time back at my village, and at least my stomach feels better.

We can see the BAG facility tucked between the rocks of the mountain at the base of the Guiana High-lands and memories flood my mind.

...I'm on the floor, the cold concrete ground of my cell, and two guards stand over me. Blue stripes decorate their black sleeves and one laughs like a hye-na as the other rips off my pants in jagged movements. I don't scream. I don't fight anymore. I can't afford more attention. So, I close my eyes.

I shake my head and lift my chin. I'm not there now. Not there now. I let myself soak in the beauty around me. I've forgotten how gorgeous the Highlands can be since I only visited once when I was twelve on an excursion my family took, which was abruptly stopped by border control telling us we could go no farther. Papa wanted to show me where he grew up, before they were relocated. The Amazon is forbidden now. I could only see the Highlands in the distance, but the almost mystical images made a strong impression.

The Highlands are so tall and regal, about three-hundred meters high. A majestic waterfall cascades from the higher elevations and toward the basin; rivers flow over short drops into a smaller ravine. Fog like fine silk wraps around the mountain's cap and even sits in thicker pockets at the rock's sides. Various grasses and plants climb from the base to the midsection of this noble sight, and I even hear a toucan in the dis-tance.

The BAG facility hides near the ravine, where most of the plummeting water seems to end up. There's even a paved road there, something I haven't seen in a while either. Adan gestures for me to move quickly, with him, as we sidestep a giant anteater and head to the edge of a river shooting off the ravine to the left.

"We need to hydrate first. It'll be a long stretch before we hit the Orinoco."

I nod and squat beside him, both of us cupping our hands to hold the water as we slurp. I feel my stomach get queasy, and I'm sure I drank something bad at the end of day two by the stagnate river where the Radguar saved me. But I can't let this sickness in-terfere with our escape. I push the erupting pain to the back of my mind and focus on the fresh breeze whisk-ing across the Amazon and my face.

Adan leads me left, and I know the Orinoco and Venezuela are to the left of the Highlands from here. I also know that Guyana is north of the Highlands, but I can't make this journey on my own. Once I'm safe in Venezuela, I'll be able to easily make my way back home from there.

"We need to stay far enough away so that the BAG soldiers don't spot us," Adan warns as we lift up from drinking and begin to cross the river. Going around would be too arduous and time-consuming. Yet, I'm still not convinced there isn't extra surveil-lance, and stay more vigilant than usual. When Adan grabs my hand and pulls me with him, I don't cringe, or want to pull away from him. I'm getting used to hav-ing him here. "Just a bit farther," he encourages.

When we make it to the other side of the river without incident, I'm amazed. Seems no matter where I head in the forest, I've run into something. But may-be that's because of all the activity from the BAG sol-diers here. They probably scare away the wildlife.

We skirt around the trees maybe a hundred me-ters from the BAG facility, keeping to a low crawl, and tuck behind trees whenever we can in our aim toward the Highlands behind the facility. But with every step closer to the facility, the more my brain hurts. The pain is so intense I have to grab my head with my palms, rubbing my temples and forehead.

"What's wrong?" Adan asks, his brows a shuffled mess.

"I...I don't know." I keep my forefingers pressed tight on my temples. "Just feels like..." I hear the squawk of the harpy eagle and then constant croaks of blue dart frogs, until the loud roar of a Bengal tiger deafens my ears. "Don't you hear them?!"

"Hear what?" Adan asks, his head turning around in search.

"The animals!" I half scream as if this should be obvious to him. After all, they are all I can hear.

He shakes his head. "I don't hear anything, Jin. You sure you're okay?"

"The facility. It's coming from the facility." My eyes catch the distant sides of the BAG building, a rec-tangular structure with high walls and white-chalk exte-rior, metal doors, and no windows.

"Oh." Adan's gaze drops, his hand scratching the top of his head. "You're experiencing the Graph Con-nection."

"The what?"

"A side effect of the Graphs."

"What does that mean?"

Adan pushes forward, taking my hand to guide me. "Graphs all experience this differently. Some more than others, but all do on some level." I keep my attention on him, though the sounds in my head make it hard. "The animal you're Graphed with becomes a part of you, because of the brain waves. It can get worse, or fade. Mine did."

"Your Connection faded?"

"It was loud in the beginning, but I ignored it, tuned it out. Eventually, it went away. I don't even no-tice it now."

I try to focus on the trees around me, on the sky, the crisp air, on everything surrounding me—anything to pull me out of my screaming head as we approach the BAG facility.

The trees careen around the building, keeping it tucked away. Adan leads me under thick foliage, push-ing up branches and ripping down vines and webs as we pass. I try to keep focused on him—on getting out—but with each step, the sounds in my head only grow louder.

When we are midway across the forest from get-ting around the facility, I can't take the noise in my head anymore and dart from Adan's backside. He doesn't notice me veering off course at first. He's too focused—like I should be, like I would be if I weren't Connected.

I traverse, my small feet in a soft pat, over thick grass and through a denser area of trees as I head to-ward the facility like I'm called to it. Dark clouds hang overhead and the rainstorm breaks. I'm about five me-ters away when Adan turns his head and notices me gone, and yells to me, "What are you doing?!"

But I can't answer, not even if I want to. The screams call to me. All I can see is the facility. I can hear Adan's feet beating behind me in a rhythm much like the tabla drums in my village—pash-pash-pash, pash-pash-pash—and his movements only grow closer as the rain plummets over us. He's faster than me and is trying to get to me, to pull me away from the facility before I ruin this for both of us. After all, why would I be running toward it? But I can't help myself.

I finally feel myself pressing my palms against the wall of the facility, my ear caressing the building to hear them better. They're calling to me and I can't ig-nore them, despite Adan's warning. I feel the Bengal tiger—his frustration and rage—as he paces inside his constricting cage, and the harpy eagle's sorrow from being unable to fly higher than five meters. Even the blue dart frogs croak croak croak inside their warm and moist terrarium, begging for freedom.

As I fall to my knees, an alarm buzzes and blares over the facility. I've triggered something. Suddenly, I feel Adan's thick hand over my shoulder, yanking me to my feet. "We have to go!" He pulls me with him, his palm tight on my upper arm, as he drags me at first. "Wake up!" He slaps me just as thunder cracks and I hear the distinct cry of a harpy eagle.

My eyes meet his and then everything is silent—in my head. The Graphed animals have quieted, and all I hear now is the blaring alarm ringing ring, ring. Adan and I dart ahead, our eyes fixed on the Highlands in the distance, and this time I don't leave his side.

Soon afterward, a group of five soldiers in green uniforms run after us, their boots slopping in the mud. When I register their close proximity, I quickly turn my head. "We have to hurry!"

Adan doesn't need to look back to know we're in danger. He keeps his eyes on some fixed spot in front as if that's all that matters. After twenty meters of run-ning in rain, we dart underneath giant kapok trees and into a patch of creeping aroids—brilliant soft reds. Adan ducks into the kapok's twisting base trunk, the creeping aroids hiding his face as he rips off his shirt and gloves. I stay behind the mossy trunk.

When the soldiers charge past us, Adan teases and leads three of them away at once, while I topple the other two like a tiger.

I can hear the soldiers, every step they take, like it's amplified. My ears zero in on their movements, and when I see another kapok tree, I take my chance. My feet bounce off the forest floor and onto the trunk of the tree as I push myself like a bungee cord off the bark and onto the soldier behind me.

He's larger than the other one, as if he lifts weights, but the thickness of his chest falls under me when I land on top of him. I don't have much time, and I almost hesitate—but I can't—so I wrap my left arm behind his head and keep my right palm on his forehead as I close my eyes and twist, and in a loud crunch—that's maybe just loud to me—I break his neck. I breathe heavily, just staring at the limp man in my hands. I can't get his dead image out of my mind. I've never killed a man before.

Just as the soldier underneath dies, the other one leaps upon me from the front and we both go tumbling and roll over a pocket of wet soil. My cheeks cake with mud and I scrape a handful of it between my fingers before I toss the wet dirt into his pointy face. He flinches before grabbing his gun. I tug his armed hand, twisting and turning to keep the aim from me—my Bengal Graph growling. But he's strong, stronger than he looks, and just as I see Adan racing toward me with three soldiers on the ground behind him twisting and screaming in pain, the gun fires.

A hot bullet sizzles across my right thigh with a trail of smoke, and I let out an agonizing scream when Adan topples the last soldier, Adan's bullet ant skin a sure reminder of the power of Graphs.

Adan races toward the far trees and grabs his clothes before redressing as I look around for more danger, but the forest is quiet now except for rain. Droplets hit my face as I grab my wounded leg.

"I'm hit!" I inform Adan.

He just points ahead. "We keep moving."

I nod. There are no breaks in this world, and if I don't keep focused, if I give up, I die. More soldiers will come. So, I swallow my pain and stay near Adan. Even with my sore leg, I can keep up with him, but each step—every time my foot hits ground—I flinch. I feel like I've burned myself with fire, one I might have set for cooking in the village. Except it's not; it's the scorching throb from a hot bullet.

"What about the three soldiers? They're still alive?!" I yell to Adan in our run.

He briefly turns to me. "They'll be in too much pain for twenty-four hours. They can't move 'til the toxin dissipates."

I understand their agony. I only felt a slight pinch from Adan's skin against my fingertips, and that was enough to warn me to never touch him again—at least not without clothes between us.

We race into the Highlands, me struggling more than usual with my leg. The mountains rise up around us, the fog tickling my arms, the temperature cooling from trade winds and moisture-rich air, and I hear a giant waterfall even in all of this rain—the rushing and breaking of the quick descent of water like a deluge.

Keeping to the base of the western Highlands as much as we can, we continue forward and through more foliage until eventually we hit the elevated sand-stone mountain range of the Sierra de Parima. Padre used to tell me stories about the Highlands, about how some of our ancestors used to live there. No one lives there now.

"I don't know if I can do this." I grab my burned leg. "It hurts."

Adan looks at me with an ounce of sympathy and a pound of disappointment. "You have to. Soldiers are going to be on our tail. Spider won't be too far behind either."

I stretch my wounded leg, pushing myself, while keeping one hand underneath to soothe me. Stumbling over branches and leaning on trunks as we climb, Adan finally yanks me to his chest and throws me over his shoulder. "We've got to move faster than this, Jin."

Until now, I didn't realize how much strength he has. He moves me like I'm a sack of rice he's got to get to his family before dark. We don't climb for the summit as travelers long ago would have for fun. We scale—or he scales—just enough to get over and around the Highlands the best we can without wasting time. Flora is different here; insect-eating plants clamp their leaves for the kill, and tiny orange frogs seem to follow us everywhere. Maybe my Graph scent?

After pushing up and through strange plants and grasses, Adan drops me to the forest floor. His gloved hand grabs mine. "We just have to climb a bit more and then descend. I'll use my wings to fly us down to the other side where we can ride the Orinoco home. We'll avoid land patrols guarding the border into Trulombia."

"Home?" My thoughts went to Mabaruma.

"Bolivar."

I nod, grateful he's here beside me. The word 'home' stays on my ears like a good meal warms the belly—even if home to him is Venezuela. The Orinoco will take us downstream west, and then north toward the Atlantic Ocean. His village is about a day's journey from mine, which rests on the coast of Guyana near the border of Venezuela. I'll head to my home from there.

My nails dig deep into the mossy mountain of the Guiana Shield as I throw my leg over another rock and watch a cloud like a puff from a cigarette ascend over the tops. Padre used to smoke; many in my village do, but I never liked the smell. Adan keeps to my backside like a protector, occasionally eyeing my sore leg. A few more meters of this and we've scaled enough to see the other side. I've never gone this far into the Highlands, because it's forbidden. I guess I know now why. King Borran wants to hide his BAG facility and keep it a dark secret.

When Adan wraps his arms around me, our chests press against each other, and he lets his feet dangle on the ledge. I'm a tad uneasy, like we're break-ing some natural law or something. Humans aren't supposed to fly, but then, we aren't supposed to do many things we do as Graphs. His arms stretch, allow-ing for the webbing to expand and act like wings. "You ready?"

My smile twists.

Adan pushes off the edge and falls like a kite that I've played with back in my village, over the far side of the Highlands—slowly, slowly through air, gliding us back and forth as more gusts of wind catch below us.

I can't see our decent, just the retreating moun-tains as we leave them behind and I even miss them a tinge, but I can feel as we get closer to the Earth again, and suddenly Adan stumbles forward as his sturdy feet hit ground and he tries to balance, but lands on his backside instead in order to keep me from hitting my head.

I help him to his feet with an outstretched hand. "Come on, we have to keep moving." I offer his push-ing words back to him in a grin. His gloved palm sits in mine and I yank him up as he pulls with his other hand and pushes with his feet. "We did it."

"Almost, we still have to get to the river." Adan points ahead and I see a speck of water in the distance.

"And then swim?" I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

"Follow the shoreline into Venezuela. It'll be our guide."

We both look to the river as we step through a thicket of trees, but I hear the stream of water even from here, like a gentle brush of thistles over pebbles and rocks that reverberates over me. We are so close.

Foliage is denser here as we approach, but at least the rain has slowed to a light drizzle that gleams in the distance. Another few meters and I can make out the gorgeous rounded water plants and their sun-glistened green leaves. Even long rods of bamboo and bladed leafs creak creak in the after-rain wind, like a rocking chair. I spot a boto spouting water from his nostril. The Amazonian river dolphin is rare, at least those without radiation deformities. A family of giant otters keeps to the other side of the river, making a den for themselves. Their short, but twisted legs are a remind-er of what the radiation has done.

I lean in, squatting to cup my hands and drink.

"Be careful of the Orinoco crocodile," Adan warns, and I stumble backward for a moment in alarm. When Adan squats beside me to drink, I re-sume until I no longer feel thirsty. We stand and then look to each other.

"Just head downstream?" I ask.

"Yep," Adan confirms, and I sigh with relief that we finally have a clear path to follow. I know the Ori-noco. The river flows near my homeland, too.

We don't journey far before the sun almost hits the horizon, ready for another day to end. But the day isn't done with us. When my nostrils flare, and a harpy eagle above us squawks, I know we're in danger. Spin-ning around on the ball of my foot, I catch sight of her.

"Adan!" I nudge his side.

He doesn't need any more to know we're being followed. His legs spread and his eyes grow big as she comes into better view over a large mound of moss ten meters away from us. Spider's crystal-blue eyes high-light her dark complexion, and they focus on Adan as if she'd rather kill him than me. My eagle will never forget that intense glare. Her legs bend as if ready to sprint in attack just when Prik appears to our far right. He's already curling up into his ball of prickly spines. I'm not sure what to do. Fight? Flee?

Before I can make up my mind, the Radguar whom I thought I'd lost days ago suddenly barges out of the forest, growling, with front paws scratching the air between both Prik and Spider. The two of them stare dumbfounded. The Radguar then races toward me, and keeps us safe, and growls again, his rigged teeth showing at the intruders, before rubbing my good leg as if to say I am his.

Spider glances to Prik, and then they turn away and disappear into the forest behind us. "What was that all about?" I ask as the Radguar keeps close to my side.

"Graphs can't harm mammals. Something in our blood prevents us."

My brows arch.

"Remember the screaming in your head?"

I stare at him like how could I forget.

"It gets real loud the minute Graphs attack a mammal."

"But aren't humans mammals?"

"Yes, but human brain waves are different from lower animals. We can kill other humans because hu-man-to-human brain waves fuzz each other out, so we can't hear the noise."

"And reptiles?"

"The brain waves are too negligible for Graphs to hear."

My mind spins curious. "How does this Connec-tion work?"

"A lot like the noise in your head earlier. The world around just screams."

I look at my Radguar, trying to understand what Adan is saying, but don't really. And then, I don't want to think about it anymore and want a name for my loy-al tiger friend. "You deserve a name. After every-thing." I stare at him. "I'm going to call you..." I stare at his eyes. "Jade."

Adan looks to me confused, his brows wrinkled. "You know his eyes are red, right?"

"Short for jaguar and Radguar."

He shrugs. "Okay."

The three of us traverse over the foliage along the river's shoreline for an hour before Adan spots a ca-noe caught between rocks. He waves me to it excitedly. "It's big enough for two."

He pulls the canoe out of the rocks and drops the vessel into the river. "Coming?"

I look to him, and then to Jade.

"He'll keep up. Trust me," Adan assures as if he's had experience with animal friends.

"How do you know?"

"I've seen this kind of thing before."

"And you're not jealous you don't have your own?"

He half-grins. "No."

I know the Connection he's rejected might prevent him from an animal friend, and I'm not sure what hav-ing a Connection or rejecting it even means yet. Still, Adan doesn't seem upset.

I pat Jade on the side before kissing his furry forehead. "I'll see you soon."

He softly growls as he watches me wade in the river and climb into the canoe beside Adan. Then the Radguar races into the forest. As the fourth night falls over us, moonlight trickles on the water and swarms of bugs buzzing. I lay beside Adan with my head tucked on his shoulder and have a strange urge to rub my cheeks over his shoulders—the ones that keep me com-fortable. I keep one eye on Jade, who races alongside the shoreline to keep up with us.
ORINOCO

I MUST HAVE DOZED off sometime in the night, the rocking of the canoe and sounds of lapping water like a sweet lullaby. I remember dreaming about my parents, about their stories of 'before King Truss'. Pa-dre was five and Madre four, when Truss invaded and took over the Americas. They remember the wars and the nuclear period too. Sometimes I envied them, that they knew a world before King Truss—like it was some kind of impossibility, because this world—now— is all I've ever known. Then, I remember my cell. D47.

My hands cradle my stomach, in memory of my ordeal. I can never escape the nightmares. I listen to the Amazon, to forget. Birds chirp and soar over treetops. Woodpeckers peck at tree trunks, and hum-mingbirds flap oddly close to my head. When my grateful eyelids fully open and I rub the sleep out, all I see are Adan's lips, crusty and cracked. Our bodies are close and even sticky, and my backside feels the bulge of warped wood from the boat.

Adan's still asleep, so serene and vulnerable. I guess he trusts me too. I find myself staring at his faci-al features for too long. A deep crease around one eye, an almond milk skin complexion—except for the cak-ing of dirt in the folds. Long lashes, maybe longer than mine, and a rip in his lower lip. Then, I find myself drawn to his lips like I was drawn to drink the river water, for satiation and comfort.

I don't even think about what I'm doing before my lips press over his. I want to feel safe more than any-thing, and he makes me feel that more than anyone I've known. The moisture of my mouth washes over his humid dryness and lingers there until he abruptly jerks upward. "Jin?" He pulls back and his expression is wary. "Don't do that."

"Sorry." I feel rejected, unwanted. His grave glare is enough to warn me to stay away. "I didn't mean—"

"It's not that...it's your lips. You're Graphed with blue dart frog. Your kiss could cause convulsions, pa-ralysis, and even death."

"I'm sorry, I didn't...I didn't know." I pause and then wonder. "How'd you even know I'm blue dart frog?"

"I've seen the coloring flush on your neck. I know that color Graph."

He stays a good distance from me, as much as he can in a canoe, rubbing his sleeves over his lips to take off as much of me as he can, while I ruminate over what he just said. I can kill, paralyze...with a kiss?

My gaze is drawn to the forests behind him, my eyes in desperate search.

"Don't worry. Jade's been following all night. I stayed awake most of the time."

Now I feel guilty. "Sorry again."

"Don't be. You obviously needed rest."

"How long have I been out?"

"It's about six in the morning; the sun is rising." His body leans one way and then the other. "I'd say about ten hours at least. Maybe twelve if you slept the whole way."

"Damn," I say, surprised.

Adan looks ahead, where the land is still filled with thick trees. "The full journey is about one hun-dred and fifty kilometers. We've done half the dis-tance."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know how long we've been on the river and how far it is from my home," he answers defen-sively. "We studied maps in my village too."

"I didn't mean anything by it," I respond. "We didn't study too many maps in my village."

"Okay." He eases. The canoe swings right, and the river builds speed. "We're heading along the Co-lombian-Venezuelan border now."

Sun glistens through the sky, and when I hear drums beat bumb-bumb-bumb-bumb, I stand for a bet-ter view and take a satisfied breath when I notice Jade watching us from a nearby bunch of trees. We're en-tering the border of Colombia. Small dark faces of children poke out from between sundrop trees and Ev-erglades palms with curiosity. Not many travelers come from the Amazonian region toward Colombia by land or water. Citizens of the Americas aren't allowed in the Amazon.

A few longer canoes sit at the banks to the right with tied bags. We've got the same system set up in Guyana. Probably cashew nuts, granadilla, guava, dragon fruit, and passion fruit—the foods the govern-ment demands and are restricted for their use only. Any villager caught eating restricted foods can be sen-tenced to prison. The bags will be brought upstream to Esmeralda, where a depot sits for goods to be deliv-ered into the mountains for the Prestige. Villagers of Guyana make similar journeys, but over river and land to get to Esmeralda. Everything south of the Orinoco River there marks a territory called Trussanda. Brazil no longer exists; it has become part of Trussanda now. All owned by the Truss family and forbidden to every-one else.

"San Fernando de Atabapo," Adan comments as we pass the drummers.

The sounds mark the divide between Trussanda and Colombia, and it's nice to finally be greeted with something other than hot bullets and sedation gas. In-stead of border patrol, the few native inhabitants keep watch and are supposed to report any illegals or be beaten. As our canoe teeters right and heads farther downstream, I lose balance and slip, landing into Adan. But he's quick, and grabs me before I make us tip, drawing me back down to the warped wood.

"Be careful."

My cheeks heat in embarrassment. Rounding downstream, it'll take about six more hours until we're completely in Venezuela, and then about seven more until we hit Bolivar. That's if we keep at this fast pace. I got pretty good with numbers from Mama. She'd make me count all the breads and 'allowed' fruits at the village market as we shopped for food, since there are no schools in villages. Not allowed. But at night, some-times, children will gather around a self-appointed teacher who'll keep them busy for a few hours before bed. Guards miss more after the sun goes down. My padre would always take a compass with us when we traveled and would make me and my siblings figure out our way back home, without his help. We once ended up in Charity, about a day's journey east from where we live. We never made that mistake again.

I lean over the side of the canoe to splash water onto my face and rake the cool stream through my dingy hair. I feel like I need a serious bath. "Could you turn around?" I ask Adan, with a hand lifting one side of my black shirt.

He pauses a moment as he tries to understand why and then nods. "Sure."

We're farther downstream now. I search for peer-ing people, and then glance around one last time just to be sure. Then, I tug off my shirt—a strange fabric mix of polyester and denim, like my pants. I wash under the folds of my breasts and stomach before putting my shirt back on and then tug off my baggy pants. I'll get to my private regions back home, but for now this is good enough.

"Done," I say as I pull the pants up over my waist. Adan turns back around just as I duck my head into the river's water, letting the current wash my hair. Then, I swing up, my hair flipping over my back like a whip, and crunch my hair with a tight fist to drain the water.

Adan just stares and I feel bad. "I'll turn around so you can wash."

He clears his throat, trying to pull his eyes from me. "Yeah."

I turn away from him and can only hear the rum-pling of clothes hitting the canoe and then water splash-ing over him. I even peek, catching a glimpse of his taut arm muscles and chiseled chest, but I look away before he sees me and my blush.

After he's redressed, we both focus ahead with awkward glances to one another for several minutes before he paddles the canoe to one side of the river.

"What are you doing?" I ask as he hobbles over me and out of the canoe, dragging the boat to the shore before ripping down a branch from a tree hanging over us.

"Guava."

I look at him dubiously. "We can't take that."

"No one's here."

"I know, but..." Somehow getting away from the facility has made me believe I might make it home, and I don't want to endanger that notion.

"It's fine," Adan encourages.

My eyes scan the river, the forest of trees sur-rounding us as if there are spies everywhere, as if I'm in more danger than I was in the Amazon. Then, Jade pops out from behind a few bushes and softly growls as he rubs against my good leg. I giggle before I reach for Adan's hand and take the fruit, peeling vigorously and dropping the skin into the Orinoco. Then I let my mouth savor the forbidden flavors. I've never had a guava before and I doubt I ever will again.

Adan eats with me, one leg over the canoe and one leg on land, as he keeps vigilant, his head never in one place for too long. I try to feed Jade, but he's not interested in fruit. Adan hands me another guava, and then another. After about three guavas each, we reembark on the canoe and continue downstream. In Venezuela and Guyana, we'll never get a chance to eat like this on the river. Too many villagers selling foods by boat. Too many eyes to report the indiscretions. But most villagers keep off the Orinoco along the Colom-bian border because it's too close to Trussanda and The Prestige, and they don't want trouble with BAG soldiers who might pass through. Trouble has brought them too many deaths in the past.

Midday, the sun is blazing, and as we approach the end of the Colombian border at Puerto Carreno, I see up ahead that we'll be stopped by the water border pa-trol, because there are no land patrols there. All major borders and major cities have port patrols.

"What do we do?" I turn to Adan as his face stays fixed on the two soldiers positioned outside their hut.

"Stay calm," he says firmly as if he has this fig-ured out already. He quickly rips the Velcro strips off his gloves that circle his wrists, rolls up his sleeve and then tells me to hide my hands and keep low.

"What are you doing?" My voice cracks.

"Just follow my lead." If the last four days togeth-er have taught me anything, it is that I can trust Adan.

I keep my eyes on him as we flow up to the bor-der hut, whose soldiers are armed with a few guns against a side wall built of logs and a cylindrical tube on the window sill used for dispelling pink-red sedation gas.

"Stop there," the lean guard with big gray eyes and short black curls demands, with one hand in a stop po-sition and the other holding a short gun.

He stands near the shoreline when Adan slows the canoe with a paddle and then pushes us toward the hut, and I feel concerned. They have weapons and we have none. They can't tell I'm Graphed—not if I don't use my gifts and flush my skin color—but Adan is dressed funny from head to toe, and if his hands are touched they'd give him away. Then they'll have lots of ques-tions for us—after they sedate us, of course. Or this could turn into a full-on bloodbath.

Adan eyes me hard, with his hand gesturing for me to keep low. So, I stay down in the boat, my legs crossed in front of me, my hands between my thighs and a long smile stretched on my face. When the bor-der patrol approaches, Adan appears confident and his stance is tall. I don't hear what he says in his hushed mumble, but his forefinger points in the direction of Venezuela and then he dangles the strips of Velcro be-fore looking back at me. The guard uses a scanner over Adan's left upper arm, which beeps green before the guard nods and gestures with his hand for us to keep moving.

I'm surprised there weren't more questions, or that the scanner didn't beep red for illegal—but com-municating that to all devices would take time. After all, village people don't often take the Orinoco here to cross borders. They typically travel by land, because of the BAG soldiers. And the guard doesn't even scan me.

I keep my mouth shut until we pass the border hut and leave Colombia behind, and only then do I build the courage to question Adan. I look up at him as he still stands, paddling the boat quickly to gain more dis-tance between us and the border we've left.

"What?" he asks, his brows like furry caterpillars.

"How was that so easy? He just let you go."

"I live in Bolivar," Adan answers shortly.

"And he didn't care that you were crossing on the Orinoco, with me? Why didn't he scan me?"

"I told him you were my wife, that your leg was sore and you couldn't walk. I apologized for using the Orinoco, and he just warned me to not use it again in Colombia."

"So, you were chastised and that was that?"

"Patrols outside of Trussanda aren't as fierce. Don't worry."

"But he just took you at your word that I was your wife."

Adan pauses and scratches his head as if all these questions have flustered him. "The guard has seen me before. I live in Venezuela."

"A friend, then?"

"Something like that."

I look away, not wanting to trouble him more. I know he's focused on getting us to Bolivar. Still, I have to know because marriage registries are kept current and the information can be found with a simple scan over our forearm barcode. "So, you have a wife?"

"I do. Married to me when I was fourteen." Noth-ing rare, since marriage is legal at thirteen and many marry out of necessity because of abandonment from our families—usually out of genocide, but sometimes out of a lack of food. "A year before I was taken away."

"Did you know her well?"

"She's Ostir."

My gaze falls to the canoe. He's known her since childhood. She even helped save his life. "Oh."

Disappointment soaks into my face like sun to de-sert, and Adan immediately shakes his head and casts his eyes on me. "It's not like that. We're good friends, is all. I needed to legally belong somewhere. So, we married." His soft expression turns to the river. "We never even...consummated."

"Oh." My voice rises a pitch and I can already feel my heart quicken again.

After a few more hours, Adan paddles the canoe to one side and pulls Brazil nuts off a tree as I gather dwarf bananas. We eat and drink, sure to only drink from rushing water this time. Stagnant water can ac-cumulate too much bacteria, but sometimes drinking it can't be avoided—especially when you're being chased. Probably what made me sick the first time. My eyes search for the Radguar, but Jade doesn't join us this time.

After our lunch, we continue downstream and I paddle. The river is misty and tinged just a tad with sunrays, outlining the river borders. After four more hours, the sun finally begins to descend and neither of us wants to go picking for food after sundown. Croco-diles, piranhas, and Crunchandas can make a meal of us.

The canoe starts to veer east, and about twenty minutes into the turn of direction, rough rapids knock into our boat like we're an unwanted twig. Crashing waves knock me into Adan, who catches me, and we hold each other at the canoe's center as we pass through the first round. Crsh, crsh, crsh, the stream of power rushes into us before we each take to one side to push away from oncoming rocks. The boat falls over a short dip that catches me off guard, and I fall back-ward, hitting my head.

"Get up," Adan urges me, his hands busy pushing at rocks coming at us so that our canoe veers away from them. When we fall over a larger dip, the front end of the canoe splinters against a boulder, and we start to take on water. "Damn it."

I lunge forward, my hands bracing against the crack to hold back any spilling water as we pass through the end of the rapids. After a few buckets' worth seep onboard, the river eases and the water is smooth again, but we have to cup our hands to toss out the extra seepage before we sink deeper.

The sun goes down, and our canoe is leaking, but at least we're out of the rapids and the water is smooth-ing out. "We're very close to Bolivar. A few more hours."

"Can the canoe hold up 'til then?"

Adan rips off his shirt. "Plug up the hole with this," Adan suggests. "We'll be fine if you just toss any water out."
TRUEZUELA

I CAN BARELY SEE as we dock on the east side of the river, at the western port of Bolivar, until I use my Bengal tiger vision. A statue of King Truss Khan sits erect near the port, holding a scale to represent his justice. I can even see the mustache detail. I've figured out that the eagle vision is good for distances and the tiger vision is good at night.

Just off the river, the village guard, dressed in a dark green uniform—courtesy of Borran—keeps his stern eyes on us as we disembark our canoe. Adan yanks the boat up to the shoreline and tugs it over grass, with me pushing from behind until we reach the port, and then he drops it with a clunk.

I scan the forest behind us. "Do you see Jade?"

Adan looks behind me and around the port and shakes his head. "Don't worry, he'll show up."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Trust me."

"Why?"

"Because I know."

I argue, "How would you know any more than me?"

"I guess I just learned more in prison than you." He shrugs and that's the end of that, for now—though I want to slap him. If he only knew how much I learned in prison.

I don't give much thought to the guard at this port because he's not controlling a border, just a tiny village port. His powers will be less and so will his training. Plus, there is only him, and by the look of his tired eyes, I can tell he just wants to head home. Home for him is probably somewhere in Bolivar, and though of-ficially part of King Borran Khan's military and there-fore paid accordingly, he looks worse than I feel.

Adan nods, pulling his shirt back over himself, and the guard nods in return as he scans Adan's upper arm. The green light beeps for Adan before Adan tells the guard, "Forget her, she's just my wife."

"Oh, Ostir," the guard replies higher-pitched, squinting his eyes in the dark over me. I keep my head low and stay close behind Adan to hide myself.

"She's tired. We'll see you in the morning," Adan responds quickly.

"Very well, Adan Liu," the guard says, and waves us through the port. I follow behind my so-called hus-band, diligently keeping my head low in the dark night, wondering how many friends Adan has in the guard.

"Where we headed?"

"My place," Adan responds, and I'm curious to see where he lives. If he has kids with this wife-friend of his. Or maybe he's a hermit? Is he tidy or messy? My mind even wanders to what his bed looks like.

We traverse over a lot of dirt, past wagons of var-ious breads and quiet markets with no vendors. An old man paints his hut in the night, of a color I can't quite make out with such little light, and I nod as we pass his heavy gaze.

The village is small, like most, and filled mostly with huts and vendors. I can see because of my Bengal vision. A few guards, loyal to the king, make their rounds to ensure the area stays compliant and calm. Guards, like soldiers, are often men who are either handpicked or have volunteered for service, often out of desperation. An intense screening of the applicant's background is done before acceptance, as well as completing a full health examination that also delves into their proximity to the Burned, followed by an ex-tensive training program. The wage is good, at least compared to village life. Though, one major infraction can be reason enough for the death penalty, and so guards have to obey the king at all costs. Still, anyone who signs up to be a guard or a soldier—or is picked—feels like a betrayer to the whole community.

As we walk up to a rectangular stone hut, Adan ducks to get through the wood door and I notice this place is twice the size of mine—at least four rooms—and we housed four people. "You must work as a builder?" I say half in jest, because most people can't afford homes this size unless they build them themselves.

"Nah, just earned my keep."

"I used to share a room with my sister and broth-er. I guess you've got four all to yourself?" I say, then swallow hard as I remember his wife.

Adan clarifies, "Well, I use one, Ostir uses one, Sum uses one, and the other is for a steel crate to store food."

"Wow, you can store food inside your home. Must be nice. All I've got is the wood box behind my hut where breads mold too soon."

"It was a recent addition. Nothing I had my whole life." We step toward one of the rooms. "This room is mine."

I look around, each room is barred by a thick silk floss wood door, like most doors in villages. "What about Klen?"

"He lives with his parents. Down the road."

"Oh."

Suddenly, the door adjacent from his bangs open and out pops a young woman with long white-blonde lashes and braided hair that laps over her shoulder. Sky-blue eyes find mine before she rushes up to Adan and throws her arms around his neck carelessly. "Adan, you're back!"

Adan blushes, his eyes veering from her to me as if to seek my expression. My emotions are a tight ball of adrenaline, relief, and fear...and now I'm not sure if jealousy has been thrown in the mix. "Yep, it's me. It's really me."

"But how?" Her lashes flutter, eyes widen, and her forefinger examines his stubbly chin.

"They released me," Adan says, and I know he's keeping the truth from her about the hunt.

"Just like that?"

"Yep. Done my time, I guess."

Ostir grabs his hand and circles around with him, her white tunic spinning. "After all these years?"

Adan just smiles and gives her a tight hug, and she seems perfectly at ease—not like me, who winces just a tad every time someone surprisingly touches me.

"What has it been...?" She pauses in count. "Five years!" she says with excitement.

"Four," I interrupt with a soft voice, but she doesn't seem to hear me or care. Her attention is fixed on Adan, and after jumping for excitement, she races to the door closest to hers before knocking loudly.

A taller man with drooping ears, sagging cheeks, and almost nonexistent eyebrows—all a result of the radiation no doubt—answers the door. "What?" he asks groggily through a thin set of cracked lips.

"Adan! He's here!"

The bald man looks up and sees me and Adan in the background, his expression turning from annoyed to joyous. He hustles to Adan, tossing his calloused hands over Adan's shoulders. "You're back!"

"Yes, I am."

Ostir adds in her high pitch, "They just let him out."

The Burned man with obvious scarring must be Sum, and he stares dubiously as if he doesn't believe this trick, and then finally lets out a guttural laugh. "You kidding me!"

"Nope."

"Well, I'll be." Sum pats Adan's shoulder again and then looks to me. "And who might this be?" He steps away from Adan and toward me, wearing a rug-ged and ripped brown garb over his body, his chipped teeth coming into view.

I give him my hand. "Jin."

His oddly shaped eyes turn back on Adan. "And where'd you meet this cutie?"

"Prison," he answers before I can, and I just let him take this. "They released us the same day."

Ostir scurries up behind Adan, her peeking sky eyes aimed at me. "And how did the two of you man-age to get yourselves back here?"

"A canoe," Adan says. "All the way from prison."

"From Neblina Peak?!" Ostir's angelic face twists with confusion because she still believes Adan came to her from prison, not the BAG facility which is much closer. She stands beside Sum, whose radiation prob-lems are in strong contrast to her delicate features.

"Yep." Adan skips the part about being hunted for days in the Amazon before finding cover in the High-lands and discovering a canoe, but it's not for me to tell them what he doesn't want them to know. They aren't my friends.

Adan looks around, seemingly uncomfortable, and then points to his room. "Still mine?"

Ostir nods vigorously. "Yes, yes." Her sincerity is refreshing after all the attempted killing in the forests. "Please, rest. And your friend, Jin, can rest in my room."

"Oh, no. I don't want to impose. I can sleep on the floor here. Really, it's no bother."

Ostir shakes her head. "Don't be ridiculous. You haven't had a decent bed in years, I imagine. We'll all talk in the morning. Take mine. I'll sleep here."

Then, Adan pushes between me and Ostir and turns me in a jerk so we're facing away from the oth-ers. He whispers in my ear, "I really need you to go to Klen's home. Stay there. I can't let you stay here." He pushes me forward, toward the exit door.

"What are you talking about? Why?" I react loud-ly as my heart sinks, and I feel unwanted. I want to be-lieve that's no big deal, but after everything we've been through I don't understand his rejection.

"Klen's place is safer," he says firmly as he pulls away from me. I look to the exit.

"Okay." I say reluctantly, but what can I do? Adan is in charge here, and besides he saved me in the Amazon. I trust his judgment.

Ostir's brows crinkle and her voice grows sandy. "Safer? I thought you two were released."

"Well, yes and no. I'll explain in the morning," Adan replies to Ostir, keeping it vague, and then he attempts to hug me, but I pull away unsure of his inten-tions. He's leaving me? "I'll come get you by morn-ing," he reassures with that look that means he's sin-cere, and then his eyes change. He gestures to Ostir to walk with me, but something in his eyes has changed and that bothers me. Something I've never seen in them before now. Something like regret.

After Ostir and I leave the house, I keep close to her side. She knows the village, and I can't afford to get lost here. I don't know anyone, and the guards will scan me the moment they're suspicious and find out exactly who I am. Jin Maharaj—prisoner D47.

"Don't worry, Klen will take care of you," Ostir assures me as we head to a hut a few down from Adan's. We enter and the hut is quiet and smaller. Just two rooms, like the one I have back in Guyana. Ostir peeks around the door and then tiptoes inside. "Every-one's probably sleeping." There's a curfew guards set for villages that vary only by a couple of hours village to village, to help keep control over the areas they watch. Apparently, Bolivar's curfew is around eight or nine.

"Where should I sleep?" I worry, unsure of what Adan's offered me.

Ostir gestures for me to follow her as she knocks a few times on a door before entering. "In here, with Klen."

I keep quiet. I might not know any of them, but Adan does and he has not let me down yet. When Klen looks up from his bed, his expression is one of confu-sion. "Who's this?" His gruff voice is suspicious.

"Don't shout," Ostir says, "but Adan's back."

"What?!"

"Shh. Yeah, just came back. Released. He'll tell you all about it tomorrow." Ostir grabs my hand and pulls me toward her brother. His short white-blond hair reminds me of Ostir's, but his eyes—his eyes are more green like the moss in the Amazon. "This is his friend from prison. She's going to stay here for the night."

"Sure, sure." Klen looks around, throwing his ripped pillow off the bed. "I'll take the floor." His hand waves over the erected cot. "Please, take mine."

I don't say anything but smile cordially. Plopping onto the cot, I watch Ostir exit quickly; I'm sure she wants to get back to her home to see Adan before be-ing stopped by a guard and questioned. I look to Klen, and he seems too awake to go back to sleep now.

"Adan's back, huh?" This lone thought apparently circles his mind. "I want to ask so much, but I'm sure you're exhausted. Please ignore me. Just go to sleep." His long chin turns from me and hits the pillow.

I lay my head over the thin mattress that is filled with some kind of flowers and plants. Hopefully this one won't prick me in the night like mine does back home.

By morning, I'm amazed I've made it this far still alive. I gaze around the room, but don't see anyone and immediately worry. Jumping to my feet, I peek out the door, but don't see anybody there, either. I imagine Klen's parents are still asleep, but where's Klen? I tip-toe out of his room and over the cold, rocky floor to the front door where I yank open the silk floss wood door. The day is bright and windy and I've missed the sun without rain. The Amazon can get so dismal.

After craning my neck in both directions and still not seeing anyone, I head out, staying close to the huts until reaching the third one down where I left Adan last night. I try to open the door with a few thuds, but the door won't budge, apparently blocked by something—because we don't have locks in the villages. They're prohibited by King Borran Khan, so that guards and soldiers can have easy access to our huts.

Suddenly, the door swings open and Adan grabs my arm and yanks me inside. I feel my cheeks graze his form and a primal urge to mark him takes over—my head nestling in a rub against his chest—not even sure why.

"I told you to stay put, that I'd come for you in the morning."

"No one was there. I got worried something hap-pened to you."

"You can't stay here. You've got to go."

I reach toward him, gripping for his arm, my eyes wide. "Away from Bolivar?! Why so soon? So fast?"

His head shakes angrily, maybe at me or maybe at himself. "No, from me!"

"What are you talking about?"

"We have no time. I've already talked with my friends. They'll take you to Guyana and make sure you get there safely. BAG soldiers will come looking for me here. Spider won't hesitate to kill me, or kill you." Adan grabs my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. "You have to get away from here, as far away as you can. Stay in your village. Don't come back. Don't ever come back to see me."

I want to cry; I want to scream. I don't under-stand. And then Sum turns from the rectangular win-dow next to the door with a stern expression. "She's already here."

"How? Why?" is all I can muster to ask in ques-tions more to myself. Of course, Adan's home village might be a logical step, but we could be anywhere. Dead somewhere at the mouth of a Crunchanda in the Amazon, or heading to Ecuador where no one would know us—but why does she still care? We aren't the only illegal Graphs in existence, not by a long shot, and we don't possess anything more unique than any of the other Graphs. Spider could be sharpening her skills against a multitude of other prisoners turned Graphs being released into the Amazon right now. What does killing us accomplish? Why has King Borran Khan kept us on his kill list, outside of the Amazon? He's risking his secret hunt being exposed as fact, not just as rumor by a labeled 'extremist group' called the PAPE. Villages would grow ablaze in fury and the king's con-trol would weaken—all reasons why he's kept his Ama-zonian hunting expeditions quiet. He could just as easi-ly send village guards to pick us up and send us back to prison, quietly. Why are we so important?

"You have to hide," Adan urges, pulling at my arm and directing me behind a cupboard in a corner near his bedroom door. His eyes are pleading, his breaths fast and voice shaky. I've never seen him like this. Like he's lost everything.

I slip behind the cupboard reluctantly, unsure of why my life is more important than any of the others', even Sum's. Surely, Spider won't hesitate to kill a Burned. Sum is already readying a knife he has tucked inside his pants as he squints through the window, and the siblings keep close to the door with anticipatory expressions, as if they can't wait to fight.

"We won't let them take you back to prison," Klen growls, hitting his fist against the wall to the left of the door, his gravelly voice stronger in the morning than it was last night.

"I'd rather die than let a BAG soldier walk off with you." Ostir glances briefly at Adan behind her as he rips off his shirt and gloves and drops the garb to the floor below him. Her surprised reaction tells me she doesn't know. She doesn't know he's a Graph. Why would she, after all, or any of his friends? He's been locked up in prison. Ostir leans into the right door wall and focuses on the assailants, and I finally see her—both siblings'—devotion to Adan. Like mine is to my family. And I guess for them, besides their par-ents, this is all the family they've got.

I see Spider approaching out of the corner of my eye when I peek around the cupboard, and through the small window. She stands behind a tree near Adan's house, and farther behind her stands Prik—still human and all. I can even make out his large biceps and short legs.

As they charge for the hut, I brace for impact.
TRUTHS

I'M SUPPOSED TO BE hiding behind the cup-board, but I can't just let everyone else fight my fight. They are here for Adan and me. I keep my head low, but stay vigilant as I peek around the cupboard, my fingernails digging deep into the wood, waiting for my opportunity to honor my village—my family.

A loud, reverberating crack suddenly hits the front door. I see Spider swaying by the window while Sum teases with a knife on the other side, and figure the first intruder must be Prik. At the second crack, the door is broken from its hinges and the crate pulled in front of the door won't do much good now.

Prik swings the silk wood door off the hut, sending it spiraling across the dirt road as two elderly neighbors stand by their hut watching in fear because Spider and Prik are designated Borran property with the large black tattoo inked over their back and shoulder bones. The emblem of three short spirals at three opposite ends all blending together into one fluid dot at the cen-ter is Borran's mark. It's a mark that means you are a legal Graph—which means Spider and Prik have the authority of the king himself to be here.

The siblings hang back as Sum takes a brave of-fensive stance, sliding to the opened center. Only a low crate separates us from them. Prik smirks, as if he's enjoying this, before he lunges over the crate and at Sum, his feet hitting the floor in a thud and his sharp needles protruding from his shoulders. Sum jerks backward, avoiding the needles, and lashes out with his knife at Prik's puffy cheeks, almost slashing him.

Prik laughs, his almond eyes like daggers, and immediately bursts forward with needles poking out of his chest in a sprint for Sum. But, Klen flushes his Graph—box jellyfish tentacles, long and dangly, flashing from his neck and shoulders like an octopus—and Klen doesn't hesitate to rip one off before throwing the ten-tacle at Prik.

The sting must be intense, because Prik falls in a grunt to the ground, his needles retracting as his fore-arms brace him when he hits the stone floor hard. Ostir pushes off the door wall and rushes at Prik, flushing what appears to be colorful snake scales lay-ered over her cheeks and forehead. Blues, yellows, blacks and pinks shine like stars in a night sky. I'm al-most mesmerized by her Graph's beauty before she hisses and vibrates her forked pink tongue, causing venom to spit across the air at Prik. His hands instinc-tively grab his face as he recoils and howls out in pain.

Simultaneously, Spider lunges over the crate and lands behind the wincing Prik, her lizard tongue flick-ing, saliva drooling. From the toxicity of her tongue, she might be Graphed with the Mexican beaded lizard or a venomous snake, common to where we live. Her intense stare fixes on Ostir—the two of them in a kind of tongue war. Prik screams in pain from his sore back and holds his eye from the sting of venom that hit his pupil—he'll go blind in that eye soon—but when he sees Klen with his other eye, he doesn't give up and instead uses his back leg to trip him. When Klen falls head first, he lands on top of Prik's shoulder needles, pierc-ing his own shoulder and is caught like a rabbit in wire. The two of them wince together in agony.

Sum jumps forward to free Klen, his knife held in front of him in desperate warning, but Prik is not fooled by the faux power, power he commands from his own skin, and rolls forward as I've seen him do in the Amazon with all of his needles prickling. The roll tears at Klen's shoulder, eliciting an agonizing scream before he frees himself. Then Prik rolls over Sum's feet, catching his legs before Sum falls backward near the cupboard, wincing in sporadic screams.

I can't stand it anymore. I'm about to jump out and aid my new friends when Spider slaps Ostir across the face, sending her crashing into the window and she screams as she holds her wounded cheek. Sweat begins to fall profusely from Ostir's head, and her hands con-vulse while Adan lunges forward at Spider to protect his wife.

"So, you've forgotten your commitments to Bor-ran, I see," Spider comments in a voice like sweet honey, her tongue still flickering and my mind stings with that thought—commitments...like a contract?! "I thought it was you who saved her, gliding her off that cliff back in the Amazon, but I just had to see for my-self how far you'd go before I took this to Borran." The detest in her eyes reminds me of when we stood at the river when Jade rescued us, the look in Spider's eyes not fixed on me—but on Adan. Now, I understand why. Adan betrayed her.

Adan stands silent, his bare chest rising and fall-ing.

"Do you have nothing to say for breaking your contract?!"

Adan grunts.

"You will die for your treason. I warned Borran about sending out prisoners." She laughs hard. "Their loyalty is even worse than the Graphed soldiers. Too much wild blood in all of you."

"If I die, I die," Adan says, as if he doesn't care for anything in this moment but beating Spider.

I'm frozen, momentarily unsure of what to do. The realization that Adan was not released like me to be a hunted prisoner in the Amazon—but is working for Borran, and was instead hunting me—makes me sick to my stomach. No wonder he knew his way around the forests so well, around the facility. Why he even has a steel food storage at his home. He even had a way past the guards. Traitor! His barcode must read Property of Borran.

Thoughts about what Ostir said fill my head: "How long has it been? Five years?"

Adan told me four. He must have been working for Borran for a year, which puts him closer to twenty than nineteen.

Suddenly, Spider lashes out at Adan—something personal between them—her open palms flushing of thick tarantula-like fur and surely wandering spider toxicity. But Adan doesn't give up, and his bare chest, arms, and hands all shimmer of grey-brown bullet ant.

Before I can even breathe, the two of them are circling each other, thrusting forward and back, each sure not to touch the other, knocking into walls and clasping each other's shoulders—each screaming in pain from the burn on their skin, but neither willing to let go. I can't take my eyes off them until Sum stabs Prik in the back of his neck with the knife and the ball of needles rolls off of Sum. Sum's legs are torn and bloody as he retreats to his friends. Klen holds his wounded shoulder with his other hand as he helps his sister to her feet, blood dripping out of the tear and onto Ostir's white tunic. The three of them watch this madness, as shocked as I am—even more so. At least I knew Adan was a Graph before now.

Knowing Spider is busy with Adan, I see my chance to escape. I just have to think about myself now. Adan is not who he pretended to be, and as be-trayed as I feel about it, I'm sure his friends feel even worse. Adan could still turn me in, he is after all on contract! Sliding out from behind the cupboard and across the cold floor, I race to the open doorway and leap over the crate. I can move fast—even as normal human, I taught myself how to run. I had to in this world. I realize my Graph gifts are more defensive than offensive. For seeing, hearing, breathing underwa-ter, and even killing with a kiss. Probably on purpose, to make me an easy kill in the forest. Nothing I can use in a fight. Spider could kill me in seconds. I have to get out of here.

As I turn to run down the dirt road, I see dozens of villagers just standing outside their huts staring at me, at the commotion. In an attempt to flee, Ostir, Klen, and Sum follow quickly behind me as Prik rolls out, hitting the crate half blind. I turn briefly to glance at my new friends, before they nod and we all run to-gether, heading east. East will take me home.

Ostir's hands still shake but running seems to make her forget she's in pain. Her brother, Klen, holds his shoulder to keep more blood from leaking out, and Sum hobbles the best he can—ignoring the rips in his legs—as he tries to keep up with us. I feel guilty, the only one not scarred, and I'm at least one of the rea-sons Spider and Prik came for us.

I worry that we might be shot on sight as we pass guards on the dirt path. But what did Spider say? "I just had to see for myself how far you'd go before I took this to Borran." Borran doesn't know that Adan res-cued me. Our cover isn't blown—yet. As far as the vil-lagers and guards know, we are trying to flee an author-ized attack on Adan. It's his home. It doesn't involve us.

A guard holds his hands up in the stop position. Any other time, that wouldn't stop us, but we do, be-cause we can't afford more attention. "Stop by the au-thority of Borran."

The four of us slow and then Klen answers for us in heaving breathes. "Officer, we were caught in the attack at Adan's home."

"I saw it. We all saw it," the guard with practically no lips answers. "Adan finally comes back to greet his village, and he brings chaos. Two Graphed soldiers in the King's military." He eyes us down. "Adan must have done something horrendous. I thought Borran liked the guy. He's registered as one of Borran's own." The guard shakes his head.

"If you'll please excuse us, we just want to get as far away from this as we can. Until things calm down," Klen reasons, and the guard nods before returning his glance to Ostir as if he's known the siblings for some time.

"You can wait at the port 'til we get things settled here, and then return to your homes."

I look to Ostir, my lips twisting. The port is in the opposite direction of my home. Keeping her soft gaze on the officer, Ostir just briefly recognizes me before returning her smile to the guard.

"Thank you, Landclass 33," Klen says before his head gestures with a jerk for us all to follow him to the port. Guards don't have names once they join Borran, just positions. Part of the unification of the military un-der Borran. I'm sure Adan knew that guard, but like all property of Borran—he lost his individuality long ago.

The four of us speed down the road, taking a shortcut behind huts to stay off the grid from Spider and Prik, and even though I know the truth about Adan now, a big part of me is still worrying about him. "Do you think he'll be okay?" I fret.

Ostir gazes at me. "You don't know Adan very well, do you?"

Her jest gives me hope. "But Spider, Prik...they want to kill him."

"I wouldn't worry about Prik. Between the snake's venom and the jellyfish tentacle, Prik will be half blind and in too much pain to do much of anything for a while. I doubt he can even come out of his ball. He'll be stuck as a porcupine 'til the day's end." Ostir laughs. But thoughts of Spider's wandering spider hands and beaded lizard venoms consume my thoughts.

"But Spider—"

Klen responds, "Don't worry. Adan's gotten him-self out of tougher situations."

Somehow, I completely believe it.

"And the port? How are we going to get out of here? Spider could tell the guards that I'm on Borran's death list too."

"She's right," Klen says.

"Yeah, about that," Ostir starts, "sorry to hear you and Adan were hunted in the Amazon."

"I'm surprised Adan told you."

"Last night while you stayed at Klen's."

"They were hunted?" Klen's mouth falls ajar, the lines around his eyes deepening.

"Evidently it's a common practice for Borran. To train his Graphed soldiers," Ostir explains. "But I had no idea Adan was Graphed, or anything about a deal he made with Borran."

Klen interrupts. "Damn. So, PAPE was right. The king is experimenting on prisoners."

"Yes," I answer emphatically.

"So, what do we do?" Klen asks. "I mean, if Adan is caught and Spider tells the guards about Jin, they'll be after all of us. We'll all end up in jail."

Ostir interjects, "Adan said that if anything went wrong for us to all meet at the hollow tree."

"The hollow what?" I ask, my head turning to Ostir as we get closer to the port.

Sum explains, "A large tree that's been dug out. Hollow inside. Used to play there as kids. It's a mid-point between Guayana City and Bolivar. Just northeast of the port."

"A rendezvous point?" Klen seems to be getting this information for the first time, like me.

"Yeah."

"So, we're not heading to the port?" I ask, re-lieved.

Ostir shakes her head. "No, but the guard sees us heading in that direction. We aren't known for break-ing rules in the village. Landclass 33 will trust us."

Sum finishes, "When we get to the port, we'll cross the river, and head northeast 'til we get to the rendezvous point. If Adan makes it out of alive, he'll meet us there."

"Okay," I agree, unsure of how I feel about a trai-tor joining us. "But how do we know we can trust Adan? I mean, he signed a contract with Borran."

"Adan will do whatever he has to do to survive, but he'd never betray us. We're his family." Klen sounds so sure as he says this, and I nod, hoping their certainty will eventually be mine—but with so many be-trayals in this world, I can't be certain.

When we reach the port, the same tired, stern eyes peer over at us, and Ostir waves as if she's friends with the guard, and then the officer actually smiles. Creases in his face tighten over his cheekbones. Her hands aren't noticeably damaged, and Klen's managed to stop the bleeding of his shoulder before ripping off his beige tunic sleeves and dropping them behind a hut, to get rid of any bloodstains.

"How are you, Ostir?" the guard asks as Sum tries to stay at my side—the side where the guard can see me.

"Fine, fine," Ostir answers. "And yourself?"

"Better since your basket of muffins last week," the guard replies.

Ostir keeps him busy talking as Klen leads and Sum stays to my side in our cross of the river.

"Oh good. Just a family recipe is all."

The guard smiles again. "A lot of commotion in the village this morning."

"Yeah, just some Graphed soldiers taking a pris-oner, is all. Nothing to worry yourself over." Scenes like this must happen a few times a year, like in my village. People grow numb to it.

"So, what you all up to?"

Ostir steps into the river. "Just enjoying the water and then heading north a bit for a nice morning walk. Yourself?"

The water helps to hide Sum's wounds as he wades.

"Same 'ole, same 'ole." The guard grimaces and then tips his cap to Ostir before waving us on. "Well, go on, then." As we make it halfway into the river, I feel the fear resolve inside of me until the guard yells, "Wait, who's that?" He points at me as Ostir turns her head. I don't dare.

"Oh, a friend of mine from Guayana City. She came in on the north side to visit."

He tips his cap again. "All right, I guess she was scanned already, then. Just don't break any laws. I don't want to have to take you and your friends in for questioning."

"No, sir," Ostir says politely as she pushes for-ward, signaling for all of us to move quickly. Who knows when Spider will show herself again and call on all the guards to cuff us.
HOLLOW TREE

EVERY REGION IS SHAPED like a diamond and has four port guards to maintain the comings and goings of each area, one at each point of the diamond. Several villages reside within the limits of any particu-lar region. One of Bolivar's ports is on the river and is called the western port. In theory, everyone is sup-posed to come and go from these ports if they are en-tering or exiting a region and most do. However, re-gion borders far away from the ports are only encum-bered by thick trees, foliage, and electric fences which in practice can be crossed if one is determined enough. Still, those crossing would have done so illegally, and if caught can be sentenced to prison for such a crime, and so most never take the risk.

We walk for about twenty minutes between trees and over thick foliage before I see any sign of what could be called a hollow tree. The large trunk must be at least a couple meters across and maybe fifty meters high, branches bringing the height to about seventy. I marvel at the magnificent natural structure just out of reach as Ostir turns to me. "We're here."

The side of the tree, where Ostir guides me, is cut out and appears hollow inside—of course. "Did you guys do this?" I ask, curious, my head poking in and eyes searching upward.

My fingertips caress the inner bark when Ostir answers, "No, it was like this when we found it."

Sum gets giddy. "Was lots of fun, too." He slips his head between me and the trunk, calling out to his friends. "Remember when Adan climbed to the top and got himself stuck, and your parents had to get him down?"

Klen shakes his head. "Yeah, my padre whipped Adan's butt good that day."

"I think he used a twig from the tree itself to whip him," Ostir adds in a hearty laugh.

"Good times," Sum finishes half sarcastic, and then pulls his head out of the trunk.

I turn around, facing the three of them, and wor-ry. Worry that I'll never see Adan again. Worry that I will see him again and hate him for what he did. Wor-ry that he'll take a bribe and betray me someday. Adan was right to tell me to get away from him, far away from him. If he's someone who will do anything to survive, maybe that means he would sacrifice me, too?

I don't know what to think, and then suddenly all my thoughts escape me at the sight of Adan in the dis-tance climbing through foliage and up over the hill to the east. His broad shoulders and neck are unmistaka-ble as he trots down the hill toward the hollow tree with a long scratch across his shirt.

I stay in the backdrop, unsure of my feelings, and can only watch as Ostir drills him. "What happened? Where's Spider?"

Adan shakes his head. "Lost her, but not before Prik slid one of his spines across me."

Ostir grimaces. "Ouch."

"Yep, hurt like hell."

"How'd you get out of there?"

Adan's eyes catch me, and his voice softens. "Dove through Sum's bedroom window." His glance turns to Sum. "Sorry, Sum. You'll have to get it fixed. Without me, of course. I can't go back there. Appar-ently, I'm a wanted Graph now."

Klen interjects, "Yeah, I'm sure it won't take long for Spider to alert the village guards of what happened. We'll all be wanted soon."

Ostir looks over her shoulder. "We can't head back, then."

Sum frowns. "No, we can't."

"You all are taking Jin to her home." Adan looks up at me and I feel myself take a step back. "You all should stay there, in Guyana, when you get there."

Ostir nods and the rest seem to agree. What is there to stay for?

Adan steps towards me, making me uneasy. I don't know what he wants, and I'm not sure I can want him anymore. Not after all this. He doesn't take my hand or grab my shoulder as he did plenty of times when we were in the Amazon, often at times to save or help me. Instead, he just stands there with his hands to his sides.

"If I didn't do their bidding, I would've been dead. The offer on the table was die or sign. So, I signed." He shakes his head. "I had to kill. Do many things I wasn't proud of to stay alive. I don't take pride in what I did. I don't take pride in being sent to kill you. But I do know that if they sent me and Spider after you, you must be important to them. And don't think for a sec-ond that Spider will hesitate next time to take you out. With me out of the way, she will focus on you. She's ruthless, and the killer instinct in her is hard for her to ignore."

I listen to him, words that sound like an apology, words that sound like a goodbye, and I'm not sure I want it over yet. "What do you mean, with you out of the way? You're coming with us, aren't you? You can't stay here." I'm not sure why I even feel insistent, ex-cept that he did so much for me in the Amazon, that without him I might not even be alive, and as much as I can't stand what he did—signing to work with Bor-ran—he did it for his life, not out of pleasure.

Adan shakes his head. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"The water from crossing the river at the northern end has put glitches in the location chip system." My mind is on full alert with Adan's mention of location chip. "I used the water from the Orinoco on our ride up to hide my location too, but the chip embedded in me will come back online again, just like it did last night, and Spider will have no trouble tracking me."

"You're being tracked?" I grab his arm. "Where? Tear it out!"

He pulls the glove off his hand and shows me his left hand. As I look closer, I can see it, the circuit wir-ing just under the skin. "I can't take it out."

"But why?!" I want to tug on his hand, almost for-getting his bullet ant will burn me.

"The chip will self-destruct if touched. I'll ex-plode."

I gulp. "Isn't there some way?"

Adan shakes his head. "I've tried everything. Be-lieve me, I've had a year to figure something out, and it's not removable. Borran wants to keep tabs on his imprisoned hunters to make sure they don't flee."

Sum interrupts. "Why the hand? Wouldn't Borran have more control with a chip in your neck?"

Adan shakes his head. "No, if Graphs are done in our necks, in our bodies, the chip will interfere with the Graphing. Therefore, the hand was standardized as the best body part for chips. That's why our barcodes are in our arms."

I don't know what to say when Adan returns the glove to his hand and touches my cheek. "Stay with my friends. They'll protect you. I'm as good as a beeping target now. Spider will send a Landclass guard by Jeep to alert the BAG facility that I've gone rogue. Borran will have kill orders on me by the end of the day. They'll send hunters for me, Graphed and human. You won't want to be near me when this happens."

"This is crazy." Ostir clenches her jaw. "We can't just abandon you to die."

"Then, tell me, what other choice do I have?" Adan asks, his eyes almost pleading.

Sum walks up with his knife, the blade shooting skyward. "The locator chip may not be removable, but your hand is. We cut off your hand." We all look to Sum, Ostir grimacing and Klen debating in his head.

"I've had worse. Look at me." Sum gestures to his radiated face.

His comment makes Ostir and I grimace.

Klen nods. "Yes, it's either that or you die at the hands of Borran's military." He looks at Adan with hard eyes.

Ostir interjects, her expression wincing already. "Can't we just cut around the locator chip? Pull it out of the hand?"

Adan shakes his head. "No, the wiring is twisted with my veins. Any cutting around it will trigger the blow." Adan looks down at his hand, and then at me, and then to Sum. "Okay, do it."

I give Adan a thick branch to bite down on as Sum cuts into Adan's wrist with his serrated blade. Adan's scream is hollow like the tree—it has to be so no one hears. His body wriggles as Sum saws over his wrist bone, and I can't look. I cast my gaze in the opposite direction, anywhere but at Adan.

Ostir grabs me and stands beside me, like a com-forting sister, and I miss mine. I try to keep my mind occupied as Adan's quiet screams of agony wash over me. I remember my sister and I playing in the creek near our house and sewing our pants together. My par-ents named her May, and she taught me how to cross-stitch. We had to reuse old clothes from years prior. Buying new clothing or even fabrics got expensive, but because of my sister's sewing talents, I never had to wear the same clothes year after year. Tears swell re-membering her death.

When silence engulfs me, I twist around. My eyes fall on a pool of blood around Adan and drops of it still seeping like syrup down his leg. Sum is wrapping Adan's left hand with cloth torn from his garb, and Adan is fixing his glove around his bloody arm stump. I can't look at the blood. Adan's blood.

I turn to Adan and focus on his face—and it's then when I realize that I can trust him. He'd cut off his own limbs to get away from Borran. I look at his lips. I remember those plump lips. So delicious. Then, just as suddenly as a harpy eagle squawks, Ostir screams, "They're coming!"

When I crane my neck to look behind me, I see the west port guard, Landclass 33, Prik, and Spider all chasing us. They can't be but more than twenty meters away when we all dart forward in the direction of Guayana City and its western port. If we can cross the river there, we can head east for Guyana—for my home village in Mabaruma.

Ostir grabs my hand and we race together for sev-eral seconds before letting each other go behind Adan and Klen leading us. Sum keeps to my side, his knife shining in his hands, still dripping of Adan's blood. But the Borran team is fast, and Spider is the fastest of them all.

I glance back several times over the ten-minute run, as we four illegal Graphs and one Burned all at-tempt to flee through Bolivar's northern barricade of trees and bush. Sum manages to squeeze underneath the bush and disappears, but Klen and Ostir are de-termined to fight. Guards aren't going to scare them away, not from their home.

They turn around—toward the enemies—and speed forward to protect Adan and me. They catapult straight into the west port guard and Landclass 33, without us-ing their Graph gifts, leaving Spider to fixate on Adan, and Prik to focus on me.

A grin pulls Prik's lips upward and fills me with rage, but his burned eye and bleeding neck give me pleasure. It's bad enough this callous creature wanted me dead in the Amazon, but now he's followed me all the way here, to Bolivar, to kill me. I won't—can't—give him such pleasure. So, when he rolls at me with nee-dles protruding out of his back, I welcome the attack because I want nothing more than to end this here.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Adan's arm stump, blood soaking the makeshift bandage and a few drops dripping to the ground beneath him. Spider keeps her attention on his face as if nothing matters more than putting an end to this traitor, and I have to hope Adan puts up a good fight, because like he said—once he's out of the way, Spider will focus solely on killing me.

As Prik rolls toward me, I feel a bellow deep in-side me trying to escape, a sound so familiar and yet so distant. A growl rumbles like an earthquake within my bones, and escapes. I'm not even sure what sound permeates from my mouth, or if it's even human, but the angry cacophony freezes Prik in his tracks before he rolls up to his feet and stands erect again, the back needles flicking off behind him.

Prik's eyes go round, big, staring into the bush be-hind me at something, and he trembles.

For a moment, I feel strong, like a power within me has emerged, until Jade springs out from behind me, onto the mound of grass in front of me to stand between Prik and myself, and growls—he sounds like the rumbling within me. Prik steps back as his fore-head tightens, his hands shaking, and when he tries to lunge at Jade, he crumples to the ground, grabbing his head in a wince of pain. Jade just growls, his saliva dripping over Prik.

Spider and Adan disentangle as their focus shifts from their rivalry to the Radguar who has chosen me as a friend. Between fighting Adan or saving her long-time partner, Spider makes a surprising decision when she lunges for Prik and yanks him by the arm down a hill to keep him safe. Jade growls, pacing near me as if to tell everyone not to cross this line—that this line is his territory and crossing it will mean death.

Spider can only watch, her face twisting like a wrung-out washrag, as Adan returns to my side un-scathed, and Ostir and Klen leave Landclass 33 and the west port guard unconscious. She watches us duck into the bushes through the northern Bolivarian exit and disappear with Jade where Sum had fled. On the other side, a river meanders upward into the western port of Guayana City, which looks manned by only one guard.

Adan turns to Klen, his voice rough as he steps over crunching branches. "Why didn't you kill 'em?"

"We've known those guards our whole life," Klen argues. "Besides, they didn't want to take us into Bor-ran's control. They had to."

I understand Adan's point of view—being out there in the Amazon, having to fight every day just to survive against those set to kill you, can change a person, make them harder. But a deeper part of me understands Klen better. The decency, the humanity. Borran hasn't killed that part inside of me, not yet, though he might have tried. But Adan—Adan's been out here killing for a year under the authority and control of Borran. I can't even begin to imagine what that must have been like, how many he's killed just to stay alive.

Ostir pats her brother's back as if to say she's on his side as we jog up another short hill before reaching the river. None of us has to flush our Graph, and as far as this port guard is concerned, we are just human—well, except for Jade. Sum waves us on; he's been wait-ing on the edge of the river for us.

"What are we going to do with Jade?" I ask when Klen gets curious.

"Where the hell did this Radguar come from, an-yway?"

Patting Jade, I answer, "I met him in the Amazon. He protected me."

Ostir turns to me. "You mean the Radguar just befriended you?"

"Yeah," I answer, unsure of her suspicious tone.

Ostir continues, "I mean, I've heard rumors of animals responding to Graphs, but I've never actually seen it happen."

"Well, it does," Adan answers curtly, cutting off further inquiry.

"So, what do we do?" I look to Jade. "The guard isn't going to understand this."

Adan points to the north on the side of the river opposite from the port—the side where we still stand. "Turn him loose here. He'll find another way in, and eventually get to you."

I look from Adan to Jade and nod to my Radguar. "Go." I grab Jade's head, holding his soft eyes across from mine. "You can't be seen here."

After Jade runs up ahead, and into the foliage where he disappears, we follow behind Sum as he leads us along the shoreline all the way to the port. We cross the river when we're about five meters from the port when the guard shouts down to us, "Where're you all headed today?"

Klen speaks for the group. "Just visiting an ac-quaintance from the north. My padre wants some of the lumber his friend sells." He looks over his shoul-der at us. "Brought some friends to help carry it."

"Sure." The guard waves us in. "Just step onto the deck of the port and let me scan you before entry."

Klen wades through the river behind Sum and steps onto the deck with him at his side. "So, how are things today?"

"Pretty slow." The Guayana City port guard looks to Klen. "Haven't seen you in a while."

Klen shrugs. "Haven't needed lumber in a while."

"Yeah, I hear there'll be a cold front soon. Best to stock up now before the lumber's all gone." The guard's small eyes meet Klen's before scanning Sum and Klen and waving them both across the port into Guayana City—a city that like Bolivar, welcomes the Burned.

I look to Adan when Ostir steps in front and lets the guard scan her. "Klen's sister," she comments shortly, as if we are all in a rush, and pushes up over the port. She looks back at me, and I can read the wor-ry on her—though she hides it well—hidden in the crusts of her eyes.

The guard is about to scan me, his cylinder device poking at my body, when Adan darts forward, hitting the scanner. As the scanner beeps green upon register-ing Adan's barcode with the message, Property of Bor-ran, the device flings out of the guard's hand and lands into the river.

"Damnit," the guard growls. "You hit me hard." He flicks his upset eyes at Adan when Adan shrugs.

"Sorry, but I'm sure Borran will send you another one," Adan responds coldly, as if this slight problem is the least of his worries. His brusque attitude blunts the guard's assertiveness, and his attention deviates from our potentially suspicious crossing.

"Come on." Adan waves to me, as if he has the authority, and the guard looks from the river to Adan.

"Just get through," he says, frustrated, as he waves his hand.

I keep my head low and follow the orders, to play along. I've gotten good at that, especially since my time in my jail cell. Rise and stand by the cell door for meals. Take the tray that slides under the door imme-diately, or you don't get food. Showers once a week, after waiting half a day in queue. Clothes washed by hand once a week, after showers.

No talking, unless spoken to by a warden. Not even to other inmates, which leaves only the night for whispers. I follow, like I've learned to, behind Adan and up to the port where we all make our way past an-other erect statue of King Truss Khan and into Guayana City.
GUYANA'S GREEN

THE CITY REMINDS ME most of home. Fes-tive sounds and rustic smells. Bells ring in the distance, near small churches with broken walls, making the buildings more inviting. Children run around blowing into wooden whistles, and the accents from the many people we pass are Indian. Curries cook in huts, and the fragrant fumes sift out of the windows and into my nostrils.

Mama prepared a lot of curries: red, green, and yellow—though red has always been my and my broth-er's favorite. Our family friend, Lila, taught Mama how to make curry. Spices are one of the few ways to make the incessant portions of rice or potato more tasty. My sister, May, and my padre used to like yellow curry especially. I'm reminded of Mama's food, of flavors I have not tasted since I was locked up, as I walk with my friends through this region.

Our goal is to pass through the villages and get to the Fringe where we'll traverse what was once the Sier-ra Imataca before dodging the port into Guyana and entering my small village of Mabaruma. The port be-tween the Fringe and Guyana is easier to avoid since the border is not marked by a river and offers many hiding places in the foliage. Plus, most people don't travel through the Fringe. Most walk along the outskirts of the mountains between Guyana and Venezuela, where the Prestige live. This is the path carved out for us—for the village folk. This is the safest path, and where King Borran Khan can better keep tabs on the comings and goings between those two regions.

But we don't have the luxury of being safe; be-sides, we'll run into too many guards and risk being turned in. I've heard that Sierra Imataca used to be an area of high technological advancement, a booming city. After the Nuclear Period, the whole area was de-stroyed. It took two decades before foliage and trees even started to grow again—and the strangest of crea-tures began to emerge, irradiated to the very core. The whole area is restricted now. A kind of cross at your own peril zone, and unfortunately, we don't have Jade to protect us. Still, we have no other choice. The Fringe is our only hope.

As we pass through the small villages of Guayana City—larger villages don't exist anymore—we keep our heads low and stay knit-tight in our group. We keep to the backdrop, and behind huts to avoid being seen. We are surely fugitives now, with blood on our clothes, and can't risk being spotted by someone who might have been informed about our activities. We scurry across the dirt and meandering roads, up between long palm trees. People don't pay us much attention.

Fortunately for us, life here is calm at the moment and everyone is focused on buying goods at the market or gossiping the day away. I even overhear a few wom-en whisper about the PAPE group recruiting more vil-lagers for their purposes, and that a boy from their own village up and joined a month ago. They haven't seen him since. Then a couple of men, likely their husbands, join in on the conversation and add that a splinter group calling themselves Relic is making waves.

I try to ignore all the talk and keep focused on our goal. Turning to Ostir, I finally have time to ask her what I've been curious about since I saw her use her Graph gift. When my neck turns and my eyes pinpoint her own, she tilts her head.

"What?"

I keep my voice low, not wanting anyone to hear we are illegal Graphs. "What kind of snake Graph did you have done?" I want to ask her how safe she felt getting a Graph done by some half-doctor in the mid-dle of nowhere, but I don't want to bring up bad mem-ories.

Ostir grins, as if this is going to be good. "I had several venoms Graphed into me. Blue krait, death adder, tiger snake, and taipan."

"Wow."

Then she answers my deepest question without me having to ask. "Yeah, the doctor is brilliant. His name is Juan Jonito. He was banned and discredited by Borran in the last two years of Truss's life, while he lay in his deathbed. Juan was called a charlatan because he couldn't produce the results Borran wanted. So, Juan ventured off into villages, at Truss's disapproval, to give them what he knew he could produce. Potent Graphs, a powerful dose of the original Graph."

"Then, your poison is lethal."

"Extremely. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to hit Spider with any of it, just Prik's eye. Spider's poison is lethal too, and we both were careful to avoid each oth-er's spit."

My mind spins as I glance to Adan. "So, how can Ostir have three Graphs, if you could only have two?"

Adan answers quickly. "Because my Graph was all over my body. Ostir's is concentrated in a small part of her neck and mouth."

I think on that for a moment, then, ask curiously. "What is this procedure that Borran demanded, that even Juan couldn't perform?"

Ostir shakes her head. "Juan mentioned some-thing about Borran wanting Graphs to be able to kill animals themselves, to cut the Connection cord, so to speak. But every attempt to cut the Connection only results in Graphs losing their gifts, or their minds."

"Why?"

Ostir takes a breath. "I forget you're new to this." She gazes from me and to the distance where children play a game of hopscotch in the dirt. "Our brain waves are linked with the neural tissues and cells inside us, brain waves that have been altered—partly linked to the waves of the animals Graphed within us. Without this alteration, our gifts don't function. You can't have one without the other. So, cutting that Connection—those brain waves—cuts out part of our minds and makes cells in our bodies that are foreign attack what's na-tive." As she speaks about brain wave connections, I wonder if that's why I still have the urge to rub my cheeks all over Adan. Maybe my Bengal wants to re-lease contentment pheromones like our domesticated cats do.

"But then you are snake, so your brain waves are connected to the snake?" I ask Ostir.

"Yes." She nods.

"So, then how is it that you still can't kill mam-mals?"

"I think it has to do with me being a mammal and those brain waves linking to the snake's waves. The whole circle of life thing, I guess, keeps me from it." She shrugs.

"But you can kill reptiles?" I ask curious.

She shakes her head. "Not snakes. My link with them is too strong." Her eyes gaze up at the sky. "But frogs, I can kill frogs."

Klen interjects, "Don't forget to tell her how fun it was lying across a wooden table in the middle of the forest with just Juan Jonito and only a nurse at his side for comfort."

"Oh, you had me there," Ostir tiffs. "Besides, I went first and everything went fine."

"You made your sister go first?" I tease, and Klen takes the bait.

"No," Klen says defensively. "Ostir insisted she go first while I still had my full strength, in case some-thing went wrong and she needed me."

I grin. "Okay, okay. You're still decent."

We make our way easily through the rest of the villages of Guayana City by dodging just one Landclass guard who was preoccupied with smoking. Then, to-ward the end of the journey, we're fed by a fatter wom-an garbed in a cotton dress. She can't stand what Bor-ran is doing to the kingdom and will do anything she can to help the struggling. She insisted we eat her vege-table soup. So, we filled our bellies with carrot, roots, potatoes, and spicy fluids before thanking her and heading off in the direction of the green.

Once at the boundary where village life ends and the Fringe begins, we all turn to each other, catching each other's careful eyes, and then nod. We have to do this. Light is dim in the Fringe, as if the sun has taken a break. Must be all the leftover pollution in the atmos-phere. Bombs hit hard here forty-two years ago. Foli-age is exaggerated in size—tree leaves twice the normal width and bushes twice as high. Many are even danger-ous, with thorns and bristles pricking us as we make our way through the thicket. Past the initial boundaries, we keep to a low crawl over the ground which spreads for kilometers ahead as Sum leads our group through where Sierra Imataca once existed. His kind know this land well. Many unwanted in the unwanted lands. We crawl for about an hour, Sum's silent hand gestures alerting us of when to stop and telling us of when to move. All this silence reminds me of my jail cell when quiet gestures would warn us of wardens passing.

Adan stays close to me, and I let my head of hair play with his head before he stares at me like I should get a grip on marking with my scent. So, I move for-ward. I sometimes feel his fingertips against the heel of my foot, followed by Ostir and Klen, who keep on the grass side by side. We all move on our hands and knees, not wanting to be spotted by any beasts out here. Not with all we've heard.

When a dark shadow races across the grass just a few meters from Sum, I see it first. My Bengal eyes zone in on the intruder in the darkness and I point. The Fringe is not like the village. Sunlight is dead here. Then, we all freeze. My harpy eagle gathers so much detail as this creature now circles us like a frenzied shark, but yet keeps distance enough to remain aloof. My Bengal tiger likes this chase; something primal about it keeps my mind preoccupied with its dizzying spin around us. Adan grabs my foot from behind.

"Stay down," he whispers.

I nod. When Adan slips his one glove off his still good hand with his teeth, and tucks it into his pants, I know he's ready for battle. Even Ostir and Klen flush their Graphs. Sum wields his knife, with his knees pressed against the soft soil beneath us.

Turning his head back to me, I ask Sum, "You think it'll leave?"

He shakes his head, then whispers, "Doubtful."

Creatures of the Fringe got the worst of the radia-tion, and what the poison didn't kill, it mutated into things we can't recognize anymore. Once, a long white rubbery animal was dragged into my village by a hunter. Arms and legs as if stretched to their limits, and a head too deformed to know where the eyes sat and the neck began. Teeth like razors. Some creature halfway between a tiger and a monkey. The hunter said it was swinging through the trees and landed beside him. Its teeth protruded after a hiss, but before it could bite him, the hunter shot it. A primitive gun, like shot-guns from long ago. Just a few rounds. But this hunter made his count. Still, no one dared to eat the meat, and the animal was burned soon after its arrival to our vil-lage. That was several years ago.

I keep my eyes on this beast that now howls as it races around us madly, drawing attention to us, calling to more of them to come. As my Bengal tiger keeps focused and my eagle zeros farther in on details, I can finally make out the flat tail like a beaver, and the blus-tering crimson eyes, the twisted body like an over-grown dog, and a half-limb like a wing that didn't quite develop protruding out of one side.

This beast is angry—angry at what we've done to it—and ready for vengeance, for blood. Just when the creature swings around behind us, Klen half stands and flicks off one of his jellyfish tentacles from his neck. The tentacle lands on the beast's backside, stinging it, and I watch in shocked awe.

"How'd you do that?" I see no pain shooting through Klen's brain waves, no evidence of his Con-nection, a Connection we Graphs are all supposed to share with the animals. Then, I wonder if he's broken—like Adan.

Then, Adan yells to me, "Most Burned beasts don't have a Connection, because the radiation has ef-fected their brains, and brain waves. Their internal sys-tems are so bad that any connections they once had to the Earth, to us, have been destroyed. They will kill us, and we can kill them."

There is evidently a lot I still don't understand about my Graph, but this explains why my Radguar can't be harmed. Radiation didn't effect the brains of Radguars, just their physical appearance. I figure since my gifts won't aid in offense, I'll take defense and spy the beasts before they come. I bend my knees, keeping my head low but my body upright, as I glance around at anything else that moves.

After the painful tentacle falls off the Burned de-formed bush dog, the creature whimpers off into the distance. But others come; more of its kind, and other kinds. First a few more Burned bush dogs circle us—howling, and then other beasts that I can't quite distin-guish just yet sneak in low in the bushes. Nudging Adan, I signal to the new intruders. I've become the ears and eyes of my group in the dark. I see one beast slithering across the ground, with claws from its front and hind legs jutting out like dangerous weapons, hid-den mostly under swaying blades of grass—but not hid-den well enough from my eagle vision. There is not much that can be kept concealed from my eagle Graph.

Still, a different kind of beast lurks a few meters from Adan to the left. I whisper in a shout. "Over there!" Suddenly, it jumps toward us and backward, just to repeat this pattern again. Startled, Ostir flips around and watches intensely, her eyes squinting in the darkness. My vision zeros in on the miniature, brave creature with tiny pointed teeth and short, sharp claws. The creature reminds me of a howler monkey; the re-verberating screech is almost deafening, and makes me tense as if I'm surrounded by the worst kind of foe, something mythical. But this animal has no hair or fur, and its eyes—oh, God, its incredible eyes are too large to miss. Like boulders on clay, the Burned howler stares at me, straight into me, as if it can read my Graph.

It howls again and my neck hairs stand on end. Then, the howler screams, revealing its monstrous set of teeth—more like a shark's than any monkey I've seen. I stumble backward, almost tripping over myself when Adan lunges forward to scare the howler. Adan's one good hand acts as his weapon and slaps the howler across its leathery body with his bullet ant skin just when the howler bites his arm. The powerful sting warns howlers watching in the distance to avoid us, though this creature will only be paralyzed for twenty-four hours. Still, I know the agony it must be feeling as the small animal convulses on the ground.

"Are you okay?" I ask Adan as he shakes his arm, trying to ease the pain of the bite.

"Fine, I'll be fine. Just a flesh wound."

Ostir hisses, her venom spitting out of her mouth as Burned bush dogs howl in their circling of us, al-most as if they have not had this much fun in a while. Sum swings his knife blade as they pass in front, the blade switching from one hand to another in just sec-onds, but after enough snake venom hits a few of the Burned bush dogs, the deformed creatures yelp as they wobble away into the protection of the surrounding forests.

We all breathe a bit easier, and Ostir and Klen step forward. Sum turns his head left and right, search-ing, but it's my eyes that zero in on the slithering beast about to grab us. "Stop!" I shout to Klen just before he steps near the creature, a branch underfoot crunching. Sum instantly lunges at it, his heavy heel over its hind legs, his knife about to slit its throat when I yell, "No!"

Sum looked to me confused before his knife jabbed into the side of the beast, which was something between a sloth and a raccoon. "It'll kill us first chance it gets."

"Which it wouldn't do if we hadn't destroyed its habitat, its genes. We're to blame for this mess, not it," I argue, my body coming dangerously closer to attack-ing Sum. "Like you, it didn't ask for this deformity." My hand wraps over Sum's wrist as my foot holds the mouth of the Burned beast against the ground. "Let it go. It can't come after us. It can hardly even move."

Sum nods, and then lowers the knife to his side. "Then hurry. We need to get through this before night-fall."

After Sum jumps away, I leap behind him, the Burned sloth snapping helplessly at me in my long jump—wounded, but it will live. When the five of us move forward again, over the Fringe, I feel we might actually make it if we can hit Guyana before the sun goes down.

Keeping to the ground in a low crawl again—we don't want to draw even more attention—I sense the stare of Burned howlers and bush dogs watching us from behind the trees, just waiting for their chance at an easy meal, one not contaminated by the radiation they keep circulating among themselves.

By the time night hits us, the moon sits like a crescent gem glowing in the dark sky—the kind of gems the Prestige adorn themselves with, the kind of gems villagers mine so they can buy food. We are more than two-thirds of the way through and complete the cross-ing in a couple more hours.

Entering Sierra Imataca, I see that the buildings are all torn down or blown up, and the smell of death lingers like bad eggs that haven't been thrown out. Human bodies have decayed or have been ripped up and strung over side walls by Borran soldiers as a warning for villagers to not go beyond this point. They want no one entering Guyana illegally, without going through the proper port patrol. The bug-infested flesh brings unwanted beasts, surely Borran's intention.

I use my Bengal tiger sight to keep tabs on our nightly movements while Adan keeps his one good hand outstretched in front of us just in case. Ostir and Klen keep behind Sum, to protect him, as much as he insists he can take care of himself. Growing up togeth-er, they know each other well. How each moves, thinks, feels. I can't say the same, though I feel I know Adan more than I should from over the course of just a week.

"Do we go through or 'round?" Sum inquires, his hairless brow bone thick over a twitching eye.

Ostir looks to Klen. "Through," he says before pointing back the way we came. His forefinger points out a few Burned howlers and Burned bush dogs still on our trail, hiding in the foliage just skirting about the buildings. If we keep to the outside, the beasts will have a few choice opportunities to bite at us. So, we press onward through the rubble of buildings.

Reaching the first one, I notice the side walls are full of holes, as if a machine gun went off decades ago here. The ceiling is blown out, and I can still see the moon as we trek across the half-concrete, half-dirt floor. Midway, I see the silhouette of a creature to our left, a large animalistic shape. Red eyes peer into mine, and then we all hear a rumbling, resonating growl.
GUYANA

SUDDENLY, THE SILHOUETTED creature lunges at another shape to its right, waiting in the shad-ows under a concrete slab. They together fall to snarl-ing and biting, growling, and rolling over on top of one another, and I think surely the Burned creatures are fighting over us—over their prospective dinner. The attack is over in less than a minute. The larger crea-ture, whose silhouette I saw first, growls as it emerges from the concrete slab victorious and walks under-neath the shards of trickling moonlight toward the cen-ter of the building, toward us, and I can finally see him.

"Jade!" Jade leaps onto me, knocking me over, as he licks my face clean. "Jade!" I hug him, my arms embracing his thick, furry neck and my legs encasing his body as we roll on our sides across the ground.

After the spectacle and a few laughs, I stand and Jade returns to my side while the others focus on the journey. Adan points ahead.

"Come on, Jin. We're almost there."

The last hours pass quickly with Jade near me, as if all the Burned creatures of Sierra Imataca have a king to listen to now, an animal that will fight to the death to protect his family—and a Burned himself. I feel that's what we've become—all of us. Human, Burned, beast. Doesn't matter. We're all family now.

When we reach the border of Guyana, where foli-age and trees cover the frontal area, I know Mabaruma is not far away. Pushing through the vines, and tree branches, letting webs tickle in between my fingers, and forgetting I've been gone for over a year...I race through the bush and into my homeland desperate to see my village and familiar faces again.

A single thought beats inside my brain: Mama. Mama. For the first time on this journey out of Boli-var, I take the lead. Sum jogs beside Adan behind me; Ostir and Klen are together as usual. As we pass through the foliage and toward the villages, I can feel my heartbeat quicken, my legs flinging back and forth like rubber bands.

We race over the last of the Fringe bushes and in-to the first village. The customary sounds of wooden whistles and tantalizing smells of curries tell me I'm finally home. My village is just beside this one. Most of these huts are made of straw, branches, and mud; not stone like in Bolivar. The lucky ones have found tins to secure their roofs with, but my home is more simple.

The neighboring village is not far, just a five-minute run, and we are there rather quickly. Most vil-lagers are inside their huts, and that tells me that the curfew of ten o'clock is approaching. I head straight for Mama's. She and I live together and share a room, after Papa and May passed away. My younger brother takes the extra room. We only have two rooms, but it's enough, and more than many have.

In a slower jog, I excitedly pass a hut on the left about five homes down from Mama's when I'm sud-denly yanked by the shoulder behind the side wall and Jade growls. I take a few seconds to gain my bearings before the rest of my team is either pulled in with me or waved in by a gesturing hand. I don't have to squint in the dark to see with the use of my tiger vision, and my friends are more startled than me.

Looking up, I see Mama's good friend, Lila—the one who taught her about curries—and I set about calming Jade. Lila's lengthy, bony arms stretch to take me to her short and stubby frame. Her wrinkly skin betrays her age; Lila is almost twenty years Mama's senior. She is balding, but still has about half of her gray hair tied into a ponytail.

"Lila?!"

Her calloused palms rub over both of my shoul-ders. "Yes, child. Who'd you think?"

"But how'd you know—"

"—you were coming?" Lila finishes my thought, and after I nod, she answers, "Come in, dear."

I shake my head. "No, I'm heading to Mama's."

"No, no, no." Lila's forefinger waves in correction like she'd do to me and May when we'd stay out past curfew so many years ago.

I pause and look ahead to where Mama will be resting in her hut.

"You must come in with me, dear child. You"—she gazes around— "and your friends."

Her palms wrap around my arm and tighten as she pulls me into the back entrance of her hut. Sour air rolls into my lungs and the sky cracks with pouring rain. "What's going on?" I ask, my voice cracking. Lila gestures for us all to sit in the wooden chairs she has in the entryway as rain hammers the roof and lash-es the side walls. My friends take a seat—but I stay standing next to Jade, who keeps his glare on Lila, this stranger he hasn't decided to like just yet. "What is it?"

"It's your mama." My gaze turns intense like the sun, bearing down on her, as Lila adds, "The other day, Borran's soldiers came through here, ransacked everything, and carted your mama away like a prison-er. Soldiers were stationed outside your home. They are there now, waiting for you, I imagine."

I don't want to believe it, but Lila wouldn't lie. She is the best friend Mama ever had, and after my padre died, she prepared the funeral just like my mama did for her husband. Adan's eyes flick from Lila to me and back to Lila again before Lila continues.

"The only reason soldiers would be stationed at your home is to wait for you. So, I decided I had to get to you first. I figured you'd be up this way soon."

"You've been waiting for me?"

Lila nods.

"Then, we have to get to Mama. Find out where they've taken her and break her out," I plead. "And my younger brother, Carlos! Where's he?" My face feels hot. "Did they do something to him, did they...?"

"No, no, no," Lila says hurriedly. "Calm down, child. You need to focus. Clear head."

She always has a way of sounding so sagely. I guess age does that to a person, at least if they have had to go through a lot to survive. "Carlos is fine," she ex-plains. "Staying at a friend's."

"Where? Who?" Too many questions storm my mind like dark clouds rolling over a clear day.

"Mr. and Mrs. Singh. They took him in yesterday after your mama was carried away." Lila shakes her head. "She screamed the whole way." Lila looks down to the hard mud-straw floor. "She waited a long time to see you. All she wanted to do was see you again."

It takes a few minutes, silent minutes, for it all to sink in. We all just stare at each other, and then at Lila, before I break the silence. "Why would Borran do this? Why would he go to all this trouble to get me back?"

My eyes find Adan's, as if he might hold some an-swer to this riddle.

Adan shakes his head.

"Why don't you know, didn't you work for them?!" I demand, and hit my clenched fist into the side wall, popping a knuckle-sized dent into the crackly mud casing.

When Adan's head drops, Lila springs to her feet, her small body wobbling to the dresser against the far wall near the two bedrooms she has. She opens the bottom drawer and pulls out a rectangular wooden chest. She hands the chest to me.

Our eyes meet. "It was your mama's. I think you'll find answers in there."

I stare at her for a few long moments as if she has stories to tell, before glancing at the splintering chest in my clasping hands. I glance at the top decorated with a carved image of a couple, presumably Mama and Pa-dre.

I plop onto the floor, legs sprawled out, and let the chest and Jade rest between my legs. Adan and Ostir come over, while Sum and Klen keep watch at the win-dow and door. Lila lays a candle near my legs and nods her head. "Well, go ahead, child, we don't have all night."

I slip open the top and find inked papers and black and white photographs. I scatter them before me, and Adan fixes his glare at one photo near my left leg. I look at it too, and notice my mama hugging a tall, bearded man who reminds me too much of someone I despise.

As Adan and I stare, Ostir becomes intrigued and I take the photo into my hands for a closer look. "Is that—"

Lila finishes my thought again. "King Truss Khan? Yes, it is. I remember when he came into the village, approving a pipeline to draw water from the Atlantic and into the mountains for the Prestige."

We all stare at Lila, even Sum and Klen now.

Lila continues, scratching her head. "Must have been about eighteen years ago."

"And Mama took a picture with him? Why? Why would she do that?"

"Because Truss wanted it—wanted her."

All the implications spiral through my mind like a bad dream, and I just want to wake up. "You mean Mama knew Truss?"

"No one really knew Truss," Lila corrects, her eyes flicking to the door at the sound of a dog barking. She signals to her bedroom door. "Let's reconvene in there. Lock the door."

Adan nods and follows with me, Jade, and Ostir. At Lila's bedroom door, he turns to Sum and Klen. "You two keep watch."

Their heads turn to the window and front door as the rest of us seal ourselves into Lila's bedroom. "You can never be too careful," Lila comments.

I lay the chest on the bed, keeping the photo in my hands and Jade at my side. "So, how did this happen?" I gaze at the photo.

"Truss spotted your mama washing clothes near the ocean one day and he called for her company," Lila continues, sitting in her rocking chair. "You can't refuse the king. So, she obliged." Lila glances at a vase of flowers on her bookcase, flowers she picks whenev-er she can. "They spent every night together for seven nights until King Khan returned to his homeland."

"Are you saying...?" I don't want to say the words aloud. That my mama had an affair with King Khan—a hated man, at least by villagers. With a man who would have been more than twice her age at the time. With a man my padre would have shot if given the chance.

Lila's gaze drops to the wooden chest on the bed. "Please, read your mama's letters. She left them for you in case she ever disappeared."

I can't pull the letters out of the chest fast enough. Ostir and Adan stay quiet, but I know their minds are reeling just as mine is. I unfold the letter at the top and read aloud.

Dearest Jin,

I don't know if your life is in danger, or mine, but if you are reading this, then there are things you must know. Years ago, Truss visited Guyana and found fa-vor with me. We slept together, and after he departed, I became pregnant. I kept the pregnancy a secret from everyone for as long as I could, until I could no longer hide the bump. Your padre agreed to pretend the child inside of me was his.

We found a doctor by the name of Juan Jonito, who also took photos and traveled between regions of-fering Graph procedures. I wanted a quiet birth, you see. Nothing that might be registered with the head of-fice nine months later, for fear that King Khan would know you were his and have you killed.

After you were born, we wrote your name on the birth certificate as Jin Maharaj, our surname, and had you registered with the head office of Guyana a month later. For all they know, you are your padre's child.

But your true surname is Khan. This information must remain secret, for your life depends on it. My life depends on it. If the king ever found out the truth, if his son, Borran, ever found out the truth, then you would be sentenced to death. No blood must be al-lowed to counter the hereditary rights of Borran for the Americas.

If you're reading this, then you must be in danger or I must be, and so I caution you to be careful, but above all things be brave. Be the fighter your padre taught you to be, and the compassionate young lady I remember. Look to anyone who can help you on your journey. Learn all you can. Remember, I am always with you and love you so very dearly.

Your loving Madre

Nearly dropping the letter, my body wavers un-steadily before Adan catches me. I zone in on the name Khan. "I'm a Khan?" I can hardly believe the notion, but there it is in a letter, in my mama's own handwriting.

"Yes," Lila answers.

"How...how long have you known?" My voice quivers.

"Since your mama's belly was showing." Lila's rocking stops.

My eyes flick to Adan. "Then this is why Borran wants me dead."

"And it explains why he would send Spider to do it," Adan adds.

"But why now?" I shake my head, my eyes grow-ing big on Adan.

He leans forward, closer to me. "Because, Jin, your blood was tested to find the most symbiotic Graphs for your body. Your DNA results would have been sent to Borran that day as all Graph DNA results are ordered to, but they wouldn't have reached him un-til the following morning. He doesn't live at the facility. Borran must have noticed you have a sequence shared by him, enough to make him suspicious. He must known his padre had flings. He probably figured out you were his half-sister on day two of the hunt, after the blood results were sent to him. That's why he sent Spi-der after you." Adan rubs his temple.

"And you," I say, almost flinching.

"Yeah," he says ashamed.

I lean backward, hitting the bed, my mouth ajar, forgetting that Adan was actually sent to hunt me down and kill me—and now he is here in front of me, saving me. "And he has Mama."

"As bait. He didn't find you at your home, so he figures he'll draw you out." Lila's expression grows grave, her tone gravelly. "You have to be careful, child. Borran is ruthless, and he'll stop at nothing to ensure his hereditary rights. If he's anything like his father, Truss, he'll play games with you."

"But how do we get Mama back?" My eyes thick-en with tears, and I can't hold back the cry any longer, and explode.

Adan pulls me into his chest, his warmth comfort-ing in all of this mess. "We'll find her. We'll find her."

Lila exits to her backyard to warm tea, a backyard just a few meters in either direction and guarded by an old fence. A kettle sits on a stone stump with a hole at its center that is used for fire. She returns and hands tea to Sum and Klen, who remain diligent on watch. Then, she heads to her bedroom.

After sipping a few times, Lila suggests, "I would go see Juan Jonito. He might know something. He took many photos of your mama with Truss. Some photos Truss requested and took with him to wherever he lives, and some stayed with Juan. There might be something in them that can help you find Borran."

I contemplate that thought, because that is what we really need—a location for Borran. Kings' homes are kept hidden from the public and no one knows where they live, except for a few trusted employees in the mil-itary. If we can get to Borran, we can try to force his hand and free Mama.

"Where can we find Juan?" Adan asks, and Ostir sits up, straightening her back and clearing her throat.

"I can help with that one."

"How?" I ask, my anxiety eased by the notion of solutions.

Ostir replies softly, tugging loose strands of blonde hair behind her ears. "Juan lives in the Kaieteur Falls, in a cave."

"How do you know this?" I question, my brows quirking.

"I'm a Graph, remember? Who do you think did it for me?"

I stand. "Then what are we waiting for?"

Lila grabs my wrist. "First, say goodbye to your brother. He's still at the Singhs'. And while you're there"—her eyes shift to Adan— "get your friend's hand fixed. He won't be much use to you bleeding like that."

Adan flinches.
PARTS

WE HAVE TO VISIT my old friends, the Singhs, at night to stay under the radar. Of course, if we're caught, the land patrol will have too many ques-tions, questions and scans, that will lead to my arrest. To the arrest of all my friends. I can't have that, so I let Ostir and Lila know that Adan and I will do this alone. Jade takes a moment of consoling, but eventual-ly he seems to understand that he will not be following me. His distrusting glare toward his 'new keepers' is enough to make me hurry back, though I know I can trust Ostir and Lila with everything.

The Singhs live on the opposite side of my village. Fortunately, the village is small and the walk will just take about seven minutes. Keeping low to the bushes and behind trees to avoid attention, as we've gotten used to doing in the Amazon and Fringe, Adan and I finally approach the Singhs' hut. A land patrol paces nearby, his head turning north in the direction of the ocean several times, as if he's wishing he could just sail off in a sailboat one day. I don't blame him. Adan and I head east.

After scurrying past a long palm tree, we skirt around the back wall and enter the back door. In times like these, the Borran rule on front and back doors containing no locks pays off. Adan and I are quiet, something else we've both gotten used to while being hunted.

I've been inside the Singhs' hut a few times grow-ing up. Mostly they were Mama's friends. Their little girl, Amanda, played with May whenever we came over, which was only ever when my parents needed wooden or metal parts. Their daughter was given an English name in hopes of having her fit in better with the Prestige, but no one just fits in with the Prestige. That was just a dream. Names don't matter in this world. Bloodlines do.

The Singhs are scroungers. Not the most noble profession, but very practical, and metals can be sold at high prices. Once, I was invited to a rowboat esca-pade that Amanda and May orchestrated when I was just ten, which ended badly in the Orinoco River with a flooded canoe and angry guards. I didn't play with Amanda much after that, but May did. My last memory of her is when she was returning from the Singhs, before she got sick.

The Singhs share a bedroom to the left of the back door, and their daughter used to stay in the bed-room to the right—but she's been married off now. Like all huts, this one is also small and just contains a small entryway before the rooms. My eyes gloss over Adan, his presence always a thread of comfort—even after everything I know about him. There's a taste of metal in my mouth in this room. My lashes pause as my eyes scan the hut. I'm not sure when I started doing this, when the Bengal inside of me could make my lashes actually freeze, but I determine it has been for some time, although I've just become cognizant of this now—so close to home, so close to who I used to be.

I wave to Adan to follow behind me as we tiptoe to the Singhs' place. Inside, I take a moment to peek in Amanda's old room, because that's where Carlos would be. With my Bengal vision I can see my young-er brother asleep in the cot, half of his body under the covers. I desperately want to hug him and tell him I'm fine, but I don't want to disturb his peace. I'll hug him after Adan's taken care of and the Singhs will tell him my plan in the morning. I'll be back.

Adan and I sneak to the main room. Ashana and Krish will be sound asleep, and I don't want to startle them. Krish can have a viselike grip and a powerful blow when scared. After squeaking the door open ever so slightly, I tiptoe to the bed and begin to call out.

"Wake up, it's me, Jin. Wake up," I whisper near his ear.

Startled, I'm sure he hasn't registered what I've said just yet, and he jerks up from bed, his matted blue-black hair like a nest on top of his head, and throws a punch. His fist lands between my nose and cheekbone before Adan comes to my defense. Adan grips Krish's wrist and pulls his arm down as Krish blinks and shakes his head, and finally comes to a more awakened state.

"Jin?" His heavy Indian tone registers me.

"Yeah, it's me," I whisper again, but this time squashed between him and the pillow on the bed. "I need something."

"Your brother, yes. He's in Amanda's room."

"No, no." I lift Adan's wounded limb. "He needs to be cleaned up and his stump cauterized."

Krish's face leans into Adan's missing hand, the bloody stump, and his eyes squint when his wife Asha-na wakes up.

"What is all this chatter about? You've invited guests to sleep with us, Krish?" she says grumbling.

"Yes, Ashana. That's exactly what I'm doing," Krish answers, sounding half annoyed. "Thought we needed to spice up our love life."

I can feel Ashana roll her eyes before Krish jumps out of bed. "So, follow me, then."

Adan and I follow behind Krish who speeds to-ward a dresser, the only dresser, in his bedroom, and opens the top drawer. "Here," Krish yawns, "all my metal and wooden parts are in here. See if you can find something that fits."

I rummage through the drawer with Adan, looking over metal rectangular slabs, cylinder-shaped pieces, and spheres. Then, I see a short wooden spike toward the back corner. I yank out the part and examine it more closely. "This?" I glance up at Adan, his head hanging over mine.

"I thought we were going to get a hand," he jests with a wink.

Krish interjects, "Well, the top drawer is all I've got." His forefinger fumbles over the part I hold. "Good enough?"

"Going to have to be," Adan comments, and then I pull out some thread strung into a ball.

"Can we use this?"

"Whatever you need," Krish replies. "After what happened to your mama, I'll do anything to help you." Krish scratches his head. "Still don't understand why they took her. Her, of all people."

He doesn't know. I expect no one knows, except Lila and Mama. Mama would have wanted it that way.

"Do you have a needle?" I ask, and Adan cringes.

Krish looks to his wife, and she huffs as she pulls herself out of bed, mumbling under her breath. She opens a box beside her cot and then hands me a nee-dle. "I loved your mama too. I'm sorry about what happened."

I nod and try to smile. I know Krish got along with Mama more than she did. Ashana has never liked peo-ple, and always tries to keep to herself. 'Safer that way,' she'd say. That's why I hardly saw Amanda outside of her home except when Mama came for parts. And af-ter that river escapade, Amanda never snuck out again.

I wave Adan toward the candle on the side table near Krish's cot. "Can you light this?"

Krish takes out the matches from the side table and the candle brims with yellow flickers that let me study Adan's hand better. "We have got to disinfect you. Then, get you sewn up tonight, before we head out for..." I almost say the name Juan before I remember that Krish doesn't know anything about this and it's best for all of us if it stays that way. "...Mama."

Krish hands me a bottle of alcohol and a few cot-ton swabs from a drawer in his dresser. Adan nods, clenching his jaw, knowing the pain that's about to come. But he's felt worse. Way worse. Early experi-ments with Graphing were dangerous, deadly even. After I was taken from my cell, that night I awoke strapped to a medical table, I thought I'd never see to-morrow from all the rumors of what the BAG facility does to prisoners. The BAG surgical team began cut-ting into my foot and head before I even felt numb. The serum was injected deep into my blood and bone. A serum that helps to bind animal cells to human cells. Then, the brain scans and wave fusions felt like a combination of electric shock and drowning. I know Adan must have gone through something similar. This will be nothing.

Adan sits on Krish's bed, while Krish and his wife watch from the other side. I lean into the light, taking Adan's sleeve to keep his stump close to me, while try-ing to steady my own hand as I use a bottle of alcohol and cotton swabs on him. Ashana shakes her head just as I wipe Adan's wounded wrist, and rushes over to us to place a towel underneath the mess we're making.

Adan grinds his teeth and Krish gives Adan a cloth to bite down on before he warms up a tin pot over a small backyard fire. When Krish returns, both Adan and I cringe. The hot pot is brought closer to Adan and Krish signals Adan with his chin to lift his stump up so he can cauterize it.

"It's got to be done, man." Krish is firm.

I hold Adan's other hand and squeeze when Krish gently presses the hot pot against Adan's stump, drying the blood and sealing the skin some.

Adan's scream is numbing.

"It'll stop the bleeding." Krish encourages before he presses the hot pot against Adan's stump again. Af-ter a few more times, the stump is no longer leaking blood and Adan looks as if he might faint. But it's over.

After wrapping Adan's stump with a cloth, I tuck the cloth ends underneath his shirt sleeve and tape them over his arm. Then I reach for the wooden spike with my other hand. "We need to get this on you. At least with this, you'll be able to fight with that missing hand."

Adan nods. He knows, as I do, that you are noth-ing if you can't fight in this world. So, I tug on Adan's sleeve, still keeping his stump close, and use his sleeve as the arm to sew the club into place. The bottom of the club has ringlets and I use those to stitch up and down, up and down, until the entire end of the club is attached to Adan's sleeve, in place of his hand. Not delicate, and not even that good of a job. Crude even. It will surely flop around a lot, but at least he can hit an enemy with it and cause some damage.

After the deed is done, we don't have much longer to stay. We want to head out of Mabaruma by mid-night, and travel with everyone to the waterfall while it's still dark. I figure the distance will take us about ten hours, like from Guayana City to the borders of Guy-ana. Around halfway through our journey, the sun will be rising and shining unwanted light on us.

That means I don't have long for my reunion with my brother. I walk to his bedroom quietly, while Adan stays behind in the Singhs' bedroom. An unfamiliar face will just scare him. I use my shaking-the-shoulder strategy to get my younger brother to wake up. Carlos rubs his emerald-colored eyes, glances at me, and blinks with long lashes a few times, as if still dreaming, before he leaps up and throws his thin arms around me.

"Sis!"

His freshness and youthful glow is invigorating. "Carlos," I whisper, and use the shh sign with my fore-finger over my closed lips to keep him quiet. I don't want neighbors hearing. Hut walls are thin, and the fewer eyes that see me, the better.

Our squeeze is long, too long with what little time we have.

"When did you get back?"

"A few days ago."

Carlos grows somber. "You know they took Ma-ma."

My forefinger caresses his silky chin. "I know. And I'm going to get her back."

"Promise?" he almost cries.

"Yeah." Carlos throws his arms around me again before I grudgingly unlatch myself from him to kiss him on the cheek and say bye. "Stay here with the Singhs. Stay quiet and keep your head down. Follow all the rules of Mabaruma, no matter how stupid. Don't get yourself thrown in prison, or I may never see you again."

Carlos nods, his eyes low on me as I exit the door and wave goodbye before I blow a kiss. When the door closes, I know Carlos will be restless. I am too. I wave to Adan to come to me and we head to the back door of the hut.

"Thank you, Krish."

"Anything. Anytime," he replies, and closes the back door gently behind us. His wife, Ashana, I imag-ine is still in her bedroom and glad we've finally gone. Despite what she says, I know she doesn't want to risk her and her daughter's life for my mama's.

Returning to Lila's hut is easy. Not too many guards on patrol, and the few that are around are busy occupying themselves with cigarettes or daydreams. But by the time I get back to Lila's place, I see a sil-houette stalking the hut from behind a palm tree. Quickly retreating through the back door, and surely seen by the stalker, I point to the back wall for Klen and Sum to take notice.

Damn, someone knows we're here.

When the four of us are at the back wall, I notice the dark silhouette approach the back door and swing the door open softly. I keep my tiger vision on the en-tryway, on this intruder who I can now see more clear-ly is marked with a black tattoo over his back—the in-signia of Barron—and wearing green military pants and combat boots.

He's quiet, and muscular. Maybe as chiseled as Adan. That's when I notice Adan step backward. He's scared. The stranger pushes his way into the hut, and we all keep in the dark spaces by the wall, behind the dresser. Lila, Ostir, and Jade will still be in the bed-room, and I can only hope this goes down quietly. I can't afford to have more of Borran's Graphs at my back door.

"He's named Eel," Adan whispers to my ear, the roughness of his breath more intoxicating than warn-ing.

Careful to keep hidden, Klen flushes his jellyfish tentacle Graph behind me. Sum swings his knife blade open and the click causes Eel to flick his head in our direction. Behind the dresser, we can't be seen, but something tells me this foe doesn't need to see us with his eyes to know we're here.

Just as Eel lunges around the dresser, flushing his apparent Graph that glimmers silver-black over hair-less arms like a series of waves, Adan rips off his shirt and leaps in front of us to take the hit. Eel swings his arms, his left arm smacking Adan across the face, and keeping Eel's electric current from hitting me—but siz-zling Adan.

With eyes closed, Adan is still confident, and I forget for a moment about his bat gifts. That he has echolocation. I watch as Adan wields his bullet ant arms against this enemy's electric eel limbs, as if Adan can see Eel right in front of him. And I guess, in a way, he can.

I can't blink, not now; my tiger mind is too intent on the action before me. Klen flings a tentacle at Eel from beside me, which burns a layer of his back skin—burning a corner of the tattoo—but it doesn't make Eel flinch, and I'm not sure if Eel can even feel at this point. Then, I see it. The layer underneath the burnt skin. Something hard, like calcified shell or something. Damn, this Graph's been body-proofed.

Adan isn't fazed by the lack of pain Eel has, or maybe he doesn't realize what just happened. Seconds afterward, Adan jumps onto Eel, their chests colliding and their arms intertwining in a chaotic wrap. Adan's wooden club bobs in the air. Shards of electricity shoot off Adan and Eel, and groans of pain finally escape our enemy's mouth at the sting of bullet ant. But Adan's in pain, too. I see the energy leaving him, draining, and his grinding teeth holding back a scream so loud that everyone in the village would surely hear. But he holds it in as his body convulses from the electric surge.

Immediately, I grab the knife from Sum and jump behind Eel to stab his back, but the blade barely makes a dent, just cracking a shell that has become this Graph's second layer of skin. Now, I understand why Adan was scared. Hurting, let alone killing Eel will prove difficult. But we have to kill him. He can't be allowed to warn the other soldiers guarding my hut that I'm here. So, I pull the knife out a microsecond later and thrust the blade into the back of his neck, a vulner-able spot. Eel wobbles, losing his balance just as I hear Jade snarl.

Jade scratches on the other side of the bedroom door, whining, and I know he's my best chance at this. I've been given three amazing Graphs, but none that can kill—as of yet. I slide to Lila's bedroom and open the door fast. Jade takes no pause before pouncing on-to Eel, his thick jaguaresque teeth piercing into the back and stomach of this enemy like a midnight snack. Eel releases Adan, and as he falls to the floor in a loud thud, Eel becomes drenched in blood.

Then, I hear a loud crunch and then a louder groan. Eel lifts his arms to attack, in a last attempt to get free and kill Jade. Suddenly, Lila comes running into the entryway kicking her legs, and the side of her foot knocks high into Eel's chin, his head flicking backward and another bone, a neck bone, cracking this time. Her athletic display stuns me when next her other foot comes flying forward to finish Eel off, and then she hits him in the groin. Eel's eyelids flutter before shutting and his limbs grow limp. Jade lets go and Eel drops to the floor in a thud.

"Let's clean this up and get out of here before more come," Lila warns.

We all look to her, knowing no matter what we do, more will always come. But we can't stop now, be-cause Borran still has Mama and I will do anything to get her back to me.
KAIETEUR FALLSS

AFTER THE MESS AT Lila's is cleaned, Eel's body is hidden under her cot along with the cloth used to wipe up the spilled blood. We sneak out the back door hurriedly and head southeast, in the direction of Kaieteur Falls. Juan will have to be our next stop if I'm ever going to get Mama back.

Lila's strength surprises me, but I guess it shouldn't. Even she would have trained herself, or her parents would have made sure she was strong enough to survive in this brutal world before passing on. Still, watching a sixty-seven-year-old woman help kick the ass of a Borran Graph is something that doesn't hap-pen every day.

"Are you okay?" I lean into Adan, examining his eyes as he lies there on the floor of the hut.

He keeps his lids closed. "My eyes have to rest. Eel stung me bad, but it'll heal in time."

"Is there anything we can do?"

"Not really, but I won't be able to move for a good thirty minutes."

Klen's forehead wrinkles as he rubs his head. "We have to get out of here. Any one of those soldiers could come investigating house by house, wondering where Eel is."

"Klen's right. We don't have thirty minutes to wait," Ostir agrees.

Sum steps between Klen and me. "Why don't Klen and I carry him 'til he's strong enough?"

"I can work with that," Adan grumbles on the floor.

I help Lila put Adan's shirt back on, trying to avoid Adan's skin. Strange—all I want to do is touch it. Maybe because it's forbidden, a long-lasting sting. Or maybe because the desire to kiss him still lingers in me. He feels like a safe refuge after imprisoned in Borran's cell before the 'hunt', someone I can long for because he can't have me—his bullet ant skin a full proof chastity belt.

After Klen and Sum lift Adan off the floor and fling an arm over each of their shoulders, we all head out the back door of Lila's hut and say goodbye to an-other village. First Adan's home, and now mine. Bor-ran is taking everything away from us. His footprint is left everywhere. Our freedom, then attempts on our life, and now our homes...and Mama. Oh God. Mama better still be alive.

The first thirty minutes of the journey to the wa-terfall are most difficult because we can't move as quickly as we'd like and three of our team are bound together. Hiding in bush and trees proves challenging as we stay behind the huts in our exit of this small vil-lage. We head south first to avoid passing my hut, which is located to the east. The darkness provides a well-needed canopy over us as we traverse out of Mabaruma and into dense foliage. Swallows chirp in soaring dives over treetops. We keep to the outskirts of villages, traipsing through a thicket of trees and over wild terrain that's been left to overgrow, traveling as far south as we can over a carpet of yellow and pink flow-ers, all while the sun is starting to rise. We then head east, where fresh flower scents are still fragrant, and spot a family of normal wildcats and wild hogs in the distance just watching us and keeping their distance.

The seven of us like to stay in a routine formation. Adan, Jade, and I up front, followed by Klen and Ostir, and lastly Lila and Sum. Scurrying around a patch of Hooker's lips flowers—shiny red buds that blow us kisses—we finally hit the waterfall around ten in the morning where a few Pin monkeys—or Capuchin as some say—play, reminding me that not all is lost to ra-diation. We have only had to pass through a couple villages during the night and one in the day. Since the regions containing those villages are smaller, they don't have port patrols there but we still are careful to avoid guards. The less eyes and question on us, the better.

The sound of water hitting rocks and a basin about seven hundred meters below is hypnotic. After a long drop, the water streams and trickles over lower rock formations, and engulfs me with a sense of calm that I haven't felt in a very long time. I could sit there listening all day and forget the chaos around me, but I have to move onward. I have to do this for myself, for Mama.

Ostir leads us to where the cave is, the one she said where Juan Jonito lives. I keep my eyes vigilant, never knowing what might try to attack us next, as we follow her between mossy trees and short stubs on the ground until reaching the large rock where the water-fall pours. Ostir points at an opening in the side and waves us forward.

"How do you know where he lives?" I pry, and Jade growls unsurely.

"A few years ago, I had a problem with my Graph. The poison was leaking onto the outer layer of my skin and stinging me. The brain wave Connection with the Graphed cells was deteriorating and causing the Graphed cells to attack their host—me."

"How'd you find Doctor Juan?"

Ostir looks to the ground, a guilty expression. "We've been in contact for a while."

"How long?"

"After he left our village, I didn't know where he'd gone, but we ran into each other at a rally and kept meeting."

"A rally?"

Ostir shakes her head, not wanting to get more specific.

But I pry.

"A PAPE rally? You're involved with PAPE!"

"I wasn't sure I would join, and when I met Juan there," she shrugs, "he just made so much sense. Had seen so much." She looks back at me. "He fixed my brain wave Connection, that's all that matters. En-hanced it, really. I was the first of this kind, you see."

"This kind?"

"The first to receive a Potent Graph."

"You mean four similar Graphs overlapping?"

Ostir nods. "Yeah, the brain wave Connection took some trial and error to get right."

"But you're fine now?" I ask Ostir, worried.

Ostir answers brightly, "I think so."

As we step into the opening of the cave, crunching over twigs on the moist ground that must have taken a drizzle of rain at night, I hear a thump-thump from deep inside of shoes over pockets of soil. The cave is colder than hiding in the foliage. A gust of wind rushes over me and leaves chills. I even feel my arm hairs stand on end. Ostir still leads, leaving Klen behind her with the rest of us following close. I pet Jade as his nose sniffs against the wall of the cave, and then in the air, trying to understand this new environment—so dif-ferent from the Amazon. Jade wants to growl, he opens his jaws and bares his teeth, but no sound comes out since he's learned to not give us away.

"Who's there?" a gruff voice resounds from deep within the cave.

Ostir holds her hand up at us, keeping her brother and the rest of us back. "It's me, Ostir."

"Ostir?" The voice is soft, soothing. "Is some-thing wrong?" The footsteps grow closer in a hurry. Then, big round eyes like coals peek up from a short form with squared shoulders and lax jaw. Juan's ex-pression grows hesitant and suspicious as lines furrow the sides of his eyes and forehead. "What's this? Who are they?"

"It's okay, Juan. They're friends. Graphs."

"That explains the Radguar," Juan comments. "Show me your backs."

I understand his quandary. Helping friends can often lead to arrest, especially for doctors performing illegal Graphs. Immediately, Adan and I flip around and lift our shirts, revealing a bare back—without the Borran tattoo.

"You never got one?" I pry.

"Prisoners on contract aren't given that honor." Adan rolls his eyes. "We are only recognized by a quick scan of the bar code."

Juan flits his eyes away from Klen, and then to the two elders in back. "Who's he? A Burned?" Juan hawk-eyes Sum.

"Yeah." Sum steps forward, unbothered. "One hundred percent born and raised, Burned."

Juan cracks a smile and then tilts his head toward Lila. "And her?"

"Just an old friend," Ostir insists, and Juan nods his head.

"Fine, then, come on in." Juan waves us in and as we follow behind him, Jade sticks close to my side, and is still not sure he can trust this new person. We squeeze through a long, thin passage, forced to go sin-gle file until we reach an open chamber, broad enough to fit twenty men.

"You live here?" I ask, keeping my voice low and hopefully not intrusive.

Juan nods. "Yes, for years, since I was barred from Borran's services." Then, his eyes fix on me. "And why are you all here?"

Ostir clears her throat. "We have a favor to ask."

"It's not about Graphing, is it?"

"No, nothing like that," Ostir says hastily, fixing loose blonde strands behind her pointy ear.

I speak up. "It's my mama. See, I was arrested, imprisoned. Then turned into a Graph by the people at the BAG facility."

Juan jets up, his interest piqued, eyes focused sole-ly on me.

"When I escaped and returned to my home vil-lage, my mama was gone. Taken by Borran's sol-diers." I breathe, trying to hold back so many boiling emotions. "I just want her back."

"But what does that have to do with me?" Juan's gray, heavy brows crinkle together. "What do you need from me?"

"You took the photo of my mama and Truss eighteen years ago in Mabaruma."

Juan stands still, his expression freezing and fixing over me as his memory whirls. "Ariana?"

"Yes." I nod. That is my mama's name. "She needs your help. Anything. Letters, photos that could help give me clues as to where she might be, where Borran might have taken her."

"I see," Juan answers, his voice lowering with his head. "You can look. I knew your madre. She was a kind woman." He walks to a basket in the corner of the room, picks it up, and sets it on the ground between me and him. "Every photo I have ever taken is in there. What's survived, anyway."

"Survived?" I fret.

"There was a fire." Juan slaps his forehead. "I spilled chemicals, started a fire. Lost some things years ago in it."

"Oh." I lean into the basket and start pulling out photos. Images of trees, rivers, waterfalls, and even a few animals make up most of the basket. "I don't see anything about Mama in here."

"Try the bottom. They're probably at the bot-tom," Juan clarifies.

Digging my hands in deep, I pull out the bottom layer of photographs and lay them over the pebbly ground. Adan and Juan lean over with me. "Here," I point to a photo, "here's Mama."

Juan nods. "Yes, that was taken of Ariana in her home." He chuckles. "That was a good day."

My fingers slide over pictures of former King Truss. One shows his fur coat, bearded face, and rab-bit hat. He's a large man, a thick man, and his eyes are deep set and dark like mine, like his son, Borran. Now that Borran's older, he resembles his padre a lot, ex-cept that he has his madre's dark long locks. I can't take my eyes off Truss's red curls that swivel under the rabbit hat—a color so much like my own, color I was told I got from my grandma—and then I focus on his rectangular chin.

I have his hair, his chin—and the part of me that I just want to hide from the world cringes.

"Yes," Juan adds, scratching his temple, "those photos were taken when Truss visited Mabaruma, be-fore I was barred from service."

"So, the two of you were friends?"

"In a way, though I wouldn't say Truss or Borran ever really make friends. They make business oppor-tunities, and power plays." Juan sits opposite me, both of out legs crisscrossed now. His hair has more gray up close. "I was useful to Truss, and his son liked me, or I should say he used me for three years to perform work on humans to perfect his Graphs. I would have been used for five, had I not been barred while his pa-dre lay dying."

"Speaking of friends, where is the nurse that helped me with my Graph?" Ostir's head turns in search.

Juan's head lowers and he wipes a red eye. "My wife, Win. She died a year back. Illness."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Ostir says, and Klen adds, "Me too."

Staring at the photos, I ask, "Is there anything you can tell me that will help us find Borran?"

Sum spreads a few photos in his hands. "I can." We all glance to Sum, who seems to often come up with odd answers. "This photo here..." He shows me one up close.

My eyes search for clues, seeing my mama and Truss in an embrace, a tight smile from Mama telling me she doesn't want to be there. An apparent cold day. Both are dressed in heavy coats and stand before a riv-er near my village. "I don't know. What do you see?"

Sum points to a vehicle in the distant backdrop, hiding near a tree. "There. Underneath the rear door is a name."

"That's right, I remember Borran driving in with a military Jeep," Juan agrees, leaning closer into the picture.

Adan adds, "And Borran likes to keep track of his property. Where it's from, where it's going."

"What does it say?" Juan squints. "I can barely read the name."

My Graph flushes over my eyes like a white feath-ered canvas, and I use my eagle vision like a micro-scope zooming in on the name over the Jeep that drove Borran into Mabaruma. "It says, 'Macapa.'"

Adan's forefinger stretches to his temple. "I've heard that Borran is a lover of all things French. French Guiana has several paths leading straight into Macapa."

"How do you know this?" Juan asks. "The French Guiana area belongs to the Prestige, and Macapa is part of old Brazil, which means it is in Trussanda. No one but Borran's military and his family is allowed in Trussanda, and you're not Prestige." Juan looks Adan up and down.

By family, we all knew Juan meant Borran's wife, Alexandria. She remained barren throughout their twenty-year marriage, creating a vacuum for those concerned about the next in line to inherit the Ameri-cas. But Borran wouldn't leave Alexandria. Like all things in Borran's life, he became obsessed with her and his obsessions dominated over reason.

Adan grunts in his answer to Juan. "I know be-cause I was under contract with Borran, as a Graph."

Juan jerks up, his stance defensive. "You mean you were sent by Borran to kill other Graphs."

"Yes." Adan glances down with guilt in his face, and then looks up. "But I'm not anymore."

"You don't have the mark," Juan says, clearly confused. "No tattoo."

"A new program. Prisoners forced to kill other il-legal graphs. Keeping us unmarked allows us to go where others can't."

"This is dangerous. Very dangerous," Juan stands, pacing. "Any illegal Graph could be working for Bor-ran. We wouldn't know."

Adan clarifies, "There is still one way to know for sure."

Juan's expression turns to Adan and sits on him.

"The barcode scans. It's the only way guards knew I was the property of Borran."

"And now?" Juan swipes at strands of hair falling over his eyes.

"I'm sure my barcode's been updated to kill on sight."

Juan nods his head, looking to me. "I guess so does yours?"

I nod.

Juan returns the conversation back to Borran's lo-cation. "You're right, you know." He stares at Adan. "About how Borran loves all things French. I worked with him for years, a few years on Graphs, and one thing I can tell you is that France is his weakness. His mama was from France, and arranged to marry Truss. His mama died in childbirth, but Borran never gave up his love for the idea of his mama. Probably felt guilty about her death, too."

"Can we use it?" Klen asks. "Use it to get to Bor-ran?"

"Maybe," Juan answers. "But we'll need some-thing bigger than French cuisine and language to force his hand."

I've been glancing at the photographs as they talk, my mind circling over all the images of the animals and the villagers of Mabaruma in them, and thinking about what happened to me. "We have to take down the BAG facility."

"What do you mean?" Adan's worried expression darts to me.

"I mean that the BAG facility is still creating new Graphs, forcing experiments on prisoners, hunting them. The facility has thousands of caged animals, held for one purpose only—to render cells and brain waves for Graphs. Graphs sent to kill." I stand, never having felt more strong, more sure. "If we can free all of them, and arm the facility with explosives ready to go off, then we have leverage. If Borran doesn't free Mama, then we blow the whole thing up."

"And maybe you all get yourselves killed," Juan warns, his guttural response hitting my ears hard.

"I won't ask anyone to come with me, to risk their lives for my mama. This is something everyone will have to decide on their own."

Klen and Ostir look at me simultaneously. "We are illegal Graphs. This is our fight too. If Borran's soldiers find us, we are as good as dead. We're in. You don't have to ask."

"If following you will take down that son of a bitch who's decided that the Burned are less than second-class citizens, then count me in," Sum adds.

Jade growls, as if he somehow understands the conversation, and I smile before glancing to Lila. "Your mama was one of my best friends," Lila says. "I'd do anything for her."

I nod, a warmth filling me that I didn't have be-fore, knowing that these few and unlikely friends will stand by me no matter what, to the death. Then, Adan glances to me, his eyes soft. "I've been with you since day one." He winks.

Juan paces again, reaching for a sack in a corner. "If you all are sure this is what you're going to do, then I have to warn you how dangerous it will be. The BAG facility is guarded by many Graphs and soldiers inside the building. Security alarms. My wife helped design some of them."

"Then you can help us understand how to get past them," I add, and Juan nods.

"I can." He opens his sack and shows us two re-ceivers. "We can use these to communicate better."

"How'd you get those? Aren't there just like a hundred left in the world?"

"I stole them from the BAG facility long ago, when I was fired."

"Nice."

"And I can help you find Graphs of your own to increase your numbers," he says. "Illegal Graphs who would love to join a fight like this. Graphs in hiding. A few of them also have explosives, even though they're illegal."

"Explosives?" I ask surprised.

"Not hard to make, really. My wife helped them build a few when she" —his voice catches— "when she was still alive. She had a great mind for electronics too, and inserted an activation device in each one."

"An activation device?"

"You'll see."

"Anyway, when your life is on the line for being an illegal Graph, you want to make sure you're packing something." Juan lifts a large, sharp needle. "And one more thing. You'll all need to blend in—with Borran's mark."
ILLEGALS

INKING OUR BACKS WITH Borran's mark feels like a betrayal to everything I believe in, a perma-nent stain to remind us that we belong to Borran—whether we like it or not. And if we're caught, Borran has one more reason to kill us. Inking is illegal in the villages, to prevent any false Borran marks on Graphs.

I close my eyes and focus on Mama's photos as the needle pierces my back, leaving trails of blood to sink to the crevice of my bottom and splashing on the cave floor beside me. Memories of blood flood my mind.

...Blood slides down my inner leg and my palms clasp my round belly. Six months in this hellhole and I'm showing. I've kept my pregnancy a secret for months, afraid of being transferred to the white build-ing. No one returns from the white building. No one ever sees their baby again.

As the inking needle pricks my back, I'm jolted back to the present. Juan inks me—performs yet anoth-er illegal thing—I begin to suspect that he was the one who leaked the Graph technology to the world. Who else? He's obviously brilliant and had mixed feelings about what he was doing. Ostir already confessed that he and she were both at a PAPE meeting.

As I wash up in the waterfall basin, Juan needles Klen and Ostir. By the time I return to the cave, the siblings are heading to the basin to bathe and Adan is biting on another branch. Seems all Adan does around me lately is get torn up somehow.

"Stay still," Juan implores while leaning into Adan's back. "I was stung by bullet ants once. Hurt like hell. Not going through that again."

"I'll stay still," Adan says firmly, the bite over the branch harder as the needle goes into his back in a precise poke, poke, poke. Juan keeps both hands on the needle, instead of one on the back as he did with me. Afterward, Adan's back is soaked with blood and he exits for the falls fast. Juan turns to Lila and she shakes her head vigorously.

"No way I'm getting one of those on my back. I won't be flaunting my nudity anyhow."

Juan half grins. We can all imagine what that im-age is.

I lean into Adan's chest at the falls after he's washed off the blood and shirted himself. I hang there like I could stay all day, letting my forehead and cheeks rub his stubbled chin.

Adan looks down at me, half-grinning, satisfied, but with a brow arched as if to ask 'What the hell?'

I'm not sure what else to say. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"I do," Adan explains.

I'm almost hopeful.

"But you've got to learn to control your urge to mark." He laughs, and then I laugh with him.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It's cute." He clears his throat. "And makes me feel guilty about being so curt with you when we first met in the Amazon."

"Yeah, what was up with that?" I glance up, my eyes meeting his.

"Impatience at needing you to keep up, and pres-sure. Lots of killing of people I knew, led me to save you that day. I guess a part of me was angry at you for being saved."

"But you helped save me." My brows twists as I gaze up at him.

"Still, too many mixed emotions. You got to live. Friends I knew died. I couldn't kill another illegal Graph, and yet looking at you reminded me of every-thing my dead friends would never have. I guess I ex-pected you to learn quick—to be worthy enough."

"And did I?"

"Yep, you did." He grins, and leans his lips over mine, close enough to almost feel him, but not close enough to touch—to contract my blue dart poison.

We're all exhausted and haven't slept for over twenty-four hours, but we have to do this. Spider and Borran's soldiers won't give up and we don't have time to rest. We should wait until we've gained more dis-tance. At least we all ate soup at Lila's.

Before we head out, I grab Juan's wrist.

"Wait. You need to take a sample of my blood."

Adan nods. "Smart. Keep evidence here of your birthright."

Ostir keeps her hand over my shoulder. "When you challenge him, you'll definitely need proof."

"And a fight to the death," Klen adds. "We all know that's how things are done nowadays. Borran won't just give up his kingdom to his half-sister."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." I stretch my arm to Juan. "For now, I need a vial of my blood."

After Juan shambles for a tube and needle in his supplies, he sticks my vein and withdraws enough blood to run several tests on my DNA to prove I'm a Khan. He adds some kind of fluid to the vial of blood, and then hands it to me to hide. I keep the blood in the basket with Mama's things. Then, we head out to make new friends.

If we're going to ambush Borran and his BAG fa-cility, Juan is right we'll need more than just us. Juan takes us to the outskirts of Annai, farther southeast, to where several illegal Graphs that he's performed oper-ations on live. They keep quiet and off the grid. Living outside the cities and villages allows the illegal Graphs to avoid being discovered by Borran's guards and killed. Getting to where we need to be to meet them is almost a diagonal path downward from the waterfall and takes about three hours. We arrive at just about two p.m.

After Jade sniffs the air, I hear a man shout, "Over here!" He's a robust man with no shirt on, shouting to another man of almost equal stature, girth and attire; except that the first man has black matted hair and the other's is blond. Both have dark complex-ions and are too muscular to go unnoticed. The blond man throws a small pinecone into the air and yells, "Incoming!"

When the pinecone comes dangerously close to hitting the matted-haired man in the face, he whips out a long stick and bats the pinecone away, sending it across the field and hitting a palm tree trunk, the cone shattering.

"You are going to have to throw better than that!" the matted-haired man grunts in a chuckle.

"Right you are, Cai, right you are."

Juan waves his hand, drawing attention to himself, causing both men to turn in our direction and jump into an attack stance. I then notice the matted-haired man's set of teeth. His jaw crunches open and shut with an awkward smile on his face, as normal human teeth become sharp and long. Juan leads us ahead, toward them, gesturing with his hands in a downward motion for the two men to calm themselves.

"This is Cai," Juan says, introducing us. "Cai, this is everyone."

I reach my hand out to shake his. "Pleasure to meet you, Cai."

Cai shakes my hand but stays quiet. Then, Juan in-troduces the other man.

"And this" —Juan shakes the hand of the second man as the first tosses a lone pinecone into the air— "is Turtle. Turtle, these are some people that you will def-initely want to get to know."

Turtle's green eyes flick open wider as his suspi-cious glare examines us. "And why's that?"

Juan answers. "Because, like you, they're illegal Graphs." Juan smiles. "And they have a plan to take down Borran."

Suddenly, the defensive expression on Cai's face softens and he cracks a grin. "A takedown, huh?" He steps forward, confident now, his voice raspy. "And how do you propose this?"

"With a team of illegal Graphs, we plan on taking down the BAG facility."

"Sounds nice, but no one knows where the facility is, let alone how to get in." Turtle scratches his thin-ning blond hair.

I interject, "That's not true." Cai's gray eyes shoot up at me in daggers, and I look to Adan. "We know where the facility is. And Adan and Juan know how to get in."

Turtle looks to me and then Juan and back to me again, his foot shifting over the grass. "And how did you come about this clandestine intel?"

"Because I was hunted in the Amazon after they Graphed me." I breathe hard. "I escaped."

Turtle and Cai are silent, but their eyes say many things. Then, Cai breaks the quiet. "You were a pris-oner?"

"Yep," Adan answers, stepping closer to me. "We both were."

"Then it's true," Turtle says, "what the PAPE is saying. What Relic is trying to do."

"Yes."

"Wait, what is Relic trying to do?" I ask. Klen and Ostir are quiet in the background, just listening. Sum keeps his keen eyes on the two new men.

Turtle responds, his voice heavy like I imagine his weight to be, and he looks at me like I've been living in a cave. "To stop Graphing, of course."

The sun beams in the background, like a warm blanket over my skin, as we all head toward a mud hut near a few trees.

"You live here?" I ask, my eyes searching the trees for any dangers. A few squirrels and lizards keep me at ease.

Turtle nods. "Just us. Sometimes we go into the villages of Annai when there aren't too many guards."

"Mostly, we stay here, though," Cai answers.

"How do you eat?" I ask.

Turtle looks to the trees. "Whatever you see there is up for grabs."

I smile at his comment and roll my eyes. I've lived enough of my life on lizards. I won't be having that again anytime soon.

"So, what's the plan?" Turtle asks, getting directly to the point.

Juan takes the lead in explaining it. "Jin and Adan can lead us to the BAG facility. My wife's knowledge of the security systems and Adan's knowledge of the Graph soldiers will aid us in breaking in. Our goal is to free the prisoners and the animals, so that there is nothing left to Graph in there." Cai looks bored. "Then, blow the place up."

"Now, we're talking," Cai answers, and smiles to Turtle.

"And we're going to do all this with just..." Turtle counts us up with a pointed finger. "You seven?" He eyes Jade. "And a cat?"

"A Radguar," I correct.

Cai crunches his teeth, returning to full human form, his scaly cheeks becoming like taut skin once again.

"And you know this Radguar wants to join this fight because?" Turtle looks at me, doubtful.

"Because I do."

"So, with us, nine?"

"Actually, we'll gather four more near Kumaka, making us thirteen," Juan says.

"With Graphs, and knowledge of the facility...we have a real chance," Adan says enthusiastically.

Cai looks to Turtle, and I can't read them, which bothers me.

Then, Juan continues, "I have an inking tool for tattooing. All of us Graphs will bear the mark of Bor-ran. It will help us get in unnoticed. Unfortunately, I only have enough ink for two more Graphs."

"No way," Cai says immediately. "I'm not mark-ing my back with that graffiti. That deplorable symbol of everything I hate."

Turtle adds, "If we're caught, bearing this mark il-legally is cause enough for death. But being an illegal Graph, breaking into the BAG facility..." Turtle's eyes get small as his words grow hard. "Borran will hunt not just us down, but our families, everyone we love. He'll hunt us all and hang us in Sierra Imataca as a sure warning."

I reach for Cai's arm, not even sure why, because I don't know him and he doesn't know me. But he doesn't pull away. "This mark is temporary. A way in to destroy all you hate. A small price to pay for what it will accomplish. Just imagine a world without Borran."

Cai looks back at Turtle, the two of them exchang-ing a glance at the words 'a world without Borran' and Turtle finally nods before Cai turns to me and Juan. "Okay, we'll do it."

Before we head off to find the other four illegal Graphs we hope will join us, Turtle offers us cooked lizard, and despite my promise to myself to never eat lizards again, I have to eat. We all eat together before Juan inks the backs of Cai and Turtle and hides his empty ink case near the tree. Then we rest a couple hours before we circumvent Annai and aim for Ku-maka.

Sum glances to Turtle as Juan leads our group through the foliage. "So, why do they call you Turtle, anyway?"

I tilt my head, catching his emerald-esque irises when Turtle answers. "My skin is fortified with red-foot tortoise shell."

"And you?" Sum looks to Cai.

Cai answers proudly, his chin high, his teeth chat-tering. "Teeth like the black caiman."

I turn to Juan. "You've been busy."

"Just a handful of Graphs in the area," Juan re-plies.

I walk up beside Turtle, curious, as we duck un-derneath a low-hanging branch. "So, I know why Adan and I are Graphs. We were forced. And Klen and Ostir don't want what happened to Adan's family to happen to them." I look at his face—so hard and square. "But why did you two become Graphs?"

Turtle answers simply, "I guess for the same rea-sons most of us local illegal Graphs did it, to separate ourselves from the kingdom of Borran, to give us a fighting chance against his Graphed soldiers."

"My family was killed back in Colombia," Cai says. "I found Juan when I was seventeen, just after he left the BAG facility. Juan waited a year before Gra-phing me, but I wouldn't leave him alone until I had it done."

I do the math in my head. Juan began Graphing il-legally five years ago. That makes Cai twenty-two, practically just a kid for someone who looks so big. I guess Turtle is about the same.

I nod. I heard the rumors growing up. My padre forbade me and my siblings from ever receiving illegal Graphs. He didn't want more attention on his family. Knowing what I know now, maybe it's because he knew I wasn't his—that I was a Khan. He wanted to keep me hidden, normal, under the radar.

Somehow, fate has other plans.

"And why do they call you Cai? Don't you have a real name like Sum or Klen?"

Cai shakes his head. "Your friends still live with their family, within their village. Don't they?"

"Yeah." I look at him, and notice his height is shorter than mine.

"Well, those that have been kicked out of their vil-lage because of the illegal Graph, or those whose fami-lies have been murdered, or have had parents abandon them, have bonded in the outskirts of villages. We change our name to leave our human heritage behind, to leave behind the life that has rejected us."

"Oh."

"We're different now, and we aren't ashamed of that. We embrace it, and so do our new names."

Juan is just a few meters in front of me and I find that this time is as good as any to ask him a nagging question in the corner of my mind, which has been bothering me since Ostir opened up about her Gra-phing.

Walking side by side with Juan, he turns to me. "What?"

"I...I just was curious about something."

"Well, spit it out."

"I don't understand why those Graphed to am-phibians or reptiles, per se, can't kill mammals. I mean, their brain waves aren't even linked to the mammal, right?"

Ostir rolls her eyes at me from his other side. "This again."

"Well, it wasn't really explained that well," I de-fend myself.

Juan sighs and then continues, keeping his eyes on the forest path. "Well, in a way all those Graphed are linked to the mammals by brain waves."

"How so?"

"Umm...how can I put this so that you can under-stand..." He pauses, looking up at the sky and then at me. "See, human brain waves have to go through the mammalian brain waves before they can reach the rep-tilian brain waves. It's like one long chain. One cannot jump over the mammalian brain waves to get to the reptilian. Therefore, anyone who is linked to a lizard, for example, is linked to the mammalian brain waves first."

"Oh," I answer still half-confused, but understand-ing better.

"See, the evolution of the dream state and brain waves have a common origin and so as we get closer and closer to that origin, the waves are less complicat-ed but we have to pass through all those other compli-cated waves on the chain to get there."

"I...I think I get it."

"Good."

"But the reptilian brain waves are too negligible for us to really feel much from them? So, we don't feel pain in our heads when killing one?"

"Right, so to speak. It's much more complicated than that, but for your purposes of understanding..." his eyes wander back to the sky, "...you could say that."

We arrive near Kumaka just as the sun is de-scending, and I'm not sure how much everyone else feels it, but I feel as if I can't take another step. So, when I hear distant chatter behind a hill where a large kapok tree stands, I'm relieved.

Two men and three women drink and laugh under the tree on the other side of the hill, and as I begin to descend on their turf, all eyes turn to me—some glow-ing in the night. A tall woman in black with long raven-quality hair and coal-colored eyes swivels her head my direction and her fingernails become claws that she scratches toward me through the air.

"Who's there?!" Her raspy voice reminds me of Lila, and Jade jumps to his hind legs, his front paws hitting air too as his growl grows.

Cai and Turtle call out, opening their usually clenched arms. "It's us!"

Juan races past me and Jade, his hands waving. "It's me. They're with me. Illegal Graphs like you," he says to this stern woman.

She lowers her hands, and then all five stands for a better view. A thin man with plain bark-colored hair and spotty skin stands behind the woman in black. A blonde with an athletic build and glowing eyes—like a predator—stands next to a man of shorter height, whose arms are crossed over his chest, and his speckled bald head glistens under the moonlight in the sky.

Turtle and Cai follow behind me, waving their hands cheerfully. "Stay calm. It's just us!" they repeat.

Adan, Ostir, and Klen stay close, while Sum and Lila keep to the back. After a moment of recognition between all our new friends, the woman in black rush-es over to greet Turtle and Cai, throwing her arms over their shoulders.

"Haven't seen you in a month!" she shouts, break-ing the otherwise quiet of night.

Cai chuckles. "Been busy."

"Aren't we all these days?" the woman replies, her taut skin like a doll's.

Juan stops walking when he spies the last person sitting on a bench behind the others. "And who is this? I don't know her."

Her dark mocha complexion tells us she is likely from Colombia, like Cai. "I'm Soill." The woman stands, and looks to be maybe nineteen. Blue eyes like seawater and short, curly dark hair comes into better view when she approaches us—reminding me of Spi-der's features.

"Juan." He shakes her hand. "I didn't perform your Graph," he says plainly.

I already know what Juan's thinking, without knowing him too long, because he's taken care of Graphs in the southern parts of Guyana and even some from the north for years. Turtle was likely from Guy-ana, as well as the woman in black and the man with spotty skin. At least they have Guyanan features—though Turtle and the woman in black seem more lati-no. Any addition is a suspicion, and knowing that im-prisoned Graphs are being hired to kill makes Soill all the more suspect.

"I was Graphed in Colombia."

Cai turns his attention to her. "San Felipe?"

She shakes her head. "No, closer to the coast."

"What brought you here?" Juan asks.

The woman gazes to the sky. "Too much vio-lence in Colombia where I lived. Needed a change of scenery."

"Family?" Juan pushes.

"No," she answers plainly. Whether they were killed by Borran soldiers, an illness, or she was thrown out when she was just a baby...she didn't say. I guess it doesn't really matter now anyway. Juan nods and leaves it at that.

"So, why have you all come?" The lean man with spotty skin asks, parting his nondescript hair with a hand.

Adan takes the lead. "Juan and I are planning an attack on the BAG facility. We've discovered its loca-tion and know its weak spots. We just need more peo-ple willing to fight with us."

At the words attack on the BAG facility, the bald man and woman with glowing eyes grin and the Co-lombian newcomer leans forward. "What do you mean attack?" the woman replies firmly, her eyes weighing heavily on Adan in intense curiosity.

"What Adan means," Juan interjects, "is that we'll break in, free the prisoners and the animals, and then set bombs."

"So, you've come for explosives?" the spotty-skinned man says, and dissatisfaction must be flushing his Graph involuntarily, because his skin is spotting green and his fingertips are dripping of sap.

"No, Springer," Juan says, his head rising to meet with Springer's taller stance. "We've come for you. We need you to do this."

Springer stands silent, just staring at all of us, as-sessing us. "And if I allow you to come in, what kind of damage will that cost us? A visit from Borran himself this time?"

I've gathered Springer and Juan have history, and I'm not sure what bothers Springer so much. But I do know from this discourse and their body language that Springer and his woman are the leaders of this group near Kumaka, which makes sense since they are the only ones that look past forty.

"I lost someone too that day!" Juan growls, his teeth grinding. "There is no way I could have known what was coming."
SNIFFERS

SPRINGER SHAKES HIS HEAD. "So, we lost two people we loved because you just had to Graph one more time. Even though you promised you wouldn't do it anymore. Not after you came so close to losing Jenji." Springer looks to the raven-haired woman who could be in her thirties.

"How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?" Juan pleads, half angry and half desperate.

"No number of apologies will ever bring my sister back. She's gone, dead. And your Graph procedure killed her."

"She insisted. Begged me." Juan breathes heavily and shakes his head. "It killed my wife too. That poi-son left behind on her skin...if my wife hadn't touched her..." Juan trails off somewhere, and I begin to frame the fuller picture in my mind. Juan said his wife died of an illness, but he didn't mention the fact that the illness came as a side effect from Graphing.

Springer grunts, and it's like a croak. Then he storms off toward Jenji.

Her dark hair billows behind her elegant figure as she nabs his arm in a jerk. "If you want to hate some-one, hate Borran. He is the reason we all beg to be-come Graphs. If you want to make your sister's death mean something, then we need to join Juan. We need to take down Borran."

Her voice soothes Springer, and her logic and closeness to him is obvious. Springer rubs his forehead with both hands and then takes a deep breath. "Fine." He darts a glare at Juan. "But it's not because I forgive you. It's for Darla."

Juan nods in a half smile. "For Darla."

When we join this new group of friends, Jenji starts a campfire at our center as we all gather around behind the kapok tree. Jenji's lips are thin and taut like a bowstring. The bald man, who looks about my age and is short with heavy brows, cooks lizards in the fire before handing one to each of us. I thank him, though I never want to eat another lizard again. I catch his gray eyes and figure he must have shaved his head because he's too young for balding, "Thanks, uh..."

"It's Dosh," he answers with a lisp.

"Jin." I smile in return, my brows arched in a question mark.

"The name comes from a mix of the words, bush and dog. That's my Graph." Just then he howls and a pack of bush dogs come racing up to us. A few tails wag and some bodies shake with excitement. This makes Jade nervous, and he paces while sniffing and tries to resist a growl as I ease him with a few strokes over his backside.

"Sit, Jade. We're fine." Jade lays on his stomach, keeping his suspicious stare on the bush dogs the entire time, who howl back at Dosh and then all take a seat behind him, obedient to a fault. "I guess I'm not the only one who's got an animal friend?" I look to Dosh after crunching into my charcoaled lizard.

"You'll find that Graphs connected to mammals tend to have more animal friends."

"Why is that?"

"Something about the emotional part of the mammal's brain. Keeps them closer to you."

That explains why I've never seen Turtle, Cai, or even Spider with an animal friend. But Adan's bat and Prik's porcupine? That must be because of a break in their Connection.

Dosh rubs his shaved bald head and gestures for the woman with glowing eyes to sit beside him. "This is Occey."

"Nice to meet you," I say, and Occey smiles at everyone, her blonde ringlets like a curtain around her head.

"She doesn't say much, but her animal friend—the ocelot—is right up there." Dosh points to the gorgeous spotted cat hanging on one of the higher branches of the kapok tree, hardly noticeable. Except, if I'd paid better attention to Jade, I might have noticed his nose flaring in the tree's direction.

"Of course," I respond, as if I should have known, given her name. "You two are from here?"

Dosh shakes his head. "No, Argentina. We knew each other and are from the same village."

"So, you came together then to Guayana?"

"Yes, after we heard of this doctor performing Graphs. Our families couldn't take care of us and we had nowhere else to go. Juan offered us a home."

Dosh and Occey both look a similar age, and they seem to be a couple like Jenji and Springer. I guess when there is no one else around, and you're stuck with just a few people to choose from, the coupling is inevitable.

I point to Jenji, more curious. "And her? What's her Graph?" Besides Soill, she is the only other one I haven't figured out. Springer is obviously some kind of toad, perhaps an Oreo, what my padre used to call the oreophrynella, since his skin is so bumpy.

"Ah, Sloth," Dosh responds as if disappointed. "Her claws act as a nice deterrent, but she doesn't have many other gifts." I guess that's true, if beauty isn't to be counted as a gift. "As a human, she is quite astute, though."

"Why'd she choose Jenji as her name then?" I ask, knowing most of these Graph rebels have chosen a new name for their new life.

Dosh shakes his head. "She didn't choose her name. She never changed it."

"Why?" My shoulders lift.

"Something about her mama having the same name and dying of illness. She wanted to keep her memory."

Then, my eyes fall on Soill—her face composed and unreadable as always. The stranger who had been Graphed illegally in Colombia by someone Juan doesn't know and who found her way here with us in Guyana. By my account, after Win died, which put her here at less than a year. Juan obviously didn't visit after his wife's death until now.

Dosh bites his lizard. "Oh, Soill. She calls herself that because her Graph is an earthworm." He half-grins as if entertained. "You know, worms and dirt."

"I get it." My forehead wrinkles. "But how does that Graph work?"

Slowly, and with an air of being impressed, Dosh says, "She can breathe underneath the dirt."

I ruminate on that thought as my eyes catch the rugged flames of the campfire. After we eat, Juan sug-gests we rest a few hours before heading out since none of us has had much sleep in a while.

Lila lays near Sum and Juan on one side of the kapok tree. Ostir, Klen, and Adan stay near the bench. Turtle and Cai lay their backs against the trunk with Soill at their side, and Cai seems to like the female at-tention.

Springer and Jenji disappear in the foliage a few meters away, while Occey and Dosh stay near their animals. I lay my head on Jade's backside as he licks my cheeks and I eventually fall asleep, dreams taking me to my past, to places I'd once forgotten.

As I awaken, my dreams stay with me, and I re-member Padre's words, his pinky at my cheek, when I was just five. "You are my little girl, and I just know in my heart that you will do something special with your life."

I didn't know what Papa meant then. I do now. I always felt him trying to make up for something with me. Now, I know what that was. I wasn't his. But I was still his little girl.

It must be before six in the morning, because the sun is not out yet when my Bengal tiger eyes catch movement in the distance behind the foliage where Springer and Jenji slept last night. Seconds later, I see them moving large boxes out of a hole in the ground and to the center where we all are resting.

Juan walks up, a few meters from them, his dis-tance as sure as the rift between Springer and him. "This is all of them?" Juan asks.

"All of them that will make any difference against that BAG wall. If it's how you described, the smaller bombs won't do much good."

Jenji interrupts, "We should get everyone else up. We need to be heading out as early as possible, and while it's still dark."

Juan and Springer nod before waking up their re-spective groups. After a few shouts and shakes, every-one is awake and Jenji serves a few loaves of stale bread. "Get nibbling gang, we're leaving in twenty," Jenji commands, and like Springer, she seems a natural leader to us.

Dosh takes a break to pee on a tree and when I catch him, embarrassed, he just answers nonchalantly. "Marking my territory." He winks.

While we eat, we formulate our plans. Adan ex-plains where the Graph procedures take place inside of the BAG facility, what rooms the Graph doctors reside in, and the basic layout of the building. Juan tries to describe the detection devices throughout the facility, focusing on the ones his wife, Win, took part in design-ing. She had a mind for electronics. We talk about the dig we'll have to do under the electric fence outlining the border of Guyana and Trussanda (where the Ama-zon and BAG facility will be). If we even touch the fence, we'll be electrocuted. It will take about seven hours to reach the Guyana border and three more hours to find the facility in the Amazon with Juan and Adan as guides.

When we talk teams, I find myself with Sum, Klen, Ostir, and Adan, which I'm glad of since I've gotten to know them best and I'm not sure yet how well I can trust anyone else. Jade will stay with me. The next group will enter first, Turtle and Cai will use their false Borran tattoos to get in unsuspected. Juan will lead with the code to get into the building, and Occey will bring her ocelot for back up.

The last lot is made up of Lila, Springer, Jenji, Soill, and Dosh. Dosh's five bush dogs will follow him, but no one in this group will have ink because Juan couldn't bring his kit, so they'll have to stay close be-hind Juan's group after entry. Juan and Springer have been separated for obvious reasons.

Each group has one person assigned to plant bombs. Sum will be in charge of the activation device and carry one of the receivers. Juan will carry the other receiver. Sum, Lila and Juan have been tasked with the bombs, since they won't be of much use fighting against Borran's Graphs. They'll stay hidden in the forest and not enter the BAG facility, and Sum will stay behind after we all leave in order to detonate. We've already discussed a rendezvous point for Sum.

We'll move together, but when we get closer to the facility, we'll break up into three groups, leaving our animal friends behind in the cover of foliage be-cause Borran soldiers—Graphed or not—don't have Connections to animals. Each group, and animal, will back up the bombers. We'll avoid detection for as long as we can, following Juan's instruction, and then make our way into the facility with our obvious tattoos, mark-ing us as Borran's. Then, we'll find our way to the cen-ter of the building on the first floor where the prisoners are kept. The labs are on the first floor as well. I guess it's easier that way, to just take prisoners down the hall for Graphing. Juan knows where the electric pad is on the wall that keeps the prisoners locked up, and says he can dismantle it.

Jenji's group will head to the second floor where the animals are caged. They'll have to break in because it's not locked electrically but with a manual key. Once the prisoners and animals are released, we'll flee the facility with our animal friends, and head east toward Macapa to rescue Mama.

The last part of the plan brings up the most dis-cord.

"No, no," Cai protests. "We bomb the facility when we leave. It's the only way to ensure the facility is destroyed."

I stop him right there. "If we do that, we have no recourse for saving my madre!" I stand, my jaws clenching as I want to yell, but hold it in. "I'm the rea-son we're all here, together, doing this. My madre brought me to you. I won't let her die at the hands of Borran because of you." I stare straight at Cai, refus-ing to waver.

Juan comes to my defense. "Don't forget, you have all these bombs because of my wife, Win."

Cai's teeth grit. "Fine, fine." His voice hardens. "But as soon as we have your madre, Sum hits the but-ton to blow that shit up." Cai looks to the electronic pads Juan holds in his chipped hands, pads that Win helped build before she died.

Just as the sun starts to rise, the ocelot and Jade pace over the ground near us, growling at the distance behind the kapok tree. A harpy eagle squawks, and I've heard that cacophonous sound enough times to know we're in danger.

I look up and over the hill. Eagle vision shows me a group of soldiers marching toward us, led by Spider. "They're coming!"

"How'd they find us?" Adan replies. "I cut off my location chip."

Juan speaks in a low voice. "Sniffers. Noses as good as Dosh's. Better. I've heard through the grape-vine that Borran's been perfecting that Graph. He must have finally done it."

"Without you," Adan adds, looking at a disap-pointed Juan.

Jenji grabs a plastic jug and starts to pour liquid over the grass, from where we are against the thick of trees and continues to pour as we race away from the kapok tree, heading southwest, until we hit the rocky hills near a lake. "Come on! Move!" she shouts, and then lights the fluid by dropping a sparked match be-fore running off with us. The grass ignites and goes up in flames like a firework show.

I run with Jade beside me and tilt my head to catch a glimpse of the ground exploding into fire and smoke behind us as we head farther southwest toward the base of the Guiana Highlands—the direction of the BAG facility. Ahead of us lies a distance that should take us into this time tomorrow to cross. Our three groups stay knit-tight together as we traverse over grass and through thick trees, under crooked branches.

Hours pass as we cross vast lands and lakes glow-ing of sunrays. We occasionally and illegally pick scarce fruits and pack them into our pockets, until midday when we slow to rest our legs. We don't know if we've lost Spider or not, but we definitely have put distance between us, and we have a long journey ahead.

Dosh points to Adan's missing hand, feeling like he has the right to pry now. "What happened here?"

"Don't want to talk about it," Adan replies curtly as he stuffs illegal bananas and guavas into his mouth. Jenji sticks to oranges mostly, and Soill gravitates to any fruits considered illegal and chews with a smirk. I think she likes the idea of doing something wrong.

"Prestige shouldn't be the only ones who get to eat 'em," she justifies, shoving another papaya down her throat.

When I spot coconuts, I shake the branch and let a few fall to the ground. I feel guilty eating so well when we have such sparse amounts of food in my vil-lage. Most of the fruit that food gatherers find they have to relinquish to Borran's army when they march in monthly for rations. And meat, forget about it. At least we can grow barley and wheat in our villages.

I bathe in the shallow parts of the turquoise water of a nearby lake, and even feel a few small fish pass by my feet. Pebbles on the sand below are rough, but I don't mind. I've wanted another bath for a while—but I won't dare swim out of the shallow end. I don't like the feeling of weightlessness, of being completely tucked under the water. Too many bad memories of being tightly confined in the cell.

Jade jumps, splashing into the water with me, and shakes his head. Letting my auburn hair soak in the wetness, with my knees bent under the surface, I let myself enjoy the water before flipping up. My hair whips against my back. Rubbing the caked dirt off my arms, my fingernails, I finally begin to feel human again.

In the water is when I first notice them—hordes of them, just staring at me with their beady eyes under all the grass. Tree frogs, yellow band dart frogs, rusty frogs, and frogs with bumps over their skin that remind me of Springer. I'm not sure if he has brought them, or me...but they keep to us like we're a pack of flies.

Adan chuckles. "I think you've got a few admir-ers."

I eyeball him, and then sink my hair under the wa-ter's surface. Rising up, I shake myself and let water splash all over Adan, in a half laugh.

"Hey"—Adan half smirks before tossing water up at me— "this means war."

I need my tension released and welcome the flirt. Flirting with him, makes me forget everything bad. We play like this for maybe five minutes—that's all we can spare—with Jade, Springer and Jenji even in on the an-tics, knowing Spider is caught behind a fire...but she'll figure out a way around it soon.

Eventually, Occey and Dosh join us, and laughter spills over a once tense group. Gazing at the sun in the sky, while floating on my back in the shallow end, my feet scraping the bottom, mind wanders to someplace far away from here. Somewhere where my madre and padre wave goodbye to me in the morning as I walk with my sister to the private educator, a self-declared elder woman who often said that Truss would not keep education out of the villages if she could help it. She was killed a few months later. Afterward, most of my learning took place at home.

"Come on," Jenji declares, interrupting my mem-ories. "We've got to get going. Spider is not taking a break and we can't afford to either."

The group finishes eating whatever fruits they were gnawing, and those of us that are wet wring out our clothes and then proceed. We've only got about ten more hours to go and then we'll be face-to-face with our enemy. A facility full of Graphs trained to kill us, and with all the rules we've broken, they won't stop un-til we're all dead.

As we step out of the lake and behind Jenji, I can't help but worry if I've done the right thing by inciting the illegals to come with me, to encourage them on this mission that may very well end up with us all being killed. Still, I remember what my padre said, that I'd do something special with my life, and I try to hold on to that single thought as I venture forward with this band of newcomers.

About thirty minutes into our trek, Dosh hears something, smells something. His head turns erratical-ly back and forth as his senses try to place the intru-sion. Then he shouts as a harpy eagle cries overhead. "They're here!"

At his words, I glance behind me and see Prik standing on a large boulder overlooking us—damn, we've got to move! His wide hands sit on his hips and his grin is hard to hide. Spider glows behind him, her head over his shoulder, as if she's satisfied to finally catch her prey. Adan frantically looks to me; his face filled with concern as lines burrow around his eyes.

"I have to go, splinter from the group. Spider will come for me. She can't help herself. I can lead her away," he says confidently as he points toward the Gui-ana Highlands. "Lead the others that way."

I shake my head, afraid I'll lose him. "No. I'm not leaving you to fight her alone. You saved me in the Amazon." My hand clasps his good arm. "I'll save you now." Our eyes stay on each other until Adan nods. I turn and grab Jenji by the shoulder. "You need to lead the group. Juan can help you get there." Jenji is sur-prised by the change in plan as I add, "Adan and I will divert Spider in another direction."

Jenji nods, quickly understanding and assessing her options. "Got it." She races ahead of the group, her right hand waving them on to follow, and as everyone gets moving. Adan and I dart northeast and hope that the confusion of this new plan will work.

Leaping over a fallen log to keep up with Adan, I bend my neck to see Spider take the bait. She, Prik, and half her team follow Adan and me, leaving only five soldiers—a few of them Sniffers—following Jenji's team.

The chase is on.
Secluded

ADAN AND I RACE, almost side by side with Jade keeping behind me, over grass and broken branches—the crunch, crunch vibrating in my ears—as we push ourselves like we did in the Amazon. We have to drive Spider away from our group because with her on their tail they won't stand a chance of finishing the plan.

"She's following," I half yell into Adan's ear, satis-fied.

"Good."

We pat-pat-pat over the soft soil and Jade growls, but he knows the drill. I run, so he runs too. We race through another copse of trees: sandbox, crabwood, kapok, and royal palms. The woody fragrance is a de-light to my nose. We don't have these kinds of trees in Mabaruma. Insects buzz crazily around the plant leaves as me and Adan push through branches and tangly spi-der webs, before we finally slow at the edge of another lake—more of a swamp really—and our shoes scrape the soil in a stop.

We stare for a moment, I'm hesitant. I can't swim well, and the swamp hides whatever lurks underneath there.

"Ready?" Adan asks.

"Yeah," I say unsure.

Must be brave, I tell myself when I dive in and remember my jump off the waterfall back in the Ama-zon. My blue dart frog absorbs water through my am-phibious skin, and my skin strangely misses the feeling. Jade leaps in behind me, his perseverance encouraging. Adan follows soon afterward, in a wild rush of green water splashing over us all.

I swim desperately with legs and arms flailing, he wades, until we make it halfway. Spider and Prik finally show themselves on the edge of the water behind us surrounded by five soldiers with weapons. Jade growls before Spider speaks, alerting me to their presence first. "There is nowhere you can go where I won't find you, Adan," she shouts. "Betrayers don't live very long in Borran's kingdom."

"Then leave Borran's kingdom and live inde-pendently, as I have chosen to do."

Spider chuckles, her laughter like a choking hye-na. "You mean a life on the run? You're a good kid-der, Adan. But I'm happy where I am."

Adan turns, his body facing hers, though they are at least twenty meters apart. "Are you really, though?" His face tightens, and jaws clench as I stare at him, concerned he's stopped moving. "A puppet in Borran's mad games?"

"At least I'm alive to participate in them."

Adan takes a single step toward her, the water breaking between his legs. "You mean unlike your parents." A breeze gushes over us.

Spider's voice grows gritty, "Unlike my family. Five of them ripped out of existence in a single day. Thanks to the Russians. Borran didn't need to hire me to do this. He saved me, and my little brother. I'm happy to fight for the Americas. To keep them safe from terrorists like yourself."

"Terrorists, huh? Is that what he's calling us now-adays?" Adan's tone is surprisingly soft, and I can tell from their banter that they were friends for a time, long before he'd gone rogue, reminding me of the lie he'd told me in the Amazon, hearing about Spider through the grapevine. What a fool I was to believe everything he said.

He likely went on excursions—even missions—with her. Learning from her and aiding her as she killed more Graphs like myself, more prisoners. People that were completely innocent. A side of me understands this necessity to survive, to kill or be killed. But a deeper part of me wishes him to be a hero—a man without blemish, someone who'll stand up to Borran even at the cost to his life. Maybe he's getting there.

"A terrorist is an enemy of the kingdom. There-fore an enemy of mine," Spider declares, as her split tongue flicks over tawny creases on her lips. Prik stands quietly behind her, keeping his spikes intact, deep inside his body and I wonder how long it'll take him to unleash them. He doesn't seem the patient type. His wide legs stretch into the water before he wades through the lake as Adan and I finally pull ourselves out onto the other side, my fingernails hugging the dirt and mud creasing between my fingers.

"Then I guess the next time I see you, I'll aim to kill," Adan says in a cracked voice, like he's hurt to say it, and I know he regrets the conversation as his dim eyes catch mine.

A soldier raises his tube of choking gas and an-other aims his hot gun at us on the opposite ledge be-hind Spider, but Spider quickly hits the soldier with her fist as her low raspy voice replies, "Put that away. Bor-ran ordered we take her alive."

I hear her because my Bengal Graph won't let me ignore her, her grainy complexion and rough voice. That singular thought about not killing me rings in my mind as Jade licks my calf. He quickly jumps out of the lake after us and onto the grassy edge. We race forward, me breathing heavy, but still heading in an eastern course to drive the soldiers away from our mission.

"You know Spider well?" I comment as I run with Adan through sporadic shrubs and under rain tree leaves: leaves that fold in the rain.

"Knew her for about a year. Trained under her, after I signed the contract."

"So her whole family is gone?"

"Yep." Adan scratches his head. "She blames the Russians, but I don't see it."

I turn my head to him. "What do you mean, you don't see it?"

He keeps his focus forward, his breaths huffing in a jog. "I mean, it doesn't make sense. Spider was taken under Borran's wing when she was just ten. Her broth-er was six. That was ten years ago." He emphasizes ten. "Graphs began nine years ago under Borran's watch, five years while Truss was still alive, but Bor-ran's been gathering armies much earlier. Graphing soldiers as early as sixteen. He knew he'd have to take over once his padre died, and he wanted to be ready with a loyal military of his own."

"So, what doesn't make sense?" We continue un-der the cover of coconut trees and I hear the rasp of monkeys in the distance as Jade sniffs the air in a long-ing to chase something.

"Ten years ago, the Russians weren't bombing the Americas, Truss was."

I think for a moment. "What do you mean? That's not what I was taught."

"You were taught wrong."

"You mean a cover-up?"

"Precisely, I discovered this intel a few months before I met you. One more reason I didn't want to be helping Borran."

"So, the attack on the entire west coast of South America?"

"Truss. He wanted the mountains for the Prestige, but that vast of an attack, that horrendous of a slaugh-ter of his own people for money, money the Prestige would give him for the land, would end in a continental civil war."

I nod my head. "He needed a scapegoat. So, he blamed the Russians?"

"I think so."

The sky cracks in a whip of thunder, and rain sprinkles over us. "Then, Spider's family wasn't killed by Russians," I say in hollow whisper under my breath.

"No, I think Truss did it himself," Adan says, "and his son saw an opportunity to take a broken girl and build her up in his army."

"Why didn't you tell her?" I step in a puddle.

"Once I found out, she was long gone. On a mis-sion somewhere in Peru."

The thought of so many lies and so much murder circles my brain dizzyingly like a fog. I don't know what's worse, having your family murdered by Truss, or taken away by his demented son. Either way, the Khans are guilty and their hands are stained with the blood of their people.

We must have trekked for a couple of hours through unguarded territory, over the unrestricted bor-der of Truriname, formerly Suriname, diverting Spi-der and her soldiers eastward and away from our team by four hours if she backtracks. Jenji's team must be halfway through Guyana by now. I wonder how her team is doing. With just five soldiers on their tail and only three of the soldiers likely Graphed as Sniffers, I can't imagine taking them down will be that hard. And the soldiers must be taken down because the Sniffers are now used to their scent, and because when the team travels over the border of Guyana and into the Amazon of Trussanda, they will have to cross under an electric fence designed to keep intruders out of Guyana. More importantly, when the team arrives at the BAG facility, they need to look like Borran Graphed soldiers return-ing from another mission so they can blend in easily.

Then I wonder if Sum, Klen, and Ostir will join Juan's group because as a team of three now they'll be vulnerable, especially without Jade. I look to my Radguar and watch his calm demeanor as air rushes over his furry head with every stride he takes beside me. Jade has a scar on his lower abdomen, one not readily seen unless close up. Under his left eye is a scab. Probably from previous fights in the jungle. I can't imagine any other more loyal to me, and I smile at the thought of having him beside me as a friend.

We take a short break to breathe and rest our legs near a charcoaled mountain with sides like the points of a thousand combs. Adan turns to me. "Jin—"

I look up to him, his muscular arms pulling him-self up and over a high ledge as fog, like silk, scales the mountain sides.

"We have to separate. You need to get back to the facility and find your mama. I need to end this with Spider."

I'm quiet before answering. "I know." My chin lowers, and my eyes catch the flood of frogs trailing behind me. I almost crack another smile. "I just..."

"I know." Adan takes in a deep breath. "You feel an obligation to me, after everything. But your obliga-tion to your madre is greater, and I can take care of myself."

I don't want to say it, but he's right. "Then this is goodbye," I say softly, not wanting it to be the last time we see each other.

Adan opens his arms before his leathered wings protrude from under his arm skin, before he glides off the cliff and eventually into me, startling Jade. His arms engulf me into his chest—a chest still covered with a protective layer of shirt—and he hugs me. For the first time, I don't pull away. His hug is a warm blanket.

"Not goodbye, later," he replies, and kisses my bottom lip, catching my chin, as rain cascades over us—but he doesn't hang on my bottom lip long. Then he whispers in my ear, his breath like morning dew. "I'll meet you in Macapa in three days, before noon."

I don't open my mouth, or even kiss back, for fear of releasing dart frog poison into his lips again. But I don't need to; Adan kisses enough for the both of us and I let him. My heart—my heart never pit-patted more.

"Later," Adan repeats, and then turns to leap up, catching a draft of air, before flinging himself up onto the mountain cliff. "I'll lead her on a wild goose chase."

He grins and I watch him under all this rain, with Jade rubbing my legs as if to tell me everything will be okay. He races off, his head high in confidence and I know he has experience at this. At chasing and escap-ing. I realize he knows Spider—her strengths and weak-nesses—but she must know his too, and I can't help but worry about him.

I nod before turning away from Adan myself, and outrun the frogs determined to strangely follow me. If I don't backtrack and just take a longer diagonal path to the border to intersect the fence hole, I can save two hours. Plus, the hole under the electric fence will al-ready be dug, saving me another thirty minutes. I'll just be an hour and a half behind Jenji's team when they finally reach the facility around ten at night, which is just eight hours away.

I keep a steady pace, like the one I had when I was hunted. Bolting for about twenty minutes, followed by a jog. A short stop for about five minutes, and then the whole routine again. Jade doesn't leave my side—like he knows he has to do this with me, as if he under-stands, and maybe he does even more than I realize. I do this routine continuously, even after the rain quits, even after the sun sets, until I reach the electric fence, trying to forget that I've abandoned Adan—the man who saved my life—and forget that Spider won't hesitate to kill him. With seven against one, I don't like Adan's odds. Still, my madre has no one fighting for her now, and if I don't show up soon, she could end up dead, or worse—a Graph experiment gone wrong.

When I finally arrive, the electric fence is long, and zaps in and out with electricity as I skirt along its zigzag line and toward the hole where we all agreed to dig, just on the outskirts of Lethem. The Truss family can't afford to guard every inch of every border in the Americas, and so besides guards at major cities and along major rivers, deterrents like Imataca and electric fences are often used. Fear is often enough to keep most villagers in order.

Keeping my knees to the ground, dirt caking my knees, I've gotten used to the low crawl. My palms grate against crackly sand as I head hurriedly to the fence. I reach the irregularly shaped hole and notice a few drops of blood on the metal wire. Someone on the team must have ripped their shirt and scratched them-selves. When I slip underneath with Jade, the Radguar ducks more easily than me, as if he senses the current too. I'm sure to keep my head away from the currents coursing above me. On the other side of the fence, I see the Amazon in the distance, like a nightmare that has come to fruition. We've finally reached the forbid-den terrain of Trussanda.

It's about nine at night. My team will be intersect-ing with the facility in about an hour and I'll be there just shy of midnight. Separated from Jenji's group, Adan, and my madre, I feel utterly alone. I hear bush dogs yelp in the backdrop of the forest as I enter and keep my eyes low on the ground. Bullet ants and wan-dering spiders are not something I want to step on out here.

Avoiding swamps, and wary of black caiman, I hustle for about an hour, and then up a long hill when my stomach growls and I wonder when Jade's eaten last—but there's nothing here I can give him. Brazil nuts dangle from a tree like a tempting tease, and I cave. This will take but a minute. I haven't eaten since midday, and the nutrients will give me strength to fight, I reason. Climbing the long, plain trunk, I use my legs as a wrap and my hands to scale. At the top, I'm proud of myself for climbing this far on my own. I nab a handful of nuts and keep my legs tightly wound about the trunk as I use my teeth to break the shells. After about ten nuts, I let my wrapped legs slide, feeling more comfortable, but the slide gains speed and I can't slow down and suddenly one wrapped leg comes un-done as I fall in a thunk. The trunk scrapes my inner thigh, and my back smacks against the ground. My head aches. I must have gotten the wind knocked out of me because everything goes black. Then I feel Jade's tongue all over my face, and I blink for a few seconds, or maybe a minute, and slowly see the world around me again.

My thigh is bleeding and I have to wipe my leg with whatever plants I find to rub off the blood, and then I rip the lower portion of my shirt to dress the wound. Staring at the gash, I see my padre's face and my sister May's. Mama holds May down as she applies the herbal medicine to her scabs, but she is so weak. Padre refuses to take his so that May can have more. The illness has ravaged their bodies and left them with bruises and scars—sure signs of the illness. Most peo-ple don't want to get too close to those dying, but Ma-ma isn't scared. She thinks it's in the water anyway. Not contagious. That's why she always uses a clay filter before boiling our water.

Papa coughs. Blood drips along the corners of his mouth, and I want to take this pain away, this death—but I can't. I can only stand there, staring and shaking, until Papa says in a gravelly voice, "Remember us when we're gone." His cracked palm grabs mine, and my eyes swell; tears drip and slide over my pinking cheeks. How could I ever forget?

I wipe a single tear now, and blink. Then, I tighten the knot over the gash on my leg. Glancing upward, alone in this vast forest, I can tell I'm so close. Jenji's team must be infiltrating the facility now, placing the bombs everywhere we discussed. By midnight, when I reach them, the bombs should be planted and the cages of animals and prisoners should be opened. Confusion will be ripping the BAG facility apart—I hope—as illegal Graphs kill any unsuspecting Borran Graphs headed their way.

The dark night is no longer like a cage hovering over me, suffocating me. This time, the Amazon is like a backyard that I'm not allowed to play in, but I've broken the rules and have chosen to infiltrate it. I know the consequences of this dangerous game. I'm no longer a prisoner; no longer an unwilling participant. But I'm eager, and ready.

I race with Jade the best I can with a wounded thigh for over an hour. At least my leg's not broken, and my belly's not rumbling anymore. As I enter the base of the Guiana Highlands, I hear growling, cawing, gunshots, and screaming in the distance. Then an alarm. I'm not far away. After approaching in a famil-iar low crawl, I keep myself hidden behind a large banyan tree with Jade next to me and use my eagle vi-sion to zero in on what's happening, but my head is fuzzy and suddenly everything spins. As if a fog has washed over the Amazon, I'm in a haze.

My attention catches the front door of the facility flipping open, where red lights beep and blare, but the sounds and sights don't divert me. All my fuzzy focus has to stay on Klen, who's got two soldiers at his back-side and a serrated knife tight through his right shoul-der blade. Blood drips over his chest and his face is scratched up. His head hangs low, and his neck is flushed with his jellyfish Graph, but the tentacles don't look pink-white, and instead resemble pea soup. His shaking concerns me. He doesn't look good.

If I don't move, he could die.

"Kill him now!" commands a tall soldier in a uni-form with blue stripes from behind the two holding Klen, and then one soldier lifts a hot gun and aims at Klen's temple.

Nooooo! I leap from behind the banyan tree and toward the facility, but my feet can't carry me fast enough as I hear the loud boom of the gun and then before I can blink Klen falls limp into the hands of the two soldiers. They drop him carelessly with a reckless laugh as I keep racing forward, my fists balling and hot tears already streaming.

It's my fault. It's my fault. I wasn't fast enough.

Suddenly, a loud growl explodes from behind the soldiers and a beautifully striped Bengal pounces on the three, ripping them to shreds. My head, my head, my head! My hands clasp my temples as so many senses surge through me. Sights, sounds...too many. I can't focus on any one of them. Fuzzy!

After the soldiers are dead and bloodied before me, the Bengal glances up and gently growls like Jade does to tell me he's there. Suddenly, Jade grrrs behind me, and it's like the two big cats know each other, like they know me. Except I've never met this Bengal. Have I?

Suddenly the Bengal leaps next to me and startles me before rubbing her neck all over my leg, and I see she's female, and a friend. Inside, I feel just her. See what she sees. Hear what she hears. Weird...I see me, hear me. I'm inside the Bengal's head—Connected.
REFUGE

SUDDENLY ALL THE SIGHTS, all the sounds make sense. I'm in my Graphed animal's heads. I see me, because I'm inside the Bengal. All the swirling above is from the harpy eagle circling the facility. Not a harpy following me, but my harpy eagle. The fuzzy sensation is from my dart frog dug deep somewhere in the mud out here. We—are—all—connected.

A gust of wind roars over me and my hair billows behind. I think I understand now. I turn to the front door where I see Turtle, Cai, and Springer all racing toward me. "We gotta go. We gotta go!" Turtle shouts as he bolts past me.

"Where's everyone else?"

Springer darts past me too, but jerks his head back to answer, "They're already out."

Looking back through the facility door, I see a band of soldiers, some of them without their shirts on, bearing the mark of Borran, and all are stampeding toward me like those that fight to survive on what was once called the Serengeti. I slam the door shut in a loud clank, and then race behind my friends with the Bengal and Jade close knit at my side.

When we hit the river, I see the flood of freed prisoners and animals—tigers, bush dogs, caiman, howler monkeys, eagles, porcupines, bats, and more— scurrying through the water or around it and toward the mountains in the far distance, the mountains which took me to the Orinoco so long ago. They fill the grounds and there must be at least fifty animals and thirty men. But I'm not heading that way this time. I have to go east, toward Macapa. Toward Mama.

I hear a rush of soldiers trampling grass behind me, maybe twenty men, and then I finally see Occey, Ostir, Dosh, and Sum behind the soldiers, ready to fight. Bush dogs howl and a few ocelots in the mix roar, the sound like a growled moan. Ostir flicks her venomous tongue at a few soldiers, the spit sticking in their eyes. After they scream, their hands cover their faces, and two soldiers flush their Graphs. Spikes pro-trude from their legs—like Prik—except not on their backs.

They kick at Ostir, but then Dosh's bush dogs snarl and speed toward the soldiers attacking. The two Graphed men try to kick the dogs, but their heads hurt, so they grab on with clasping hands. I know their heads hurt, like mine did when I first encountered the facility, when they yell in pain and crumple to the ground. A pain I know well. Their Connection is suppressed, like Adan's, but this only keeps them from bonding with their animal friend and prevents them from reading—it doesn't allow them to kill a non-human mammal. Un-fortunately for Borran, the idea of breaking the Con-nection never allowed soldiers to kill non-human mammals as he had planned.

After the two Borran Graphs fumble to their knees, cowering under their own arms, out of the cor-ner of my eye I see a large shadow of people rushing out from the trees and at the soldiers. Under shards of moonlight, the facial features of Lila, Soill, and Jenji grow clear and I sigh, relieved to see more of the team still alive.

Just then, a few human soldiers lift their hot guns and fire ahead, not at anything in particular because in this pitch darkness it's hard even for me to see without my Bengal vision. But when a few bullets rip through Occey's chest, I hear her scream. The forests grow dead silent except for her dying sound—screeches that permeate me. I fall to her side, mostly a shadow of darkness—but I can smell her all the same. Even the blood leaking from her frail form.

"Occey?! Occey?!" I yell to her, try to pull her in-to my chest, her blood seeping onto my shirt. I rock her in my arms, unsure of what to do, of how to save her. The ocelot growls and moans and lunges onto the three assailants, and devours them whole like a shark in a blood frenzy. Dosh's reaction is delayed, as if he's not quite sure what just happened, and then I hear a deep grief-stricken cry in the darkness. He heard her scream, can hear her soft coughing of blood, but can't find her in this blackness, can't be at her side when she dies.

Left with twelve soldiers still, I worry how we're going to get out of here with our numbers dwindling. Then, two Borran soldiers flush their Graphs and their human skin turns scaly, like a caiman. Their teeth snap, snap, snap, and Cai rushes with Turtle to defend Jenji and Lila, who stand too close to them. "No, no," Cai teases, "we can't have more than one of me."

Cai snaps at the Borran Graphs, and as one of them keeps Cai occupied, the other lunges at Jenji and nabs her arm. She grimaces, but doesn't let out a sound as blood drenches her arm and her free hand claws at her enemy, leaving a long scratch mark over his cheek.

Soon, Soill leaps over the caiman Graph's back and puts him in her very special chokehold. Her arms bend like rubber, 'round and 'round, until the caiman Graph can't breathe and he collapses to the ground.

"And who said I couldn't fight?" Soill says, clearly conscious of her non-intimidating Graph, then turns to help Cai. But the other caiman Graph lunges at Turtle, and snaps his neck instantly, leaving Turtle to fall to the ground without even a noise—except for the crunch of the neck bone he broke.

Cai doesn't respond to his friend's death at first, but jumps on the killer immediately, the both of them snapping and missing, until Cai finally twists the Bor-ran Graph's head off his neck. The blood is toxic, like a putrid smell filling the forest. I call to the Bengal and to Jade for help in a click of my tongue. We have to leave before the alarms alert more soldiers back to the facility. More are surely already on their way.

As my cats claw and dismember five more of Borran's soldiers, Lila jump kicks one of her own en-emies, and I'm almost smiling when that Borran sol-dier falls to the ground at the hands of an elderly wom-an.

Suddenly, Jenji yells out to us, "Move!"

When she speaks, we listen. I have to let Occey go. We all dart ahead to trail her as Juan pokes out from behind the bushes and scurries behind me. We leave behind our dead friends Klen, Occey, and Tur-tle, and even the frogs that have been following me. The four remaining soldiers stumble in their pursuit of us through the wetness of the river and the denseness of trees, away from the BAG facility—away from where Sum is hiding with his activation device to blow up the place. They are only human, after all.

Somewhere between sunrise and the gorgeousness of blue breaking in stripes across the Amazonian sky, we stop. The ocelot has left us, staying to her Graph, Occey, or returning to home in the forest, and we've lost the remaining soldiers too, but the bush dogs and my cats follow. I haven't had long to process Klen's death. Ostir holds to my shoulder, the weight of her brother's death hardest on her, but she doesn't say any-thing and I don't want to ask. I think we all just want—need—to focus on the mission at hand, or all of this, all of the loss, will have been for nothing.

"What happened to Adan?" Juan asks as the group looks to me for the answer.

I look to the ground, feeling guilty about leaving Adan, about not getting to Klen fast enough. "We split up. He said it'd be safer."

Juan stares me down. "He's right. Don't beat yourself up over leaving him. He's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

I try not too, but they don't know I was there when Klen died, and just watched it happen.

"He sure can." Ostir finally says something since the incident, and I nod with a half-smile at her, trying to be strong for her. I owe her that much. At least the thought of one familiar friend still alive keeps her at ease.

"Eat. We'll get moving in ten minutes," Jenji commands, and Springer hugs her as she closes her eyes. She's tired, and worried. Just like me, just like all of us. Even through her tough exterior and command-ing orders, Jenji has a soft spot too.

"How long 'til we get there?" Cai asks, his voice more crackly than before, and I already feel the ab-sence of Adan because he would have answered this question already.

Instead, Juan replies, "By midnight, we'll be less than halfway there. Probably by sunrise two days from now."

"So, we keep a steady pace. Eat, drink, rest," Springer says as Jenji takes a break from being the oth-er group leader to be near him.

I huddle next to Lila. "How was it in the facility? Did you get everyone out?" I hate that I missed this.

"Yeah, most everyone," Lila answers in her raspy voice.

"We followed the plan. Because of Juan, we were able to avoid all the detection triggers set up around the perimeter, allowing the bombers to get close enough to set the bombs. It was dark, but we got everything done in thirty minutes," Springer explains. "By that time, a few soldiers walked out of the facility for a smoke. So, Turtle and Cai took care of them. The door was open and we saw our chance to get in, didn't even need the code.

"All those tattooed took off their shirts, and we headed to the center of the facility like we belonged there. Keeping our heads low and our tattoos front and center kept most of the soldiers' questions at bay. Just another Graph coming in from a mission. Nothing suspicious. But when we entered the restricted areas, that's when things got hard."

"Restricted?"

Cai continues, "Yeah, turns out the codes were changed after Juan and Adan left, which neither knew about. We couldn't get into the room where the pris-oners were kept."

"So what'd you do?"

"Juan ripped out wires from the electric box." Cai chuckles in retrospect. "He looked like a madman. The box was in a small room next to the prisoners. When the electricity went out, the doors could be pushed open easily." Cai rakes fingers over his bald head. "But a soldier down the hall saw what happened and sounded the alarm."

"That made my group's mission harder," . "We were upstairs, at the door to rescue the animals, but the door wasn't electric so we still had no way in, and guards were coming for us."

"What happened?"

"Two guards exited the room to stop us, with pis-tols in hand." Her head shakes. "Dosh and Soill took down one, while Springer and I took down the other." She rubs the side of her arm. "But the guard's bullet grazed me." Jenji sighs. "Then we got in and pushed the buttons on the pads to open the caged doors. Once the animals got out, we had a lot of power on our side."

"How do you mean?" I ask.

Cai finishes. "They fought alongside us, better than us. Even the prisoners took down about ten sol-diers themselves, but not before a couple soldiers took Ostir."

"What?!"

Cai continues, "Yeah, they dragged her down the hall. She was screaming and Klen went after her. He yelled to us to complete the mission. The guards al-most got us on the first floor too, but once the prison-ers were freed, they took care of the guards."

"And Klen?" My voice cracks.

"He managed to somehow free Ostir but got him-self in their grip." Cai's head drops. "Ostir won't speak about it."

Jenji interjects, trying to bring the conversation back to our win. "The animals took another fifteen guards. We took down five ourselves. Most of us fled the building and were already heading for the trees when you showed up."

I can't speak at first, my mind still hanging on Klen, his sacrifice for his sister, and my inaction. Then, I finally do. "And the bombs? They're all still in place?"

Juan pulls out the receiver from his pocket. "You there, Sum?"

The receiver crackles like an old-fashioned walk-ie-talkie. "Sure am. Blow now?"

"No, no, no. Just wanted to make sure you could hear me is all." Juan looks up to me. "We're all set."

Springer adds, "The bombs are tucked under the ground, but close enough to the walls. When they go off, it'll be a fireworks show."

"Good." My gaze catches a few birds flying across the sky. "Because Borran will be furious with what happened there, and if we don't have leverage, Mama's dead."

As we eat a few Amazon fruits, Jade and the Ben-gal lick my face before rushing off into the forest, I guess to find food for themselves. I try not to worry; after all, Jade always finds his way back to me. Instead, I think about the plan, and about how we'll get to Bor-ran."

Time disappears quickly, and soon Jenji is yelling for us all to move again. "We won't be stopping this time until midnight. Then we'll nap." Springer's lead-ership style is more how and less yell. So, we'll have eighteen hours of walking and running with little food and no breaks. I've had worse.

Cai grumbles. Under his dissonance is a need to cry for the death of his friend, but he won't, not here, maybe not ever. I can see he is a hardened young man. Wanting to be tough for his friends, for himself. But if he doesn't work through this loss, I fear the pain will eat at him like a piranha to flesh.

Dosh howls with his bush dogs like they're all in mourning together, and I guess in a way they are, if they can feel Dosh like Dosh can feel them. That no-tion makes me think about my harpy and Bengal. If we are Connected then maybe they feel me too.

I walk behind Juan and put my hand to his shoul-der. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For everything," I answer. "We would not have come this far without you."

"Win would have wanted it this way. I did it for her, for your mama. For all the illegal Graphs." He looks to Springer, who leads with Jenji. "I owe them that much, at least."

"Is that why you joined PAPE?" I say, not realiz-ing I've broken a secret.

"Who told you that?" Juan reacts sharply.

"Oh, sorry," I pause before continuing. "Ostir mentioned it when we went looking for you at Kaieteur Falls."

Juan's stare is long and I'm afraid I've offended him in some way.

"I didn't mean to worry you. I didn't realize she shouldn't have told me."

"It's just you can't be too careful in this world, and I can't let that secret out. Borran would make it his mission to track someone in PAPE back to me just so he could see me hang."

"I won't say a word," I implore. "And still, thanks for everything."

Juan nods.

By midday, I realize I'm not in my mind any-more, but somewhere inside of my harpy eagle flying high above the Amazon forest. The trees are like grass for my feet and branches present themselves to land on, but my eyes zero in on a figure standing on a high mountain. I focus in on the face—the features—and see Adan. Adan! He's alive! And if he left and continued east, he'd likely be somewhere in the middle of Suri-name now, reaching French Guiana by the time our team naps at midnight. Of course, he'll have to go around French Guiana. The Prestige is hard to break into.

My harpy eagle circles and caws above Adan, but Adan doesn't take much notice of me up there watch-ing him. He likely doesn't even know what I can do, what I can see. He gave up his Connection long ago, and I wonder if he will ever get it back. I watch him for a few minutes before his leathery wings protrude from between his arms and chest and help lift him off the mountain as he glides across the woody terrain and near a river where he ducks to drink.

Then the eagle soars in the other direction over the mountain and through a cast of fog, and my eyes focus below on the dark woman and her large friend: Spider and Prik. Just two soldiers walk with them now. Three must have been picked off somewhere in the wilderness by beasts, the climb, or Adan himself.

The harpy eagle circles before perching on a nearby tree branch as I listen and watch my grand nemesis. She paces before hitting her fist against the trunk of a large kapok tree. "We must kill him tonight. We've lost too many to this traitor."

Prik nods. "Do you think we should have just for-gotten him, and headed after Jin? After all, Borran would have been very satisfied with her capture. He has plans for her." His voice is deep.

"No," she hisses, her forked tongue flicking, "you think I care about Borran's little experiments?! This is my war. Mine. And I will kill anyone in my way."

"If you wish." Prik retreats toward the trees that smell of heavy pine. Keeping my harpy eagle eyes close on Spider, I watch her as she examines the mountain ahead.

"He got ahead of us, and he'll certainly use his bat wings to get down easily. We'll do better just to travel around it."

"As you command," Prik answers.

"Why are you here? Just to agree with me? Spy on me? What?!"

Prik steps back, stunned. "I...I'm here for the same reasons as you."

"Really? What are those?"

"Survival."

Spider looks Prik up and down, and I register dis-agreement with her. She's here for something more than just her own survival. She cares, maybe too much. So much that she's all twisted up. She wants vengeance, for the death of her family. And she wants something more, to be out from under Borran's thumb—just like me.

Watching her from way up here feels like I'm vio-lating her privacy or something, still I'll take every ad-vantage I can get.

She squats onto a log where Prik leans against a trunk. "You know my entire family was massacred by the Russians."

"I know," Prik says, as if he's heard this before.

"Truss took me under his wing and his son saved me, made me into something stronger. Something that could survive this harsh world."

Prik just looks at Spider, his attention on nothing else.

"I've dedicated my life to Borran, not because I'm dead without him, but because he will give me what I need to bring death to the Russian terrorists. To those who want to destroy the Americas."

"Yes," Prik responds as if he has to agree, as if he wants to agree, and I realize for the first time that Prik cares for Spider—really cares for her—like a good friend or a lover. I can see it in his eyes, in his continu-al acquiescence.

Maybe this is something I can use.

I shake my head, coming back into myself when Jenji yells. "Waterfall, drink up." We all dive into the water briefly, and drink as much as we can until fully sated. I gulp the fresh water, knowing Adan drank too, that he's okay, and that if he's anything like the man I knew in the Amazon, then I'll see him in Macapa very soon.

Ostir lets the fall of rushing water drizzle over her head and down her face as I see her break down, tears cascading with the falls. I pull her to me and let her rest in my chest.

"It'll be okay. It'll be okay."

I don't know what else to say. I've lost family too. Too many people along my journey in this world—a world that belongs to Borran. And I can't lose any more people I love. We can't lose any more. We just stay like that while everyone else drinks and Lila even plays and splashes. Funny watching someone so old, so carefree. Ostir hangs on me like I'm her life raft—and I feel a burden of guilt about Klen, coupled with a long-ing to be a better friend to her than I've been. Springer and Jenji still have each other. I lost Adan, but at least I know he's alive. Cai is quiet. Juan pushes on in memory of his wife, Win. Soill is an enigma, but seems to have made friends with Sum, the outcast; and Dosh sits with his bush dogs, taking comfort in them nearby, as he stares into the vastness ahead that will take us into our future, into the depths of the Amazon—the forbidden lands of Trussanda.
ALEXANDRIA

WE'VE EACH FOUND OUR own ways to cope with our losses, with the struggle to survive, and we do so with hope because we finally see a light at the end of this dark tunnel. A tunnel that ends with Borran's death. Cai walks with Soill, the two of them becoming like peas in a pod again over the last few hours. I'm used to hearing Cai comment sarcastically or bluntly, but ever since Turtle died, he's been relatively quiet. At least he's not isolating himself. Despite the rift between Juan and Springer, the two of them stay in front with Jenji, leading the rest of us. I guess that's what good leaders do. Lead, despite it all. Lila and Dosh lag be-hind, but the bush dogs make sure none of us gets left behind.

Ostir keeps close to me, her fingers always finding the waist of my pants or a thread on my shirt. After losing her brother and her best friend, Adan, she doesn't have much left. While we walk together under a falling sun, I hear the buzz of insects and the crunch of leaves under our feet, and I can't help but wonder what Spider meant by Borran's little experiment, and keeping me alive. Borran wanted me dead in the Ama-zon; he must have changed his mind. But why?

The sun has finally set after a long display of fabu-lous colors—blood-red oranges, eggplant purples, ba-nana yellows—shoot across the sky in paintbrush fash-ion. Six more hours 'til our break, and we'll be across the border in to Suriname. Adan will be crossing in to French Guiana, most likely, because heading through will be too arduous, and crossing south into the Ama-zon will be more dangerous than keeping to where people live. Villagers will help him; being a villager himself and bearing the mark of Borran could be put to use, so long as he avoids being scanned by guards.

I'm not sure where I am when I get into the head of my eagle again, sometime and somewhere in the dark night. A gush of wind rushes over me. I am feath-ers. I am in flight. Sailing downwind over the Amazon River and water lilies, and over a massive tract of land...the most gorgeous plants and flowers decorate the grounds for at least half a mile. Salty ocean winds hit my feathers as I approach. Strangler figs help keep a border around the property, and bromeliads shoot off the ground like tentacles in brilliant shades of red, along with interspersed pink-purple diamond-shaped leaves of bougainvillea flowers. A large immaculate white marble mansion is surrounded by white and pink and vanilla orchids, and even a few acai palms in the front yard.

When the eagle lands on an open windowsill on the third floor of the mansion, I finally know where I am. A strange odor casing over me, but I focus. My eagle keeps a keen eye in the bedroom and a sharp ear turned to the window, as I hear the pat, pat, pat of slip-pers enter the bedroom, the squeaking door shut, and a croaky voice resound.

"How is my darling today?" the male voice asks as a square-shouldered man in his mid-forties pounds across the black ceramic-tiled floor barefoot and in a robe. After pouring himself a glass of champagne, he toasts himself in the circular mirror hanging on the wall above the dark mahogany dresser. "Congratula-tions to the catch of the century. Ariana will prove most useful to me. Most useful to keeping my king-dom." He sips, and I know now who this man must be. No one but Borran would have my madre.

The man is tall and large and his chest covered in hair like a bear. He sips the champagne once more before setting the glass on the dresser to turn to the knock at the bedroom door. "Come in." The man's lower chin crinkles and his nostrils flare in disap-pointment.

A uniformed soldier with many stripes enters. His short hair is combed to one side, and he holds a file of papers in his hands. "Sorry to interrupt, King Borran, but I have an updated report on the BAG facility inci-dent."

"Yes, what is it?!" Borran demands sharply.

The soldier answers in a low voice, "Fifty-nine bodies were recovered at the facility."

"And?!" Borran is impatient.

"Three bodies are unknown illegal Graphs. We've deduced they must have been part of the terror-ist cell. Ten bodies have been identified as prisoners, and forty-six bodies are our men, sir."

"Our men! Forty-six!" Borran's face grows hot red and his balled fists hit the dresser to the side. "How do we lose forty-six of our soldiers?!"

"Well, sir"—his voice is desperate— "only ten of our soldiers were Graphed. The terrorists had several advantages."

Borran's lips twist as his dark eyes look like they are about to pop out of their sockets.

The soldier continues, "They appear to be a team of illegal Graphs, from what we've gathered in inter-views with surviving soldiers. The terrorist cell man-aged to not only locate the facility, but avoided all of our perimeter detection alarms and then proceeded directly to the cages. They must have had an inside man."

Borran clobbers the soldier's face with his pound-ing fist. "How does this happen?! How does this hap-pen?!"

The soldier's bloodied nose leaks all over his shirt before he bows and exits. Borran slams his door and then takes a deep breath before returning to his glass of champagne.

"No matter, that cell will come straight to me. Jin was spotted with them, and I'll be waiting for them when they do." He sips from the glass. "Ariana will bring her daughter to me, and then I can run the exper-iments on her blood." A grim grin rolls over his ex-pression. "Once the experiment is successful, I'll have my own Graph for the world to see."

I pull out of my eagle's head, not sure if that's what I even want to do, but I have to breathe. Feel my own breath. My hands draw to my knees, and I let my head roll over, my hair cascading about me.

"Are you all right?" Ostir asks, her hand on mine.

I breathe again, and then flick my head up and nod. "Yeah, sure, I'm fine."

Suddenly, Dosh hangs his head over my shoulder. "You're seeing through them, aren't you?"

My head tilts to him, our eyes meeting. "What do you mean?" I ask in a low voice, quiet, as if this should be a secret. The fewer people who know about this, the better.

"You know what I mean." Dosh scrambles to walk side by side with me, Ostir on the opposite. "Ever since the release of the animals from the facility, things have been...different."

I look at him, wondering if he can do this too. See through the animals, hear through them. "You can do it too?"

He nods. "Been seeing through my bush dog ever since he found me after the escape."

"How...how do you do it? Go in and out, I mean. Seems like my eagle just pulls me in whenever."

Dosh scratches his head, and the bush dog behind him scratches his hind leg. "I'm not even sure yet. I just focus on the animal. On his mind, I guess. My brain waves pull me into his." Dosh then looks up at the front of the convoy. "Maybe Juan can help?"

I have to learn how to do this, and fast. I need to see what my eagle sees. She could warn me about what's coming. Let me know how to get into Borran's mansion...and I need to see Adan again.

I shuffle up to Juan and tap his shoulder.

"Hey, you okay?" His wrinkly face turns to me, his heavy brows hanging low.

"Yeah," I say quietly. "It's just that me and Dosh have been noticing things...ever since the facility."

"What kind of things?"

"Just that we can somehow get into the minds of our animal Graphs."

"What do you mean, get in?"

"I mean I can see and hear what my eagle is see-ing or hearing."

Juan stops. "How long have you been able to do this?"

"I...I just noticed this six hours ago. I saw Adan."

"You saw Adan?"

"Yeah, on top of a mountain. I saw Spider, too. She was still chasing him, but he was alive."

Juan nods a few times, digesting everything I've just said. "Then your brain waves are surging into your eagle's," he says, matter-of-factly.

"But how?"

Juan's expression turns excited. "It was theorized ten years ago by the creator of Graphs, Christoph Elise."

"The creator?"

"He was French and knew Alexandria. They were good friends and rumored to be lovers when they were just teenagers and living in Paris. But when Alexandria became engaged to Borran under orders of her padre, to keep peace with a powerful nation, Alexandria had to give up Christoph.

"Later, she persuaded Borran to pay for Christoph's travel to South America. She convinced him that Christoph would be an asset to his military, that Christoph had many ideas that could enhance his power.

"Alexandria was right. Christoph and Borran forged a union stronger than Christoph had with Alex-andria. Christoph became Borran's leading scientist—a man who studied biology as well as physics and elec-tronics.

"Twelve years ago, Christoph conceived of the idea of Graphs, and ten years ago he first succeeded in Graphing someone. The subject was said to have died soon after Graphing, and this death caused a great fear in Borran, because the subject was rumored to have been close to him. But Borran commissioned more work to be done in the field of Graphing, and nine years ago began building the facility and equipment. Experiments started soon afterward."

"But on who, then? Prisoners weren't used until four years ago."

Juan shakes his head. "I know that prisoners were used as far back as six years ago, because that was one of the points of disagreement I had with Borran. One of the many reasons he listed for my expulsion from the facility."

"For six years?" My mind races.

Juan nods, and then continues, "I believed people should volunteer, not be forced. Before prisoners, Borran relied on volunteers from villages. He'd pay the family for the use of the volunteer. People were desperate—are desperate—and some would turn in their firstborn if it meant food for a month."

I think about what Juan said as we quickly walk over foliage in the dark with only moonlight to guide us.

"You must have performed on many volunteers who didn't know what they were getting into. Death, or experiments gone wrong?"

Juan looks down, the light from the moon sharing only half his face. "Sadly, I have to admit that I was a part of the problem."

"So, Christoph theorized about the Graphs getting into the minds of the animals themselves?"

Juan nods. "Yes, it was never achieved, of course. Even after years of trying. Borran's Graphed soldiers were too brainwashed, too militant, to ever listen to the Connection within them. Even when the wild hit their blood, they couldn't control themselves. This infuriat-ed Borran. He saw no purpose in keeping the animals alive if he couldn't use them to strengthen his military, and in a rage, he slaughtered the animals brought in for Graphing that month.

"Eventually, gathering new animals got expensive and it was more lucrative to reuse animals for their cells and brain waves than to find new ones. So, cages were enhanced to ensure the survival of the animals maintained there. My late wife, Win, helped to develop some of the cages, too."

I turn to him. "So, this new ability...it, it's because I'm not a soldier?"

"It's because you haven't suppressed your Con-nection. Soldier or not, if you suppress your Connec-tion, you won't be able to Read your animal."

"Read?"

"That's what Christoph called it."

Frustrated, I ask, "So, how do I control it?"

"You can't look at it that way, as in controlling the animal. It's a partnership. It feels you, and you feel it. In a way, it sometimes even controls you. It senses your longing, and when that sense is great, it responds to it."

"Which is why I was shown Adan."

"Probably." Juan stops me with a hand to my shoulder. "Think of it as talking to your animal and listening to it."

"Communication?"

"Precisely."

I am about to step back, to return to Ostir, who is surely wondering why I've abandoned her, but then Juan stops me again with another question. "Tell me, how do you control yourself, when you're inside the head of the animal?"

"I..." I shrug. "I didn't really think about it before. I just did it. I can always see where I'm going, but it's through a haze. Then, an image pops in my head from the eagle. When the Connection weakens, I return here."

Juan nods. "Christophe theorized reading was strongest in one's sleep."

"Sleep?"

"While you dream."

"Why is that?"

"Because the closer we get to the origin of the species, the closer we get to dream waves."

"How do you mean?"

"Lizards, for example, are always in dream wave mode. Even while awake. Humans, on the other hand, only dream while asleep."

I stare at him, at his brilliance and my forehead must be crinkling with more confusion.

"Since you've been Graphed your brain waves are closer to the lower mammals and closer to the dream waves. Therefore, Christophe says that dreams are where the real Reading is done. Unaffected by the world."

Juan lets me go and I have a lot to ponder. I re-turn to Ostir and Dosh, with answers to share with Dosh later, but for now I have to Read my eagle.

Crickets rub their forewings, making crick, crick sounds, and frogs croak in the distance, reminding me that they are nearing again. The forest is quiet except for the sounds of nature, and I close my eyes to speak with my eagle. Let me in.

It doesn't take long before an image of the man-sion pops into my mind. My harpy still sits on the win-dowsill, and Borran has finished his glass of cham-pagne—a putrid smell from the room still engulfs me. A little inebriated, he stumbles forward, grabbing hold of the bed's banister, and then he can't help but laugh. "I'm such a klutz when I drink, but you already know that, my beautiful Alexandria." He gazes to the bed, to the figure underneath the white covers. "My beautiful, beautiful Alexandria."

He falls to her side, his body sitting in the fold of the bed, and kisses her forehead underneath the thin white bed sheet. "You will never leave me now." As Borran slips the bed sheet off her face, the malodor is worse, and my body shivers at the sight of a rotted corpse. Her eyes are hollow and her skeleton is thin, coffee-stained brown. She's clad in a deteriorating dress with stains and rips. Borran lays beside her, his eyes glued to her empty sockets and his lips so close to the corpse's lips that I want to vomit. "You will always be with me." When Borran closes his eyes in a drunk-en daze, my harpy caws and takes off into the sky in a shiver.
VISIONS

WE'RE NEARING MIDNIGHT and must be somewhere within Suriname now. We'll rest for six hours and start moving again when the sun rises at six in the morning. I find a walking palm, comfortable with the security they've offered me in the past. Before I slip in, my Radguar and the Bengal rush out from the bushes and trample toward me, the Bengal carrying a rabbit in her mouth. Jade jumps, licking my face, and the Bengal watches, lowering to the ground and finish-es her meal.

I laugh and pet his face. "You've come back! I knew you would." I kiss Jade's forehead and then slip into my protective palm for the night.

"Your friends made it back to you." Juan smiles and I nod.

"Thank goodness. A part of me always worries."

Ostir pats Jade's head before softly saying, "Nice to see a familiar face again."

Then, Ostir walks off and plops next to Soill and Cai. Lila squats next to Juan, who grips his receiver in his hand. Just a tree away are Springer and Jenji, while Dosh uses his nearby bush dogs as pillows. The night is pleasant, a kind of night I have not had many of in Borran's kingdom.

I fall asleep easily. I think we all do, after every-thing. But even in my sleep, my Connection keeps me with my eagle, like twins inside of a warm womb. My dreams fill with a journey taken by the brave harpy, over trees and through wet clouds so high I can't even see the ground just yet, and then she descends so quick-ly, I feel the air rush over her, over me, and I never want this experience to end. I feel, just like Juan said, more Connected without the real world to interfere with me here—in this state.

Her glide leads us to the western borders of French Guiana, or as the sign below says—French Truiana. Past the border sign, my harpy flies over the Abounamy port and to the river where, thirty meters downstream, I finally see Adan again lying inside of another canoe with his head low, letting the current take him. He's safe, and to my surprise passing through French Guiana instead of around it. Maybe Spider blocked him, or maybe he wants to save time. Either way, at least he's still alive.

Architecture in French Guiana is different from that of other regions. On either side of the river, I can see the region's majestic beauty. Beauty I've been told of, but have never seen till now, behind these eagle eyes. This extravagance is because King Truss adored the French people and language, and so all the villages in that region are spoiled. All other languages and foods are forbidden to be used there, except that which is influenced from France. With his son's bride, Alex-andria, Truss ensured French culture was brought into his family.

Instead of huts, villages are composed of one large building with hundreds of rooms. Four rooms allotted per family (or so I've been told), and so twenty-five families live in a single village—a single building. Pointed roofs, elegant rounded columns, and even col-orful flowers decorate the French structures and the surrounding grasses, from what I see high up here in the clouds. Outside the buildings are simple markets and vendors, similar to what I've seen in my own re-gion except that signs read: baguettes, soupe à la mi-gnonne gratinée, mousse au chocolat. I'm not sure what all that means, because I don't speak French be-cause it's forbidden for those not born to French Gui-ana to use French, but the food sounds better than in my village. English is the language we've all lived on for ages, and only the privileged learn other languages. French Guiana is a privileged region of villagers, for sure. Though they don't live in the mountains, they are for all extensive purposes Prestige. I assume people get here and there by walking upon the dirt paths, as in my village, but I see carriages with horses parked at vari-ous French structures. French Guiana is nothing like my simple home.

I let my mind wander deeper into my eagle—into this dream—to tell her to dive toward the canoe. I want a closer look at Adan. She turns, her wings like perfect aerodynamic instruments as she navigates toward him. I feel her, and I know she feels me. She takes me low-er, to the boat, and lands upon the center. She caws loudly and awakens Adan.

His eyes are sticky with sleep, and his face is caked with dirt. One sleeve is ripped and his forelimb is covered with bruises. Maybe a fight with soldiers? That would explain the missing from Spider's party. I didn't notice when he stood on the mountain.

I caw, caw, caw and Adan looks at my harpy's yel-low-rimmed eyes. A question mark forms in the etch-ing of his forehead. "Jin?"

I want to tell him I'm here, that I see him, but I can only caw again. "Oh, that's silly." Adan shakes his head at himself. "How's that even possible?"

My harpy flips her wings at Adan and her talons catch the boat's edge. "Okay, what are you trying to tell me? Is she close?"

Yes, so close.

We dance like this for a few minutes, with my harpy cawing and staring into his eyes, just to flip her wings and for Adan to scratch and shake his own head. I reach my triangular beak to his supple lips—lips I've noticed since we've met and have been unable to fully experience the impact of yet. I let my beak press his lips, linger there, and then I pull away in a fluff of wings and ascend into the sky.

"Jin?" Adan's brows twist as his mouth falls open, and his eyes hang on me until I disappear into the clouds somewhere.

When I awaken, it all still feels like a perfect dream—Adan and me—which is quickly torn away by the grating sound of Jenji's orders. "Time to get mov-ing! Get up!" For such a miniature woman, she sure has a lot of punch inside of her.

We head off in the pairings we've gravitated to-ward unconsciously. Springer and Jenji, Juan and Lila, Cai and Soill, Ostir, myself with my Bengal. Jade van-ished in the night, likely searching for more food for himself and his new companion. The last grouping is Dosh and his bush dogs. We walk two by two in a crooked line over the forests, the thick trees growing sparser, and the vines becoming easier to tear through. We're nearing the end of the Amazon.

"Why hasn't Borran sent more Sniffers after us?" I ask Juan, half shouting, ten minutes into our journey.

Juan turns his head, looking at Lila standing next to him and me. "Sniffer Graphs are a difficult proce-dure to undergo. He likely doesn't have many, and those he does have he may be saving for another pur-pose."

"After all," Lila replies in a raspy tone, "didn't you say he has your madre? Borran must know that we'll come to him."

"But he couldn't know that Jin was a part of the at-tack on the facility. That Adan was. They weren't even there," Soill interjects from behind.

"True," Juan responds, "but he does know that you and Adan both know where the facility is and both escaped the hunt. How else would anyone know where the facility is? He probably guessed that you two must have helped the group who attacked the facility in some way. Finding you will lead him to us."

I add, "Besides, I heard one of his guards report me when I was seen at the facility. He knows."

Dosh rubs his bald head and retorts, "Look what sending Sniffers did for him the last time. Got nearly all of them killed. Borran's surely figuring out new plans now in that demented mind of his."

"I'm sure he is," I say half under my breath, re-membering the 'little experiment' Spider mentioned.

Jenji shouts back, "Stop yapping, we've got a lot of ground to cover, and I want to be on the outskirts of Macapa by midnight. We'll rest then, and start fresh in the morning. It'll take time getting into Macapa. It's sure to be heavily guarded."

I nod and try to forget all the questions about Graphs, about Borran, and about where Mama is and if she's even still alive, and try instead to focus on the route.

"I have an idea," I say suddenly, thinking of my eagle. Jenji turns, evil eyeing me, and I grow quiet. While walking, I briefly close my eyes and think of the harpy. I call to her from my mind and suddenly hear her caw, caw. Not above me, but far away somewhere. We have about fifteen hours left to journey before reaching our destination where we'll nap, and then we don't even know what we're getting into. If my harpy can get an eagle's eye view of the border of Macapa, of how we might be able to get in without getting killed, then I have to let her fly there. As soon as she sees, I'll see, and then I can warn my team. At seventy kilome-ters an hour, on a slow day, she can travel from wher-ever she is in French Guiana to Macapa in a few hours.

Midday, when we take a break at a body of water to drink and find a few fruit trees to eat from, is when I have the vision. Macapa is inside of Trussanda. This much I know. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south is the Amazon River, and it's about a day's journey from French Guiana's eastern border, which is how Adan predetermined when he'd arrive.

But what I didn't know—what none of us knew—is that the northern and western parts of Macapa are sur-rounded by a very high marble wall, the same material used in Borran's mansion. The air smells like ripe pears and honeysuckle, and the sun is brighter here because there aren't as many trees. Clouds aren't as heavy, either. As I swoop over the Macapa area, I see no villagers, just uniformed guards, and lots of them. In the mix is a few barebacked Graphs—male and fe-male, flaunting their Borran tattoos—and no animals, which is odd. I don't see any snakes, frogs, tigers, crocodiles, monkeys, or too many birds. I'm one of just a few birds in the sky, and I realize I—the harpy—have to be very careful. The Macapa area is clear of anything not directly approved by Borran.

Water vessels float near wooden docks outlining the Amazon River. Several guards are stationed every hundred meters, and I can see a barebacked Graph at each port interval as well. Tall white columns etched with the French words "Sa Majesté" adorn every port. Borran wants to assure that no one rides up the Ama-zon River, deliberately or accidentally, and ends up in his backyard.

I can see his mansion from the river, a looming structure that can be seen from any point in Macapa. The structure itself faces the land, but it is situated close to the Atlantic Ocean. There are no open mar-kets and vendors here, rather just buildings inter-spersed across a large plot of land.

While everyone bathes or rests and eats for a few minutes, I find the highest rock nearby and climb upon it. "I need everyone to come to me now. I've had a vi-sion of Macapa."

They all turn to me, their expressions a mix of confusion or doubt. "What do you mean, you've had a vision?" Soill's brows twist above squinting blue eyes.

"I mean, the Graph Connection is coming alive inside of me, inside of Dosh, too." Dosh looks to me with a wary face, and then to the group. "We've been seeing through our animal Graph's eyes."

"You mean you can see what your Bengal sees?" Soill's eyes grow big on me.

I nod. "Yes, but I haven't been inside my Bengal as much as my harpy. I've been following my harpy through Macapa and have seen things."

"Wait," Jenji interrupts. "How are you seeing through the eyes of your animal Graphs?" She looks around at her group. "Does anyone else do this?"

Cai and Springer shake their heads before Juan in-terjects.

"Reading, as it's been dubbed, is not unusual, and in fact was theorized by the Graph creator Christoph Elise."

"Theorized?" Springer pries, his eyes enlarging, making his bumpy face seem insignificant.

"Whatever animal you're Graphed to becomes a part of your mind," Dosh says, "your brain waves. You can see, hear, and even feel what that animal experi-ences."

"Then why don't I see anything?" Jenji demands, the disappointment on her face obvious, and Soill leans forward, her attention fixed on Dosh.

Dosh answers, "Because the Reading is strongest only with mammals and birds, and only with those who have not suppressed their Connection."

"But a sloth is a mammal."

"Maybe your Connection is weaker? Maybe you haven't been focusing?"

I add, "Distracted by leading your illegal Graphs?"

Jenji nods. "Besides my sloth never goes anywhere or does anything interesting. I'm sure I wouldn't see, hear, or feel much of anything useful from a sloth."

"They do move slow, and maybe that keeps you from connecting with your animal—because the sloth could show nothing that interests you? But who knows, maybe one day your Connection will draw you to your sloth,"

Dosh continues, "Or maybe your sloth is dead. You can only read the animal whose cells are Graphed to you."

"That's a very good point," Juan agrees.

Dosh finishes, "So, only me and Jin Read."

"You've been doing this too?" Jenji asks sharply.

Dosh nods with a guilty expression, eyes down and lip puffed.

"For how long?"

"Just since we freed the animals from the facility."

"But why now?"

I look to Juan, knowing only he will have answers. Juan shrugs. "Might have something to do with being freed from all the wiring and tubing. The sedatives the facility gives the animals also don't help."

"Makes sense," I say. "If the animal is sedated or its mind is hazy, how can it connect to its Graphed human at all?"

"It's possible that's the reason. I don't have enough data to know for sure," Juan says sheepishly, sounding like the former scientist he is.

Springer steps forward. "Then, that begs the obvi-ous question." He stares straight at me, his eyes like pins. "What did you see?"

Everyone looks to me.

"Macapa is obviously bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Amazon River, but where there is not wa-ter, there is a very high and very thick marble wall. Borran lives inside of a mansion just off the ocean. There is nothing for about half a mile from his man-sion, and then a few buildings spaced out until the wall."

Cai interjects enthusiastically, "What about the river? Can we get in through the river?"

"The river is guarded with a handful of soldiers at every port, and ports are spaced out at every hundred meters. Among the guards is at least one Graph at eve-ry port, too." I shake my head. "I don't see how the river is an option."

Jenji asks, "What about the wall? Is there a way in? How many guards?"

I close my eyes and try to remember what my harpy saw. It's weird, having memories of a bird inside your own mind, but I'm adjusting well enough. "I..." I shake my head. "There was a gate at the north wall, and guarded heavily by twenty soldiers and a Jeep."

Cai grinds his teeth. "Then how do we get in?"

We're all quiet, and then Dosh answers from be-hind us all. "We ask."

"What?" Jenji jerks her head to him. "Are you crazy? They'll string us up on the spot."

"Not if we tell them we have something to ex-change with Borran. Something he won't refuse."

"What do you mean?" Springer's pin eyes squint.

I half smile. "Exactly, the bombs for Mama."

Cai shakes his head. "No, no, no, you promised we'd set the bombs off after we got your madre out of there. This isn't part of the deal."

Dosh looks at Cai like a brother. "Come on, Cai. You just lost your best friend to Borran. Do you really want to do the same thing to Jin? Her madre's life for the facility?"

"Besides," Springer adds, "there'll be other op-portunities."

We all stare at Cai, and his expression is a mix of sadness and reluctance. He knows, as we all do, that this time now is the best time we have. Later could mean more security on the facility or even it being moved. I'm not sure what anyone else thinks of all of this, until Soill supports Cai. "I say we sneak in from the Atlantic Ocean. Climb into his backyard and scale up the mansion wall to his bedroom. Surprise him there."

Dosh nods his head. "That sounds like a good plan. Then we don't sacrifice anything. We can get your madre and still blow up the facility."

Juan shakes his head. "Borran is not stupid. He's sure to have his mansion heavily secured with alarm systems. We won't get very far."

Springer adds, "Yeah, we could just as easily end up in cuffs that way, and given a one-way ticket to ex-perimental Graphing."

"We could always do both," Lila says in her raspy voice. "Send Springer, Soill, and Cai through the ocean to see if they can find any weak points in his mansion. After all, they are our best swimmers and climbers." Lila looks to me. "Send Jin, Dosh, Jenji, and myself to the front gate."

"What about me?" Ostir asks.

Lila replies frankly, "You stay behind with Juan and protect the receiver. After all, if we can't com-municate with Sum at the BAG facility, he won't know what to do." Lila looks at me. "We set up a meeting, and then do the exchange." I guess Lila can sense Ostir is weak now, with the death of her brother, and won't be much good to anyone inside of Macapa.

I look to Jenji. After all, if she and Springer don't say this is a go, then it's not.

Jenji hesitates, glances at Springer, and then finally nods. "It's a plan. Let's do it, people."
MACAPA

AFTER SIX HOURS OF traveling through the Amazon at night, we've finally reached near the end of our journey and rest inside of a chilly cave at the back-side of a small mountain where cool air rushes in every hour. At sunrise the next morning, dusty golden colors of light flicker across the hazy sky as the Bengal licks me awake. Then, burnt orange bleeds like a tomato when we all get ready for our excursion to the north gate of the Macapa wall. I'm worried about Jade, won-dering where he might be and frustrated that I'm not Graphed with him so that I can check-in. But he'll show up in time. He always does.

"Listen, I know you all have your own reasons for joining this battle. I lost my mama. Juan was banned and then marked for assassination. But Cai and Dosh have both lost good friends because of this. Don't feel you have to come with me now. It could happen that none of us make it out alive, and I can't ask that of you."

Soill slaps her foot on the ground, spit shooting from her mouth. "No way I'm giving up now." She looks at everyone, her hand waving. "We're so close to taking down Borran and his Graphs." Her voice scratches on Graphs. "This is my family." She looks around at us, her eyes distant—someplace far from here. "The one I was born to was massacred, and if I remember anything, it's that my padre told me you never turn your back on family. So, I'm pushing on-ward."

"If we die, Jin," Cai answers, "our blood is not on your hands. It's on our own. We're all choosing this—like you said, for our own reasons. Even without your madre, we'd still be doing this. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we've had enough of Borran and his kingdom and the way it's been treating our people."

Dosh and Ostir both nod their heads.

"Okay," I concede, feeling some of the weight lift off my chest.

Then, we continue.

The trek is short, especially compared to what we've been doing the past few days. Juan and Ostir have stayed behind in the forest with the bush dogs, to keep the receiver safe. Before we step out of the forest, Springer, Soill, and Cai divert their route, heading east and straight for the ocean. They plan to swim to the mansion, and with Soill's earthworm gifts, Springer's frog gifts, and Cai's caiman gifts, I have high hopes they'll make it and even be able to scale any mansion walls with ease.

I walk with Lila, Jenji, Dosh, and my Bengal tiger. An old woman, sloth claws, and a dog's nose, hardly a team that incites fear. I'm surprised we made it this far, but as I leave the forest and step into the open field, I feel a tug on my shoulder from behind and spin on the ball of my heel.

"Adan!"

"Told you I'd meet you here!"

My head falls into his chest, his scent—the phero-mones I've left on him—letting me know he's really Adan. "What about Spider? How'd you get away?"

"Don't worry about her. I left her with my scent all over the place. Her Sniffers will be running her in circles."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate that."

"I owe her at least that much for training me." Adan winks. "So, where's everyone else?"

My cheeks pop. "Oh, we formed a new plan. Some of us are keeping the activation pads safe. Oth-ers are coming in through the rear. The rest of us—those you see here—are entering via the direct route."

"Good to know you all still have a plan."

My head drops and I hesitate, but I know I have to tell him.

"What?" he pries, his finger under my chin.

"We lost Klen."

Adan is quiet, and then speaks with resolve in his tone. "God, is Ostir okay?"

"She wasn't at first, but she's better now. Focused on the mission."

Adan nods, and I see a lot of emotions brewing inside of him, emotions he isn't sure what to do with just yet, and so he pushes them down inside of himself. "Then we need to, also."

We approach the north gate about midday, in what feels like no time at all. I'm waved down by a guard positioned on a high post above the wall.

"What's your business here? This is restricted territory." A gun points in my direction. The scratchy French accent reminds me of the voice of one of my takers, one of the men that took me in the middle of the night from my cell. The one who said, 'We have a new home for 'ya.'

My Bengal snarls, sniffing the ground vigorously, before I answer. "We've come to speak with Borran."

The man peeks through his binoculars before he yells, his accent less clear, "No one speaks with Bor-ran!"

I step in front of my team, raking my fingers through my auburn hair. "He'll want to see me. I have something he wants."

The guard stands, his fitted pants colored green, like his shirt. "Well, if it isn't D47. We've been won-dering where you ended up."

I use my eagle vision to peer at the guard high above us, at his gray eyes, nonexistent brows, and an-gled nose. It's him. One of the men who took me to be Graphed. Too bad he wasn't my rapist. I'd love to break his neck.

"I haven't come for you. I've come to speak with Borran."

He smirks and calls out, "As I said, no one speaks with Borran."

"Well, then, I guess you'll end up on his list of those who go missing, because if Borran doesn't hear about this, he'll be furious."

The guard paces and straightens his cap, and then speaks lower, "What is this that you have that's so im-portant?"

"It's for Borran's ears only."

"I'll ring him and see if he's interested." I can see the guard's lips tightening, and he even straightens his shirt collar before lifting the receiver on the nearby table, one of just a few in existence.

My Bengal hearing is good, and I hear each ring, ring, ring before I pick up the voice of another soldier. "What?" the voice demands, a deep, guttural sound.

"D47 is outside the wall. She demands to see Bor-ran."

There is a silence.

"She came with four others, and a tiger."

A click, and a wait. Another click, and then I hear the phoned soldier again. His voice is matter-of-fact. "Let her in."

The guard on the wall returns the receiver to the table, his face screwed up, like he isn't sure what just happened. He peers over the side of the wall, without his binoculars. "Fine, come in." He waves.

The gate grates as the large marble material slides open, and on the other side waiting for us is a convoy of twenty soldiers and a few Jeeps. At least two of the soldiers are Graphed. I can tell because the muscular female has blue-black scales on her neck and a flicking tongue, both reminding me of the death adder snake. She really ought to meet Ostir. The thinner male, without a shirt, sniffs at me and his nostrils flare as he nods. "That's her." I don't recognize him as one of Spider's Sniffers, so he must have smelled something of mine. Maybe my blood at the BAG facility?

We enter, the Bengal watchful and teeth showing as she sniffs crazily. My calm demeanor tells her that we are not fighting, at least not yet. "You are to be es-corted to the guest facility."

"Guest facility?" My brows grow crooked. "We are supposed to be meeting Borran."

The tall soldier keeps a gun pointing at my back, and Adan flinches as the barrel presses up hard against my spine. "Borran is held up at the moment. He'll be meeting with you later. In the meantime, you'll be wait-ing in the guest facility."

One Jeep follows with wheels crunching over the ground with half the soldiers, while the other two jeeps and the last ten men stay at the front gate.

When a gun meets with Jenji's back, she com-ments, "Nothing like being greeted with a warm wel-come."

The soldier behind barks orders at us. "Keep qui-et. I'm not here for your entertainment. Just an escort."

"You know, if we don't get out of here by sunset, our friends are directed to do something that Borran will never forgive you for," I say gravely.

The guards at my sides exchange a glance.

Dosh looks to Lila, who immediately begins her story as if we aren't in the middle of a war zone. "I re-member a time when there weren't border or patrol guards—or Graphs, for that matter."

Her guard sticks her hunching back with the tip of his gun. "What are you, old woman, like a hundred?"

"No, just old enough to remember a time before the Nuclear Period. A time when life was much more simple, and a lot less restricted." The guards usher us in the direction of a building that's marked with vertical lines across the side walls as Lila continues.

"Trussanda didn't even exist then. You know what it was called? Brazil," she says, without waiting for ac-knowledgment whether they care.

"Oh, be quiet." Her guard pushes her through the front doors. "You're 'home' now."

After our guards push the rest of us through the front doors of the guest facility, the door suddenly shuts hard in an echoing bang. Adan looks to me. Dosh jumps, and my Bengal growls as she paws the door in a scratch-scratch.

"How long do you think we'll be in here?" Jenji asks, her clawed fingers carving into the wall, searching for windows and exits. There is very little light, except for a dim ceiling bulb, and there is no furniture from what I can see. The space appears to be about a twenty-by-twenty-meter room, and the floors are concrete.

"Until Borran gets back," I reply.

"Do you think they're just trying to break us?" Dosh asks.

Jenji replies, "If they are, they'll be in for a sur-prise."

The Bengal paces the room with me, lean muscles rippling under its stripes. My breathing gets shallow, the room suffocating. Adan grips my shoulder from behind and having him near me is a relief. I don't have to worry about where he is or if Spider has killed him yet.

In a corner of the room Lila is quiet as if meditat-ing, her palms united at her center and her legs crossed. I wish I could be calm like her. Maybe with age? I tilt my head and see Dosh out of the corner of my eye against the far wall. He hits his fists and then kicks his legs like we've made the wrong move. And maybe he's right.

Borran could easily kill me, kill us all. But then, he wouldn't have me to experiment on—to play his game with—to find the perfect Graph for himself. He wouldn't know what leverage we have or why we've come all this way just to see him. Besides, I get the feeling my half-brother wants to see me, to meet the sister he never knew, the sister who survived the Ama-zon hunt and slipped through the fingers of all his sol-diers, including Spider.

It must have already been about thirty minutes as we all stare into the darkness wondering what will hap-pen next. Adan takes my hand to his side. "Everything will be okay."

"What if Borran doesn't go for it?" My voice trembles. The room looks darker now, as if the sun itself is even dimming.

"He will. After all, we know what he wants: you." Adan rests his calloused hands over my shoulders and draws me to him. "Borran can't let his family's dirty little secret get out. His kingdom would question his power, but he isn't ready to kill you just yet either."

Dosh grins with a laugh behind us. "Imagine eve-ryone knowing that his padre left behind bundles of joy all over the kingdom."

"Do you think there are others who can claim the kingdom?" I wonder.

"Without a doubt," Jenji replies a few meters from us, closer to the front door. "Truss didn't strike me as a man who cared much for matrimonial rules." Jenji scratches near the door, her sloth claws making a sure indent. "Besides, his wife died after giving birth to Borran. He had no one left."

"No wonder Truss went looking for your madre," Dosh says.

I sigh heavy, not sure I should mention this, but Adan can read me well.

"You have that look again," Adan says plainly.

"What look?"

"That look like you desperately want to say some-thing, but aren't sure."

My brows rise. "I have a look?"

"Yep." Adan grins.

"It's just that I overheard Spider say that I was not to be killed and that Borran wants me for some exper-iment. When I saw him in his bedroom—"

Adan's eyes widen to me. "You saw Borran at his house?"

"No, no, not me, per se." I am at a loss for words. "What I mean is, my..."

Dosh finishes, "What she means is, her harpy saw him, and she saw through her eagle."

"Then that was you," Adan says, realization dawn-ing, "on the canoe."

I smile. "Yeah, that was me inside there."

"But how?"

Shrugging, I respond, "I don't know. I just—"

Dosh interjects again, "It's called Reading. Some-thing apparently Graphs can do with the mammals or birds they're Graphed to."

"Wow." Adan's brows rise.

"Anyway, I heard Borran say he had special plans for me, to test my blood or something, to make sure his would be okay."

Adan locks eyes with me. "He wants to use your DNA to experiment on Graphs for himself."

"Sounds like it," Jenji agrees.

I shake my head. "So, we have to make sure he doesn't take me."

"We will," Adan says confidently, his eyes locked on mine, and his palm greeting my shoulder.

"So what do we say when we meet Borran?" Jen-ji's left brow arches.

I sigh, and then turn toward Jenji. "We let him know that if he doesn't return Mama, we'll destroy eve-rything he holds dear."

"And when he laughs in our faces and shoots us down to get to you?" Jenji half grins.

"We tell him that our team is on standby and ready to fulfill our plans if he doesn't hand over Mama by sunset."

Dosh places his hands on his hips. "We can't mention the bombs at the facility. If he knows, he'll just send troops to search them out and have them disen-gaged."

"Timing is everything," I clarify. "Informing the guards at the BAG facility will take time. Took us days to get here. Even by Jeep, he'll have a journey." I look back to Adan, who keeps eyes on me.

"There are no communication receivers at the BAG facility, as far as I know," Adan adds.

"If we tell Borran about the bombs, we have to make sure we have my madre soon afterward or we blow up the facility."

"Right," Adan agrees.

Lila tilts her head over her shoulder, away from the door. "I think someone's coming."

The guest room grows quiet as we all watch the door creak open. A few soldiers walk in and one grabs me by the arm. "Borran only wants to see D47."

"No!" I snap. "We all come, or I don't go."

The guard stares me up and down, his expression stoic and unreadable. "Fine. But if your friends are shot on the way in, don't blame me." He says this with pleasure, and I know we have to be on our best behav-ior. His hand gestures in a stop position, "Not that." He eyes the Bengal.

"I can't just leave her in here."

"Going to have to. Animals are prohibited near the mansion," the guard replies firm.

My mouth falls open and my palms clasp my Bengal's head. Borran won't hesitate to shoot any one of us if we don't follow his orders. "We'll be back for you," I promise her.

I follow behind the soldier, with the rest of my team, compliant. Jenji leads with Lila, her eyes careful-ly fixed on the soldiers, and Dosh keeps a watchful eye at our behind. About ten guards, including the two sol-dier Graphs from earlier, meet and escort us with guns against our backs, all the way up the hill and leading into a field of brightly colored flowers.

"Are we taking a detour?" I ask, half-jokingly.

The soldier in front answers, "Borran has a din-ner prepared for you at his home."

"And why would he want to dine with the likes of us?" Lila asks with uneven tone.

"He said he'd like to get to know better the girl who evaded his men."
BORRAN

AFTER A WALK THROUGH strangler figs and bromeliads, I'm reminded of my vision earlier of Borran's mansion. Diamond-shaped bougainvillea leaves engage us before we hit the immense white-marbled mansion. I spot orchids, and even the few acai palms that I'd seen through my harpy.

A guard opens the double doors made of a strong dark mahogany, the creak alerting me to the fact that we are now here, at Borran's home. It's a strange feel-ing, entering the home of my enemy—the king who or-dered my arrest, my captor. The home of my half-brother, the home of my padre—men whose oppressive acts have all but destroyed the world I live in.

I wonder if Soill, Springer, and Cai made it inside and where they are in the mansion, where Jade and my harpy are now. Then, a tall figure with wrinkly skin and dressed in black from head to toe waves his hand as if to tell us to follow him. The guards keep to our backs, to keep us in line, as we are escorted further inside the mansion.

When we pass through the foyer with marble stat-ues of Truss and Borran, and through the corridor with oil paintings of what I assume to be France since they look like French Guiana, we take a left and find ourselves in a room with a wooden table so large it just about takes up the entire space. The guards take up positions at each corner of the dining room with hands fixed behind their backs. The Graphed soldiers stand at the entryway, the Sniffer flexing thorny spikes jutting out of his arms. I guess he has Prik's Graph too. Four guards wait in the hall.

When Borran enters from the opposite end through a hand-carved door, all eyes turn to him. His square, thick frame filling the doorway reminds us all that he is certainly not weak. Dark hair and eyes tell us he takes after his dead mother. Leathery brown clothes cuff his body securely and leather boots run up and over his calves. A single serrated knife is tucked into a hip latch, and a few pearls, shells, and even bones are threaded onto a string that loops around his neck. His lashes are long, and the tip of his nose points at a downward angle. An onyx-jeweled earring pierces his right brow, and his eyes flick to me.

"I requested D47, and I see I've gotten her entou-rage." His voice is gravelly but sails across the room.

I want to growl. "My name is Jin, and I don't go anywhere without my friends."

Borran chuckles softly, his head tilting backward in an exaggerated motion as I notice a scar in the folds of his neck, "Sure. Jin it is." He waves to us. "Please, please. Have a seat."

I'm not sure whether he is being serious just yet.

"This is all strangely cordial for someone who wants to kill us," Adan says as he slides a chair out for himself, affecting a nonchalant tone while he drops into the chair, arms hitting the table heavily.

"You know how I love etiquette, Adan," Borran says quickly, his eyes just peeking briefly in Adan's di-rection before returning to me.

Keeping my eyes on Borran, I slowly take a seat at the opposite end of the table, with Adan to my right.

"Besides, who says I want you dead?" Borran continues, not really asking a question, and I've gath-ered already that he enjoys games.

Jenji stands hesitantly behind me. "I'm fine here." Her feet stomp and her fingers clutch the head of my chair.

"Come, come. Don't be shy," Borran calls to Dosh and Lila, who approach the table and sit opposite Adan.

"So, now that you've got us all here, what do you want from us?" Adan presses.

Borran waves his forefinger in the air to the black-garbed man standing in front of the soldier Graphs, and the man immediately whistles before two servants dressed in black-and-white uniforms push between the Graphs and lay bowls of potatoes, beef, chicken, gua-va, papayas, Brazil nuts, and croissants onto the table.

"We have a few surprise guests. Bring enough for us all," Borran commands, as if he's a gentleman, a dutiful host. Perhaps in his mind he wants to think of himself that way, as someone the French would ad-mire. Still, he is a duplicitous man, a man of many fac-es to many people. Yet to me, I will only ever see just one.

I feel distressed, and not because of my own nerves—but because of my Bengal. Left behind, in that concrete room I feel her unease, her uncertainty. And there is something else. She misses Jade.

"You think food is going to make everything okay? Make up for what you've done to me, to my vil-lage, my family?"

"And what have I done?" Borran argues as he waves a finger for the man garbed in black to serve him. Borran's plate fills with meats and forbidden fruits as he continues. "Sentenced a thief to prison. Used her in our training to help our kingdom become stronger. That is within my rights, and as a prisoner of Trussanda, you have none. You lost your citizenship when you stole that bread."

I've gotten used to being treated poorly as a pris-oner. Being beaten and neglected, and even scoffed at sometimes. But as a citizen of this 'great kingdom,' I was treated just as poorly over the years by Borran's guards and rules. So, his justification is more laughable than anything else.

But I stay silent.

"And this one," Borran scoffs as he glares at Adan. "My property! I didn't think that after a year, you'd go soft." His eyes beat down on Adan as Adan tries his best to ignore him. "Tell me, was it just too much for you to protect Trussanda? Or did you simply fall for this...D47 girl?"

Gritting his teeth, Adan tries to keep calm, but ex-plodes. "It must have been after you forced me to kill a friend!"

Borran grins, and somehow it is the most sinister grin I've ever seen. He turns his attention back to me.

"And as far as your village and madre go..." Bor-ran waves his dominant left hand, the one holding the fork of beef. "We had to find you, to draw you here. After all, you are our property now and you ran off. I am perfectly within my rights as king to do so."

"Rights and rules that you alone dictate," Adan in-terjects.

Borran smirks. "And you would let the common people decide the rules for themselves? Govern them-selves? We know what happened to that world, don't we?"

Adan's expression turns as if to say, 'Yeah, we do.' "That country crumbled to the ground."

He leaves out facts like the Nuclear Period that his padre initiated, or how Truss blatantly broke trea-ties with South America as he pillaged and rolled in with his tanks. His actions were the real reasons for the demise of democracy.

Lila and Dosh just watch, and they wait for Borran to try each dish before helping themselves. Probably because they want to make sure the food is not poi-soned. I can't see Jenji's expression, but I imagine she is all grimaced and scowling. She refuses to sit and par-take of the early dinner.

"And so now we have you to thank for this—" I look around the room, to the walls and table as my right hand gestures and my eye twitches "—glorious kingdom."

Borran nods with a grin as he shoves forkfuls of meat into his mouth and I have to wonder at this point where he gets his meat. There are no animals, or very few, in Macapa. He must keep them locked away somewhere, for his own personal use.

Adan eyes me with a half-smile, and then takes his first bite of guava. "So, how long do you plan on keep-ing us here before you release Ariana? That is, after all, why Jin came to you."

"I see," Borran says with a note of surprise, as if this is news to his ears. "Well, I thought we'd dine first, and get to know each other a bit. Besides, why would I want to release Ariana to strangers? To criminals, no less."

I look to Adan, and he turns his head to me be-fore eyeing Borran. My hand squeezes hard on my fork and the tines hit the wood of the table, leaving dents. "I want my madre."

Borran takes another bite of beef and speaks with his mouth full. "Isn't she much safer with me? The world can be quite dangerous out there." He chews, the sound echoing in my ears and making me crazy.

I stand in a jerk, my chair flinging out from be-hind me, my hands hitting the table hard. "We have no need for your safety. We have leverage of our own. I want to see my madre now, or we're not staying."

Not much of a threat. Borran could easily force us to stay, or just shoot us. He has no strategic reason to keep us alive, as far as I can see, and he has all the power as far as he knows. But I want to see just how far he'll continue this game.

His laughter fills the room, like smoke from a barbecue, choking me. His hands clap as he nods. "Yes, yes, yes, you are a feisty one." He waves his hand to the man in black and the man rushes out of the dining room to where the guards wait in the hall. I can hear the pad, pad of his shoes. I watch Borran and then Adan as Adan's mouth drops and his eyes grow big when he stands.

My head jerks, straining my neck, when I see her. "Madre!" My arms flow over her and we pull each other in with tight hugs. "Madre!"

"My baby girl," Ariana coos. Tears stream. "I was so worried that you might have..."

She doesn't have to finish the sentence for me to know she wondered if I'd been killed.

"Ah." Her head shakes in disbelief as her palms clasp my cheeks and she pulls my face to hers for a brief kiss on the cheeks.

We just stand there, hugging, unable to let go, un-til I hear the grating sound of Borran.

"There, there. Sit down now. You both wouldn't want to be rude to your host. After all, I went through all this trouble to provide your dinner."

My madre lets me go and pats on her tunic to flat-ten the folds, then glides to the seat beside Dosh where Borran is tapping with his thick forefinger. She knows as well as I do that this is a game and she needs to fol-low the rules in his house. So, she sits, and Borran smiles as if he's won and gestures for the servants be-hind the soldier Graphs to serve him chicken by point-ing his finger. The bowl is just a half meter away from him, within reaching distance, but he's helpless to serve himself. As the servant piles chicken onto his plate, he continues.

"So you see, Jin, your madre is perfectly well with-in my care."

My eyes dart up to mama, asking if she's okay. Her jaw slackens and she nods before averting her eyes from me and focusing on the food with her head low. She seems comfortable in that spot, as if she's sat there before, as if she's dined with Borran many times. I have to wonder if he's made my madre his surrogate. After all, his own madre did die, and I've seen his dead wife in bed with him through my harpy's eyes. Nothing would shock me about him.

"Please, Ariana, eat," Borran says encouragingly, and I can't help but watch the subtle spectacle between the two of them. The ebb and flow of a captor and his prisoner as he overtly gives and she, with unease and worry, has to graciously receive.

Is this my madre? I wonder as I hesitantly grab a guava to mimic mama. Would I have succumbed to the pressure if I had been his prisoner? Adan keeps his eyes on Borran, and I know what he's thinking. If he could just rip his shirt off and leap across the table and throw himself on Borran—all of this would be over here and now. But he could die. Two soldier Graphs watch closely behind us, just waiting for us to slip up, for Borran to give the signal for them to tear us to shreds, and they wouldn't have a tough time at it.

Jenji is practically human, as far as Graphing is concerned, and Lila...she is human with frail bones. Dosh is useful if Borran plays a disappearing act. I am great at defending myself, but offense is not my strong suit with these Graphs. Designed for hearing and see-ing where humans cannot, for breathing where humans cannot—those gifts won't come in handy now. No, Adan alone would be the best chance at taking down Borran here. The rest of our team, and mama, would become collateral damage. And Adan knows it, which is why he averts his predatory stare from Borran and glances at me cautiously.

Halfway through the early, unexpected, and quiet dinner, Adan clears his throat. "When we leave, we will be expecting to take Ariana with us." Adan half smiles to be cordial to Borran's game. "After all, we've come all this way."

"And leave me without company?" Borran asks lightly, as if this news is even more of a surprise than us coming for Ariana. "Nonsense." Then Borran looks up at me, straight in my eyes. "Unless you want to make a trade."

Adan grits his teeth, saliva dripping out of the cor-ner of his mouth. "What kind of trade?"

Borran's left hand flicks upward with the fork still in it. "Why, Ariana for Jin, that would do."

Then, Adan loses control. His fist pounds the ta-ble as he stands in a jolted movement. "No one is stay-ing behind. We didn't come all this way to relinquish Jin."

"But you have no other choice, do you?" I can see almost all of Borran's teeth now in his smile—white and clean, not at all like villager teeth.

I drop my silverware, the clink on the plate draw-ing attention. "But we do, Borran." I stare across the table to see my madre watching me like she's proud, like she's never seen me so brave. "See, we came with a plan."

"What kind of a plan?" Borran asks with patroniz-ing disinterest, like nothing I could say could change the cards we've been dealt.

My chest puffs. "Your precious BAG facility has been surrounded with a series of bombs, and if we don't make it outside of the Macapa walls to tell our friends that we're okay, they'll blow it up. Everything you've worked so hard on for years. Gone. Blown up in seconds."

Borran's eyes widen, his nostrils flare, and fists tighten around the silverware still in his hands on either side of his plate. I have his undivided attention.

"See, if you try to alert anyone or harm us in any-way before we are freed, your facility is gone."

"So, that's why you all went to the facility." Gone is his sense of haughtiness, like a cat playing with a mouse. "Not to kill the soldiers, or even to free the prisoners"—he dusts his hands off on the cloth beside the plate—"but to bomb it."

I just stare at him.

"A magician's trick of misdirection." He even looks a tad gratified as he smiles wide again, revealing his teeth. He rubs his dimpled chin.

I still don't say anything more. Those are our cards. The deal has been shuffled.

"And what is my reassurance that you will not just blow up the facility once you've exited Macapa?"

I break my silence. "You have none. Except to know that I am a person of my word, and once we are all safe, the activation pad will be buried, giving you time to dismantle the facility bombs." I pause. "But one day I will destroy the facility, if not today."

Borran looks at me for several long seconds—his blood, his half-sister—and then to Ariana, the woman whose blood I share without him. Then, he tilts his glare to the Graphed soldiers behind us. "Be sure Jin and her" —Borran takes one long last look at all of us before he stands, the chair creaking against the floor, and he steps to the opposite door to exit— "companions make it out of Macapa."

My heart is beating fast, and I'm relieved, sur-prised, suspicious all at once. I turn to see the Graphed soldiers' expressions as I stand next to Jenji. They are so unsatisfied. Slowly, each of us stands and pushes in our chairs in creaks after Borran disappears behind the dining room exit door. First Jenji, Adan and Lila, then Dosh and lastly Mama. The female soldier waves her hand to gesture for us to follow. The guards stay close behind us with raised guns still pointing as the Graphed soldiers lead.

I imagine they couldn't be more shocked.
LEVERAGE

I DIDN'T KNOW IF our plan would work, if Borran could give up my madre and me so easily. But I guess his hands are tied. He loves one thing more than his kingdom: his Graphs. We pass the orchids and the diamond-shaped bougainvillea leaves, and then through the strangler figs and bromeliads. I never thought I'd be so excited to see a wall. But the Macapa wall in the distance has become my symbol of free-dom. Freedom from Borran's clutches, from his mor-bid Graphing. I don't want to end up an experiment gone awry like Win did.

The soldiers and guards escort us to the guest house to pick up my Bengal and then over the rest of the grounds and to the wall. My neck cranes up and I see one of the guards who took me from my cell where it all started. My eagle vision allows me to see his every micro-expression of disdain, shock, and confusion. Every wrinkle and freckle and shadow on his face. I wonder what his story is. How he ended up here. Fami-ly killed and nowhere else to turn, like Spider? Volun-teer? Graph enthusiast? Spy? The stories vary so much these days. No one really knows anyone for sure, and in this world, maybe it is better that way. Friends die so readily, so for many it's easier to draw lines and boxes of simple categories. Villagers versus Borran's proper-ty. Illegal Graphs versus Graph soldiers. The details make things too complicated, especially when you have to take someone's life.

The wall cranks open and we all walk out, without a fight and without fear. Lila and Dosh stay close to each other, as do Adan and I, with my Bengal behind me. Jenji and Madre walk on either side. The air even feels different out here, fresher somehow.

The male Graph who is part porcupine and part bush dog yells at us, "We'll be seeing you all soon." His thick molasses of a voice makes me want to cringe. His female partner just smirks, reminding me of Spider and Prik on a lower caliber. Obviously their dangerous Graphs have been duplicated.

When we make it about ten meters away from the wall, I grab my madre and pull her to me. "We got you out of there."

She's silent at first, unsure and scared, and I won-der what Borran did to her in there. Her soft eyes peek up at me. "You did," she says quickly, almost unbeliev-ing, and throws her arms around me for another hug—and memories of Mama fill my mind.

But just as we embrace, my back to the forest and eyes at the wall, I see Borran walk out with twenty sol-diers and guards behind him, some of them colored with a flushed Graph. A carriage sits to his side, as if he's just gotten out of it. But with all of that in front of me—all of that danger—that is not what draws my atten-tion.

Thrown over Borran's shoulders and hanging to his shins is a long coat of fur, spotted red with the dis-tinct smell of Jade, and fitted over Borran's scalp is part of Jade's head and long teeth. I can't move. I'm paralyzed. My mind races over scenarios of Jade miss-ing and not returning last night to him now dead and hanging off the body of this monster, and I want to vomit, scream, stab Borran, and rip him to shreds all at once.

Borran speaks, his voice like a rattlesnake. "Fun-ny how some animals are just drawn to Macapa, to the wall. It was odd when my guards saw this one sniffing around and alerted me."

Every fiber in my being twists, and my bones shake uncontrollably.

"Just two shots to his side. That's all it took from up there." Borran's head stretches back as his eyes look to the platform high above the wall.

I feel Adan's hand over my shoulder, the grip tight. "Take a breath."

I hear him, but at the same time it's like I don't hear him. I'm blinking back tears as his words flow through my ears, not really registering. All I see is Jade lifeless on Borran. I've never wanted to kill a man, even in this desperate world. I never wanted to. I had to. But Borran isn't human—he's a monster. A monster I would do anything to kill. I will kill him. I will not—cannot stop—until he is dead.

I am about to take a step toward him, completely having lost my mind, but Mama pulls my arm and yanks me back to her. "Another time. Another battle."

Everything in me spins crazily and I need to run to Juan and yell at Sum through the receiver to blow the bombs, that Borran tricked us, to forget our deal and make Borran pay right now. But we wouldn't get far. Borran would surely kill us all before we even made it past our first border. We have to keep our end of the bargain to make it safely away from him.

Suddenly, Borran yells to his guards, "Bring 'em."

At his loud command, we all turn and look at Borran to suddenly see Soill, Springer, and Cai locked in chains that bind their ankles and wrists, the lot of them being dragged by a porcupine Graph.

"This isn't the deal!" I yell, my voice cracking.

Borran laughs.

"If you don't want your facility blown, then release them!" I feel myself getting desperate like a skunk let-ting off his stink.

Boron's voice is hard. "This was precisely the deal. Your madre for my facility. We never negotiated for these thieves caught breaking into my property." The sun sets behind the forest, the blaring sunrays breaking over us all like wild ocean waves, blocking my sight. "They will remain in my custody to ensure you keep your end of the bargain."

Holding my hand to my forehead to keep light from blinding me, I realize now why Borran let us go so easily without knowing for sure that we wouldn't just blow up the facility after we acquired what we wanted. We didn't have as much leverage as we thought. He knows we'll come back for our friends, and when we do, he'll surely be waiting for me.

I have no more moves, and as the sun descends—letting me see my friends' faces one last time before we leave them behind—I'm torn. I've gained my madre just to lose three Graphs who have become close to me, who've helped me, without whom I would not have been able to get this far.

Staring at them, at their forlorn expressions, Springer rises to the leadership role he always held back at his home village. "Go! Get out of here!" Springer shouts. "We'll be okay. We'll find a way!" The guard near him hits his side with the butt of a gun, and Springer staggers in pain and grabs his stomach. "We'll be fine!"

I can't stand this, looking at this situation in which I have no control, no power. Adan grabs my hand and tugs me in the direction of the forest, and I notice that Lila and Dosh have already crossed several more me-ters of ground. Jenji stares at Springer before I push her forward, and with my madre at my side, we finally flee into the forest.

When we find Juan, he is vigilant—head turning left and right—and hiding high on a tree branch with the receiver still clutched in his tiny hand. It sits next to his mouth, in case he has to yell instructions to Sum quick-ly. Ostir leans against the trunk.

"What happened?" He drops from the tree in a thud and looks straight at me, and then sees my madre standing behind me.

"Juan?" Mama's mouth falls ajar and she races up to him.

"Ariana." He hugs her and immediately I see they must have gotten to know each other as more than just photographer and subject.

"Long time," Juan says.

"Too long. And you're a part of this rescue mis-sion?" Her wiry brows push inward.

"Always getting myself into trouble." Juan seems cooler now, like he's remembering someone he used to be—before his wife died, before he was banned from the BAG facility.

Adan clears his throat. "We have to keep mov-ing."

"Right, right." Juan nods vigorously as he wraps his arm around my madre's. They stroll behind me and Adan as our team traverses over grassy terrain.

Jenji leads and briefly turns her head to address us, her voice catching, and I know she's trying hard to forget Springer for now—until we are all safe. Then, she'll break. Then, she'll cry. Then, she'll remember she loves him. "We need to find two canoes, and circle back around to the Amazon River. It'll take us to the Negro and Vaupes, leading straight into Colombia, where we can make a new home for ourselves."

Dosh agrees, rubbing his bald head before patting his loyal dogs. "Right, no way any of us are going back where we came from. Sniffers have our scent, and Spi-der already found us there."

"Your home is being watched," Lila mentions to Mama.

"And my home is gone too," Adan confirms. Ostir just keeps her eyes on Adan, like the words that her home is gone, the reminder that her brother is gone, is too much all at once. Then, Adan goes to comfort her. He crosses past Dosh and Lila and walks with her as we all push forward through the thick for-est. I had enough of civilization anyway. Enough to take for today, at least. I miss the forest, even more so now that I have Bengal blood ripping through my veins. The cover, places to hide. The fragrant smells and buzzing sounds. At least the Bengal is home.

The eight of us grow more invisible as darkness spreads like butter over us and the forest, until eventu-ally we hit the Amazon River with the Bengal and bush dogs, far enough away from Macapa to not be noticed. We won't have to worry about border control until we hit Colombia, thankfully.

But canoes. We need canoes.

"There's nothing here," Dosh laments, his eyes frantically searching under bush and along the riv-erbed.

Ostir worries; lines frame her forehead and creases fold into the corners of her mouth. "What are we going to do?"

Jenji scratches her head. "Juan, tell Sum to meet us where Manaus used to be. It's south of the BAG facility and we're both about the same distance from it."

As Juan uses the coveted receiver, Jenji points to several loose trunks, vines, and branches. "We build a raft."

I look at Lila as her energy goes from determined to sluggish. "A raft?" She is not amused.

"It's the only way," Jenji argues.

"She's right," Dosh says. "We need to gain mo-mentum. Put fast distance between us and Macapa. A raft won't take long."

I don't hesitate. I've heard enough. We have to get going. So, I start ripping down branches and twigs and kicking broken logs toward a pile near the river, and Adan quickly joins me. Ostir does what she can. I guess pushing aside her love for someone—an absent member of our team—is harder for her than it is for Jenji. Maybe that is what makes Jenji so strong, so trusted as our leader.

With all of us pitching in, even my Bengal taking twigs in her mouth, the raft building doesn't take too long. Our leverage lightens our collective worry no small amount. Having the opportunity to blow up the facility with one command keeps Borran honest on his end of the deal. He won't be chasing us for a kill, but that doesn't mean he won't have eyes on us. We can never be too careful, and who knows if he'll come up with an alternate plan, one not to our liking.

After I've gathered enough wood, I begin to tie the pieces together with vines alongside Lila and my ma-dre. The rest focus on bringing more wood—thick pieces of kapok tree, wormwood, juniper, and even a few strangler figs. The raft is looking decent. Nothing I'd trust with my life, and it will surely fall apart some-where along the wet journey, but it will do for now. We just have to make it to Sum. We'll pick him up, and then repair any damage to the raft before heading for Columbia.

Manaus used to be a booming city, filled with in-teresting architecture, colorful buildings, and lots of life. At least that is what my padre used to tell me. That was before the Nuclear Period. Since then, the city has become a dumping ground for unwanted waste, like plastics and chemicals. I guess that's why I headed south when I was released for hunt at the BAG facility. In the back of my mind, I figured I could make it to Manaus and hide. No one would search for me there, in all that pollution. I didn't realize then that there would be an electrical fence encasing me, prohibiting me from any movement toward the Amazon River, toward Manaus. Thankfully, we won't have a fence to encounter since we are far south from the hunting grounds of the BAG facility.

When the raft is finally finished and Adan and Dosh have tested it for leakage and strength, we all get on and begin to float in the dark. My Bengal keeps to the shore with Dosh's bush dogs, racing alongside it to keep up with us. The raft is far from perfect. Water seeps between cracks and between my toes, even under my calves. The night winds course over us, leaving me in chills, and I'm feeling tired.

I find a sweet spot between Adan's chest and arm. He's still fully garbed, so his skin doesn't hurt me. I've discovered that his clothes are made of a thick materi-al, something I haven't seen before on common folk—rubbery, and yet soft like cotton. I'm not sure what it's made of, but he must have had his clothes specially made at the facility for his bullet ant condition before he went under contract for Borran. The shirt even has slits on the undersides of his arms for bat wing expan-sion.

Dosh seems to protect Lila, like a son to a mama. His legs are spread out on either side of her as they both sit toward the back of the raft. My madre keeps to my side, her head resting on my shoulder in the middle of the raft. Juan and Ostir sit at opposite sides of the raft just in front of me and Adan, while Jenji sits at the front with her legs crossed, keeping first watch. It's go-ing to be a long night, and we will all have to take turns.

Sometime in the middle of the evening, I'm shak-en by Juan, who nudges me up. "Your turn to watch." I'm guessing it's about one in the morning, because we got into the raft about seven, an hour after the sun went down. We each have a two-hour duty to watch and Jen-ji, Ostir, and Juan have had their turns. I'm next in line, followed by Adan and lastly Dosh. At seven in the morning, we all have to be up. Jenji's orders. My ma-dre and Lila get to sleep all through the night. Then, it will take one more full day before we hit Manaus, ar-riving when the sun rises the next day.

I hear my harpy caw above me. I know she's mine because I can feel her. I almost want to join her up there to see what she sees, but I have to stay focused. It's my turn to keep us safe, and I won't let my team down. We've been through too much together, lost too much together.

I don't mind the water on my legs now. I've gotten used to the dampness, and at least we are hours from Macapa by now. I hear howler monkeys in the trees and see glowing eyes, too. I even sense a few Radguars lurking in the bushes. They might smell me, my Ben-gal. They've adapted to mating with Bengals since the obliteration of so many of their kind. Offspring don't survive well, if at all. But at least there is a camarade-rie. On the other hand, they eat sloths, and bush dogs. So, I don't trust them to get too close to us until we've grown accustomed to each other like Jade and I did.

My thoughts turn to Jade, and how savagely she was murdered, at how she hangs like a coat over the man I despise with every ounce of my being. I will have my revenge. I know deep inside me that Borran's death will have to happen, even if it is the last thing I ever do. Memories of Jade follow me, his wet, rough tongue licking, his head rubbing against my legs—all memories flooding into my mind like a bullet to my heart, and tears stream over hot cheeks as a round lump forms in my throat.

"I will avenge your death, Jade. I will avenge your death."
FREEDOM

IT IS DARK, NOT THE kind of dark that lets moonlight in, but the kind that is like a thick silk blan-ket that wraps around you. Frogs croak, their sounds engulfing me, and I'm not sure if that is normal for the river or if a group has been following me. Glowing eyes pop out of the river water and I already recognize them. A black caiman. It's been keeping to the shore-line, swimming with us for several minutes. Probably waiting for one of us to topple over and make a quick dinner. Too bad Cai isn't with us to confuse him with similar scents.

Bugs flicker past me, sometimes stinging my arm, the flap of their tiny, negligible wings like a reverbera-tion in my Bengal ears. If I use my Bengal sight, I can see reeds among the trees along each shoreline, and even see a few otters playing on the right side a few minutes later. A cool breeze rushes over me and I wish I'd been Graphed with bear fur. The river is full of dangers, but I would rather be here, keeping our scent off the ground from Sniffers, from Spider.

I have a lot of time to relax and think about every-thing I've been through recently. So much has changed. Too much. But at least I have my madre back, and my brother is safely tucked away at a friend's home. Best to leave him there for now, until things settle with me. I'd hate to be the cause of his death. I have so much blood on my hands already. Taking a life is never easy—even if one deserves it. I've heard that when you dance with the devil, you don't change the devil, but the devil changes you. I don't want to become a monster like the men I've killed, like Borran. I guess I understand Adan better now, too.

He had no choice in becoming a Graph, and if he wanted to live, he had to work for Borran—but at what cost? I guess he suppressed his animal Connection so he could forget what it's like to care about something other than himself. He had to then. To do what he did, had to do. Still, I wonder why he decided to finally fight back, to save me.

When three o'clock rolls around, I awaken Adan, and though I'm supposed to sleep, I can't help but stay awake with him. It's so quiet and serene. He keeps his left hand over the left edge of the raft, and keeps his right hand at the center, his neck tall and head high, eyes alert. And I have to know.

I look at him, and Adan already knows me too well.

"What? You have that look again. Like you want to ask me something."

"I just...I wanted to know why you saved me in the Amazon? I mean, you could have left me to die like all the other prisoners, continued to work for Borran. Never have become a wanted Graph."

"Oh..." Adan looks to me, his eyes off his post for a minute. "The day before I was sent to hunt you with Spider, I was forced to kill a few villagers in Caracas. They were supposedly part of a resistance movement called Relic."

"Relic?" I've heard that name mentioned before once or twice.

"A covert organization designed to eradicate the world of Graphs. So, they are a danger to Borran."

"So, Borran ordered you to kill them."

Adan looks down, his eyes watery. "But I knew them. One of them was an old family friend." He scoffs. "They weren't part of some resistance."

The lump in my throat returns.

"I had no choice. Graph soldiers came with me, and if I didn't do it, they would have, and then killed me."

"I'm so sorry."

"I gave them a quick death." He shakes his head. "But that night, I was ordered to return to the Amazon for a special mission. A special hunt."

"To hunt me," I say, not even making it a ques-tion. We both know the answer.

He nods. "I'd never been involved in a hunt be-fore, to kill another prisoner. I just...I just couldn't. Not after what happened the day before, not after realizing that you could just as easily have been me."

"I see."

Adan perks up, his smile growing. "Plus, you were too cute to die young." I can tell he's trying to divert attention from his cracking emotions.

"Well, most certainly." I wink and then stretch my arms up in a long yawn. "I'm going to catch some sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

"Later."

I'm awoken by screams. Mama's and Lila's, to be precise. Jolted from sleep, I glance back toward them and see a green Crunchanda slithering over the side of the raft, crunching its jaws as it wraps tightly around Lila's right leg.

"Get it off of me! Get it off of me!"

Dosh is up front; it's obviously still his turn to watch out for us. Maybe it's sometime around six in the morning, because the sun is just breaking behind the trees. Blood-orange washes over us as Lila screams again.

"Ahh!"

My madre tries to help tug the broad snake off Lila, but the vertebrate is too strong with well-defined muscles. I hate snakes and watching this Crunchanda squeeze Lila's leg shoots razor-esque chills down my spine. Immediately, Jenji darts to Lila's aid and thrusts her sloth claws into the Crunchanda's skin, but the snake isn't deterred from its goal of strangling my el-der friend and taking a bite, even as blood rushes off the Crunchanda's sides. Seconds later, Ostir flushes her Graph and the potent snakes she keeps hidden in-side of her pop and lash out into a split tongue, spitting venom. The hissing startles the Crunchanda, and the venom that slaps the snake's face must sting because the Crunchanda wriggles and finally slithers off the raft.

Ostir winks. "Don't worry, I'm not killing it. Can't."

Adan leans over me and examines Lila's leg with his eyes. "Are you okay?"

"I hardly know anymore. Seems every day some-thing new falls apart." Lila's face wrinkles, and then she gazes at her sore leg. "I can lift it, but it hurts."

Adan continues, "Probably best to rest your leg now anyhow, so it's a good thing we can't move. When we reach Manaus, we can see if there are any major problems to address."

"Agh!" Lila leans back, her arms behind her, her head upward to the sky. "I guess I'll just try to enjoy the rest of the ride."

We must be somewhere south of Guyana by now. Borran's guards have surely reached the BAG facility traveling by jeep and searched every inch now that Borran knows bombs are there. Our bombs are null and void. Our leverage is gone. But at least we are far away from Macapa.

When we pass under Brazil nut trees and guava trees, Jenji points at them. "Let's have breakfast and then carry on."

There are no disagreements, and soon we've pulled the raft to the shore and disembarked for our breakfast snacks. I'm glad for it, because my Bengal is not far from us, meandering nonchalantly a few meters behind where we are, and her eyes are firmly focused on me.

"Bengal!" I yell, racing to her and then dropping to my knees, hugging her enough for both her and Jade. She licks my face, and I can't help but think of how I'll never see Jade again.

I shake my head and try to forget that thought as I enjoy my Bengal's company, and then climb the trunk of a Brazil nut tree for a handful of nuts. Adan's al-ready there on a low branch plucking away. Jenji sits below a guava tree, the juices of the fruits running down the sides of her mouth with Ostir, as Juan and Dosh walk further up the shoreline to grab some of the pacay and camu camu hanging low.

Mama helps Lila off the raft, and then Lila uses my madre's left shoulder to help keep her up as she lets her right leg recover. They wobble over to the Bra-zil nut tree and Adan hands them each a handful of nuts.

"Thanks," my madre says, and then starts chew-ing. I eat with my madre for the first time since Bor-ran's dinner, and curiosities circle my mind. When each of us has had enough to eat, we drink from the rushing water of the river and then Adan tightens a few of the raft's vines and Dosh places a few more branch-es over holes before pushing the raft off into the river. We all board it and keep ourselves close to the center for balance.

Mornings on the river are filled with a hazy fog, and sunrays sprinkle throughout the sky like a speckled painting. Reflections of the raft and sometimes of the sun are cast in the water, and I lean back, letting my gaze fall over my madre.

My right hand meets her back and her head tilts in my direction. "How did Borran treat you...I mean, in there? In his mansion?"

Mama closes her eyes, and a deep breath inflates in her chest before she exhales. "The first day was scary. I didn't know if I was going to live or die. Sol-diers dragged me away from my village and I was in a Jeep, ankles and wrists bound." She gazes over the raft to the water reflections. "When we finally arrived in Macapa, I was tossed into a dark cell. It was cold and I shivered all night. I thought Borran would kill me then. I didn't understand what I'd done, why I was being held."

Her head turns to me, her eyes catching Adan and me. "Then, Borran greeted me and welcomed me to his dining table. He wanted companionship, I guess. Someone to talk to? Eat with? No one else sat with us, which made me wonder where his wife Alexandria was."

I recollect the image of Alexandria's dead body in his bed and cringe. "She's dead."

"Dead?" Mama asks sharply, and the rest of the team looks at me.

"I saw it when I was Reading my harpy."

"Saw what?" Mama presses, her left hand hitting mine.

"Saw Alexandria dead in Borran's bed. She's just a skeleton now. Dead for some time."

My madre just stares at me before asking in a low voice, "You mean, he sleeps with her?" I nod and see my madre flinch before she continues, "That explains a lot." She scratches her curly hair. "Borran always looked so lonely. When he saw me, his countenance shifted, like he was happy to see me. Still, he gave me the creeps."

"How did you find out why he'd taken you?"

"One night I asked him why I was there."

"And he told you?"

My madre nods. "He said matter-of-factly, 'Your daughter broke out of prison and my soldiers are at-tempting to bring her in. You are her madre, responsi-ble for her...disobedience.'"

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything." My madre smiles. "I fig-ured then that Borran wanted me to draw you to him. I was relieved to hear it had nothing to do with—" she drops to a whisper "—your padre."

"They know," I reply.

My madre looks over the crew. "They know?"

"Yes, that my padre is really Truss. That Borran is my half-brother."

A gulp slides down my madre's throat. "Well, there it is, then. When Borran didn't mention anything of the sort, I thought maybe he didn't know. That all of this was because he wanted his prisoner returned."

Adan darts his eyes with a dubious expression, crinkles outlining his brows at her. "All for a prisoner? You believed that?"

"I think I was in denial. I was still in shock of it all."

"He knows," Adan says confidently. "That's why I was sent to hunt and kill her."

Mama sits up, her muscles tensing, even in her forehead. "You mean you are trying to kill my daugh-ter?!"

"Was," Adan clarifies.

"He's okay, Madre," I interject. "He saved me."

"From what?" My madre looks at me, deep crev-ices in her neck and face.

I glance at Adan, unsure of what I should tell her. "I don't want to worry you."

Mama nudges my side. "Worry me? Geez, Jin, I'm your madre. Worrying about you is my one job in this world."

I crack a smile before I start to explain, my voice low. "Borran's prisoner experiments are real. He's experimenting on prisoners to perfect his Graphs, and then tossing them into the Amazon to be hunted by his soldiers so that they can train before being sent off on missions."

"Oh, my God," my madre gasps.

The raft grows quiet as Mama digests the facts.

"That's why I didn't want to say anything."

"So, he tried to kill you." My madre's voice turns high-pitched.

"Well, his soldiers did, yeah." "They've been hunting me ever since I escaped with Adan."

"And rescuing me brought you straight back to Borran," Mama concludes.

I let my palm sit on her shoulder. "We're here now. Everything's going to be fine."

Truth is, I don't know how anything will ever be fine. My brother could be another target if Borran ever learns where he's being kept. Soill, Cai, and Springer are still Borran's hostages and will likely become Graph experiments if we don't rescue them soon. Spi-der is still on the hunt for Adan and me, and none of us have any sure home to return to, which means we won't know anyone wherever we end up. And in this world, knowing people is how you survive.

All I know for sure is that my madre is alive and I'm surrounded by the best group of people I've ever known. People that would risk their life for me, people I'd risk my life for. And right now, that has to mean everything.

Hours seem to fly by on the raft, the quietness of it all. It's impossible for Borran to guard every spot in the kingdom, and so many areas are still vacant of guards. We haven't seen other people since yesterday night. Yet, Amazonian creatures are never far, always lurking somewhere within the forest, and occasionally I hear toucans and see spider monkeys in the trees, and more river otters.

After a couple more stops for relieving ourselves and snacking on fruits or nuts, the sun is about to set and we're getting closer to Manaus—I can tell because of the smell, and because Jenji yells out, "We're three hours ahead of schedule."

I lay my head on Adan's shoulder as we both en-joy the brilliant yellows and oranges fading into night. My madre squeezes my right hand on the other side, as she uses her other hand to comfort Lila.

When the sun finally falls, so does our raft. A few vines unravel and branches drift off into the river. Wa-ter seeps so much over us that we can barely stay on anymore, and then I feel them—slimy fish against my shins. Adan grabs my madre and I grab Lila as we swim to shore. Juan and Jenji, Dosh and Ostir, all keep close as they swim behind us.

"Piranha!" Lila yells as she straightens out, soak-ing, on the shoreline. Her wrinkly, crooked forefinger is pointing to the center of the river. My Bengal vision catches glimpses of the fish. Fast and dangerous, I pull my madre out as Adan pushes her up from under-neath.

"Come on, Adan. Get up here!" I yell, but he ig-nores me and instead throws his shirt on the shoreline and dives back in to help.

Dosh screams, "My leg!"

Adan reaches for Ostir's with his gloved hand. He pulls her with him as piranhas bite and shred his arms, stinging themselves with his bullet ant chest. By the time they reach the shoreline, Adan's arm is bleeding and Ostir is in shock, but a few piranhas float limply. I pull Ostir up using both arms and then let her fall stomach first to the ground beside Mama and Lila, clumps of mud clinging to her blonde hair. Jenji is des-perately climbing out of the water with Juan a few me-ters downstream from me, but Dosh is still screaming, and all I see is a pool of blood.
HOME

"DOSH!" I SCREAM when his pack of bush dogs leap into the river, paddling to where he is strug-gling. Piranhas savagely shear skin off the dogs with each interlocked bite, but his dogs are loyal and don't give up. Instead, they stay, despite the danger to their own lives, and make sure Dosh has securely wrapped his arms around at least one of their necks before the pack retreats back to land, opposite where the rest of us wound up.

One of the dogs is bitten so badly he can't move, and the river is a mix of Dosh's blood and dog blood, until the wounded dog is swallowed underneath the wa-ter. I can't look, turning away as Ostir screams in Adan's comforting arms. Mama grips my shoulders and we all watch in horror.

Dosh limps onto shore, both his legs bleeding pro-fusely and two of his dogs bleeding alongside of him. "Ah, shit!" Dosh exclaims. "Now the Sniffers will defi-nitely know I was here."

"Damnit," Adan replies. "What are we going to do?" His hand waves over the river. "You're there, and we're here. How are you going to keep up with us?"

As if my Bengal heard Adan's cry—or maybe mine—she growls gently, calling to Dosh. He looks her up and down suspiciously before I respond to ease his concern.

"I think she wants you to ride her," I reply.

Dosh looks at her for a few moments before he climbs over her back, keeping his bloody legs close to her sides. "Okay. I think I'm stable."

I nod, calling to her with my mind. I'm getting used to this.

My Bengal hears me and responds with a shake of her furry head before she trots alongside the shoreline with Dosh on her back, as we track up the opposite side on foot, drenched in river water. The smell is a tad putrid, so close to Manaus. We meet up with Juan and Jenji, and stay close to each other. Jenji's hair cakes to her face, sopping.

"That was close," Jenji grunts.

Juan nods sadly. "Too close."

"Best if we just finish up the next hour or two on foot. Meet up with Sum and then figure things out from there."

Juan nods, and the rest of us don't disagree.

"Let me look at your arm." I hand Adan his shirt when I spy the piranha bites. "Damn, that gash is big."

"It's nothing. I've had far worse."

"We'll have to patch you up soon."

"At Manaus."

I half smile, feeling everything more now. Adan could have been the one caught instead of Dosh. He could have died. I can't imagine doing all of this with-out him.

Adan taps my shoulder with his stump, Ostir clinging to his good hand. "You okay?"

"I can't get the image of all that blood out of my mind."

"But we're okay. Dosh is okay. Everything will be fine. Sum is waiting for us. Let's focus on that."

I nod my head.

Ostir scratches her throat. Her voice is low. "Re-minds me of when Klen fell from the hollow tree and split his arm open."

Adan looks to Ostir, a sympathetic expression fill-ing his face. "Yeah, that was bad."

By the time we reach Manaus, the bugs are buzz-ing and slapping against my skin, and frogs are croak-ing even louder. I've seen a few following me along our journey, but try to ignore them. What good are they to me? I can't Read them like I can with my Bengal or harpy. Heck, according to Adan's and Juan's infor-mation, I could probably kill one and not even feel the noise effects of my Graph.

Each of us looks for Sum through what can only be described as the largest landfill of anyone's imagina-tion. The river is untouched, because Borran ordered the river be clean so water coming into Macapa is clean, but the ground about twenty meters from shore is covered with junk and garbage—red bags that read 'Contaminants', and yellow jugs filled with fluids that smell funky like spoiled milk. We call to Sum in whis-pers and keep our eyes alert. My eyes are especially useful now.

"Sum?" I call out for him. "Sum?" After about ten minutes, I finally spot him high in a tree just above a pile of garbage bags. "Sum?!" I race to the tree and wave my hand to get his attention.

His eyes are droopy, and then he rubs at them and sees me. 'Jin?!" He immediately slides down the trunk of the tree, his hand and legs wrapped tightly around it in his careful descent, and then throws his arms around me. "Jin, you're a sight for sore eyes."

"Has it been hard?" I ask.

"Yeah, you can't begin to imagine. Waiting is dreadful. Waiting to hear from you guys while I hide in the forests of the BAG facility. Waiting as I traverse across the Amazon into Manaus, and waiting here for someone to finally arrive."

"Sorry you've been on your own so long."

"Yeah," Sum says glumly, and for the first time I see a weakness, something that makes him vulnerable.

I call to everyone else, "Sum's over here!"

I hear the pat of feet running toward us, when Sum asks, "Did you find your madre?"

That single thought makes me finally smile. "Yes, I did."

"Good." Sum smiles contentedly.

When the rest of the team arrives, Sum scratches his head. "Where are Cai, Springer, Soill, and Dosh?"

Adan answers, not wanting Jenji to have to re-spond and choke up. She'll deal with Springer's loss in her own time. "Borran has them, except for Dosh."

"Shit."

"Yep."

Sum looks to Adan. "So, where's Dosh?"

Jenji replies, "He's on the other side of the river. Got bitten up pretty badly and separated from us."

"Crap."

Adan waves to us. "This is a good time to get him back. We should be far enough away from the pira-nhas."

Juan and Sum join Adan as they walk to the shore-line, the river so dark and the water so uncertain at night. "Hey, Dosh?! You there?!"

Crickets chirp in the backdrop and stars speckle the sky above, but hardly share their light through all the pollution. After about five minutes of calling for Dosh, he finally responds.

"Adan?!"

"We're coming for you now. You ready?"

"Sure."

The three men wade through the river, their heads still above water. When they get to the other side, Adan and Juan grab either side of Dosh and Sum kicks his feet in the river in front to scare off any weaker preda-tors like river snakes or poisonous frogs.

When they make it to our side safely, I hear Jenji sigh.

"Good to have you back, Dosh." Jenji hugs him, patting his back. "Good to have you back."

Looking over all of us, all of our wounds, I sug-gest, "Maybe we should patch up some of our gashes." I look to Adan and Dosh. "They need help." Then I look to Lila, concerned about her leg.

"I'm fine, dear, really. Your madre has been mas-saging my leg almost the whole way since the incident and I'm feeling much better now."

Jenji says loudly, "I agree. Dosh, Adan, go wash off." Then she points to palm leaves above her. "We can use some of these likes bandages to help bind the wounds. We can't have you two spilling blood every-where, leaving a sure scent to follow."

Juan interjects, "Wait. We can search for me-laleuca."

"Mela what?" Sum questions.

"Paperbarks, honey-myrtles, tea-trees."

"Oh." The reply resonates from a few of us, in-cluding Sum.

Juan continues, "We need to find the short shrubs. The plant can be peeled into sheets. We put the sheets into a jug with water and boil it. Adan and Dosh can let the fumes wash over their wounds. It's basically tea tree oil. A natural antiseptic. The oil kills bacteria, viruses, and fungi."

Jenji nods, her tight expression commanding. "Adan and Dosh, wash." She looks to Juan. "Juan, Ari-ana, Lila, and Ostir—find the plants." Jenji's eyes catch me. "You and I are going to find a jug to put the plants into, and a few rocks and twigs to make a fire."

Jenji wastes no time and has a plan in seconds. Though she has few Graph gifts, I'd say this is definite-ly one of her super abilities.

After about thirty minutes, everyone returns to the edge of the river where we left Adan and Dosh. A few of the tea-tree plants are in a pile, and Mama huffs, "We had to go way out there to get away from all the contaminants to find a few."

I drop a shell of a coconut Jenji and I found about ten minutes out, and then Jenji drops the rocks and twigs we'll use to make a fire. "We got everything?" Jenji asks.

"I think so," I reply.

Juan pulls the plants into sheets while Adan helps make the fire. Dosh is still in pain, flinching and gri-macing every few minutes. But once the plant starts to boil in river water, the smell is like astringent eucalyp-tus, the kind the Prestige use, and invites us all to it.

Adan and Dosh bask in the fragrance and healing properties of the oils as the rest of us tear down palm leaves. Jenji and I strip the leaves into vertical sections and then wrap a section around a wound before tying the ends. The process is repeated until all of Dosh's and Adan's gashes are treated.

"Not perfect, but at least you'll be better off," Jenji suggests.

Juan adds, "And you'll be less likely to develop in-fection."

"So, are we heading out? I don't want to hang here in the capital of all that's polluted and unholy."

Jenji points west. "We were heading toward Co-lombia. To make a new home there, where no one knows us. Once settled, we'll devise a plan to rescue our friends. But..."

"But?" Sum asks.

"But our raft fell apart and left us fending for our-selves in a river of piranhas."

"Ah," Sum says shortly. "Well, we'd better make a new one. The longer we stay here, the more likely we're going to come out with three arms and two heads."

I half grin.

"All right," Adan agrees. "Let's get building."

Trees are harder to find in Manaus than in the uncontaminated parts of the Amazon where so many fruits and nuts are abundant. Too bad the Amazon is considered part of Trussanda, and everything in it therefore the property of Truss's son, Borran. There is enough food in the forests to feed many of the villages. But the trees in Manaus are not like the rest of the Amazon, they are often surrounded by plastic bags and loose trash. We have to climb over garbage just to pull down weaker branches, and there are fewer branches just lying on the ground. When we finally gather enough twigs and vines and even utilize some of the plastic bottles and strings to make the raft more secure, we push the raft into the river. It must be somewhere around nine or ten in the morning.

We all look to each other, partly satisfied for the minute accomplishments, and jump into the mock raft to head northwest, flowing in the direction of the river. I let my head rest on Adan's shoulder, knowing he'll take care of me while I sleep. The river will carry us straight to Colombia. The journey will take two more days. By the time we reach Colombia, our friends will have been under Borran's control for four. We'll make a home on the outskirts on San Felipe—where Cai is from— just on the border of Colombia and de-vise a plan to free our friends.

But there is more than that waiting for me. I will have my revenge.

## THE END
Please continue with Graph Wars
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1) Do you think Jin will have her revenge on Bor-ran?

2) What animals would you be grafted into, if you ad a choice? Remember the animal must be from the Amazon, or a part of the story.

3) Do you trust Adan now that book 2 has ended?

4) Who is your favorite illegal Graph? Least favor-ite?

5) What are a few of the themes of this series?

6) Would you return to Borran to rescue your friends, or remain in San Felipe in peace?
Author Biography:

M. Black is a pen name of Ami Blackwelder.

M. Black is her dystopia and thriller line of books. Re-becca May is the pen name for her historical and con-temporary line of books. Ami Blackwelder writes par-anormal and sci-fi novels.

Her stories range from Tween & YA to Adult. Growing up in Florida, she graduated UCF and in 1997 received her BA in English and additional teach-ing credentials. Then she packed her bags and trav-elled overseas to teach in Thailand, Nepal, Tibet, Chi-na and Korea. Thailand is considered her second home now. She has always loved writing and wrote poems and short stores since childhood; however, her novels began when she was in Thailand in her early thirties.

Having won the Best Fiction Award from the Uni-versity of Central Florida (Yes, The Blair Witch Pro-ject University), her short fiction From Joy We Come, Unto Joy We Return was published in the on campus literary magazine Cypress Dome and remains to this day in University libraries around the USA.

Later, she achieved the semi-finals in a Laurel Hem-ingway contest and published a few poems in the Thai-land's Expat magazine, and an article in the Thailand's People newspaper. Additionally, she has published po-etry in Korea's AIM magazine, the American Poetic Monthly magazine and Twisted Dreams Magazine.

Thank you to all my supporters, family, friends, and fans for making this novel not just a dream, but a reality.

A special thank you to my alpha-readers, beta-readers and editors!

Without all of your readership, fan support and advice, I would not be able to do what I do. I love writ-ing. It has always been my passion and I am so fortu-nate to be able to write the stories I love for my read-ers.

You may also download this novel on Kindle, Nook, and iPad or go to your local bookstore and or-der a copy. Or go to my main website (http://AmiBlackwelder.blogspot.com) and order an autographed novel for only $7.99 using the email link touch-of-grace@hotmail.com.

M.Black can be found here http://MiaBlackThrillers.blogspot.com and has a planned upcoming line of books in the dystopia and thriller genres that you can check out at her website.

Follow her blog to know when her new books come out!

If you enjoyed this, please try Simulation or EX-OTIQA by M.Black.

All her work is available at her websites:

http://amiblackwelder.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/amiblackwelder

http://www.facebook/amis.bookpage

Please consider joining Ami Blackwelder's newslet-ter found at her website. M.Black and Rebecca May books are also announced on the newsletter sent out by Ami Blackwelder.

http://amiblackwelder.blogspot.com

or visit M. Black's website at

http://MBlackDystopianThrillers.blogspot.com

Earn a FREE ebook by signing up for the newslet-ter at her website. You may opt out of the newsletter at any time if her writing is not for you. The newsletters are sent four times a month whenever there are new releases, contests, giveaways, or significant updates.

