I don’t know, I’ve never died before.

An hour? More?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Where’s a coyote when you really need one?

Maybe we’ll get lucky… escaped claw beast or something… Her thought trailed off incoherently.

That was our last conversation. It was too hard to concentrate enough to form words. There was more pain than we thought there should be. All the muscles in our body rioted, cramping and spasming as they fought death.

We didn’t fight. We drifted and waited, our thoughts dipping in and out of memories without a pattern. While we were still lucid, we hummed ourselves a lullaby in our head. It was the one we’d used to comfort Jamie when the ground was too hard, or the air was too cold, or the fear was too great to sleep. We felt his head press into the hollow just below our shoulder and the shape of his back under our arm. And then it seemed that it was our head cradled against a broader shoulder, and a new lullaby comforted us.

Our lids turned black, but not with death. Night had fallen, and this made us sad. Without the heat of day, we would probably last longer.

It was dark and silent for a timeless space. Then there was a sound.

It barely roused us. We weren’t sure if we imagined it. Maybe it was a coyote, after all. Did we want that? We didn’t know. We lost our train of thought and forgot the sound.

Something shook us, pulled our numb arms, dragged at them. We couldn’t form the words to wish that it would be quick now, but that was our hope. We waited for the cut of teeth. Instead, the dragging turned to pushing, and we felt our face roll toward the sky.

It poured over our face-wet, cool, and impossible. It dribbled over our eyes, washing the grit from them. Our eyes fluttered, blinking against the dripping.

We did not care about the grit in our eyes. Our chin arched up, desperately searching, our mouth opening and closing with blind, pathetic weakness, like a newly hatched bird.

We thought we heard a sigh.

And then the water flowed into our mouth, and we gulped at it and choked on it. The water vanished while we choked, and our weak hands grasped out for it. A flat, heavy thumping pounded our back until we could breathe. Our hands kept clutching the air, looking for the water.

We definitely heard a sigh this time.

Something pressed to our cracked lips, and the water flowed again. We guzzled, careful not to inhale it this time. Not that we cared if we choked, but we did not want the water taken away again.

We drank until our belly stretched and ached. The water trickled to a stop, and we cried out hoarsely in protest. Another rim was pressed to our lips, and we gulped frantically until it was empty, too.

Our stomach would explode with another mouthful, yet we blinked and tried to focus, to see if we could find more. It was too dark; we could not see a single star. And then we blinked again and realized that the darkness was much closer than the sky. A figure hovered over us, blacker than the night.

There was a low sound of fabric rubbing against itself and sand shifting under a heel. The figure leaned away, and we heard a sharp rip-the sound of a zipper, deafening in the absolute stillness of the night.

Like a blade, light cut into our eyes. We moaned at the pain of it, and our hand flew up to cover our closed eyes. Even behind our lids, the light was too bright. The light disappeared, and we felt the breath of the next sigh hit our face.

We opened our eyes carefully, more blind than before. Whoever faced us sat very still and said nothing. We began to feel the tension of the moment, but it felt far away, outside ourself. It was hard to care about anything but the water in our belly and where we could find more. We tried to concentrate, to see what had rescued us.

The first thing we could make out, after minutes of blinking and squinting, was the thick whiteness that fell from the dark face, a million splinters of pale in the night. When we grasped that this was a beard-like Santa Claus, we thought chaotically-the other pieces of the face were supplied by our memory. Everything fit into place: the big cleft-tipped nose, the wide cheekbones, the thick white brows, the eyes set deep into the wrinkled fabric of skin. Though we could see only hints of each feature, we knew how light would expose them.

“Uncle Jeb,” we croaked in surprise. “You found us.”

Uncle Jeb, squatting next to us, rocked back on his heels when we said his name.

“Well, now,” he said, and his gruff voice brought back a hundred memories. “Well, now, here’s a pickle.”

CHAPTER 13.Sentenced

Are they here?” We choked out the words-they burst from us like the water in our lungs had, expelled. After water, this question was all that mattered. “Did they make it?”

Uncle Jeb’s face was impossible to read in the darkness. “Who?” he asked.

“Jamie, Jared!” Our whisper burned like a shout. “Jared was with Jamie. Our brother! Are they here? Did they come? Did you find them, too?”

There was barely a pause.

“No.” His answer was forceful, and there was no pity in it, no feeling at all.

“No,” we whispered. We were not echoing him, we were protesting against getting our life back. What was the point? We closed our eyes again and listened to the pain in our body. We let that drown out the pain in our mind.

“Look,” Uncle Jeb said after a moment. “I, uh, have something to take care of. You rest for a bit, and I’ll be back for you.”

We didn’t hear the meaning in his words, just the sounds. Our eyes stayed closed. His footsteps crunched quietly away from us. We couldn’t tell which direction he went. We didn’t care anyway.

They were gone. There was no way to find them, no hope. Jared and Jamie had disappeared, something they knew well how to do, and we would never see them again.

The water and the cooler night air were making us lucid, something we did not want. We rolled over, to bury our face against the sand again. We were so tired, past the point of exhaustion and into some deeper, more painful state. Surely we could sleep. All we had to do was not think. We could do that.

We did.

When we woke, it was still night, but dawn was threatening on the eastern horizon-the mountains were lined with dull red. Our mouth tasted of dust, and at first we were sure that we had dreamed Uncle Jeb’s appearance. Of course we had.

Our head was clearer this morning, and we noticed quickly the strange shape near our right cheek-something that was not a rock or a cactus. We touched it, and it was hard and smooth. We nudged it, and the delicious sound of sloshing water came from inside.

Uncle Jeb was real, and he’d left us a canteen.

We sat up carefully, surprised when we didn’t break in two like a withered stick. Actually, we felt better. The water must have had time to work its way through some of our body. The pain was dull, and for the first time in a long while, we felt hungry again.

Our fingers were stiff and clumsy as we twisted the cap from the top of the canteen. It wasn’t all the way full, but there was enough water to stretch the walls of our belly again-it must have shrunk. We drank it all; we were done with rationing.

We dropped the metal canteen to the sand, where it made a dull thud in the predawn silence. We felt wide awake now. We sighed, preferring unconsciousness, and let our head fall into our hands. What now?

“Why did you give it water, Jeb?” an angry voice demanded, close behind our back.

We whirled, twisting onto our knees. What we saw made our heart falter and our awareness splinter apart.

There were eight humans half-circled around where I knelt under the tree. There was no question they were humans, all of them. I’d never seen faces contorted into such expressions-not on my kind. These lips twisted with hatred, pulled back over clenched teeth like wild animals. These brows pulled low over eyes that burned with fury.

Six men and two women, some of them very big, most of them bigger than me. I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized why they held their hands so oddly-gripped tightly in front of them, each balancing an object. They held weapons. Some held blades-a few short ones like those I had kept in my kitchen, and some longer, one huge and menacing. This knife had no purpose in a kitchen. Melanie supplied the name: a machete.

Others held long bars, some metal, some wooden. Clubs.

I recognized Uncle Jeb in their midst. Held loosely in his hands was an object I’d never seen in person, only in Melanie’s memories, like the big knife. It was a rifle.

I saw horror, but Melanie saw all this with wonder, her mind boggling at their numbers. Eight human survivors. She’d thought Jeb was alone or, in the best case scenario, with only two others. To see so many of her kind alive filled her with joy.

You’re an idiot, I told her. Look at them. See them.

I forced her to see it from my perspective: to see the threatening shapes inside the dirty jeans and light cotton shirts, brown with dust. They might have been human-as she thought of the word-once, but at this moment they were something else. They were barbarians, monsters. They hung over us, slavering for blood.

There was a death sentence in every pair of eyes.

Melanie saw all this and, though grudgingly, she had to admit that I was right. At this moment, her beloved humans were at their worst-like the newspaper stories we’d seen in the abandoned shack. We were looking at killers.

We should have been wiser; we should have died yesterday.

Why would Uncle Jeb keep us alive for this?

A shiver passed through me at the thought. I’d skimmed through the histories of human atrocities. I’d had no stomach for them. Perhaps I should have concentrated better. I knew there were reasons why humans let their enemies live, for a little while. Things they wanted from their minds or their bodies…

Of course it sprang into my head immediately-the one secret they would want from me. The one I could never, never tell them. No matter what they did to me. I would have to kill myself first.

I did not let Melanie see the secret I protected. I used her own defenses against her and threw up a wall in my head to hide behind while I thought of the information for the first time since implantation. There had been no reason to think of it before.

Melanie was hardly even curious on the other side of the wall; she made no effort to break through it. There were much more immediate concerns than the fact that she had not been the only one keeping information in reserve.

Did it matter that I protected my secret from her? I wasn’t as strong as Melanie; I had no doubt she could endure torture. How much pain could I stand before I gave them anything they wanted?

My stomach heaved. Suicide was a repugnant option-worse because it would be murder, too. Melanie would be part of either torture or death. I would wait for that until I had absolutely no other choice.

No, they can’t. Uncle Jeb would never let them hurt me.

Uncle Jeb doesn’t know you’re here, I reminded her.

Tell him!

I focused on the old man’s face. The thick white beard kept me from seeing the set of his mouth, but his eyes did not seem to burn like the others’. From the corner of my eye, I could see a few of the men shift their gaze from me to him. They were waiting for him to answer the question that had alerted me to their presence. Uncle Jeb stared at me, ignoring them.

I can’t tell him, Melanie. He won’t believe me. And if they think I’m lying to them, they’ll think I’m a Seeker. They must have experience enough to know that only a Seeker would come out here with a lie, a story designed for infiltration.

Melanie recognized the truth of my thought at once. The very word Seeker made her recoil with hatred, and she knew these strangers would have the same reaction.

It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m a soul-that’s enough for them.

The one with the machete-the biggest man there, black-haired with oddly fair skin and vivid blue eyes-made a sound of disgust and spit on the ground. He took a step forward, slowly raising the long blade.

Better fast than slow. Better that it was this brutal hand and not mine that killed us. Better that I didn’t die a creature of violence, accountable for Melanie’s blood as well as my own.

“Hold it, Kyle.” Jeb’s words were unhurried, almost casual, but the big man stopped. He grimaced and turned to face Melanie’s uncle.

“Why? You said you made sure. It’s one of them.”

I recognized the voice-he was the same one who’d asked Jeb why he’d given me water.

“Well, yes, she surely is. But it’s a little complicated.”

“How?” A different man asked the question. He stood next to the big, dark-haired Kyle, and they looked so much alike that they had to be brothers.

“See, this here is my niece, too.”

“Not anymore she’s not,” Kyle said flatly. He spit again and took another deliberate step in my direction, knife ready. I could see from the way his shoulders leaned into the action that words would not stop him again. I closed my eyes.

There were two sharp metallic clicks, and someone gasped. My eyes flew open again.

“I said hold it, Kyle.” Uncle Jeb’s voice was still relaxed, but the long rifle was gripped tightly in his hands now, and the barrels were pointed at Kyle’s back. Kyle was frozen just steps from me; his machete hung motionless in the air above his shoulder.

“Jeb,” the brother said, horrified, “what are you doing?”

“Step away from the girl, Kyle.”

Kyle turned his back to us, whirling on Jeb in fury. “It’s not a girl, Jeb!”

Jeb shrugged; the gun stayed steady in his hands, pointed at Kyle. “There are things to be discussed.”

“The doctor might be able to learn something from it,” a female voice offered gruffly.

I cringed at the words, hearing in them my worst fears. When Jeb had called me his niece just now, I’d foolishly let a spark of hope flame to life-perhaps there would be pity. I’d been stupid to think that, even for a second. Death would be the only pity I could hope for from these creatures.

I looked at the woman who’d spoken, surprised to see that she was as old as Jeb, maybe older. Her hair was dark gray rather than white, which is why I hadn’t noticed her age before. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, all of them turning down into angry lines. But there was something familiar about the features behind the lines.

Melanie made the connection between this ancient face and another, smoother face in her memory.

“Aunt Maggie? You’re here? How? Is Sharon -” The words were all Melanie, but they gushed from my mouth, and I was unable to stop them. Sharing for so long in the desert had made her stronger, or me weaker. Or maybe it was just that I was concentrating on which direction the deathblow was going to fall from. I was bracing for our murder, and she was having a family reunion.

Melanie got only halfway through her surprised exclamation. The much-aged woman named Maggie lunged forward with a speed that belied her brittle exterior. She didn’t raise the hand that held the black crowbar. That was the hand I was watching, so I didn’t see her free hand swing out to slap me hard across the face.

My head snapped back and then forward. She slapped me again.

“You won’t fool us, you parasite. We know how you work. We know how well you can mimic us.”