Henry didn't even flinch when he cut into his own wrist to remove his tracking device. I'd offered to do it, but he wouldn't let me, so I'd shown him where mine had been when Lucas removed it, and he'd taken care of it himself. He stared ahead, at the water, his expression blank. I had him with me, and yet I felt that I wasn't going to be able to reach him for some time. Whatever they'd done to him over the past months, it had broken him.

I found bandages in my bag and gave them to him, so he could wrap himself up, but he was too late to stop some of the blood from running down his wrist and into the palm of his hand, where it formed a small pool. He'd heal quickly, as I had. After he'd removed the tracker, I smashed it with a rock and scattered its bits and pieces to the wind.

"We'll have to move again, now," I told him.

He didn't even look at me. He just kept staring out to the beyond.

"Henry, whatever happens, at least we're together, now."

"Is Lucas dead?"

I was caught a little off guard. "Yes," I sighed. "They killed him."

"They kill everyone."

"Not you. Not us." He didn't respond, so I gently asked, "How did you know Lucas? I thought he was you--he let me think he was you the whole time!"

Henry shuffled his feet a little. "He was in there with me for a while, until they took him."

"Where--in that room? You've been there the whole time?"

He nodded. "When he left, he promised me you'd come. Said he hoped he'd be back, too, but that you would come for sure."

"Of course I would. I've never stopped thinking about you, Henry." The words were easier to say aloud than I'd thought they'd be. Silence followed. I was allowing him to repeat the sentiment, but he didn't. Dismayed, I touched my throat where the glass had pressed a little too hard. "I--I got the flowers. The . . . forget-me-nots."

That seemed to pique his attention. "Flowers?"

My mind tripped. "The flowers--in the envelope? You didn't send them?"

The question in his eyes told me the answer. "I wouldn't have been able to. At least, I don't think I'd be able to."

"What do you mean?"

"You have to understand . . ."

I waited for him to tell me what I had to understand, but he trailed off into a fog and didn't finish his sentence. Beginning to grow frustrated, I pried: "What? What do I have to understand? What is the matter with you, Henry?" I knew that I couldn't push him--that it wasn't right to think he could just be the same person I remembered. Whatever he'd been through, he was going to have to work past it. I knew that--I knew it . . . and yet I couldn't keep from feeling disappointed, even annoyed with his distance. I'd thought so often of our reunion; this wasn't living up to the image I'd created.

"Lucas is really dead, huh? It's weird to think. He looked just like me. It's like I died or something."

I rolled my eyes. Why was he being so . . . so strange? We didn't have time to dwell on things like this. We needed to get out of there, to keep moving until we were so far away that they'd never find us. (Hadn't Paolo said as much to me?) "We can go north, Henry, north until we can't handle the cold, and then we can go east. Or anywhere. We can find some place where no one knows anything about us. Without the trackers, they won't be able to find us."

"They'll always find us."

I huffed in frustration. "Well, we have to try to get away. Do you want to just sit here and wait for them to come? Why are you acting so hopeless? I want the old Henry, the one who knew what to do. Who wasn't afraid of anything." Even saying it, I felt guilty, but the words just wouldn't stop themselves. I was scared that this was how he was going to stay--that I would have to be the one to figure everything out. I'd wanted to find him and let him start making the plans, the decisions. I was so, so tired of trying to solve impossible problems.

We were sitting in a sort of alcove in the rock, up on the land, away from the water and inaccessible by foot. The fly here had been difficult--Henry had really tried to manage on his own, but overall, he'd had to hold onto me as we flew. I forgave him that--I'd been the same with Lucas--but resentment had also come through; I'd just expected more from him. I'd wanted him to jump into action and be . . . well, different. Not like Lucas, but like himself. I was sort of dreading having to continue the journey on hoverboards, because I didn't want more hanging on to me, but I wasn't sure we had much choice. We had to put as much distance between us and them as possible. If what he said was true, that they'd never let us go, they were probably already on our trail.

"I know you're really angry with me," Henry said suddenly, breaking my thoughts.

"I'm not angry, just--"

"It's fine. I'm a mess. I know it. But at least, if we're going to keep going together . . ." he turned to look at me, and I met his eyes, which suddenly seemed empty, somehow, "since you know mine, can you at least tell me your name?"

I glared at him, not understanding, at first, what he meant. How . . . how could he not know my name? And then, as the ocean rolled in and out and back and forth interminably, its slow rush a constant reminder of what had happened on those cliffs, it dawned on me, and I began to feel sick.

"Wh-what's the earliest thing you re-remember?"

His bare toes played at the dirt in front of them. "Being in that room, Lucas explaining to me that he was leaving, but that someone would come get me out of there. Then he . . . he was gone."

"So . . . you don't even know anything about him? Why he was there with you? And . . . and you don't remember . . ." I took a deep breath, pushed down the knot that had formed in my throat, "You don't remember anything with me?"

He waited a moment, then gave me an apologetic shake of his head.

I couldn't bear his pitying expression. I jumped up to my feet and went to the lip of the alcove, mumbled something about coming back in a minute and dove down toward the water on my hoverboard. The sea air drove away the heat tearing across my face, my neck and chest. I flew over the grasses, then the sand, and then the water, just going, just wanting to feel free for a moment, wanting to escape the reality of what he'd just told me. How could I help him if he didn't even remember me? Was everything I'd been feeling for months--that we were connected beyond explanation, that he and I were somehow bonded, that I was being drawn to him and he to me, and we were seeking each other and enduring suffering for one another and when we finally found one another the world would be put back together--was it all self-deception? Oh what fantasies I'd told myself! All lies. Because I wanted so badly to believe that whatever we were in, we were in it together, that he and I would be all right if we just had each other!

But he didn't even know who I was.

Paolo had died for this. Paolo--everything I'd been trying not to think about him came rushing back at me, and I had to direct my hoverboard back onto land so I could fall off it and cry on the sand. I bent over and sobbed, on hands and knees, my forehead pressed against all the million grains and bits of rock, fingers clutching whatever they could find. It would all have been a bearable sacrifice, I'd told myself, if I could save Henry. If I could bring him back to me. But how wrong I'd been. I didn't have Henry, not really, and I had lost Paolo--someone who had actually cared about me, who had thought I was beautiful and who was determined to protect me, who had searched for me and waited for me and traveled miles and miles just to find me. Who had kissed me and held me in his arms and let me into his heart. I'd never let him into mine. Mine had been taken up by my obsession with finding Henry, and it had cost Paolo his life. Me, my selfishness, my willful ignorance. Why hadn't I thought of him? What was wrong with me that I'd thought only of myself?

I was like Lucas. I was as lost as he had been. How I'd hated him for being heartless and cruel; I'd condemned him for his violent determination to get what he wanted, how he'd killed people without thinking anything of it--but hadn't I done the same, now? I'd been entirely willing to use Andy for my own purposes, and I'd used Paolo for my own comfort without ever really caring about his. I'd been willing to let them hurt, let them die, just to get what I'd wanted. Just like Lucas.

It was what they'd done to me, to him, to everyone they touched--the Circuit, or not the Circuit . . . whoever these people were, they were all mixed in together. They valued us; the memory me had told me as much And they did, but why? Why had they been so concerned with me not hurting myself? I was already a waste of a human life; what did it matter to them?

My tears mixed with the rising tidewater. I didn't care. I laid down, let my face wash with the saltwater, tasted it, felt deserving when it stung my eyes. Maybe they'd see me here; maybe they wouldn't. I wasn't sure it mattered.

I didn't know how long I lay there. Darkness fell. The water was all around me, but I stayed where I was. This was where Paolo was, now--somewhere in the water. I'd not even looked for him when we'd left.

What was my purpose, anymore? If it wasn't to find Henry, what was it? I had nothing, no one. No purpose. Nothing . . . . nothing. Just . . . nothing. But as much as I'd threatened it, I couldn't take my life. I couldn't do it now, when there was no real reason to. Oh, in those moments when I'd thought it mattered, maybe I could've done it, but now? Why? And even in my despondency, I recognized that I did still have Henry. And maybe there was a way to help him remember. Maybe there was a way to get more draloline. Maybe there was a way to get the both of us back to where we needed to be. Was that not what mattered?

What had Lucas said to me--You don't know what we are . . . Don't you wonder why you didn't get altitude sickness? Why you never get too hungry or too tired? . . . We weren't born to be regular people . . . You were ruined the minute you existed . . .

What were we? Had they created us to tear us down? Amirah said in my memory (the memory Lucas had died for) that there were others . . . others like us. That they were taken somewhere. What had she called it? Xanadu . . . Lucas had wanted to find her, this Amirah--this person I'd thought I was. Maybe finding her would bring some answers, but I was sure she wouldn't be easy to locate; they'd hidden her away, maybe killed her. Who knew? And why did she look like me? And Lucas look like Henry? And there were others . . . We were pieces in a game they were playing--the Circuit, the masked figures, the memory-erasers and Oliphant . . . everything was connected. Everything went back . . . maybe that's where I had to go, as well.

With a sudden determination, I got to my feet, dripping wet in the ankle-deep water. I shook my hoverboard dry and stepped up onto it, buzzing out over the water toward the rising moon, where I breathed the cleanest, coolest air I'd ever breathed. It filled my lungs, refreshed my mind, invigorated every part of my cold body. I flew up and down the coastline, allowing myself some forgiveness, but not too much, and by the time I made it back to Henry, I felt a different person than when I'd left him.

He'd barely moved, still sitting, but his eyes were closed as if he were asleep. I touched his shoulder, and he blinked awake.

"We're leaving," I told him.

"Where are we going?"

I steeled myself for the words I had to say: "San Judo. Back to the beginning." Not that he remembered the beginning.

"Will we be safe there?"

"No. Definitely not. As you said--they'll never stop looking, but Henry, I hope they do look. I hope they follow us to the ends of the world."

He lowered his brow in confusion. "Why?"

"Because when we see them again, I'm going to kill them. All of them."

Henry just looked at me, his face revealing both awe and agitation.

"We'll need to get you some shoes, though. It's a long trip back. So first, we find a store somewhere. I still have a little money. Stuff in this bag."

"It was Lucas's. I recognize it."

"Yes, well it's mine, now." I bit my lip. "I just wish I hadn't lost that gun."

Henry nodded a little, then looked surprised, as if recalling something. "Wait! Wait. Here." He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out my gun, the one I'd blown the window out with, the one that had killed the guard, and Mr. Allen, and whichever Hines had lived and whoever else Lucas had killed with it. My face must've shown my joy, because he said a little sheepishly, "I fell on purpose back there, at the house. I wanted to grab it before we went in. Just in case."

My chest heaved with appreciation, with a small bit of hope. There was the Henry I remembered--thinking ahead, cunning. I took the gun from his hand; our fingers brushed in the process, and there was something in the touch of skin, that bit of contact . . . a bit of electricity seemed to move through my body, as if a wire stretched throughout my veins and lit up at his touch. I thought he felt it too--his eyes widened slightly, looked into mine with their pale glass, and beyond them, something glowed, something sparked.

It was there, still, whatever it was . . .

"It's Nadia," I told him. "Nadia."

He smiled, some slight mischief in his look, I thought.

And we snapped open our hoverboards, Henry refusing my assistance as we got on, and set off out into the night. I had purpose, now. Whatever it took, wherever we went, however they tried to deceive us or control us or torment us, I'd find them; I'd figure them out . . . and I'd destroy them all.

THE END