casta didn't release the tension in her shoulders until the ship pulled from harbor. A loud horn resounded through the entire ship, overshadowing the gurgle of water underneath. She edged to the rim of the trailer, checking for anything amiss.

"Seriously, Jocasta," Kevan said from the floor. "Calm down. If there's someone within the three-kilometer radius, I'll know, and I'll tell you."

She cast one last look at the shadows of the port slowly creeping away. Every minute the ship spent sailing, the farther they got from the containment facility. How much longer would they have before The Corrector freezes the ship's route and captures them again? She half-expected black-clad soldiers to pursue them past the A13 and flag them down by the Le Havre, bringing in the country's law enforcement, but everything was quiet. The cloak of the night might have helped.

A shiver ran down her arms, and she gritted her teeth to keep it at bay. She was still in the facility's loaned uniform—the gray, sleeveless yards of cloth—and with how they rushed out of Île-de-France, they didn't have time to change or even think of doing it.

Her gaze immediately fell into a lump of a human slotted between the floor and the beginning of a hatch. Squeezed between a stack of cargo trailers which could topple anytime, Markel lay with his eyes closed. He wouldn't be waking up anytime soon. Not after that stunt he pulled inside the containment facility.

Jocasta didn't understand what really went on, but she remembered the panic shooting up her limbs when he collapsed on the elevator just as the doors slid open. When he didn't respond with two or three violent shakes, she had every reason to believe something was wrong. Something was really wrong. So, she hoisted him over her back and rushed out, plunging straight into a crowd of people strolling in and out of whatever building that was.

She vaguely remembered Alon and Kevan teaming up to knock a smartly-dressed man on his way towards the glass turnstiles. A rectangular, black block flew out of his hands, and as Kevan apologized profusely in the little French he knew, Alon scooped the gadget off, turned invisible, and ran off. They met again at the building's landscaped facade, with Ji-yeon throwing Jocasta another phone.

"We'll stay in contact," Ji-yeon was saying, but her words flew by Jocasta's head. The girl jerked her chin towards the weight pressed against Jocasta's back, a weight that was slowly decreasing. "We need to find a hospital. Quick. He won't last long with that."

Jocasta wanted to argue if calling for an ambulance would be faster, but decided against it. They were still under fire from Primeva's men, and Shaw wouldn't let his assets run around the city unsupervised. They needed to make most of the little freedom Markel afforded them at the expense of his health.

So, she stalked after Ji-yeon as they took to the streets in search of the nearest hospital. After asking around, people pointed to a derelict cube of concrete with a big, red cross emblazoned on the facade. A flurry of white-coated individuals flocked around Markel on sight, loading him into a metallic mattress with wheels and carting him off. Kevan and Alon rushed in a few minutes later, eyes wide and breaths erratic.

Jocasta allowed an hour, and by then, the doctors wheeled Markel out into the general ward in line with other sick people. She talked to an elderly man with thinning hair and a loose white coat draped over his shoulders. The truth came out then. Markel's organs had failed, one after another, and they had put him on life support as they determined the cause. She remembered thanking the doctor. Then, she unhooked the boy from the machines. In a short while, they were running again, this time, towards the series of parked cars.

Kevan took the passenger seat, with Alon squeezing into the driver's side after Jocasta pried the door open with an ignition key she molded from her hair. She and Ji-yeon piled into the backseat, throwing Markel next to the window. The ride towards the port Noak told them about was spent with Jocasta growing and snipping her hair until they had most of the tools the hospital used to keep him running.

When Alon pulled up in the empty field in the middle of nowhere, night had fallen on them. No Primeva ops chased them in sleek black cars and electric batons. Even as they jumped into the first departing smuggling ship they found, one that transported wares for the black market—whatever that was—the harbor remained quiet and the highway, pristine. A few minutes of scrambling between the maze of trailers and hatches, they reached a considerable distance from either port and starboard sides and settled the best they could.

Noak told them it would be a long ride, around a fortnight, so they had enough time to take stock of their next plan, of learning all they could about New York and where Jacqueline Shaw might be, and for Markel to heal and wake up.

A soft thud followed by a blatant curse in Alon's native language jarred Jocasta back to the present. She turned away from the trailer's edge and whirled to find Alon wrenching open a metal box he scavenged from an open trailer two stacks away. It was where they found several of Markel's essentials, their change of clothes, and food that attacked their throats with their sugar content. All the more reason to get out of the ship as soon as it docked. They couldn't afford to be caught red-handed nor could they leave any evidence they had been here.

Paper rustled, and a blur of gold edged into Jocasta's periphery. She turned to find Alon holding out the box with its top popped off towards her. Several bits and bobs of strange pastry greeted her. "Go on. It's safe." Alon sat on the hatch and crossed his legs atop it. "I've been having these since we boarded. Can't believe we still have thirteen days of this."

"We're not here to lounge around," Jocasta answered, plucking one from the bunch nonetheless. The taste of chocolate and sugar coated her tongue as she chewed it in one bite. "But these taste amazing."

Alon tilted his head at her. "Nothing like the food inside the Game, huh?" he said. "No wonder these normals love this world. If there are more of these here, I'd want to spend more time too."

"Would you go back?" she prompted, following the thread of his thoughts. Apart from the clipped exchanges they shared in the Game, she and Alon had never really talked. This was new, as was most of her interactions with the rest of the crew. "To the Game and to Primeva, I mean."

The boy shrugged. "If there's no other choice, yeah," he said. "Shaw isn't keen on letting us go, and I'd rather have a warm bed and a false sense of security than being on the run."

Jocasta opened her mouth, but shut it when he continued. "I mean, I believe in what Markel's trying to do, but none of us are heroes," he said. "You said we need to come up with a plan once we reach New York. Well, I say we need to make a plan for when we fail to land a dent in Primeva too."

Made sense how little Alon's faith in Markel was, and Jocasta wouldn't put up much of a fight to change the boy's mind. Markel was literally dying on the floor right now, having thrown whatever caution he had left into the wind. Despite her warnings and his friends' pleas, he didn't listen. Now, all of them reaped the consequences.

What was Jocasta supposed to do then? Without him, the only way they'd be tackling was the one towards the memory wipe machines. After refusing Shaw to his face—no matter how holographic that representation that day had been—The Corrector would be rushing to get them under control before they caused another global incident. Markel did what he could, and they should too.

"Hey, chin up." Alon's gentle voice bled with the wind whistling in Jocasta's ears. "Markel's a tough one. If there's anyone who can survive multiple organ failure, it's that guy. He eliminated every section there was without using a single ability after all."

Jocasta snorted. That wasn't entirely true, but she got the implied thought. "Let's catch up on sleep," she said, instead. "We've got a busy week ahead."

And when the sun had risen the next morning, dousing her face with unbridled light from the sky, she rose and started off a routine that'd carry her for the next few days. By the time a coast started appearing on the horizon, they had mapped out a better understanding of New York. They still had not enough leads to go on, with the only image Kevan fished out from Jacqueline's friend in Paris being a dark-bricked complex. It could be anywhere in the city or the state. Primeva wouldn't give them enough time to scour the entire place, street by street.

Markel improved over the course of the week. Color returned to his cheeks, and there were moments when he regained consciousness. He would always dunk back into a stupor after a few minutes. Fatigue hung heavily on his body, even as it rocked with the ship's bobbing motion. His cheeks caved in, his eyes sank, and his breathing turned more erratic before flattening into weak bursts. The concentrated oxygen she and Ji-yeon made a few days ago seemed to help.

It still hasn't sunk in how Markel had an ability all this time. Why would he hide it, and why did his chip say he didn't have any ability? A mystery surrounding their clever leader among many others. When would they ever dig out every one?

According to Kevan, who had experienced overusing his ability as well, tried explaining it a few days ago. Think of a dried-up well. To get water, one would have to siphon the resource deeper into the source, straining the pump and the source. Or, to go about it naturally, people would wait for rain or for the water to repopulate the present reserve.

It was the same thing with their abilities. Energy was the resource the ability and biological systems traded with each other. Over time, the ability system found unique ways to draw on their biological functions. Run one system down, and it would sip energy from the other. To replenish the water from that well, they would either have to deepen their energy levels or wait for their bodies to recover on their own.

Markel's ability was a special case. It allowed him to change the perception of time within any living being, sentient or not. Overusing it resulted not only in energy from his biological functions being spent, his ability appeared to have backfired on them as well, messing with his own body's perception of time. And the strain of coping with those changes as well as keeping his body functioning must have taken its toll.

When the boat stopped moving, and the noisy whirring of the anchor being lowered halted, Jocasta led the others into the starboard side and cast the lines towards the rusty docks. After shimmying down, they burst across the open field, past the towering spread of industrial buildings, and finally, a neat array of near-empty parking spaces. Stealing their fourth car since Geneva, they tore across the interstate until they got into the heart of New York City.

The fortnight on their impromptu cruise wasn't spent in vain. In that course of time, they pinpointed several neighborhoods in the city where Jacqueline's apartment might lie. They were on their way to the nearest when Alon hit the brakes too soon, throwing them forward. Jocasta cast an arm sideways, stopping Markel's unconscious frame from flying to the dashboard.

"What the hell was that?" Ji-yeon demanded, pounding against Alon's seat. A string of strong Korean words followed suit as the girl slipped into her habit of cussing. "You could have killed us!"

"Get down!" Alon hissed, eyes glued somewhere beyond the windshield. Jocasta pulled Markel away from the window and shoved him into the legroom.

"What?" Jocasta whispered as Alon switched gears and started backing into a nearby alley. Cardboard boxes crunched underneath the wheels, showing them how squalid this neighborhood was. Why would Jacqueline stay here if she was the daughter of a conglomerate owner?

Alon turned his head away from the windshield and the side windows. "I saw Primeva's corps patrolling the streets," he replied. "It's one of two things. Either they are here for us, or they are here for Jacqueline Shaw."

Made sense. Jacqueline might be guarded, since, if the rumors were true, she was also a walking asset Primeva was desperate to retrieve. Jocasta gritted her teeth. "Pull up on the nearest flat," she said. "We'll regroup there."

That was how they ended up crashing inside an abandoned complex. The ceiling had droplets of rainwater dripping from it, the windows had cracks, and the floorboards creaked a little louder with every step, but it'd have to do. For a stolen house, it was more than enough.

Jocasta braced her hips and faced her friends. "Okay, first things first," she said. "We plan on how to approach Jacqueline."

Then, two things happened at once. Markel rolled over from the dusty couch they set him on and threw up all over the carpet, and the doorbell to their otherwise dilapidated flat rang. Jocasta ran to get the door while the others rushed to mind the recovering patient. She yanked the door open to find an older girl beaming up at her from the base of the stairs. Blond hair hung in natural waves down her back, framing her thin face and stark blue eyes.

"Hi," the visitor said, startling Jocasta out of whatever trance she entered in that short span of time. "I'm Jacqueline Shaw, and we must talk."