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“Fucking kids,” Dan mumbled.
 

“Are you okay there?”
 

“Well, yeah, I guess.” He paused, as if with gravity. “We got a visit, though.”
 

Piper didn’t like the sound of that. She looked at Cameron.
 

“What kind of visit?”
 

“Vincent, Terrence, and Christopher went topside to … well, that part’s not important. Point is, while they were out there, one of
them
… a ship … it showed up out of nowhere.”
 

Piper put her hand over her mouth, big eyes wide.
 

Dan sighed. “It chased the guys back inside. But before they all got in, it … ” He trailed off, leaving the sentence hanging.

“It
what?
”
 

Before Dan could answer, the radio beeped. Whatever Terrence had done to make the call, it didn’t appear to be permanent. The beep and accompanying display icon were prelude to a fading signal.
 

“I’m about to lose you, Dan.”
 

“Yeah, we thought that might happen. They seem to be watching us now.”
 

“What do you mean?”
 

“Look. Call drops, we’ll call you back. Not right away, though. I don’t understand it, but I’ve learned to believe this dodgy motherfucker about computers and stuff. Terrence says it’s like poking holes. Eventually, someone can spot the signal and shut it down, but then, if he watches, he can jab another hole. Just doesn’t know when or for how long it’ll be before that happens. And we have to call you; you can’t call us. So if we — ”

“DAN?”

“No, I’m still here. Sorry. Raj was asking for his watch back. You believe it?” Then, apparently to Raj: “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Chuckles.” Then back to Cameron: “Raj is on Terrence to try and call his folks. But it doesn’t work like that, like with normal phones. Radio/radio, over analog cellular … shit, I don’t know or care.”
 

“What did the ship do?”
 

“Pardon?”
 

“You said that before they all got back inside, it did something.”
 

Heavy sigh. “It got Vincent, kiddo.”
 

Piper’s hand returned to her mouth.
 

“What do you mean it ‘got’ him, Dan?”
 

“I mean he’s dead, kiddo. It got him. It just … well, let’s just say he’s gone. A bunch of those people camping up top, too. Did this big ray thing. Not the kind of thing you can get out of your head. I’d guess maybe a dozen people dead, burned a bunch of their shit. Like it was trying to make a point or was mad or something.”
 

“Is anyone else h — ?” The radio beeped again. Twice, this time. “Signal’s going, Dan.”

Dan sighed again. The mood there must be terrible. Piper hadn’t been close with Vincent, but she found herself wanting to cry.
 
“If it cuts out, we’ll call you back in a bit,” he said.

“Is anyone else hurt?” Cameron repeated.

“No, kiddo. The rest of us are okay. Scared shitless, but okay.”

The radio beeped twice more.
 

“It’s really going now. I’ll keep the radio on me.”
 

“Yeah, and with batteries. But here’s the thing, Cam. Have you seen any of those ships while you’ve been on the trail? Big or little?”
 

The spigot was at the corner of a field. The field was wide open. Piper looked up, feeling exposed, suddenly sure she’d see an approaching armada.
 

“No. Nothing.”
 

“Well you watch your ass, okay, kiddo? Stay under trees if you can.” Then he swallowed audibly. “You know how the movie aliens always say, ‘We come in peace’?”

“Yeah?”
 

“Well, these ones don’t.”
 

Cameron looked at Piper then at the radio.
 

Piper whispered, “Ask about Lila.”
 

“Dan?”
 

“Yeah.”
 

“How’s Lila? How’s she doing, with her baby and all? Piper wants to know.”
 

“Oh, right,” said Dan. “Shit,
really
glad you asked. I almost forgot. Tell Piper that — ”
 

Dan stopped midsentence. Cameron held the radio to his ear then shook it. He slapped it like a busted TV set.
 

The signal was gone, and they were alone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The radio didn’t crackle again for days.
 

Piper’s nerves, which had been soothed by Dan’s report, were now more jangled than ever. Before that first call had come through, a part of her mind had thought the bunker might have been decimated and everyone dead, but a much larger, more sensible part of her mind knew the idea was paranoid lunacy. Meyer had seemed to predict the alien invasion somehow, so it made sense that his bunker would be built well enough to hide them. And besides, she’d been getting snippets of thought from Lila, Heather, and maybe Trevor, thanks presumably to their encounter with the massive magnetic stones. The part of her mind that accepted those flashes knew the truth.
 

But now, days distant from the line of stone monoliths, the psychic bolus she’d felt had mostly disappeared. Piper could still occasionally gather Cameron’s thoughts but only the loudest, and presumably because he was right there beside her. Random visions from people she didn’t know were either gone or had faded into the background miasma of ordinary thoughts. There was nothing clear from Lila, Heather, Trevor, or anyone else.
 

She didn’t like the way Dan had been cut off midsentence, even though they’d known the signal could fail at any second. She didn’t like his hanging thought: “Tell Piper that — ” Tell her what? He’d said that right after Cameron had asked about Lila and her baby. Was there a connection, or had Dan’s memory simply been jogged about something else?
 

Tell Piper that Lila says hello.
 

Tell Piper that Lila lost the baby.
 

Tell Piper that Lila got prepartum depression and killed herself.
 

She fretted whenever their traveling twosome fell silent — which was often, since they had days of travel and only so much to talk about. Strangely, Cameron was still guarded. Despite all that time, she still didn’t know much of his history. He hadn’t yet hit on any of the memories she’d pulled from his mind, especially those of his father. Did he know Piper had seen all those thoughts? Or did he think that by saying nothing, he was hiding them well?
 

When they stopped talking, Piper thought of the bunker.
 

When they stopped for the first night after Dan’s call, she thought of it more.
 

The second night, she couldn’t stop thinking about it at all.
 

And by the third night, when Dan or Terrence still hadn’t called, she birthed new worries. They kept Piper from sleep and cast the stirring woods in menacing chatter.

She was already fretting over whatever might have been happening with Lila. Now she worried for them all. Dan had said Terrence would be able to call back. “We’ll call you back — not right away, though,” he’d said … and that seemed to imply the process was difficult or random. But
three days?
She’d thought it might take hours. A day maybe.
 

But by the morning of the fourth day, there was nothing.
 

They crossed into Utah.
 

Her companion was unperturbed. Piper had kept her bothered thoughts to herself, and Cameron, if he was anything like her, could no longer reach into the heads of others. She kept her face impassive, and when they spoke, she didn’t let her voice or tone betray her. Piper was probably being stupid. If Cameron wasn’t fretting about Vail, then she shouldn’t either. He’d been out in the big, scary world — not just on his way to the bunker to join and betray Morgan Matthews but throughout his life. He’d been to places that made Piper uneasy, sure she was just another coddled and xenophobic American: China, India, Central and South America, the Balkans, the Middle East. If he wasn’t showing concern, maybe she was being stupid.
Maybe.
 

Although if a ship had arrived and killed a bunch of people above the bunker, her fears weren’t exactly unreasonable.
 

She’d seen what the mothership had done to Moscow before the TV signals and Internet died. She’d also seen — again on the news — reports of smaller decimations, with deaths numbering “only” in the single digits. She’d heard rumors of other alien attacks, and the ships seeming impervious to anything the world’s governments tried hurling their way.
 

If Terrence hadn’t made them a new connection despite the way Dan seemed sure that he could, maybe that meant the ships had returned to Vail and killed more than just Vincent.
 

A fourth night passed.
 

Then a fifth.
 

On the morning of the sixth day following Dan’s call — the seventh or eighth total since they’d left the others behind (maybe to die), Cameron stopped his horse at the top of a slowly rising hill made of red rock. The last days had been warmer, and they’d made them mostly without cover, nothing but empty blue sky above. Utah was different from Colorado. Mountains had given way to craggy rocks, sculpted, wind-eroded outcroppings that looked like precariously balanced art. Piper hadn’t liked traveling in the open, but there was no other way. They’d been a cowboy and a cowgirl on the range, with nothing stretching from one horizon to the next.
 

But for the past two hours they’d been following a valley. It reminded Piper uncomfortably of the ravine in which they’d evaded and then hid from the Andreus Republic, only far deeper, far steeper, and with walls of red stone rather than soil. They’d been following a road, but it looked seldom used and forgotten, more clay than pavement. It seemed the middle of nowhere to Piper, as they followed the canyon’s meanderings. But Cameron seemed to know where he was going, and by the time he stopped, she knew they must be near — even as out in the middle of nowhere as she felt.
 

“This is it,” he said.
 

Piper looked around. There was nothing but dust, road, canyon walls, and what seemed to be a dried-up riverbed. The sky above, visible as a strip between the walls, was pure blue.

“Nice place.”

“Okay, not literally. It’s around that bend.” Cameron pointed, but the canyon curved ahead, and Piper saw nothing.
 

“Then let’s go. And please tell me they have food. I’m sick of beans.”
 

Cameron paused. “Just … just remember why we’re here, okay? To find Meyer. To find a way to get him back.”
 

“Of course.”
 

He looked at his horse but didn’t urge her forward.
 

“Cameron, what is it?”

“The people here. They’re professionals. They know things. Just keep that in mind.”
 

“Cameron,
what?
”
 

He said nothing. Just sighed again then nudged the horse with his heel to get her moving.
 

As they neared the bend, Piper realized that the path was rising, moving them slowly out of the canyon. It wound up and around, the walls shorter with each passing step.

The lab Cameron had told her about entered their view. It was the strangest building she’d ever seen. By the time Piper could fully see it, the canyon walls had shortened to the height of a two-story building, maybe one and a half. Set into the wall directly in front of them was a brick facade with a door in the middle, as if someone had walled off the front of a cave and built the lab right inside it.
 

But the lab’s appearance wasn’t what stole Piper’s breath: It was the mothership hovering in the newly revealed sky.

“They think he’s in there, Piper,” Cameron said, nodding at the mammoth sphere floating above the cliff. “The people here? They believe Meyer’s inside that ship.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Piper woke, lying on her side, a soft pillow under her head. One arm was beneath her, sticking straight out. The warm arm draped over her other side, however, wasn’t hers.
 

She rolled back and met Cameron’s gaze. He was already awake.

“I had a dream,” she said.
 

“Was it about racial equality in the 1960s?”
 

She rolled fully to face him. “No.”
 

Something in her expression must have registered. Cameron sat up and propped himself on one elbow.
 

“About Meyer?”
 

No, it hadn’t been about Meyer. She wished he hadn’t said it — and wished even more that she’d just told him the dream’s contents rather than making him play this guessing game. She was split exactly down the middle on the topic of Meyer. When they’d arrived at the Moab ranch three months ago, Meyer had been all she’d wanted to discuss. She’d pestered Cameron’s father unceasingly, asking question after question, pursuing avenues that Benjamin had already traveled but that Piper’s desperation forced him to revisit anew. When Benjamin grew exhausted, she’d pestered his right-hand man, Charlie. He was less patient than Benjamin; he’d told her to sit down and let the professionals do their work.