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  “What?”

  “Evidence of what we’ve got. Now we decide. Do we kill him here, or take him back to La Purísima?” Ro isn’t talking about the Mission. He’s talking about the Grass rebels.

  Spluttering, the boy tries to sit up out of the water. I pull his head forward and lean it against my knees.

  “How could we get him back up the Tracks? Did you see how many Sympas were out there? It would be impossible to hop a car without them seeing us. If the Tracks are even running.”

  Ro thinks, tracing his blade against his leg. “Yeah, and if you’re right about Brass Buttons here, it’s only going to get worse.”

  “Grass and Brass. It’s not a good mix.” I try not to think about what will happen to the boy when we get back to the Mission. If we get back to the Mission. What Ro will do to him. What I will let Ro do to him.

  I shake my head, pulling the boy closer up into my lap in the water. “No.”

  “Get away from him, Dol.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Now.”

  His voice is cracking. I can see the changing situation is overwhelming him. He loses control as we lose control.

  Which we have.

  We did when I saw that button.

  “Please.” I’m talking to Ro, but I look at the boy.

  His eyes fix on mine, just for a moment.

  He moves his hand toward me, a desperate gesture, like a raccoon caught in one of Biggest’s traps, flopping against the metal door one last time before it surrenders.

  I start, and Ro shoves the weapon closer.

  A dot of red light—the targeting mechanism of the boy’s own Sympa gun—dances at the bridge of his nose.

  The boy doesn’t react.

  Maybe he doesn’t think that Ro will do it.

  I know he will. He’s done it before. Sympas are a personal threat to his existence. And mine.

  The hand stretches again, nearer to me. “I’m warning you. Don’t move.” Ro growls the words, and as usual, it’s his tone that tells you everything.

  The boy’s fingers uncurl, slowly, touching my knees in the water.

  “Sweet Blessed Lady.” It’s all I can think to say.

  There, beneath the half-undone leather wrist cuff, beneath the ripped sleeve of a muddy Embassy military jacket, beneath the bloodstained uniform shirt soaked with ocean water—

  Four blue dots, forming a perfect square.

  In that second, the world of two people, of Ro and me, shatters into a world of three.

  Now I understand what I was feeling.

  Now I understand who this boy is. Or more to the point, what he is.

  He’s an Icon Child, like Ro and me.

  There are more of us.

  My heart is pounding. I knew there were stories—rumors of other Icon Children—but I never really believed there could be more than me and Ro.

  Had the Padre known?

  If I had only read the book when I had the chance.

  “What is it?”

  Ro hasn’t seen.

  My mind races.

  He showed me his markings.

  Why?

  Had he seen mine, here in the water?

  Could he have been conscious when Ro and I bound hands?

  No.

  I had been there when Ro smashed him in the face with his own weapon, knocking him out.

  I was there when he fell.

  I saw his eyes roll back in his head before anything happened.

  No. He showed me because he knew about me. He knows about us. He knows.

  “What’s wrong?” Ro tightens his grip on the gun.

  “They’ve come for us, Ro.”

  “Of course they have. What do you think that was all about back there, on the train? They send out their fat, lazy Sympas to drag us into their stupid Projects, just like the other Remnants. I told the Padre we needed to arm ourselves, we needed better defenses. He wouldn’t listen.”

  I shake my head and try again. “They’ve found us, Ro.”

  I hold up the boy’s wrist, and I unwrap mine.

  The resemblance is undeniable. The distance of the dot from the palm, the size of the mark. Next to each other, we are perfect matches.

  Just like Ro and me.

  RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

  CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

  To: Ambassador Amare

  From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke

  Subject: Icon Children Mythology

  Subtopic: Rager

  Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

  The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.

  Text-scan translation follows.

  7

  A DECISION

  “Four dots. You know what this means? There are more, Ro. More than us.” I look at Ro.

  Ro studies the boy in my arms. He doesn’t put down his blade. He doesn’t put down the Sympa gun. He grips each more tightly.

  I feel a red-hot blaze of pure hatred that I have never felt before. Not from Ro, anyway.

  “Three,” Ro finally says.

  He points to me. “One.” Himself. “Two.” The boy. “Four. What about Three? What did they do to him?”

  The boy says nothing. The boy only looks. He moves his head restlessly, and a moment later I hear why.

  Embassy Choppers overhead, closer than before. The blades flap, low and loud. They want to make sure we know they’re coming. In force.

  “Damn. Damn. Damn,” Ro mutters, wiping his sleeve against his face. “We need more time.”

  I look down at the wounded boy and feel his rising panic. “We have to get him out of here.”

  Ro’s voice is cold and hard. “Why?”

  “Ro.”

  “He’s one of them.”

  “Look at his wrist, Ro. He couldn’t be one of them, not even if he wanted to be.”

  “Why not?” He looks as stubborn as the rock he wants to throw at me right now.

  “Because he’s one of us.”

  Before Ro can respond, the boy struggles to get to his feet. I push him up from behind, but I can barely pull myself up along with him; he’s all but deadweight.

  “Give me my gun,” he croaks. “Now.”

  Ro laughs. “I must have hit you harder than I thought. You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Give me back my gun. It’s your only chance to survive.”

  “Really? What are you threatening me with? The gun you don’t have?”

  “I’m trying to save you. They see you with my gun and you’ll die. Both of you.” He doesn’t look back at me. I slide my arms down, letting go of him. Now, just barely, he is standing—swaying—on his own.

  “What’s your name, Buttons?” Ro smiles, without a trace of friendliness.

  The boy hesitates.

  I let my arm fall on his shoulder. “It’s all right. We know you’re from the Embassy. Just tell us who you are.”

  “My name is Lucas Amare.”

  I bite my lip so as not to gasp aloud.

  Ro bursts out laughing. “Oh, very good. That’s excellent. You’re human contraband like us, and your own mother is the Ambassador?” He grins at me as if we are sharing a really exceptional joke. You know, have you heard the one about the three Icon Children and the Ambassador?

  He says it again, shaking his head. “Lucas Amare is an Icon Child? And you thought we had secrets to keep, Dol.”

  All I can do is stare.

  Ro’s right. We aren’t contraband, not exactly, but it feels that way. Whatever we are is something the Padre went to great lengths to conceal, not just from the Embassy but from everyone, even from Bigger and Biggest. And now we find this Sympa, who’s also an Icon Child, living right in the Embassy itself?

  It makes no sense at all.

  I understan
d what Ro is thinking. There is no way the son of the Ambassador, the devil herself—the Hole’s only earthly link to the General Ambassador to the Planet, GAP Miyazawa, and beyond him, the House of Lords—can have anything in common with the two of us. No matter how many markings we share.

  And with that, the world is back the way Ro likes it to be. A world of two.

  “It’s not a secret. Not from my mother. She knows I’m here.” He sounds defensive.

  “Here, in this miserable water cave? Or here, out poaching innocent Grass children?” Ro is almost laughing. He can’t believe our good luck, that we stumbled upon something so valuable.

  Someone.

  “I found out you were being brought in, both of you. I wanted to—I wanted to help.”

  “Help us? Or help them?”

  The boy lowers his eyes.

  Ro smirks. “I see.”

  The Choppers are growing louder. It sounds like they’re landing right on top of us. I inch my head out from under the lip of the bluff, and I can see the edge of the blades, maybe fifty feet up.

  “That took too long. The Choppers.” The Sympa boy—Lucas—says what I am thinking. “They’ve gone back for reinforcements.”

  “Good. They’ll need them,” Ro says darkly.

  I step between them, placing both hands on the muzzle of the gun.

  “Move, Dol.” Ro shakes the gun, exasperated.

  “I can’t. Lucas is right.”

  “You’re listening to Buttons now?”

  “His name isn’t Buttons, and I trust him. I can feel him, Ro. You told me to.”

  Ro’s mouth tightens into a scowl. He doesn’t like the idea of me poking around in Lucas Amare’s mind, that much is clear. I ignore him.

  I try again. “You have to believe me. We can trust him.”

  “You don’t know anything, Dol. We don’t know how he works, what he can do. Maybe those marks are fake. Maybe he’s controlling you with some kind of Embassy endorphins—they have every scientist in the Hole working on one Classified weapon or another.”

  “Your new Grass Rebellion friends tell you that?” He’s angry, but now I’m angry too.

  “Maybe. But either way, he’s been sent here to bring us in—he already admitted that much himself.”

  The Embassy Choppers are so loud now, he has to shout. Even then, I can barely hear him. I pull on the gun with both hands.

  “Let go, Ro.”

  “Don’t, Doloria de la Cruz. Please.”

  “Let go, Furo Costas. Please.”

  I’m begging you. That’s what his eyes say, even if he’s too proud to ever use the words himself. I’m begging him too, with every tug on the gun barrel.

  Lucas watches us. “I give you my word. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Shut up, Buttons.” Ro is panicking, which is dangerous.

  I put my other hand on his wrist. “We can do this. We have to. We don’t have a choice.”

  Now I see the ropes falling into the water, all around us. Sympas are about to drop from the sky, along with the rain.

  Then I say the words Ro doesn’t want to hear most of all. “We have to trust him. We have nowhere else to go.”

  “Give me the gun, Ro.” Lucas is shouting now. He holds out his hands. I feel Lucas reaching toward Ro. I feel the warmth unfolding, the rush of his influence.

  Lucas is intoxicating.

  Ro’s fingers flex on the grip. Dazed, he takes a step backward, trying to brace himself. But I already know it’s no use.

  Ro lets go. I stumble from the weight of the gun, almost knocking Lucas over. I press the gun into his hands and step away, just as the cave fills with Sympas.

  Armed and masked.

  Now the tracking dots are on our foreheads, dancing between our eyes.

  “Took you long enough. Bring them in, boys. I’m beat. Stubborn Grass. Had to hold them here all afternoon.” Lucas lurches out from the rocks, splashing through the water. He stops, steadying himself. “One thing. I don’t want anybody talking to them without my permission.” He shoots Ro a meaningful look. You don’t have to read minds to know what he’s saying. Shut the hell up.

  Then it’s my turn.

  “And careful with the girl. She needs medical attention. They both do. Send them straight up to Doc when we land.”

  Lucas speaks with authority, more than his years, more than he has. The Sympas salute as he passes. Only I know he barely has the strength to hold his gun.

  “Mr. Amare.” An angry-looking man in a heavily decorated military coat stands next to Lucas.

  I recognize the wings on his jacket, and the bile rises in my throat.

  He was there, in the chapel. He is one of the Sympas who killed the Padre. Their leader.

  I swallow. I try to get my breath, but it feels like there isn’t enough oxygen in the air.

  I watch him speak. The words are civil but the tone is not. Lucas reddens, and I realize the words were meant to remind him he is not a Sympa soldier at all. He only wants to be.

  Lucas nods. “Colonel.”

  The man’s eyes move over him, taking in the blood on Lucas’s face. The wet clothes. The swaying weakness in his body, how he’s not standing quite right.

  The Colonel’s head is completely bald, and a jagged scar interrupts the sheen of his skin. As if someone has taken a knife and sliced halfway around the top of his head, as if he were a jack-o’-lantern.

  His coat has a strange collar, like a priest’s. I see in a glance that he has nothing to do with any church, on any planet.

  He doesn’t acknowledge us, though I know he feels me staring at him. I tentatively reach out for him in my mind, but I feel a shock of cold, like I have been repelled by freezing water.

  He fingers the buttonless edge of Lucas’s jacket. Lucas says nothing. Then, slowly, the Colonel raises his eyes to me. They are the color of dirty ice.

  I shiver and stop trying to see behind them.

  Lucas and the Jack-o’-Lantern Man turn back to the waiting command Chopper, sleek and silver and emblazoned with letters and numbers that somehow spell out wealth and importance. The Chopper is deceptively small for something worth more than a year of wages for everyone in the Hole combined.

  As they climb in, I notice a slender girl standing next to the Chopper. She wears the same uniformed coat as Lucas, but her hair is silver and severe, with a slash of bangs cropped against her forehead. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have seen her at all in the crowd of Sympas that surround the Chopper.

  I do, though, not because of how she looks, which is striking enough, but because of the way her eyes track Lucas.

  Like a predator locked on her prey. A king snake, maybe, or a rattler.

  I close my eyes. I can’t sense my way through to her, not in the chaos and the noise of the scene.

  In a second the opportunity is gone. The girl falls into step behind Lucas and the Colonel, and they rise into the clouds with a few flashing twists of blades, without so much as a look goodbye.

  I glance over at Ro, next to me, as they cuff him. He resists, but a Sympa guard kicks the back of his legs, and he falls awkwardly to the ground. Another Sympa yanks him up with a threatening scowl. “You want a fight, boy?” The others laugh. Ro is seething, looking at me accusingly. I hold his eyes, pleading. He turns and shakes his head, climbing onto the transport. He is miserable, his eyes dark and wet. I try to remember if this is the first time I have ever seen him cry.

  I think it is.

  I hope I’m not wrong to trust Lucas and let them take us. I hope Ro’s not right.

  Out here in the rain, as I board the transport, I can’t feel anything but scared.

  RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

  CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

  To: Ambassador Amare

  From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke

  Subject: Icon Children Mythology

  Subtopic: Lover

  Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during ra
id of Rebellion hideout

  The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.

  Text-scan translation follows.

  8

  DOC

  “Dol, wake up. You drifted off.” I turn to see Lucas, his face framed by the water, rough on every side.

  “Where’s Ro?” I turn to look for him, but all I can see is Lucas. His eyes, and broad swaths of sand and sea.

  “He’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He pushes up his sleeve and holds out his naked wrist. “I want you to feel better, Dol.” Four dots. Four blue dots.

  The blood is gone now. So is his shirt.

  Lucas puts his hands inside the bottom of my sweater, tugging at it. He looks at me, questioningly, before gently pulling it over my head. I shiver.

  Lucas doesn’t seem to notice. He takes my cold, bare arm in his hands. Unties my binding and pulls it loose, letting it hang halfway off my arm, undone. Where his hand runs over my skin, I have goose bumps.

  “Say something.” Now Lucas slips his fingers through mine. “I’ve been waiting for you, all this time. I know you feel it too.”

  He begins to wrap the cloth around our arms. As he works the cloth, our elbows touch, then our forearms. Our wrists. He laces our fingers together, more tightly. His fingers dig into the back of my hand, inching closer…

  Until I ball up my hand. Because I can’t let him do it.

  There are only millimeters of air between our markings but it might as well be miles.

  I can’t let go. I can’t do it to my best friend, the only person I have ever let feel how it is to be me.

  And now it isn’t Lucas who is holding my hand, but Ro. And we’re back underneath the bluff again, in the cave. I can hear the waves, all around us.

  Ro leans closer to me, looking at my mouth, and suddenly all I can taste is pomegranate—

  I wake up staring at pomegranate seeds.

  No.

  They’re not pomegranate seeds. They’re ceiling tiles, with hundreds of tiny dots on them. And the waves aren’t waves. They don’t crash, they only hum. Evenly and endlessly.