No! He would not go down the tunnel with his head hung low. He was once great—he had to remember that. He once inspired fear and respect, but he gave that up for Allie. Because he loved her. And although he still loved her deeply, it wasn’t the same as it had been, and he marveled at how love could have so many hidden textures … for the feeling that once cushioned his heart now chafed at it.

The five of them walked through most of the night to make up for lost time, then early the next morning, Milos took Allie out for more skinjacking lessons. Today Milos taught her the skills of “justicing,” and “terminizing.”

Justicing involved skinjacking the incarcerated. There was a penitentiary halfway between Lebanon and Nashville, and that’s where Milos took her.

“I know it is not a romantic place for a date,” he had joked.

“Good thing it’s not a date,” she reminded him.

While the electrified gate of a high-security prison kept the living from escaping, it was little more than an annoyance for an Afterlight. Allie felt the current as she passed through the gate, and it left her with a passing feeling that resembled indigestion, if one could feel indigestion throughout one’s entire body.

Once inside the prison, they proceeded to skinjack various prisoners, with the specific goal of determining if they were guilty of the crime they were imprisoned for.

“That’s impossible,” Allie had told him before they began. “Sure, we can hear their thoughts, but only the things they happen to be thinking about—and if we get too close, they know we’re there, and they freak out.”

“Ah, but we can control the direction of their thoughts,” Milos had told her, “without them ever knowing we are there.” Then he told her to skinjack one of the milder looking prisoners, and at the same time, think of something that made her feel guilty. Her thoughts immediately went to Mikey, and how bad she felt that he was left alone while the rest of them were out skinjacking—and as those thoughts filled her, she suddenly got flashes from the prisoner. His own guilty conscience told her that, yes, he did steal all those social-security checks from helpless elderly men and women.

The moment the confession hit her, Allie peeled herself out, stunned. It took her a few minutes until she was willing to try it again. She tried four more times before it became too much for her. The last prisoner was either innocent, or too hard to read, she wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” Milos told her. “Guilt is easy, innocence is hard.”

“But what’s the point of it?” Allie asked. “They’re already in prison—what’s the point in us knowing they’re guilty?”

Milos grinned. “What if the ones we justice are not in prison?”