“I’ve told Mkele,” said Marcus. “I’m not stupid. Mkele’s looking for Nandita, but I’m not too anxious to tell the Senate that I was in contact with the enemy.” He moved his finger slowly around the whorls of a knot. “I guess we’re still afraid of being lynched,” he said. “Afraid of being caught. Do you know what the others told me?”

Xochi narrowed her eyes. “What others?”

“Your other sisters,” said Marcus, “Madison and Isolde. They got evacuated in the first group, to protect the children, so I talked to them quickly before they left. They said Kira wasn’t the first girl Nandita adopted.”

Xochi cocked her head. “Really? I mean, I never assumed she was until we started talking about that photo, but now it seems kind of weird that she wasn’t.”

“By the time she had Kira, she already had the other one,” said Marcus. “Ariel.”

Xochi nodded, as if this piece of information was especially profound. “Ariel moved out a couple of years ago,” she said, “before I moved in. I didn’t know her well, but she never got along with any of the other girls, and she hated Nandita like you wouldn’t believe.”

Marcus counted them off on his fingers. “Ariel in Philadelphia, Kira in a refugee camp, Isolde here on the island, and Madison a full year later when Jayden got chicken pox—he stayed in quarantine, Madison stayed here, and the situation worked so well she never moved out. Madison said Nandita fought like a lion to get her moved here instead of somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“Anybody’s guess,” said Marcus. “But Madison does remember the first thing Nandita said when she brought her to the house: ‘Now you can teach me.’”

Xochi frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Marcus, standing up, “but there’s only one person left to ask.” He walked to the door and drew back the bolt. “You head to the rendezvous point. I’m going to go find Ariel.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kira and Afa were waiting on the George Washington Bridge with a pile of equipment when Samm and Heron finally appeared with the horses, not right at noon but soon thereafter. Afa, of course, had his backpack, stuffed to the seams with originals and copies of all his most important documents. If the worst happened, and his record stash was raided or destroyed, he had enough in his backpack to . . . Kira wasn’t sure. To write a really good history book about the end of the world. What they needed now were the answers that would make it all add up: What was the Failsafe? Why did the Trust end the world? And how could they use that knowledge to save what was left?

“This is too much,” said Heron, reining up her horse. It nickered, breathing heavily. “We’ll have to leave most of it.”