“Okay, okay!” Pushed past his patience, Daniel pointed me at a tumble of paperbacks. “Flip through them, see if anything’s inside.”

“What sort of anything?”

“Papers, page markers, scraps, anything not part of the book. Find something, toss it in here.” He plopped the bucket down between us. “The books go in that crate.”

I heard ‘papers’ in capital letters, but what kind he meant would have wait till I found some. I slid my water bottle behind me and bent over my assigned heap. Daniel dropped to his knees to paw through a neighboring scatter. He seemed to pick up books at random, but those already in the crate had the word ‘Mars’ on most of the spines. Coincidence? Rubio swore there’s no such thing. Like, I doubt I’d had a single thought about Mars before this week. Now it was turning up everywhere. If it’s not coincidence, what is it? A plan?

Down the line, the woman’s screams dulled to weeping and faded behind the crackle of flame. I prayed the old couple hadn’t lost more than their inventory. Then, as I shook open a water-stained copy of something called Swords of Mars, a thin fold of paper fell out.

“Good.” Daniel snatched it up before me, and dropped it in the pail.

“What are they?”

“Later. Keep looking!”

Another searing whoosh. Flames sprouted over the lamp dealer’s stall, leaping into the trees. Oily smoke roiled through the branches in a wave that made me cough and hold my breath. The already gray afternoon darkened.

“Hurry!” Daniel snatched at books so fast his fingers blurred.

“Can’t hardly see . . .”

“Just grab. Work by touch.”

We bent to it until I was truly smoke-blinded. I stood up to wipe my eyes on my wrist, then froze with a book in each hand as a half-dozen masked and armored figures stepped out of the fog like intruders from another dimension, futuristic weapons in hand, gleaming tanks strapped to their backs.

Brand new, shiny black. Weirdly out of place in the rough-hewn Souk, but I’d seen that kit-out before, minus the tanks and the guns with nozzles. Was I still in my bunk, writhing in a cartoon nightmare, the sort where you feel reality spinning out of control?

“Daniel . . .”

“Stay calm,” he murmured. “Say nothing.”

“That’s not Bright. Who . . . what are they?”

“For once, do what I say!”

I shut my mouth.

He straightened, his back to them, slowly dusting ash off his knees, grasping the rim of the waste pail as if to empty it. Turning, he seemed to discover the high-tech posse, strung out in an arc of threat and posturing. Suited up like the cloned infantry in a video game. Almost comical. Except this was no game.