“Yes. Please.” There had been this many people working in the compounds. There had been all the girls. Maybe it was because the girls had been cut on a regular schedule that they didn’t experience any prickles about one another. Or maybe they had been exposed to one another so much they stopped feeling the possibilities.

Or maybe they had felt no prickles about one another because none of them had had a real future.

Once Merri Lee left, Meg felt a moment’s relief. No prickles, no buzzing. She walked into the sorting room, not sure what she could find to do, especially if she ended up stuck there for a few hours.

She looked at the five CDs she’d been playing that week, but none of that music appealed to her right now. No mail, no packages, no deliveries bringing anything new today.

She opened the drawer that held the prophecy cards.

The room did one slow spin.

Meg slammed the drawer shut and held on to the counter. She gritted her teeth, craving the silver razor as her skin buzzed and crawled.

She was alone but she was still too close to too many strangers. The humans would remain within the Courtyard’s business district. She had to get away from it—and them.

She ran out the back door, then crossed the paved area between her office and the garages that held a couple of BOWs.

Had to get away before someone saw her and tried to argue.

Once she was on the road that would take her back to the Green Complex, she sighed with relief and trepidation. There would be such snarling when Simon found out she had bolted.

He wouldn’t be able to snarl at her for hours and hours since he had to protect the Courtyard. Maybe by the time the storm ended, he would be too tired to snarl.

Maybe pigs would learn to fly.

Entertained by the image of piglets with wings, she almost relaxed her death grip on the steering wheel, when a gust of wind lifted the passenger-side wheels off the road for one heart-hammering moment.

Meg looked around. Straight ahead would take her to the Green Complex—where she would be totally alone because everyone who lived there would be in the Market Square or with their own gards.

If she went to her apartment, her friends would fight against the storm to reach her. If something happened to her or Simon because of her need for solitude, what would happen to Sam?

“Sam,” she whispered. She needed a kind of quiet but not necessarily isolation.

Then she couldn’t see a thing. She rolled down a window, hoping it wasn’t her vision that had gone wacky. She stuck her head out, and her fuzz of hair was playfully lipped. Pulling back, she stared at the gray muzzle of the steed. “Fog?”