And it really is. He must see it in my face, because he lets my hand drop and examines the shard. His eyes widen. “Is this a piece of the ship?”

“Yeah. No one else knows about it.”

He stares at the jagged piece of glass in his hand. Then, suddenly, his breath catches and he fumbles the shard. I dive to catch it, then tuck it safely back in my pocket.

Elliott shakes his head. “Sorry. I thought I saw …”

“Colors?” I supply. “Flickering across its surface?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why we’re here. One of the researchers who lobbied to study the wreckage on the island is a consciousness expert. I want to take the shard to him, have him examine it. He and his team were supposed to get here three days ago—which is why I got here three days ago—but they got delayed till this morning. Then I found out you’d be released tonight, so I decided to wait a little longer.” I start walking toward the prefab buildings behind us, motioning Elliott to follow.

After a second, he does. “You think Mirage might still be alive.”

“Maybe. If he is, we have to help him.”

“We?”

“Me. The researcher. You, if you’ll help me. Ty.”

He pauses. “So you really did find your brother?” he asks at last. There’s something in his voice that wants to be glad but can’t quite manage it. After all, he doesn’t have a brother anymore.

I hunch my shoulders. “Yeah,” I confirm.

“And … he’s part of the ‘us’ you invited me to stay with earlier.”

“Yes. If you want.”

He doesn’t answer for a second. We pick our way through the debris on the street, walk past the rubble that used to be the storm drain where I hid to watch Sam Garcia’s exile. It’s also the storm drain where Elliott escaped his mother, that last day at the bridge.

“I’d like that,” Elliott says at last. We’ve come to the biggest prefab building. He reaches for the door’s handle, pulls it open. “My dad is still somewhere in Miami, I think. He was always close with Braedan. I hated him, but now I think that might be mostly because my mom hated him. Maybe I’ll … reach out. See if he wants to talk.” There’s only a small catch in his voice when he mentions his mother. He knows she’s gone—he’ll have to have seen her body next to mine when he found me on Mirage—but I know that it’ll keep hurting, in one way or another, for the rest of his life.

“That’s a good idea,” I tell him, then pause. I’m standing at the entrance of the building, one foot on either side of the threshold. A familiar compulsion rises in me.

Elliott notices. He doesn’t say anything. He waits.