“Pay attention to what?” asked Adeline.

“You pay attention to what you know, not what they say.”

“I know…” Adeline faltered. She wasn’t acting now. Her eyes were trapped by Sophia’s imploring stare. Her lips pinched, pulled, frowned.

Had Sophia made Adeline…bashful?

An aircraft swooped down from the night sky, then another, their lights finding the trio quickly.

As the spotlights tore open the dark, they found Adeline pressed to Sophia, their lips locked. There was a force to the kiss that magnetized Sophia and sent gleeful static through the reverie’s fabric. Kane gasped. Actually gasped.

Adeline broke off the kiss, saying, “Now you have to take me. If you leave me, you kill me.”

Sophia uncuffed Adeline. “Then you’d better keep up. Both of you, get ready.”

Kane took one hovercycle, and Adeline slid on the back of Sophia’s. They maneuvered to face the ship that had just landed. From its hull slid a ramp, and out poured soldiers sporting large guns. Then came the music. A soaring string overture Kane recognized from his mom’s record collection of girl group music from the fifties.

Kane didn’t know how to drive a hovercycle, but he thought it might begin with the big green button in the shape of an arrow. His hand hovered over it, ready.

The soldiers fanned out, keeping in time with the beat. One opened an umbrella for their leader, who stepped down the ramp daintily. She was a woman in a tweed suit, the narrow skirt allowing her only small steps. She was perhaps in her sixties and immaculately composed. Her femininity cost her no authority, and it was clear she scared Sophia.

“Miss Smithe,” Sophia whispered, her eyes locking with the woman’s white glare.

Kane realized this was a projection of Sophia’s real-life nemesis: Headmistress Smithe of Pemberton’s School for Girls, a beacon of antiquated thinking according to Sophia. The reverie began to make sense.

“That’s right,” said Miss Smithe silkily. “The Bright Hand has plagued my Committee long enough with your juvenile pilfering. I thought I would personally attend your capture.”

Sophia stood in the seat of her hovercycle. “The rebellion will never die! History can never die!”

“Tsk tsk,” said Miss Smithe. “A little girl, playing at archivist, but if she had any talent for history she would recognize the erroneous ways of the world she wishes to resurrect. The truly liberal are the truly misguided, for there is no bastion in a world without Holy Society. You know this. You’ve heard of the Doom that lays beyond Everest’s lights. It is the Doom that we, the Committee, hold at bay so that all citizens may thrive.”

“You’re wrong,” Sophia screamed. “Everest isn’t a bastion. It’s a prison! I’ve been beyond the lights. I’ve seen—”

“Enough!” said Miss Smithe sharply. “Miss Buffy Crawford, please step forward and arrest this radical at once.”