The taxi flew up the avenue for a few minutes, then turned by the movie studio and stopped at a light. At a piano on the sidewalk—some kind of public art thing?—a young girl was playing while her mother took a video on her phone. Eden cracked the window to hear what song it was: “Yankee Doodle Dandy” or was it just “Yankee Doodle”?

Disappointing either way.

They’d better show.

Eli

ELI

Eli sat on the steps in front of school and waited. The device was quiet in his bag and had been since the nursing home. He didn’t like it. It felt wrong, like the device was somehow gearing up for a big move in their game.

Marwan appeared in front of him. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You have it?”

“Of course,” Eli said.

“You think this is going to work?” Marwan said.

“Not if you keep talking about it,” Eli snapped.

“Jeez,” Marwan said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Eli said. “Just want this to be over with.”

He couldn’t live like this for another day. Nothing could happen to his sister or grandfather. Nothing would. She was safe at home, and the pacemaker was far, far away.

A green cab pulled up, and Eden rolled down the back seat window.

“Hey,” she said, and they moved to get in.

The car smelled like fake Christmas trees—a bad combination of pine and something Eli couldn’t place but a spice, probably. The back seat was oddly sunken. It was hard to even see the road ahead through the taxi partition.

“We’re really doing this?” Marwan said.

Eden nodded. “Yup.”

Eli nodded, too. Why were they talking when the device could hear?

The cab hit a nice green valley down Thirty-Third Street, but then traffic started to back up by the Grand Central Parkway. People, typical, were being jerks and turning onto the highway on-ramp from lanes that weren’t meant to feed to the highway at all. Three lanes had to merge down to one, and their driver was one of those drivers who was all herky-jerky with the gas and brake, and Eli felt a bit sick from it.

They cruised along at a decent speed for all of five minutes before settling into stop-and-go traffic; there were ambulance lights up ahead.

“Great,” Eden said. “An accident.”

“You don’t think …?” Marwan said.

Eli said, “Turn off your phones.”

Eden said, “Mine’s already off.”

Marwan said, “Mine, too.”

He expected the bag to vibrate, or for the device to scream something out at them. Its silence was almost worse.

They were coming up on the accident. A fender bender. Nothing horrific. Eli’s relief was a surprise to him.

“Get off here,” Eden said, leaning forward to talk to the driver once the traffic started moving again. “Then left at the light.”

“There’s nothing to the left,” the driver said.

“You’ll see,” Eden said.