Irritated at the tightness in his stomach, he glanced at the lean-to where Nicole was asleep. As he peered into the darkness of her shelter, he acknowledged another conflict churning inside him. Since her attempted escape, they had settled into a sullen truce that left him filled with a nagging sense of guilt. She spoke only when it was absolutely necessary and steadfastly ignored him whenever he tried to be even minimally sociable. And yet, over the past three days he had developed a grudging admiration for her stubborn courage. Only today had his own body begun toughening up, the chafed skin callousing over and the crippling stiffness leaving him. And he had spent his life on a horse! Yet never once had Nicole complained or asked for an early stop. Part of that was the result of her anger at him, but part was sheer courage.

He picked up a log and set it carefully on the fire so as not to awaken her, but Cricket suddenly stood up and trotted to his side. Eric reached over and scratched behind her ears as she lay down next to him contentedly. A moment later Nicole emerged out of the shelter. She walked over to the fire, picking her way carefully in her stockinged feet, and sat down across from him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t wake me. I was already awake.”

“You too?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow’s a big day. For both of us.”

She didn’t reply, and for several minutes they both stared at the flames licking hungrily at the log Eric had added to the fire.

“Nicole?”

“Yes?”

He hesitated, trying to sort out his thoughts. “Are you sure you want to go back?”

Her head came up slowly, and in the moonlight he could see a look of disbelief on her face.

“I mean, well, I know you want to go back home, but do you think you really can go back to Central Control and be a Guardian again?”

“Again? I didn’t realize I had stopped.”

“I heard what you said to Travis that night in your living room. You don’t want to be a Monitor anymore, right?”

“That was before you came back,” she snapped. “That changed a lot of things.”

He ignored that. “It’s open war now, Nicole. I wish we could stop the Major without an open confrontation, but we can’t. Are you ready to face another Cliff Cameron choice? Because that’s what it’s coming to.”

She brushed that away. “You’re free. Tomorrow your family will be free too. Why can’t you just go away?”

“What about the rest of my village—do I just write them off? And what about the other villages and towns dragged into this mess—do I have any obligation to them?”

“Is it your obligation to save the whole world?”