Malik grabs hold of the metal ladder and swings into the wind and throws out his arm and then he swings back in again. “Yeah,” he says. “But we’ve had practice. And you just picked it up. Like that.”

“I jumped on a train, Malik. I didn’t cure cancer.”

He laughs. Runs his hand through his hair. “Combat and sword-fighting…that’s level one of your Pathfinder skills, Ana. There are layers to your abilities.”

“Like?”

He looks at me, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “I want you to try something.”

“What?” I ask suspiciously.

“I want you to dodge.”

“Dodge what?”

“This.”

He spins out his pistol and, instinctively, as he lifts the barrel to my face, I slip sideways and turn my shoulder. The next thing I know, and with a blast of panic, I’m teetering forward over the edge, tracks running beneath me, and then I feel a hand grab my hoodie at the small of my back. Malik yanks me to safety.

“Are you testing me?” I demand, slapping his arm away.

Malik reholsters his gun and smiles.

“You’re quick,” he says, eyes dancing. “I thought so. That’s good news. But I’m still faster, so you’ll need to improve. And you will.”

A conversation I had with Vidhan, at the Haven in Ares, flashes back to me. I see him lift a glass off the table, and I watch the bobbing rings of light move apart and converge when he lowers the glass. See? Light can be in two places at the same time. So why not me? Why not you? Nothing is at rest. Everything moves.

“C’mon,” Malik says. “We’ll talk about this later. Let’s have some fun.” He tips his head at the open door. “Follow me.”

“Why?” I ask, feeling red-faced and irritable. “Where?”

“Up,” he says.

We climb the steel pipe ladder outside the door, ponchos swirling, the bare desert rushing below. We climb to the train’s roof and splay flat onto the hot metal. The wind screeches and hammers at us. Malik stands and leans forward, then turns and shouts something at me I can’t make out. I get up onto my feet and we stumble forward, up the length of the car, leaning into the wind. Each step an effort of will.

I watch Malik’s broad back, feeling unhinged by him. Angry. And, at the same time, excited.

Wild.

At the end of the car, we clamber down another steel ladder, step over the coupling joint and climb up the other side and onto the roof of the next.

The train rockets into a black tunnel and we fall flat in the sudden dark.

The tunnel releases us, and we shoot out into bright sunlight. Malik laughs into the wind. We hit another tunnel. And slam out the other side. And another.

Dark. Light. Dark. Light. One after the other.