Lily sat on a bed, surrounded by a trove of American Girl dolls that she had placed around her like a shield. As he stepped into the doorway, she practically plowed over them.

He could feel her tears wet his shoulder after he swept her up.

“You went away. Why did you do that?” she said, her voice muffled in his shirt.

He found himself nuzzling his face on the top of her head. “I didn’t want to, kiddo. But I had to get away from the men who took me. One of them I had to pay a whole lot of money to sneak away.”

She looked up at him. “I still have your dress on. They brought me new clothes but I didn’t care.”

He smiled, his vision blurry.

The dreams were coming constantly, an insistent barrage, making sleep useless. William could feel its hunger for him.

Hunger and rage, just as he experienced when he first sought out Jane during the dream, and again when he reached out in the vast, unexplored darkness that opened in his mind as he tried to find Nanna.

Anger at his defiance. And it grew in intensity each time he found a way to block it.

It took Jane to show him how.

He hadn’t thought of it when he communicated with the others. When he’d finally found Nanna, he was exhausted, barely clawing through the dark to cry out to her. It was if he were yelling at her underwater, knowing she couldn’t understand his words. He’d extended his hand, feeling as if he were a rubber band about to snap. She’d stretched for him. With a single touch, a brush of their fingertips, the connection was so strong that he saw exactly where she was, and in turn, knew she could do the same. He could barely speak.

“Quincy,” he’d said in that second. “Tell Quincy Martin. Level forty-two.”

The band broke, and he spun back through the black and into the fluorescent light of the room. He was so tired, he’d closed his eyes, only to find the dream waiting.

So he’d reached out to Lily, but she became so upset at his eventual departure that he worried he was doing more harm than good letting her know he was still there. Ryan, too, became agitated when he had to leave.

Jane, however, gave him no choice. When he checked on her welfare, she made it clear that he was not allowed to break their communication until she said so. With a doctor’s precision, she’d begun to grill him on the dreams: what he was seeing, what it might mean when he saw the eyes of the other abducted, how he had broken through the dream to get to her, and what was at stake for all of them.