“Yes!” Liam made the connection a full second before I did. This was a tribe—these were kids. “Yes, we’re Psi, please—we’re Psi like you!”

“Lee? Liam Stewart?” There was a shuffle of feet running toward us.

“Mike? That you?” That, from Liam.

“Oh my God…stop, stop!” The gun lifted off my face, but I was still pinned to the ground. “I know him—that’s Liam Stewart! Stop! Hayes, get off of him!”

“He saw; you know the rules!”

“Jesus, are you deaf?” Mike yelled. “The rules apply to adults—they’re kids, you asshole!”

I don’t know if Liam finally managed to throw him off, or if Mike’s words did the trick, but I felt Liam rise next to me, and opened my eyes in time to see Liam drive his shoulder into the black figure on top of me. I gulped in a full chest of air.

“Are you all right?” he asked. He put his hands on either side of my face. “Ruby, look at me—you okay?”

My hands came up to grab his. I nodded.

Of the six guys gathered around us, only two pulled their knit ski caps up off their faces: the big kid—big in a Hercules kind of way—with ruddy skin and black paint under both eyes, and another one with olive coloring, shaggy brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail. The latter was Mike. He reached over and pulled the letters out of Hercules’s hand and pressed them against his own chest.

“Lee, man, I’m so sorry. I never thought—” Mike choked up. Liam let go of one of my hands to clap him on the back. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Liam took the letters back from him, and reached back to draw me forward again. “We’re okay now,” he told me. It seemed to be true enough. The other kids in black had lost interest in us the minute Mike stepped up.

“God, Lee,” he said, wiping the rain off his face. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you actually made it out.”

Liam’s voice was tight. “I thought you were with Josh when…”

“I was, but I got through the fields.” He added, “Thanks to you.”

Another kid, this one with skin as dark as Chubs, jerked his thumb in Liam’s direction. “This is Lee Stewart?” he demanded. “From Caledonia?”

“From North Carolina,” Liam said, with surprising venom.

Mike gripped Liam’s hand, his entire body shaking. “The others—did you see if any of the others made it out?”

Liam hesitated. I knew what he was thinking, and I wondered if he would tell Mike the truth about how many kids actually escaped that night.

Instead, their watches went off at once, a shrill beep.

“That’s time,” Hercules said to the others. “Grab the supplies and head back. The uniforms will be here any second.”

A single gunshot punctuated his order like an exclamation point, thundering across the open road. Liam and I both jumped back, away from them.

The kids at the back of the truck were tossing down the entirety of the truck’s load: boxes and crates of brightly colored fruit. My lips parted at the sight of green bananas, just a few days shy of being ripe.