“We’ll have to wait until they stop moving,” I say. “Maybe then they’ll open their Chest and we can send a message. We’ll watch in shifts. We need to get to Five before the Mogs do.”

Marina volunteers to take the first shift. I linger in the workshop after the others have gone. Even with all this excitement about Five, I haven’t forgotten about our other problems, specifically Ella and her nightmares.

“I talked to Ella today,” I begin. “In her nightmares, Setrákus Ra asks her if she’s opened some letter. Any idea what that could mean?”

Marina looks away from where Five’s pulsing beacon cruises across Oklahoma. “Crayton’s letter, maybe?”

“Her Cêpan?”

“Back in India, right before he died, Crayton gave her a letter.” Marina frowns. “With everything that’s happened, I almost forgot about it.”

“She hasn’t read it?” I ask, feeling a little exasperated. “We’re fighting a war here; it could be important.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy for her, John,” Marina says, levelly. “Those are Crayton’s last words. Reading it would be like admitting that he’s really gone and not coming back.”

“But he is gone,” I reply quickly. Too quickly. I pause, thinking back to when Henri was killed. He’d been like a father to me and, even more than that, he was the only constant in a life spent constantly on the run. For me, the idea of Henri was almost like the idea of home—wherever he was, that’s where he was safe. Losing him was like having the world ripped out from under me. I was older than Ella when it happened, too. I shouldn’t expect her to be able to just brush it off.

I sit down next to Marina, sighing. “Henri—my Cêpan—he left me a letter too. He gave it to me when he was dying. We were on the road for days before I could bring myself to read it.”

“See? It’s not so easy. Plus, if Setrákus Ra showed up in my dreams and told me to do something, I’d definitely do the opposite.”

I nod. “I get it. I do. She needs to grieve. I don’t mean to sound heartless. When all this is over, when we win, we’ll have time to mourn the people we’ve lost. But until then, we need to gather all the information we can and find anything that might work to our advantage.” I wave my hand at the screen with Five’s location. “We have to stop just waiting around for the next crisis and start acting.”