With Jamie, I understood why. More than anyone else, he had accepted me and Mel as the package deal we were. He was able, with his young, open mind, to grasp the reality of our dual personalities. He treated us like two people rather than one. Mel was so real, so present to him. The same way she was to me. He didn’t miss her, because he had her. He didn’t see the necessity of our separation.

I wasn’t sure why Ian didn’t understand. Was he too caught up in the potential? The changes this would mean for the human society here? They were all boggled by the idea that getting caught—the end—was no longer a finality. There was a way to come back. It seemed natural to him that I had acted to save the Seeker; it was consistent with his idea of my personality. Maybe that was as far as he’d considered it.

Or maybe Ian just didn’t have a chance to think it all through, to see the glaring eventuality, before he was distracted. Distracted and enraged.

“I should have killed him years ago,” Ian ranted as we packed what we needed for our raid. My final raid; I tried not to dwell on that. “No, our mother should have drowned him at birth!”

“He’s your brother.”

“I don’t know why you keep saying that. Are you trying to make me feel worse?”

Everyone was furious with Kyle. Jared’s lips were welded into a tight line of rage, and Jeb stroked his gun more than usual.

Jeb had been excited, planning to join us on this landmark raid, his first since I’d come to live here. He was particularly keen to see the shuttle field up close. But now, with Kyle putting us all in danger, he felt he had to stay behind just in case. Not getting his way put Jeb in a foul mood.

“Stuck behind with that creature,” he muttered to himself, rubbing the rifle barrel again—he wasn’t getting any happier about the new member of his community. “Missin’ all the fun.” He spit on the floor.

We all knew where Kyle was. As soon as he’d grasped how the Seeker-worm had magically transformed into the Lacey-human in the night, he’d slipped out the back. I’d been expecting him to lead the party demanding the Seeker’s death (I kept the cryotank always cradled in my arms; I slept lightly, my hand touching its smooth surface), but he was nowhere to be found, and Jeb had quashed the resistance easily in his absence.

Jared was the one to realize the jeep was gone. And Ian had been the one to link the two absences.

“He’s gone after Jodi,” Ian had groaned. “What else?”