Guards were pouring in through several doors along the wall. They’d found him. Regardless of what had really happened here, he was now at their mercy, which he doubted would be very liberal.

He released the man, let the knife fall to the platform, and lifted his hands in a show of surrender. “Run, Silvie! Save yourself! Find Darsal. Find Karas. Run!”

They fell on him with a tangle of sweaty arms and sharp curses. A pair of shiny silver shackles were clamped around his wrist and tightened. They hurried him from the building and shoved him into a Chevy with lights atop it, like the ones that had first given pursuit. Johnis slouched in the back, behind a cage that separated him from the pilot.

It took them only a few minutes to reach their prison and shuffle him into a plain white holding room with a table and chairs, all made of a white material like wood, but smoother and more uniform.

Johnis had never felt as lost as he did now.

“CALL ME SERGEANT CRAMSEY,” THE OFFICER SAID, OFFERING his hand and sitting across the table from Johnis. “What would your name be?”

Seated here so helplessly, Johnis considered his options with growing pessimism. Silvie was out there, completely lost without him. They had no idea where Darsal or Karas were or how to get word to them. He was no longer sure if Las Vegas really was a Horde city from the past or some kind of mix between human and Scab.

What he did know was that he felt sick for having lost Silvie. The forlorn sound of her voice crying for him from beyond the wall made his belly rise each time he thought about it, and he couldn’t get her cry out of his mind. Tears threatened to overtake his eyes. He turned away from the man, unsure if he should tell him his name.

Then again, the only way to find Silvie, Darsal, or Karas was to make his whereabouts known. Johnis faced the Cramsey. “My name is Johnis.”

“Last name?”

“Just Johnis. Johnis of Middle.”

“Well, Johnis Middle, seems you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble.” He flipped through a report in his hands. “Reckless driving, speeding, stolen vehicle, disrupting the peace, attempted manslaughter . . . What the heck were you thinking, boy?”

“I was thinking they wanted to execute me.”

“You expect me to believe that you raced into the Excalibur with real weapons and put a blade to a man’s throat because you believed someone was after you?”

Johnis looked up at a thin glass box with moving pictures. Another amazing invention from the Histories. It was all far more than he could grasp.

“What is that?”

The officer looked at the glass box. “A Net screen. The Net, the news. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen the Net.”

He frowned and shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”