Timon had been rummaging through their meager belongings, starting the process of setting up camp, but stiffened and dropped everything, ran to where Letti stood. After Isaac and Sadina exchanged a worried look, they did the same. Soon the four of them were lined up, facing the long length of the bridge, which looked like it had melted and twisted in the sun, rusted in the rain, half of its former parts long fallen into the rushing waters below. The structure seemed one stiff wind from completely collapsing.

But it held. It held for now, enough of it still put together for someone to walk across.

And someone was. A lady.

Carefully picking her way along the treacherous steel skeleton, she was heading toward them, maybe a third of the way across. She waved an arm in greeting, and for a split second Isaac thought she’d lose her balance and tumble from the precarious perch. But far too cheerfully, she continued her approach.

Timon then said something that Isaac truly hoped the lady didn’t hear.

“Should we kill her?”

Letti’s response was even worse.

“Yes.”

They’re just kidding, Isaac thought. No, they’d killed Kletter. Images of his family flashed across his mind, of Kletter, of water and blood and death. Waving his arms, he yelled at the lady to go back, to run away.

Timon snorted a laugh.

The lady kept coming.

“Roxy!”

He had sprinted to the edge of the bridge’s entrance, feeling as if his feet had barely made contact with the ground beneath. Not quite ready to bound across the sketchy, rusted remains of what had once been a mighty structure, he stopped and yelled her name again. She turned her head to look back at him, and he expected a glare of annoyance—the feeling would’ve been mutual. But instead she had a genuine expression of excitement, of a childlike glee, her eyes wide and a smile stretched across her face. It made her look twenty years younger.

“Come on!” she yelled to him. “It’s totally solid and safe!”

The four strangers spotted earlier stood on the far side of the bridge, lined up like young Orphans waiting to be handed instructions for their next trial. They didn’t seem especially menacing, but they didn’t exactly scream friendliness, either.

“Roxy, we have no idea who those people are! Get back over here!”

She was a sweet woman, an innocent woman, a trusting woman—the biggest evidence of which had been how quickly she’d warmed up to the Orphan himself when he’d straggled up to her house weeks ago, haggard and hungry. Not once had she shown the slightest suspicion toward him. He couldn’t let her make that mistake again.

“Please, Roxy! Just come back and we’ll figure this out.”