Tess looked down and tried to figure out what course to take, how she could navigate the orange vectors. She knew it was probably not a good idea to run into any of them. At the moment, she was trying to delicately balance on one of them, as she’d stepped directly on it when she first went through the wall. If she were to slip, would she fall or get stopped, rather unpleasantly, she imagined, by one of them.

She wondered if she could walk with certainty or if there was a possibility she might fall through one of them. How stable were they? Would she be able to keep her balance? What would happen if she did fall? She could imagine Max suggesting, as the vectors sometimes crisscrossed at funny angles, that she try not to run into one of them; if she was on one and another one popped up in front of her, that it probably wasn’t a good idea to interfere with their space. Or that they might be like a spider web, interwoven somehow, and if one of them were to break, it might be the same as a large glass window shattering. Max would think that way. As if they might have an attitude or a design of their own. They probably were there for a reason, whatever the reason was. And they were bright orange, almost like a warning sign and definitely had a maze-like quality, that she thought she should try to figure out before she attempted a run on them. Max had taught her to be a little more careful. Max would say, for sure, that she should study them before she attempted a run on them. At least that was what she thought Max would say if he was with her. She wished he was with her to tell her what he really thought.

But he wasn’t.

Max was somewhere out there with Colin on the other side of the wall. Or was he?

She saw something crouching below her on one of the orange vectors, hunched up against the wall, as if he was hiding in the corner (or waiting for her). It was “the person who used to be Max.” He put his index finger up to his mouth as if to say “Shhhh!” Then covered his mouth with his hand, as if imploring her to stay quiet. His finger up again, “Shhh!” as his eyes begged her not to say a word. Tess understood the meaning, that somehow she wasn’t supposed to speak, as if the sound of her voice, any sound could set off an alarm, disturb the vectors—she wasn’t sure what—but the eyes that were looking at her, imploring her to silence, looked like Max’s. “The person who used to be Max” looked like Max again.

Tess put her index finger up to her own mouth, in a gesture of “Shh,” and nodded that she understood.