Crayton reaches forward and touches my hand. I meet his solemn, yet encouraging eyes. ‘It’s okay that you don’t know. I’ll show you whatever I can,’ Crayton says. ‘I’m not just Ella’s Cêpan now; I’m all of yours. As long as I’m alive, Marina, you can count on me.’

I nod, and place my palm against the lock. Now that Adelina is dead, I can open my Chest on my own and it’s a bittersweet power. Six watches me, and I know she understands exactly how I’m feeling, having also lost her Cêpan. The cold metal lock shakes against my skin. With a click, it falls to the floor of the truck. The dirt road we’re driving on is covered with potholes and debris, constantly jostling me and making it hard for me to steady my hand as I reach inside the Chest. I’m careful not to touch the glowing red crystal in the corner that caused me so much trouble in the orphanage’s belfry, the one I worried was a Loric grenade, or worse. I reach for a pair of dark glasses.

‘Do you know what these are for?’ I ask Crayton. He examines them for a second but hands them back to me, shaking his head.

‘I don’t know for sure, but they may give you the power to see through things, like X-ray vision. Or they could be thermal detectors, good for seeing at night. There’s only one way to find out, you know.’

I place the glasses on my face and look out the window. Aside from dulling the brightness of the sun, nothing else seems to happen. I check my hands but they’re just as solid as before, and when I look up at Crayton’s face, there aren’t any thermal hot spots.

‘So?’ asks Six. ‘What do they do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, checking the barren landscape out the window again. ‘Maybe they’re just ordinary sunglasses.’

‘I doubt it,’ Crayton says. ‘They have a use that you will discover, just like everything else in there.’

‘Can I see them?’ Ella asks. I hand them over.

She slides the glasses up her nose, then twists around and looks out the back window.

I turn back to my Chest.

‘Wait – everything looks a little different somehow but I  can’t figure out why. It’s almost like seeing everything a  little delayed  . . . or maybe sped up  . . . I can’t decide.’ Suddenly Ella gasps, then shouts, ‘Rocket! Rocket!’

We follow her line of vision, but I don’t see anything but crystal-blue sky.

‘Where?’ Crayton yells. Ella points up at the sky. ‘Get out of the truck! We have to get out right now!’

‘There’s nothing there.’ Six squints into the horizon. ‘Ella, I think those glasses are messing with you, because I don’t see anything.’