The other trucks and vehicles were crowded around. One of the Case Fifty-Threes was acting as a television, projecting signals onto the side of a truck.

She fled from all of them, the surge of positive emotion giving way to doubts and anxieties. She wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself if she hadn’t said anything and she couldn’t forgive herself now that she had.

There wasn’t any good ditch nearby, so she propelled herself in the direction of the woods, stopping at the treeline. She stopped to ponder the mechanics of trying to bury herself alive inside her hamster ball, dismissed it as a silly idea, and spent long minutes stewing inside her own mire of thoughts, instead.

Footsteps trudged through grass, prompting her to turn around.

“Hi.”

She injected false positivity into her voice, “Hey Egg!”

“Can I pick you up?”

“Yep. Come on, cheek, cheek.”

He made a face, but he politely obeyed, holding the ball to one of his cheeks so she could faux-kiss it through the hard plastic, then turned his other cheek. It had started with one of the others doing it, one of the Case Fifty-Threes from Europe, a boy, had kissed Egg. To get Egg to relax about it more of the Irregulars had started doing it. That it included some girls seemed to motivate Egg.

“How’s our seniorest junior member doing?” she asked.

“I’m happy. I never thought life could be this good.”

“I’m so glad,” she said, her spirits lifting some from where they’d been.

“It’s a temporary kind of good, but it’s good. Are you okay? Are you good?”

“I’m… feeling very full of complicated.”

“Sitting in a ball in the woods—”

“Edge of the woods.”

“Doing nothing but getting ticks and mites and fleas all over you, crawling in through the air holes.”

“Ew, no, ick.”

“No,” he said. He held her up, moved his flashlight against the orb, illuminating everything and creating stars behind her eyes, and searched the interior. “One ant.”

“Great. Company.”

There was laughter from one of the groups by the trucks. Weld had left the truck and was probably looking for her or something. She felt five different kinds of humiliated and awful.

“Sitting in the woods in the dark with an ant to keep you company.”

“And you.”

“And me,” Egg said. He smiled.

“Just thinking,” she said.

She watched as the smile fell from Egg’s face.

“What?”

“I was talking with some of the guys, I think it was yesterday. You know, I’m the oldest of the under-sixteens. The older Irregulars found the one we’re calling The Cloak two days ago—”

“Mantellum.”

“Yeah. And it sounds like as soon as we have a good window or opportunity to go after Cauldron, we can.”

She nodded.

“We were talking about who’s going and it sounds like I am. The other junior Irregulars aren’t. Whippersnap and those guys.”

“Yes,” she said. She’d talked about it with Weld.