Piercey sighed at my claim that Dr. Henderson threatened to kill me so that he would obey. "No. She never threatened that. I just know her. If you keep crossing her, I'm afraid I won't be able to save you. Let's get on the same page and make our world better. Don't be stubborn."

"You're a fool, Piercey. I'm going to prove it to you."

Anger hardened his voice. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'll provoke her and let you see who she really is. I doubt you ever piss her off enough to see behind her mask. Her council ought to know she's devolving as she plays god with our world. There's no experiment anymore, Piercey. Dr. Henderson has truly become a god. Our world is for her, now."

He groaned. "We're just not on the same page. I need to share what I've learned with you. That's the only way for us to understand each other. See, we've made war with these neural implants and missed their most basic functions. Things children in other worlds grow up knowing how to do are lost on us." He reached both his hands out. "If you still trust me, I can give it all to you, right now."

I stared at his hands. "How?"

"I have a neural link with my graduates. We can communicate with our minds any time we tap in. We don't need computers. Our implants are linked. But I've never shared everything with someone before. I want you to have it, Max. I want you to have everything I've been through, everything I've learned, every ounce of wisdom I have."

My heart started to pound. "You'll open your soul to me."

He laced his fingers with mine. "All of it."

"Piercey…"

"Trust is all it takes." His eyes lowered. Voice lowered. "It doesn't mean anything more than that."

The pain on his face crushed my heart. "Leif and Wren are my blood, Piercey. But you've never stopped being my best friend. Not for a moment." I squeezed his hands. "Take what I have too. Understand me and I'll understand you."

"If you hold nothing back, I'll have it all. Your every memory and thought."

I glanced at the window where Nash slept still. I couldn't share everything.

"You don't need to save me from the things I already know." Piercey smiled sadly. "I know how you see him, Max. And I know how you see me. It's okay."

Sadness tinged my thoughts. Knowing it and experiencing it were different. "I can't hold anything back?"

"Once you close up, it's hard to keep the rest of yourself open. You don't have to give. You can just receive."

"No. We both need to know everything. Let's do this."

"Linking will give you a weapon I've been working on for a very long while."

"What weapon?"

He lowered his voice. "It's safer to show you."

The look that had always stopped me in my tracks as a kid, made me retreat, burned in Piercey’s eyes, somehow brighter than ever. How could he still love me? After all these years? I’d left him behind, but he never left me. I’d had him this whole time.

The other day I'd slipped back to when I fled the Sacred School. I could feel his embrace now, as if that girl I’d been and the woman I’d grown into shared the same body. It’d been different than any other time we hugged. Didn’t feel like it was between the kids who’d survived this terrible Sacred School together anymore, but instead the people who’d been quietly growing inside of them. His hands had touched me differently that day. Touched me more like he did now. When he’d pressed his lips against mine, it was the first time I’d ever kissed someone.

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It was confusing then. Such an experience, to be kissed and to kiss a boy.

But I'd quickly found it didn't feel right to me. Not with him.

Piercey breathed out slowly and closed his eyes. "It's as easy as opening a door. When you feel me, let me in. I'll do the same for you."

I didn't understand. Couldn't understand. Not until it happened. Warmth spread from his palms into mine, tingled up my arms, flowed into heat that washed over me from head to toe. Everything we'd experienced together filled me as if I remembered every second at once. I could hold back. I could shut down.

Instead I opened myself to my friend and I let him in, no matter what it meant for us.

My eyes ripped open. Our gaze met and his life washed into me. It was the same as waking from a dream and remembering in a single moment who you were. What your life was. All of it there within you.

I didn't have to wonder what this meant for us. I knew. Knew him fully. Somehow knew myself more fully.

"I'd forgotten." My voice came out hoarse. "We really do need each other."

A tear slid down his cheek. The piece of me that had missed him was healed now. The anger over our differences gone.

With our knowledge and experience combined, everything that had been unclear was now so apparent. Piercey really believed that he could work with Dr. Henderson because the influence she gave him helped him turn the Sacred School into an academy of peace and healing. But the fact that she was intervening when she claimed she wouldn't told me everything I needed to know. I had no doubt she was taking action Piercey knew nothing about. The things Flare had said were similar to Dr. Henderson. Piercey wasn't the only partner. Flare must have been too.

Piercey would know that now. But when we connected, I felt his hesitance still to take action. He was so trusting in the good of others.

He breathed out slowly. "If Dr. Henderson tries to destroy you, you have to use what I learned. Use the weapon I gave you. I know you'll want to use it regardless, but you know how I feel. The risk is too great if it can be avoided."

Piercey had never stopped trying to learn how to hack into our simulation, because he knew one day I might ask for it, and he'd been right back then. He never could deny me. More than that, he trusted me to do something he didn't trust himself to be able to do. He trusted me to decide whether to use it. And experiencing the way he saw me made me trust myself too. Because Piercey was the smartest person I'd ever met. If he believed in me, why shouldn't I believe in myself?

I took my friend's hand. "Dr. Henderson taught you how to open your soul to someone so you would do it with me. She thinks you'll change me. She thinks when I see her next, when we see her next, that we'll work with her together." I shook my head. "Before I leave to battle the Prophet, I have to see her, and figure out what she's been doing in the valley. Otherwise, I don't know what I'm walking into. I'll be wise with the weapon." Although, I could use the threat of hacking the simulation to force her to confess her actions to me.

His expression was hard. Before Piercey had known not to trust Dr. Henderson, but now that he truly saw from my point of view and witnessed what Skia Hellig truly had been through, he must have understood how dangerous his game was. It had been a lie when she told us she didn't intervene in our world. Even if I killed the Prophet, my people wouldn't be free. Piercey had been right that I had the strength to fight this battle, though it wasn't because of the energy that killed those people at the eclipse. It was because I knew the truth and I wasn't afraid to do something about it.

Dr. Henderson was fucking with our world, and I would stop her at all costs.

"We'll save your people, Max. And we'll find a way to free the people from the corruption of the Prophets, and Flare's manipulation, and the crushing power of our implants. I can't promise I'll kill the Prophet or fight Dr. Henderson. Only that we'll find a way to help everyone. Just tell Dr. Henderson one thing for me. Tell her, I'm with you. No matter what."

I swallowed hard. "I will, Piercey." So that was it. He'd choose me. Neither of us had really had the right approach. It wasn't as simple as killing Flare and the Prophets or having the gods take away our power. It wasn't as diplomatic as Piercey working with Dr. Henderson to right all our wrongs. As long as Dr. Henderson had so much power over our world, we would never be free to determine our own path. Piercey couldn't deny me. He was letting me follow my heart, despite his misgivings. I'd prove to him that his trust wasn't misplaced.

Piercey gestured at the window. "Nash is waking up."

Opening ourselves up to one another hadn't changed the way we felt. Only deepened it. Deepened it so much that I knew without doubt I was never going to fall in love with him. Only love him more deeply as my friend. But he was cursed. Cursed with more than that for me. The pain of that burden ate away at me as I looked into his eyes.

"Go ahead," Piercey said. "He'll want to see you."