Orson had parked before he heard from either of his friends. He’d found a patch of riverbank low enough and stable enough to leave the water. He’d navigated through the trees until the foliage around the Aesir hid them from both the river and the sky.

“Did we hear anything?” Orson asked. “I think we’ll be fine where we are, but we’re stuck until we know where we’re going.”

“Nothing yet,” Jaleel said.

“We can get back to the road from here?” Enoa asked. Wesley now slept on her lap, breathing deeply, his spikes lying flat across his back.

“Hopefully.” Orson switched the view on the windshield to the outdated satellite imaging the Aesir still used for its comparisons. He saw the road they should take, an access route skirting the edge of the old Crystal Dune Complex’s property. Many miles distant, it joined a pre-interstate road that wound between remote desert villages in three states.

But the Aesir’s thermal imaging was purely localized. There was no way to plan their course in advance, no way to be certain there was any path through the trees that would take them to the access route. The forest between them and the road could be a maze without an exit. No way out.

“All we can do is try.” Orson zoomed out on his satellite imaging snapshot. He saw other places where the trees thinned between the river and the service route, but nowhere that didn’t require driving along the shore or in the open, visible. And the satellite scan he used was now years old. Full trees could not grow in less than a decade, but his data was still more assumption than truth.

“Hey!” Jaleel called. “We’re getting something!”

“Shhh!” Enoa waved at Jaleel. “You’ll wake Dr. Stan.” They’d situated their latest traveling companion in the last of the empty bunks. She had made no sound since closing the door.

“Sorry!” Jaleel took the page from the typewriter. “This must be Eloise. She says, ‘What are you thinking? No. No. No. No. No. No NO!

“‘Orson! Rob the Liberty Corps? One second you’re saying they have a Hierarchia battleship, the next you want to steal from them? How is that a good idea?

“‘I know you want to find this island, but there has to be another way. There has to be. This robbery idea might be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, unless you did some really stupid shit while you were out of the country.

“‘Get the anti-venom disguise for the Aesir and drive back here. We’ll think of something else together. Please!’”

“She took that well.” Orson groaned. “I didn’t think she’d be this upset. I’ve been to some pretty rough places before. So has she! If the Baron didn’t have that Starbird, this would probably just be another old Hierarchia base.”

“That ship is a pretty good reason not to go there,” Enoa said.

“Fair,” Orson said. “Okay, I have no idea what to say to her. Maybe the best way to tell her is to bring up the timeframe. Is there another way? Probably, but the Liberty Corps knows we’re after the Dreamside Road. We can’t sit around waiting for some sign while they’re busy collecting the rest of the keys.”

“That knight wanted to take my key today,” Enoa said. “Do you think they’re after multiple keys?”

“Pops thought so.” Orson turned around in his chair and looked at them. “He had some Liberty Corps intelligence that you need all eight keys held by Dreamthought Project members to get the Dreamside Road. I wanted to talk about this before we left Littlefield, but…”

“That’s why you threatened to destroy your key?” Enoa asked. “And that’s why your threat worked?”

“Eight keys?” Jaleel asked. “So this is a Pokemon gym badge, Voldemort Horcrux, Dragon Ball, Chaos Emerald kinda thing?”

“Maybe?” Orson said. “I only know a couple of those. You two are taking this better than I did. I’ve been really dreading telling you about this, Enoa. I thought – all you need is more to worry about, finding all eight of these damn things. We’ve only got a quarter of them.”

“Actually, I think there’s less pressure on me,” Enoa said. “Before, I was afraid they might get access to the Dreamside Road just from stealing mine, like, if I lost my key to that Rowan, it’d all be over. But, now I know for sure that isn’t true.”

“Well, I’m not totally sure,” Orson said, “one of those officers today mentioned some other way of getting to the trove.”

“Sounds like a bluff,” Jaleel said. “If you have to collect all the little widgets, then there’s no other way. Everybody knows that.”

“Hopefully,” Orson said. “But maybe not. I wouldn’t be surprised with anything about this. We just don’t…”

“Hey,” Jaleel said. “We’re getting another one.”

“Eloise again?” Orson asked.

“Nope. Your other friend. It looks like he wrote us a book!” Jaleel read.

“‘Hey Orson! How are you, man? I’m so stoked for you, buddy. It feels right for ships to have crews. Feng shui! It’s like a spiritual balance thing.

“‘A porcupine! I love porcupines! I had a stuffed toy porcupine when I was a kid – Mrs. Tig-winkle! She’s not a hedgehog so no Tiggy-winkle. But I think she was alive, man. She moved around on her own, like a ghost or a mystical guardian. She was still watching over me during the Millennium Soufflé Disaster, and I was sixteen then.

“‘Also, I gotta tell you, I don’t think porcupines fly. Are you sure what you have is a porcupine? Could it be a bat with a freaky fungus? I’ve been hearing about some bat fungus, but nothing about quills or spikes. How would that work? There was something about a white nose, though. Check out your porcupine’s nose when you get the chance. Or maybe it’s both, like a miracle of biology. A porcupine-bat. A porcubat. Hey, I know a conservationist from Maine who spends winters out here. Or she used to. Now that I mention her, I haven’t seen her in years. I hope she’s okay. But, if she’s still local, she might know what kind of animal you’ve got living with you. It’s a good thing to know that, man.’”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Jaleel removed the page from the typewriter. “Millennium Soufflé Disaster? Orson, what kind of person is this? Is he… okay?”

“Ted’s an original,” Orson said. “He’s an artist. He went the Culinary Institutes in New York and Paris to study the Pastry Arts. We’re all in for a big treat.”

“He wrote all of that and didn’t answer your question,” Jaleel said.

“Yeah,” Orson said. “Teddy does his baking this early in the morning so he’s probably writing in between other work. He’ll get back to us.” The typewriter began to move again.

“What will the typewriter do if Eloise and Teddy try to write to you at the same time?” Enoa asked. “Will it let them do that?”

“It should put through whoever writes first and the second one will wait in the queue,” Orson said. “But it could get confusing. Jaleel, who is it?”

“Teddy again. He says, ‘Oh, I almost forgot the good news! April moved in with me! The distance wasn’t too big a problem when all the trains were still going, but with them shutdown it was just too far. So we made the leap, man. I said to myself, hey, Orson and Sirona lived together in the Aesir, and I have way more room at my place. We’ll be just fine. And safe! Can’t forget safe. Lots of weird stuff going on today. You probably know that even better than I do, but nowhere is safer than here!”

The typing ceased. The paper, half blank, shot out of the typewriter and fluttered to the floor.

“What the hell?” Jaleel yelled.

Typing resumed on the next page.

“That’s probably Eloise.” Orson stretched down to grab the fallen page. “I hope they don’t both keep writing or I’m going to waste a lot of paper.”

“Your girlfriend lived here with you?” Enoa asked. “It makes so much sense now! You two were living together. She made you weapons. I get why you’re still in love with her.”

“Maybe going to see Teddy wasn’t such a great idea,” Orson said. “He has no filter. Who’s writing now, Jaleel? Is it Eloise?”

“Probably?” Jaleel said. “But the message is literally all question marks, a whole line of question marks.”

“Oh yeah, that’s Eloise,” Orson said. “She’s pissed. We’d better answer her.”

“What about Teddy?” Jaleel asked. “Do you think he’ll write more?”

“He’s probably between baking steps,” Orson said. “But he’ll keep writing. Before we hear back, please write to Eloise. Just tell her that we still aren’t one hundred percent sure what’s going to happen and we’re all too tired to figure it out now. That’s not totally untrue, since Teddy hasn’t agreed yet.”

“Why aren’t you typing to her?” Enoa asked. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“I was watching the scopes,” Orson said. “Just in case someone followed us and decided to attack once they thought we were shut down and defenseless for the night.”

“Done.” Jaleel slid back the carriage return and sent the message. “I wrote to her.”

The typewriter began to move again, a flurry of motion to catch up to whatever message they’d received while Jaleel typed.

“Short message,” Jaleel said. “‘Teddy says, ‘oh yeah, of course you can crash here, man! Just let me know when you’re getting close.’”

“I guess that’s it then,” Orson said. “We’ll call it a morning. You two go to bed. I need to figure out what to say to Eloise and I can write back to Teddy myself.”

“You don’t need sleep?” Jaleel asked.

“I’ll sleep when my watch is up,” Orson said. “I’ll take from now until noon. You two figure out who wants to go next. I need to sleep through both of your shifts. I’ll be driving the whole night. We have to cover as much ground as we can. I’d rather get to Teddy’s in the not too distant future.”

“I’ll take watch at noon.” Jaleel stood and stretched. Then he passed Orson the typewriter. “When the Archers were going after Solar Saver, I always used to sleep three or four hours out of every twelve so I could balance out what I had to do.”

“That sounds miserable.” Enoa made a gagging noise in the back of her throat.

“I got used to it.”

“Orson, if we have to find six more keys,” Enoa said. “This could take a really, really long time.”

“It could,” Orson said. “But that depends on a lot of things. If we get to the island and that knight is there – Lucas, he probably would have some information. Also, I’ve been thinking…” He sat back down in the pilot’s seat.

“Yes?” Enoa patted Wesley on the head. “Maybe I should stay up first? I can’t move him. I should take the first watch.”

“He’ll move when I walk away,” Jaleel said. “He still needs his breakfast.” He started back toward his bunk. Wesley, it seemed, was not so soundly asleep as he’d appeared. The aeropine leaped from Enoa’s lap and glided off after Jaleel.

“There you go,” Orson said. “Now you can get some sleep.”

Enoa stood. “What are you thinking?”

“What?”

“You said you’ve been thinking and then you just stopped midsentence, like you do when you’re worried about something.”

“Oh, yeah. Uh, I’m thinking about the Liberty Corps. If we break into their base to get oceanic telemetry, why not see what other information they have that might be useful for our search. This is already going to be insanely difficult, so I think it’s worth planning to steal every piece of Dreamside Road information they have. Level the playing field. Take it all.”

* * *

Kol allowed himself to be restrained. The men and women in pale gray lab coats slipped his arms and legs into fabric restraints. The lab team adjusted them, but kept the fabric loose. Kol could have freed his hands even without his prosthetic, but he made no such attempt.

The laboratory was a long room, with a viewing window on the left. The overhead lighting glowed a harsh white.

The lab team placed electrodes across his head and clipped small round devices to his jumpsuit. They then prepared what appeared to be a pitching machine at the far end of the room.

Sir Geber stood on the other side of the viewing window, surrounded by vintage computer monitors and a full team of lab techs holding laptops and tablets and old-fashioned pen and paper. Kol occasionally saw their lips move, but couldn’t hear their words. Geber now wore his knight’s armor – a standard officer set but with segmented antennae on the helmet.

“Mr. Maros.” Geber’s voice projected down into the testing room, from a speaker hidden somewhere near the ceiling. “We’re going to test your newfound abilities. We will be firing projectiles at your person. Generate your energy field to repulse them. If you attempt to free your limbs to stop the projectiles, Maxwell will be punished.”

“I won’t free my limbs.” Kol expected threats against Max, but not so soon. Geber used his best leverage right out of the gate. Would the knight wield that threat again if Kol failed, if he didn’t give the results Geber wanted?

“Are you ready to begin, Mr. Maros?” Sir Geber asked. The remaining lab techs who’d prepared Kol’s bonds filed out of a door behind the pitching machine.

Kol didn’t feel the feral desperation that had created his shield before. His Shaping wasn’t a gift for him to use as he pleased. It was a miracle, a miracle that had saved him. Shape or die. That was all he knew.

“Mr. Maros?” Ser Geber asked again. “Are you ready?”

“I don’t know,” Kol said. “I can’t control it.”

“Commence recording,” Sir Geber said. “This is the Kolben Maros Shaping Trial, test one. Fire.”

Kol tried to find the electricity, to remember the pinpricks he’d felt up his spine when he’d made the shield. He tried to imagine shielding Max from harm, shielding Max from whatever would be fired from their machine. Kol needed more than fear for himself. He had no such…

Kol saw only a blur before the projectile from the pitching machine struck him in the chest, a blunt strike. He jerked back against the wall, but he didn’t cry out. It left his heart racing, but didn’t wind him – surprised, but not wounded. The projectile fell away, thudding against the floor.

The lab team took notes. Kol couldn’t hear them, but he saw their fingers or pens moving.

Sir Geber did not write. His slit visor aimed at Kol, his antennae angled at him. Kol did not look away from the man’s masked gaze until the writing ceased.

“Mr. Maros,” Sir Geber said. “Did you understand the instructions? Yes or no will suffice.”

“Yes,” Kol said.

“Good,” Sir Geber said. “Then we will increase density. That was a Mark Two. I advise you, Mr. Maros, to perform your Shaping before we reach Mark Five. Beyond that point, you will be harmed.” He gave Kol a chance to reply. Kol did not.

“Mark Three,” Geber said. “Fire!”