“I didn’t trust them blindly. I trusted you. I was as careful as I could be.” Except for having a recognizable face. It’s all because of my stupidity with that cure attempt. How can trying to do good end up so badly? Could no one see that I was trying? Could no one see my motives, at least, were good? Sure, I failed but . . . where is the grace? I’m suffering from my failure too.

I should have worn a bandana or something to mask my face.

“Who else do you have in the Real World who can help me?”

“No one!” Luc’s voice grows in ire. “You were my only man awake. If I had another one more reliable than you, I’d have him helping my father. All I have are useless kids who can’t drive or lift anything heavier than a backpack.”

“So I’m stranded at the landfill to die?”

He smirks. “Shall I send a kid there and tell them the highway information and mile marker?”

“You’re being the childish one.”

“My father is stranded in the high-rise. He’s dying. Starving to death. Atrophying.” Luc starts pacing, but his breaths come fast and thin. His entire frame trembles, and after only a few back-and-forths, he sinks onto a cushioned stool.

“What about you?” I ask quietly. “You aren’t well.”

“I know that,” he retorts. “I just want to see Dad again. Before one of us is gone for good.”

Even though I’m the one in imminent danger, I find myself doing damage control. There will be no benefit to letting Luc’s despair take over. If he’s given up on me, I won’t get that LifeSuPod.

“You and I want the same thing.” I keep my voice as calm as I can manage, even though I picture Stranna bleeding out in an overheated Jeep at this very moment. “We want Galilei alive. We need to find a way to make that happen . . . no matter what.”

“I have no one.” That seems to be all Luc can say. “This can’t be the end.” Small nightbeast creatures slip out of his hands and drop to the ground. Little snakes, snails, a mouse, a tiny badger that snuffs and snorts when it hits the floor. Luc doesn’t seem aware of them. I’ve never seen him out of control like this.

I know what it’s like to care about someone—to dread their dying and to miss them—but most of the world has had to face losing a loved one. Surely Luc has considered that maybe we won’t be able to save his father in time.

Luc is young. As young as me. Maybe he’s never lost anyone before. And I know from Mom’s long, drawn-out end that the fear of loss can often be greater than the pain of it actually happening.

I can fix this. And I’ve already primed the pump.

“I have an idea,” I venture. Luc seems desperate enough that he might consider it.

He stops and looks at me with the first glimmer of hope. “What? What is it?”

“Ask the Spores for help.”

His hope vanishes, replaced by a glower. “They are causing this problem. They cut the power to the high-rise in the first place. They’re trying to kill my father.”

“But they don’t know that I’m trying to save him.” I need to find Stranna. She has no idea what predicament her body is in. Here in Tenebra, I’m her enemy. But after I rescued her from the Macella Quarter I think she’ll listen to me. Her people will help me if it means helping her. That is, if she’s not dead already.

“I can try to find them,” I say. “Ask for help. Put on a face and get them to trust me.”

“Why would they trust you? You killed one of them.”

“Because I saved one of them in the Macella.” I eye Luc’s hands while I say this, waiting for him to create a gun to kill me as a traitor, but he sits there giving me his full attention.

“Explain.”

“I had questions. About Nole. It was the only way I saw to ask them.” I didn’t tell him the questions were because the Spore girl came back to life. “The Spore didn’t give me many answers, but I think maybe she’d give me more if I pretended to be on their side.”

“That was foolish, Cain.” He looks me up and down. “You could be Spored for all I know. To get that close to a Spore again is a death sentence.”

“No more than the death sentence I’m already living. And I’m not Spored.” I hope. “Do I smell like tar to you?” I don’t wait for an answer—maybe because I fear it. “I’m trying to save Galilei and save myself. If I fail, we don’t get a cure, I don’t get the LifeSuPod, and I’ll die. If the Spores distrust me, they kill me. Same end. But the Spores are the only ones outside of the kids who can go between Tenebra and the Real World at will. You said so yourself.”

He is quiet a moment, but then relents. “Fine. But I want you to find their base. Both here and in the Old World. Find out where they stay and live. We need to cut off their power after all this is done.”

I turn to leave, hoping he reads my silence as assent.

My saber-toothed tiger is dead.

It took me twice the time it should have to make it back to the fountain where I last saw Stranna in Tenebra. I came here for my tiger, assuming he’d be pacing and waiting for me. Hoping he would be. I’d been working on a backup plan in case the tiger had run off while I was in the Real World.

I didn’t expect to find his carcass with a nightmist spear through his skull.

I stroke his enormous muzzle and give him a little scratch behind the ears. “You’re a good tiger,” I whisper, feeling oddly sentimental about seeing him dead a second time. He’s still warm, almost like he’s merely sleeping.

Which means this was a recent killing.

I snatch my hand away. The tiger stayed in this spot for hours, waiting for me to return. Then someone came and killed it. It could have been anyone, but the timing and the spear imply it was an intentional strike against me.

Maybe Stranna. That would mean she’s nearby. But it’s been so long since we spoke here. I can’t picture her sticking around or killing the beast after it saved her, even if she sees me as an enemy. She saves strangers from burning tiny houses.

I manage a pained step. Now I have nothing to ride. My emotions are too muted beneath my pain for me to create the tiger again. I’m not even sure how that would work since it’s dead. Would I create the same one or would it be like a sibling?

Nightmist is confusing.

I pull myself together and look around. “Stranna?” I whisper. Luc said Spores can enter the Real World at will, so she needs to wake up, to get up there and save us. Contact her people.

A shadow moves. “Oh thank good—”

Crixus steps forward. I swallow my words. He looks around, frowning.

“Who were you talking to?”

I casually avoid his question. “What are you doing here? Does Luc need something?”

He’s assessing my dead tiger but doesn’t seem surprised. Did he kill it? I don’t know why that makes me so angry. He doesn’t have a right to kill my nightbeasts.

“I’m here because you created a deadly saber-toothed tiger in the middle of the Macella and then ran away with a Spore. I’m sure you can see why I’m suspicious.”

“I’ve already talked about it with Luc. If you want to know the details, take it up with him.” I turn my back on him. “I’m busy.”

“Leave the Spores be, Cain. You’re endangering everyone. You’ve killed one and earned your citizenship. Now go live your life.”

“What life?” I growl. “I don’t have a LifeSuPod. I’m on borrowed time.” Crixus has never seemed worried about his own existence, which tells me his physical body is tucked in its own LifeSuPod somewhere. He wouldn’t be Luc’s right-hand man otherwise.