“Hey!”

When I screamed, the three assholes didn’t even glance over at me.

That was enough. My hand went to my knife. I pulled it out and ran back to where the kids were fucking with Ethan.

He wasn’t even trying to fight them, and that pissed me off even more. Rum had both the kid’s shoes off and sat in the dirt, preparing to try them on. Fee laughed so hard it sounded like he was having a seizure, and Alex had just gotten his balls out of his pants when I grabbed him by the hair and jerked him back.

Before Alex knew what was happening, I laid him out flat on his back in the salty ash. Fee’s expression turned serious when he saw the knife I held. I stepped the toe of my boot on Alex’s hand that he had wrapped around his balls, and pressed the blade of my knife firmly beneath his nose.

Griffin knew there was a fight on. I caught a flashing view from the corner of my eye of him throwing a roundhouse kick directly into Fee’s jaw.

I opened a small cut across the bottom of Alex’s nose, still twisting his hair in my grasp. More Odds scrambled down from above to watch the fight. But it was over before much of anything else could happen.

Fee rolled around in the dirt, crying and squeezing his jaw. Rum dropped Ethan’s shoes and put his hands in the air, backing away from me and Griffin like he was an arrestee held at gunpoint, and Alex just whimpered faintly, too scared to move.

I let go of his hair.

“You ever touch anyone again, I’ll fucking kill you, kid. Anyone. Understand me?”

Alex nodded enough to let me know he got the message, so I pulled my knife away from his face.

Griffin had his hands in a fighting position, eyes shifting alternately between the brothers. I could tell he wanted to kick Fee again, but he wasn’t about to fight back. Fee just rolled around and sobbed.

Ethan sat up.

I was disgusted with everything. “Get your shoes on and come with us.”

*   *   *

I heard them following me, but I kept my eyes forward as we climbed the rocky chute that led up to the ridge where the lookouts perched.

I dug my fingers as forcefully as I could into the sharp rock face, trying to make it hurt so the anger might stop howling inside me. But it didn’t work. It just made me madder. I wanted to run back down so I could feel the satisfaction of jamming my knife as far as it would go into Alex’s belly, to marvel at the kid’s warm blood as it spilled out on me, and watch the show of his eyes as they alternately flickered surprise and horror at what Jack was capable of doing.

I was sick of myself, of what I’d become.

I killed Quinn Cahill.

I climbed faster.

All the not-worlds left me numb. All the not-worlds trapped in the Marbury lens made Jack a monster no matter where he found himself.

Fun game.

I am the King of Marbury.

If I couldn’t get home, back to Nickie, back to my friends and what was real, everything would be lost.

Everything except my kingdom.

*   *   *

Henry was different.

I could see it as soon as I looked at his face. He didn’t need to say anything to me at all. He knew who I was.

Ben nodded to me and gave a wary glance past my shoulder at Ethan. “This is it, Jack.”

Frankie hovered behind him, practically bumping into Ben with his chest. His voice sounded tense, ready for a fight. “This is what, Odd?”

When nobody answered him, he grabbed Henry’s arm, made the man look at him. “This is what, Henry? What’s going on?”

Henry shook his head and shrugged, as if to tell the boy he had no answers.

Then I saw the rider.

I squinted, cupped my hands around my eyes so I could screen out the endless wash of gray in the fading evening sky. Solitary, so far away that he nearly vanished, half in, half out of the Marbury haze, keeping his head down as he rode southeast; and I was certain beyond any doubt that it was Conner Kirk out there.

We’d been closer than brothers, and I could recognize Conner Kirk from the angle of his shoulders, the motion of his hand when he wiped across his eyes. Even as tired and worn as he must have been after being hunted by the Rangers since helping me to escape, I knew I was looking at my friend.

“That’s him,” I said.

“Fuck this,” Frankie snapped. He started off down the path to the clearing. “I’ll show you who he is. We’ll fucking go kill him. I’ll bring back his fucking head.”

“You won’t get anywhere near him,” I said.

Frankie stopped. “I’m not afraid of guns. We’ve fucking killed Rangers before. There’s more of us than him.”

“Believe me, Frankie. You don’t want to fuck with him.”

Frankie’s eyes darted from me to Henry, then to each of the other boys who stood there on the lookout with us, as though he were searching for any gesture of support.

He spit a long, stringy blob down on the rocks between us. Frankie put his hands up to Henry, like he was expecting something. “We’re just going to let him go, then?”

Henry inhaled slowly and looked at the sky. “Nobody wants to go out there at night.”

“I’m going to go after him,” I said.

“Jack—” Ben started, but I cut him off.

“We’ll talk about it later, Ben.”

I already knew he was going to tell me I couldn’t go out there looking for Conner without taking him and Griffin. I tried not to think about leaving, about not coming back. This was Marbury, after all. Or not-Marbury. Who knew where the four of us would be tomorrow, and the next day after that?

So I stared at Conner until I couldn’t see him anymore. I tried to estimate the distance and direction where I might intercept his path, but calculations like those were meaningless in Marbury.

The dimness of the gray night fell over the silent Odds who stood on the ridge beside me.

We scanned the nothingness of the desert below until Frankie got tired of waiting for some affirmation from the other boys that he was right, that he was still in charge. When it never came, he started down the narrow path, half whispering that it was time to eat.

Frankie chose out the next shift of boys to keep guard on the watchposts. Nighttime meant Hunters would be out, and the Odds never slept. At least, they never all slept at the same time. It was perhaps the only reason they had survived to escape Glenbrook and attempt the crossing to the settlement in the first place.

So I half expected him to appoint me as a replacement for Ben or Griffin on the ridge, but the kid never asked me to do anything throughout the five days that I’d been with the Odds, and he continued to ignore me over the small rations of food that were distributed for our dinner.

We ate in segregated groups. The division was more than just the few feet of dirt that separated us from the other boys. The Odds were talking about me, about the three new kids and the bed wetter. No matter what happened to us tonight, I knew things would be different from now on.

Ben and Griffin sat with me while we ate. Henry stayed up on the ridge. I knew he wanted to talk to me, but he was just waiting for the situation between the Odds and me to calm down, I thought.

Ethan sat with us. There was nowhere else the kid could go. That was my fault, too. He never tried to fight back against the bullying of the other boys, and things would probably be calmer, easier, if I’d just let them get away with their shit.

But it was too late for that once Ethan had seen through the lens. He knew me. Another thread had been woven into this hopeless string, and I couldn’t ignore it, no matter how much I wished I could.

In the other group, Frankie stayed where he could watch us. He always watched us. But the three assholes—Alex, Fee, and Rum—sat as far away from us as they could, wounded and angry, backs turned, never so much as glancing toward me.

Griffin broke our mournful silence with one word.