"One!" Hilde shakes me awake. In her hands is the small hammer from my Inheritance, along with a fabric black case of assorted needlelike crystals. I thought we were done with this whole waking up-to-an-earthquake bullshit!

I'm on my stomach before I even have a chance to register Hilde's hands. She lifts up my shirt, presses a crystal into my lower spine, and gently taps the hammer to hold the needle in place. We've been doing this acupuncture training since the kelp roll got too short, and it still hurts like a motherfucker every time.

My fists clutch the sheets, willing the quake to subside so I can remove the needle from my back. It takes only a few seconds before the tremor is gone entirely.

"You good?" asks Hilde.

"I'm fine, bad dream," I reply. "Can I take this shit out of my back now?"

"As long as you're sure you won't start shaking again."

I pull the crystal out with a grunt and safely return it to the fabric case, which I gently place back into the Chest. Hilde places the hammer beside it and closes the lid. I hold up my hands. "Already shaking."

"You know what I—" she starts coughing before she can finish the sentence. "…We need to get out of town."

"It's like ten feet of snow in every direction once we step off the road."

"And if we stay here, we're just sitting around until the Mogadorians track us to Jasper."

"Well, at least we'd have a town to back us."

"What?"

"I'm just saying," I explain, "if we weren't always living on the outskirts of towns we'd probably know there were Mogs around before they were at our door."

"The Mogs are hunting us, not the other way around," she replies sternly. "We are here to train, to assimilate with Earth, and return home."

"I get that. But you have to admit that we don't know shit about them, either. Those Mogs we saw in Alder weren't like the ones in the erkōsa visions. I was expecting a band of starved guerrilla soldiers, not a team of giant fucking knights."

"Are you insinuating that my training hasn't prepared you to face them?"

"Hilde, that's not what I'm…," I give up. No point in trying to argue this with her. "Look, I'm sorry I suggested we stay. I'll gather my shit and we can leave at noon."

It's seven-thirty in the morning. We grab breakfast in the lodge lobby and get back on the trail by nine o'clock. Always the fucking early birds. The blizzard did a goddamn decent job on blocking the mountain trails. Most of them I have to unclog by inducing avalanches, but our trek isn't exactly delayed. Hilde views it as extra practice. I think of it as child labor, but whatever.

We endure the winter winds and snowstorms until we make it to the border. Hilde's got connections everywhere, so we cross with ease. Two hours at a bank and an internet café in Spokane, Washington results in wallets brimming with hundreds and newly forged documents. I am now Odette Lager, a name that fits like glove-in-hand with my Keeper's permanent alias Hilde. I'm sixteen now, so Hilde also made me a driver's license, only to be used in emergencies.

The news reports about the United States didn't exaggerate.

It's a mess here. We mostly stay in the mountains, but that barely does anything to subdue the putrid air. Conditions must be far worse down along the west coast and the farther we hike the worst the smell gets. Hilde is coughing more than she's sleeping, vomiting more than she's eating. I tend to her every night with damp cloths, herbs I find around our camps. She needs real medicine, and while she's too afraid of checking into a hospital, I'm not gonna let her die out here while I sit around on my ass.

At a rest stop in Colorado, there's this house right across the road from the campsite. It reads Hart's Apothecary & Animal Shelter on a sign carved above the front door into a slab of wooden clapboard. The place reminds me of those "psychic huts" Wade wouldn't shut the fuck up about. But it's no hospital and it's probably the closest we will get to natural medicine in this backwards-ass country. Hilde agrees to go in after a few minutes of convincing.

"Welcome," a voice calls from the kitchen when we enter the house. "You can come in, y'all. Don't be shy."

Hilde glances at me with her eyebrows raised. I shrug. Why the hell not?

We enter a kitchen that I can only describe as modernly archaic. The counter forming a big L against the walls is covered with little turntables of jars and bottles, remedies from the mountain. At a sink beside the counter stands our apothecary, a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with ivory skin and blond hair she keeps tied back in a braid.

"I'm Artemis Hart," she says, turning toward us with a smile. "How can I help you?"

"We got on the trail early this fall," I say. "My grandma here thought the mountain air would help with her cough, but it's only got worse since we've been up here."

"I see," says Hart. She gestures to a small table in the center of the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the surfaces in here, all the table holds is a small, leather-bound book. "Can you tell me what originally made you sick?"

Hilde hesitates for a moment before she goes and sits down across from Hart. I lean against the doorway to watch. We haven't had to use persuasion techniques in a while, but Hilde is not a bit rusty. She pulls this grumpy old lady routine with the apothecary, keeps saying vague, intentionally unhelpful things like, "It's all this bad air, I wasn't sick until all this sound pollution, all the unhealthy food these days is poisoning my soul."

Hart is patient, though. The way her cold blue eyes stay locked on Hilde makes me think she can see through the bullshit. When Hilde finishes her grandma spiel, Hart stands and circles around to the back of Hilde's chair. She presses her palm into my Keeper's upper back between her shoulder blades, and Hilde inhales so deeply I'm afraid she's trying to suck all the air out of the room.

"Where're you from, Misses…"

"You can call me Hilde."

"You from the mountains, Hilde?" Hart asks, sitting down. "These here ones, that is."

"I was raised near the mountains, yes. Not here."

"Somewhere warmer? Let me guess…Tanzania? Argentina? You've got a look of Himalayan to you, too."

Hilde stays silent, unwilling to give up any more information. I guess she's being cautious on default, because I personally see nothing wrong with this woman. She sounds like she's genuinely trying to help us. Like she wants to know what's wrong. I haven't met a human with those characteristics in a long time.

I watch Hart as she stands and retrieves something from the cupboards. She boils some water in a kettle and turns back to us, leaning against the sink. "People from hotter climates are people of the water. Where there is heat, there will always be moisture, and that can be a blessing or a curse. In colder or more varying climates, air can range from bone dry to watered down. That's part of why you've been getting sick. You're breathing in too much of the wrong air too fast. And what this air carries goes into your heart, your blood, and you never want that."

Hart takes the kettle off the stove and pours it into a cup of grounded herbs. She places the steaming thing in front of Hilde. "Inhaling the steam should do your blood some good and drinking the tea will return that warmth you've been missing."

She looks at me. "Do you have anything for acupuncture?"

"Uh, yeah," I reply, ignoring Hilde's look of reproach from the table.

"Put some needles along your grandmother's back and shoulders. There's a lot of tension, and that might be what is making you sick so fast."

I nod. "Will do."

"Until then," Hart says, "I believe you two can return to your trail. Good look on your travels."

"Thanks." I reach for my wallet and start tugging out a couple hundreds.

She places her hand over mine. "Not necessary. I'm glad I could help."

Hart crosses to the fridge, removes a picture magnetized to the door that twists my heart. It's of a seven-year-old girl with the same blond hair and blue eyes. She's standing in a field with a straw hat on, twining flower stalks together to make a bracelet.

"Are you a fan of photography?" asks Hart. I shake my head. "I get it. The skill requires a special eye. Most people think it's a hobby. My niece, Sarah, I think she'd love it. One of you might love it too."

The fuck does that mean?

Hilde, having finished the tea, starts coughing. It's a wet cough, none of that wheezing and hacking of these past months. "That's awful!"

"It has an acquired taste for some." Hart places the picture of her niece back on the fridge and removes an image of pink flowers ringed by huge triangular leaves. "Lungwort. A cup every other day should help her on this hike until you get to where you're going."

"Thanks, ma'am."

"Call me Art." To my surprise she pulls me into a hug. Then whispers, "I'm sorry for your loss."

I pull away, shove my hands into my pockets, and follow Hilde out the door. Hart waves us goodbye, but I don't return it. That woman is a fucking weirdo. Sorry for my loss? Who or what did I lose?

A week later down the trail when Hilde is confined to her sleeping bag, a shivering and sweating mess, I start to worry that the loss Art spoke of was some fucked up premonition. So, I leave Hilde in Rio Grande National Forest and run all the way back up the trail to Hart's. It's nighttime when I'm banging on her door so hard I chip the wood.

"Is everything okay?" she says cautiously as she opens the door. "You came here with your grandmother not too long ago, right?"

"Yeah, I did." I take a second to catch my breath from the run, the adrenaline fueling my ire. "I wanna know why she's running a goddamn fever, lady!"

"It's detoxifying her blood. That process can be painful, but I promise you it's helping. Just give her time."

"We don't have time!" I keep my hand blocking the doorframe, preventing her from closing it. "If she can't get out of bed, she can't hike, and if she can't hike…"

"Sweetheart, I understand that you're angry," Art says calmly. "You're too young for so much stress, responsibility, heartbreak. It can be too heavy at times, yeah?"

"Yeah," I growl reluctantly. I want to stay angry at her but she's making it difficult. A few minutes later she's invited me inside for tea, where she continues to pick away at my protective shield.

"Sometimes you feel that weight pulling you down to the point where you can't stand to bear it all." Art lets the teapot whistle before removing it from the burner. "You can either choose to let it crush you, or you can pass it off for somebody else to carry."

"And you're getting at…what, exactly?"

"Darling, I—"

"Don't call me 'darling,'" I interrupt.

"You never told me your name."

"Odette."

She smiles only with her lips. Art's eyes say something else. "Okay. Odette, have you ever felt an instance where you ended up in a place and forgot how you made it there?"

Several instances rocket through my mind, but I don't let them leave there. I keep them stored away, tied down, and I'm about to carry them out of the house with me. When I'm exiting the kitchen, Art reaches for my hand, but I snatch it away.

"Stay away from me."

"Odette, I believe if you don't get help—"

"I don't need help, okay? I'm not crazy! I do not—!"

"What was her name?" she asks abruptly.

"Who's name?"

"The friend you lost." What the fuck? "You did lose someone, yes?"

Short answer: no.

Long answer: I've been having weird dreams about a girl whom to my knowledge I only spoke to once, getting killed by what I'm assuming is a Mogadorian. That situation's enough to piss me off just for being a Loric personally. But I also have this piece of stone I carry around that I don't remember collecting and swear used to be a crystal, and every time I touch it I feel wiped out, like how the Cêpans must have felt at the end of that week in orbit.

I decide not to say anything, but Art still replies. "You can't remember her, can you? Not beyond the two of you meeting, I see, but you're aware of greater connection that you cannot actually see. It must be frustrating."

Fuck off.

Art rises from the table and picks up a fat, oblong, ugly-ass root. "This is raw turmeric. Chew on the root before sleeping, and it should help you remember."

I guess that's my cue to leave. I came into this lady's house, complained, she talked to me about some spiritual bullshit, and gave me some earth-based remedy. A pretty normal night for her, I guess. Before I leave through the front door, Art hugs me again like I didn't just barge into her house.

"Have a safe rest of your hike," she says. "Oh, and there'll be a service fee next time."

Hilde is safe right where I left her. Still shivering and drenching her sleeping bag with sweat. But I promise you it's helping, Artemis Hart's words return. I lie down across from her in my tent, stuff my hand into my pocket until I find the dead crystal. Its origin is locked away, somewhere in the backstage of my brain. The root in my other hand smells spicy and bland at the same time, and the more I look at it the more I keep thinking about worms, grubs, and other vermin of the fucking Earth.

But where would I be if I kept running from my problems?

I start chewing until I'm certain all my taste buds have been thoroughly molested by this dirty-ass larva shit. Despite how gross it tastes, I manage to slip into unconsciousness. Dreams are brighter tonight. Louder. It reminds me of those early days when Hilde and I were trying to figure our way around humans—all of these new languages and dialects and accents blended together until my Loric ears heard everything as a jumbled mess of alien noise.

Hearing human languages was the most annoying part about it all. I was already decent in English and the Romance languages by the time we landed. Had to be, after hearing from Hilde what was waiting for us on Earth.

I was in the Autodoc, getting my fever diagnosed. The fucking thing only took half a second to scan you and it wasn't necessary to remain in that coffin-like device for longer than that, even when it took time rendering a diagnosis. But I was comforted by the claustrophobic space. We had no walls, no rain or sun on the ship. The Autodoc was mostly glass but the hum of the sophisticated machine contrasted greatly with the silence of space.

Then I heard my Keeper laugh. Hilde—her name was Hessu back then—never laughed unless you said something worthy of her humor. But the laugh I heard wasn't the rare one I would hear when I somehow told a jest she tolerated her attention to. It was bitter, sad. And then she says, "Don't you realize we're all going to die?"

The memory has taken the forefront of my subconscious tonight. I don't question it, I let it go where it went. Everything is so vivid and clear that I believe I actually am that same nine-year-old girl trapped in a spaceship. Hessu sits at a table in the canteen across from a teenage boy in a Kalvaka shirt. Until tonight I'd have never recalled his name: Sandor the fucking Stowaway.

"This is a suicide mission," Hilde continues, and her voice is as clear in my ears as it was back then. I cling to every word. "We are going to some distant planet to hide from the Mogadorians, to run from them, to make whatever pathetic efforts to survive before they hunt us down and kill us."

Sandor tries to calm her down, but she starts laughing again. Deflated. "You and your boy get blessed last out of sheer luck, because you were running late! While me and my girl…we're first. First blessed, first to die."

And her laughter gives way to tears. I'm standing at the corner of the Autodoc, trying to wrap my head around this. First blessed, first to die. The gravity of those words crushes me as the ship disappears, leaving me in the darkness of space with Hilde's sobs being the only sound. Vulnerable, alone, dead to the rest of the universe.

I wake up when the moon is high over the trees. Listen to the birds and insects chirping. The roar of a plane flying overhead. Dried leaves rustling in the frigid wind. I shrink deeper into my sleeping bag in an effort to escape the nauseous feeling of dissociation. This is the first night in a very long time where I feel like an alien.