Hours had passed by. It was the next morning. At John’s suggestion, they’d immediately gone back home. After what was possibly the most awkward dinner he’d ever eaten, they’d turned in early for the night.

  It was only as Zach had lain down in Oliver’s bed that he’d registered he hadn’t slept once since awakening in that bathtub. Not only had it been one thing after the other, but he just then understood that he hadn’t really been tired.

  Another ability of Severity.

  However, all of that piled up, and when his head finally touched the pillow, he’d had no problem sleeping, troubled though it had been.

  His mind had run over the same questions again and again, sometimes pulling him out of sleep, refusing to let him go until he answered each question.

  What next? What now? What am I going to do? How am I going to go home? What if I’m stuck here? What if Oliver’s father finds out I’m a fraud? That last one in particular worried him the most.

  Back in the apartment with Noah, there was no need to keep up an act. Not really. Noah hadn’t known the real Oliver. But he still knew I was hiding something that big. Though it had to be said, Noah and his brother looked as though they had an interest in solving mysteries.

  Still, being this close to Oliver’s own father was more of a risk than he’d thought. If he slipped up here, more than he already had, how would John take that? His son being changed by whatever it was that happened to Dreamers when they were first Claimed? Or proof that his son was not well after all?

  Both cases were less than ideal and would most likely end with him being dragged back to that wooden platform and shot dead in front of the entire Camp.

  That line of thinking had been his entire night until he finally managed to fight his way back to sleep’s embrace.

  Now, Zach stood in Oliver’s old room, the morning sunlight shining into the room, blocked only by the thin. blue curtain. Before he knew it, he walked over to the gauzy material and threw it open.

  A strange thing to miss, sunlight filtered through windowpanes, but now that he had it, it almost eased the feeling this alien world brought to him.

  He dried his hair with the towel. The clothes he had on now were slightly too big, a testament to the weight he’d lost in the Dreamhold.

  “You ready?” John asked from beyond the door.

  Zach took a deep breath, calming his nerves. Had Oliver been introverted or extroverted? The type to keep his thoughts to himself, or voice them? You have to say something!

  “I’m done,” he said.

  Tossing the damp towel on the desk, he moved to the door and opened it to see John standing there wearing the same leather jacket as yesterday with a loose pair of black trousers. The shoes were still those same brown leather boots.

  He looked Oliver up and down, nodding slightly to himself.

  “After you were taken, the WSF lowered our water. But your mother refused to let your clothes go unwashed. I’m sure she’d be glad to know it wasn’t a waste of time.”

  WSF?

  The second the thought came to his mind, the answer wasn’t too far behind it. The Water and Sanitation Function. They handled the allotment of water, tracking the camp’s water supply, as well as the camp’s waste disposal.

  “We can go see your mother now, only if you’re ready, of course.” Zach tried searching through their old interactions to see why John was so awkward with his own child, but there was no answer there. He’d simply always been this way.

  “If you think it’s too soon for you, there are other things we can do. The Head thinks it’s best if we get you into a Function as soon as possible. If you’re seen doing your part in the camp, it might help with some of the tension surrounding you right now.”

  Zach found their entire family dynamic more than interesting. The Head was supposed to be Oliver’s grandmother, yet John referred to her by her title, and with a subtle coldness, too. Granted, Darlene Emery was only his mother-in-law, but still.

  In his memory, Oliver’s mother spoke with the same coldness, referring to her as the Head and never as mother. It was more than a little frustrating that Oliver hadn’t known why that was.

  Before Zach gave his response, he wondered if Oliver had been close with his mother. Was that how he was supposed to answer? Mother first? It felt right, if that counted for anything.

  “I can choose a Function later,” he said. “Let’s go see Mom first.”

  “You don’t choose a Function, Oli.”

  Damn it. How could you forget that?

  “They’ll have you do some tests, and whichever one you’re best suited for is where you’ll go. Unless they’ve met their numbers.” He shook his head, sighing softly. “I’m rambling. Come on. Let’s go see your mother.”

  They left the apartment building, so much more full of life than the Dreamhold had been. The hallways were lit with open light, and the windows were kept open constantly to allow for fresh airflow.

  This early, the streets were filled with people going about their day. Those in the Agricultural Function were already walking in their overalls, some of them with large hats sitting on their heads.

  There were small teams pulling wagons down the street. Smaller than the one the Head had ridden in yesterday. They came up 3rd street, a street that went down diagonally to the east end of the Camp, slanting until it eventually reached the lower end of Dream Street.

  Others also came down 2nd and 1st, all of them driving donkeys pulling wagons. Periodically, they stopped in front of buildings, where they picked up buckets people had placed there on their way out.

  The cloth masks on their faces marked them as the WSF. Which meant those were buckets full of excrement; they’d be taken down to the farm once they’d been prepared for manure. Even in front of their building, the buckets were placed neatly beside the road. Thirty of them.

  Zach could only marvel at the level of organization. Not openly, of course. After all, Oliver had grown accustomed to this sort of lifestyle.

  They waited for the morning transport wagon to arrive, twenty others from their building waiting beside them. They did their best to avoid him, but Zach had to at least give them some credit. At least they’d stayed.

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  Coming from the buildings around them, they’d found many people standing here, waiting for the wagon to take them to their different locations. Most of them had left the minute he’d walked up.

  “Almighty, see the truth of my soul,” a few of them muttered to themselves.

  Zach glanced at the woman who’d said that. Her soul seemed to flee her body at his gaze. She stood frozen, her hands clutching her shirt tightly.

  “Oliver,” John whispered. “Just give them time. They’ll come around eventually.”

  He looked away from the woman, turning his attention to the building that rose in the near distance. The Dreamhold stood there, the wooden boards making the place look anachronistic. A run-down, derelict building from a much older time. Especially when compared to these buildings surrounding him now.

  A loud clatter of wheels bumping against the paving announced the arrival of the transport wagon. The brown horse pulling the thing looked strong and healthy. Well-groomed, too.

  The way Noah had gone on, even with the support of Oliver’s memories, this world was currently under an apocalyptic event. In spite of what the Ospelian stranger had said, there were still demons running around.

  Not on this continent, he remembered.

  The war had happened on the northern continents, the fighting and bloodshed tearing the sky open. The creatures reported to have crawled through that opening had quickly spread across the lands. But fortunately, they stayed on that side of the world.

  Of course, they’d quickly discovered that demons could also crawl out of the Dreamers. But Camp Twelve had been effective at handling those. That handling was the only thing that explained what he saw now.

  These people, structuring themselves into some form of government and going about their day with their concerns boiled down to maintaining their infrastructure. Was it a wonder they looked at him so fearfully? He was disrupting that peaceful routine, destroying that paper-thin sense of general security.

  They all got on the wagon, making for a very tight fit. But in a world where functionality was the priority and not comfort, he supposed it didn’t matter. The small space—as much as they could give him—was the best they could do short of walking all that way.

  The wagon driver led them down the west end of 2nd Street. With the speed of the horse, it took them around ten minutes before they arrived at the medical ward. A low and large building that sat on the corner of Buys and Mark’s Street, it once served as a school.

  “They don’t want more than one person in at a time, for the other patients. So, you go. Straight down, she’s at the back, in the room on the left.”

  He patted the side of his arm lightly, then stood back and let him go. Zach looked up at him, the hesitation in that gesture explaining some of the loneliness Oliver had written about in those pages.

  His sympathy for Oliver deepened. But why did I have to be sucked into this?

  He gave John a nod, then preceded inside.

  The place smelled of strong spirits, vodka, and rum, mostly. But underneath that strong smell, the place smelled clean. No one would be picking up an infection here. A woman sat at a table set in front of one of the old classrooms. There was a logbook open before her.

  When she looked up, her mouth opening with some remark, the second she laid eyes on him, her mouth clamped shut. She tried to give a small smile, but the thing was weak, barely there. She mumbled something, gesturing down the hall, before she picked up the pen and added his name to the book.

  To put her at ease, he said nothing to her. Offering her only the smallest of smiles as he continued on his way.

  Though he tried to hide it, he couldn’t stop himself from looking around as he walked. The lights were still on. Seven years into the global collapse of society, and the lights were still working.

  They keep it only for the important things.

  He finally reached the end of the corridor, pausing in front of a large classroom. The desks were gone, replaced by hospital beds. And there she was. Eve Emery, Oliver’s mother. He walked into the room. There was a woman with her, gathering some items from a stand table.

  “I’m almost done, John,” Ava said over her shoulder. “I wanted to feed and check on her myself. We’re barely an hour into the workday, and someone’s already cut themselves. Can you believe it? I—”

  She turned around and nearly dropped the tray she was carrying. “Oh. Oliver.”

  “He’s still mad at you?” Zach asked, then, when he remembered his place, he asked again. “My dad, I mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t blame him,” she said softly. “I put you in danger when I told everyone you were awake. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You only did what you thought you had to. I’m sure Dad sees it that way, as well.”

  “Well, I hope so,” she said slowly. “Like I was saying, I just fed your mother. Nothing special, just milk and a bit of honey. To keep up her strength.”

  For some reason, the mention of honey shocked him. She saw the look on his face and explained. “I don’t know if you remember Diya, but she has a small beehive in her garden. Only your mother and I knew about that, so don’t mention it. Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  She made for the door, but just as she crossed the threshold, she asked, “I know you probably don’t want to speak about your time in the hold, but I have to ask. What happened with the friend you needed the tea for?”

  “... I thought I could get them to drink, but I couldn’t.”

  How easy that lie came, and how easily she believed it. She gave him a sad smile before saying, “It always hurts when you can’t help them.”

  Another flash of that smile, and she was gone, her shoes scuffing away on the hallway tiles.

  He swallowed, looking back at his mother. She looked so peaceful lying there. Her chest rose and fell softly. Nothing like the locked-in state of the Dreamers in the Dreamhold. Her hair had been brushed back where it pooled out around her head, like a black halo.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare at her. What was this immense sadness unfurling in his heart? A darkness that seemed to be swallowing him up whole. It felt like his heart was slowing down, a hollowness emptying him from the inside out.

  Then it came to him.

  This was grief. This was his grief. Raw and unbridled. Connecting the dots, he came to the only logical conclusion. His own mother, back in his own reality, must not be alive. And judging by the intense pain of this fact, her death had hit him quite hard.

  He bunched his jaw in anger and frustration at being unable to remember her face, her name, the manner she’d died, or even when she’d died. His tears fell with a burning that went all the way to his throat. He chewed on his lower lip, balling up his fist.

  All the anger and tension bunched up in him until he kicked the chair sitting beside the bed. A hard kick that shattered the wooden chair into a spray of splintered and fractured wood. The sound echoed in the room as he looked down at it.

  Severity’s First String.

  “Well, that’s something,” a voice said from the door behind him.

  He spun and found Lucas standing there.

  “We were wondering what you could do.”

  “What are you doing here?” Zach asked, looking guiltily at Oliver’s mother. He’d just made a lot of noise.

  “I’m part of the Medical Function,” he said, peeking back into the hallway.

  “I couldn’t go back to the Dreamhold,” Zach said immediately. “Oliv-dad wanted me to come home with him right then and there, after the experiment. It would’ve looked funny.”

  Lucas nodded. “We figured. But we really need to know what happened to you when he read from the key.”

  “What?” Zach asked. “Did you see something? Are you a Dreamer?”

  “No,” he grunted. “It would take too long to explain it, but—Look, how long’s your father expecting you to be in here? We need to talk—in detail.”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s my first time seeing her—my mom, I mean—in months. I think I have at least twenty or so minutes. Why?”

  Lucas looked around the room, searching for something. “This will have to do,” he muttered under his breath as he picked up one of the splinters.

  “What are you doing?” Zach asked as Lucas lifted the splinter to his hand.

  He took a breath, muttered something about desperate moments and desperate measures, and dragged the sharp edge across the palm of his hand, immediately drawing blood. He rushed across the room and held his hand out the window, waving it in the air.

  What—

  “Quickly, cover her ears!” he said over his shoulder.

  Without thinking, Zach ran over to his mother’s side, cupping both her ears with his hands. A split second later, the air in the room pressed against him as Noah Stepped in. The wood on the floor moved from the force of his arrival.

  “Lucas, we said—”

  “Not now,” his brother snapped. “There he is. You have twenty minutes, max. I’ll keep watch outside, and knock when someone’s coming.”

  He balled up his bleeding fist as he stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. Zach could only shake his head, his hands still covering his mother’s ears.

  Who are these people?