“U.S.?” I ask.
Katarina nods, pulling our most recent passports from the inside pocket of her army jacket, tossing mine into my lap. I flip it open and peer at my new name.
“Maren Elizabeth,” I say aloud. Katarina puts a lot of time into her forgeries, though I usually complain about the names she chooses for me. When I was eight and we were moving to Nova Scotia, I begged and begged to be named Starla. Katarina vetoed the suggestion. She thought it was too “attention getting,” too exotic. I almost laugh to think about it now. A Katarina in Mexico is about as exotic as you can get. And of course she’s keeping it. Katarina has grown attached to her own name. Sometimes I suspect that Cêpans aren’t so different from parents after all.
Maren Elizabeth . . . it’s no Starla, but I like how it sounds.
I reach down and cradle my calf, just above the throbbing scars on my ankle. By squeezing my calf I can muffle the pain of my sizzled flesh.
But as the pain fades, the fear returns. The fear of our present situation, the horror of Two’s death. I decide to let go of my calf, and I let my leg burn.
Katarina refuses to stop the car for anything but gas and pee breaks. It’s a long trip, but we have ways to pass the time. Mostly we play Shadow, a game that Katarina made up during our previous travels, out of our desire to keep training even when we couldn’t do physical drills.
“A Mogadorian scout races at you from two o’clock, wielding a twenty-inch blade in his left arm. He swings.”
“I crouch,” I say. “Dodge left.”
“He swings around, the blade above your head.”
“From the ground, a kick to the groin. A leg sweep, from his right side to his left.”
“On his back, but he grabs your arm.”
“I let him. I use the force of his grip to swing my legs free, up, and then down to his face. Step on his face, pull my hand free.”
It’s a strange game. It forces me to separate the physical from reality, to fight with my brain and not my body. I used to complain about games of Shadow, saying it was all made up, that it wasn’t real. Fighting was fists, and feet, and heads. It wasn’t brains. It wasn’t words.
But the more Shadow we played, the better I got at drills, especially hand-to-hand drills with Katarina. I couldn’t deny that the game made good practice. It made me a better fighter. I have come to love it.
“I run,” I say.
“Too late,” she says. I almost complain, knowing what’s coming. “You forgot about the sword,” she says. “He’s already swung it up and nicked your flank.”
“No he didn’t,” I say. “I froze his sword and shattered it like glass.”
“Oh did you, now?” Katarina is tired, eyes bloodshot from ten straight hours of driving, but I can see I’m amusing her. “I must’ve missed that part.”
“Yeah,” I say, starting to grin myself.
“And how’d you pull off that feat?”
“My Legacy. It just kicked in. Turns out, I can freeze stuff.”
This is make-believe. I have yet to develop my Legacies, and I have no idea what they’ll be when they arrive.
“That’s a good one,” says Katarina.
CHAPTER FIVE
We crossed the U.S. border hours back, without a hitch. I have never understood how Katarina manages to make such incredible forgeries.
Katarina is pulling us into a dusty pit stop off the highway. There’s a tiny, single-story motel, an old-fashioned and decrepit diner, and a gas station, newer and brighter than the other two buildings.
It is barely dusk when we step out of the truck. The faintest pink of sunrise creeps over the horizon, just enough to add a strange hue to our flesh as we stumble out onto the gravel.