I’ll be watching you, too.

  The thought echoed in Zach’s mind as they rode down Cache Street. Zach sat with his back against the front end of the wagon, staring at the Dreamhold as it towered over all the other buildings.

  Although he did his best to hide the unease that spread in waves of goosebumps across his back, he couldn’t help but shift. That woman... Knowing that she was Oliver’s grandmother somehow made it worse.

  From the moment he’d left her presence, that knowledge had brushed against that mental wall. Even weirder, it brought on a pulsing wave of contempt, filling him even as he sat staring at the passing buildings. And that was his own emotion, held for his own grandmother back in his world.

  Just how often would this happen? Had his and Oliver’s lives really mirrored each other so closely? Were their family experiences somehow linked?

  He shook his head. It was quickly becoming clear that by living Oliver’s life, he’d manage to unlock more of his own memories. Maybe even what he’d been doing in the moments before the transmigration.

  But there was no telling how long that would take.

  He sighed, looking down at his hand. Still bandaged to hide the healed flesh, he often found himself looking at it to remember that first day. Not that there was anything pleasant to remember.

  It was just that having something concrete to focus on, to remind him this wasn’t a dream, was a helpful tool. Had it really only been three days?

  Okay, that’s enough. If I stay in these thoughts any longer, I’ll get depressed.

  There was something in those thoughts that felt like home. Like despair was where he was supposed to be, what made the most sense, and what he knew best.

  Shut up!

  He shook his head, turning to face John.

  “Where are we going now?” he asked, desperate to chase the silence away.

  “The Store,” John said, looking as though he’d been deep in his own musings.

  “What’s the Store?” Zach asked before he could stop himself.

  John turned to look at him, an expression of concern creasing his forehead, or rather, his best approximation of concern. “The Store, where the Function heads meet to work? You know this, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Zach said immediately. “I just... forgot.”

  John nodded, the expression still on his face. “Your grandmother?”

  Zach only looked at him, wondering how he was supposed to respond to that.

  “She didn’t do anything to you?” he asked. “Ask about Leo?”

  What the hell happened with Leo?

  Back when he’d first heard Leo’s name, he’d felt Oliver’s immense guilt. Now, after hearing the Head and John mention it, he wanted so badly to ask about it, but the pain sitting behind John’s eyes stopped him.

  He shook his head in answer.

  “Good, that’s good.” He hesitated, biting his jaw. “Oliver, we’re almost at the Store, but there’s something I want to say to you. Just so you know, and just so it’s out there. Alright?”

  “Okay...” Zach swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “I don’t blame you, alright? For what happened with Leo. I don’t blame you. And I know your mother wouldn’t either. It sucks what Leo did, and... and I know it must feel like torture straight from the Black End. But it wasn’t your fault. He made his own decision. Alright?”

  Zach bit down on the corner of his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The rawness in John’s voice deepened his sense of guilt. It was clear John had worked up a lot of courage to say this, but Zach didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Zach had robbed the man of having a touching and honest moment with his son.

  And yet, strangely enough, it did touch something in him. A father who cared enough to say something like this, to have a moment like this with his son. It brought up a feeling of deep longing that Zach instinctively cringed away from.

  “...” He didn’t know what to say, but he succumbed to the sudden need to hug this man.

  John stood surprised, hesitating only a moment before returning the embrace. Zach received the hug, feeling a part of that strange longing fade away.

  The horse nickered as it turned into an old parking lot of what clearly used to be a mall. There, they found a small group sitting in a circle with someone standing in the middle reading from a clipboard. Seven other people stood in a line nearby, seemingly waiting their turn.

  As the cart rattled down the concrete, the man’s voice died off, every eye turning to watch them. Zach stared back with a lump in his throat. It was stupid. He didn’t know any of these people, not really, and yet, here he was, worried about how they would perceive him. Worrying about how they looked at him.

  The horse came to a stop, the driver getting off to light what looked like a tobacco cigarette. Zach knew there were eyes on him, and still, he couldn’t help but watch as the man lit the end of the cigarette, the end glowing a soft orange.

  There was no smoke, not even when he put it to his mouth and took what looked like a deep puff. The man exhaled nothing, either. The paper didn’t even fall away to ash; it simply burned away to nothing.

  Zach shook his head in amazement.

  “Glad you could make it,” someone called from the circle, seizing Zach’s attention.

  He turned and watched as a man got up, walked over, and laid a strong hand on Zach’s shoulder. His name was Peter, he remembered, but most people called him Pete. This was his father’s best friend.

  John’s best friend. And Ava’s husband.

  “I’m glad to see you’re up and kicking,” he said with a smile. “You had us nervous there. I kept telling your father you’d be fine.”

  “Thanks, Uncle P,” he said, recalling Oliver’s honorific for the man.

  “You’ve already started?” John asked the circle.

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  “The bloody engineers were too impatient,” someone grumbled and complained.

  “We need parts,” the man standing in the middle of the circle said. “If you want the cars to work, we need more parts.”

  Zach thought the man went out of his way not to look at him. Indeed, that seemed to be the case for everyone here. Still feeling the emotional fallout that came from remembering hints of his familial scars, he looked down at the floor as they walked to join the circle.

  “Didn’t we strip down the cars in the city for this same reason?” Peter asked, the three of them taking their seats.

  Knowing that Zach would be coming, a chair had been set out for him. The chair was purposefully placed between Peter and John, so the others wouldn’t have to be forced to sit next to him.

  “We did,” the engineer answered. “But that was for something else. We’re attempting to revive cars, but a lot of what’s here in the camp is too modern. Electric and hybrid cars are useless. We need more spark plugs, especially for the engineers who will be going with you. In fact—”

  “Okay, okay,” Peter said, waving his hand around. “I get it, please don’t go into detail.”

  “I assume you have a list prepared?” John asked.

  “We do,” the man replied, flipping through the pages on his clipboard.

  “And we’ll find all of this?” he asked.

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult,” the man assured them. “The only challenge is if someone else had the same thought and already stripped the cars. But that would be impossible. Most of the engineers are in Camp Twelve.”

  “Fine, then,” John said. “Leave the list with us. We’ll add it to the expedition. Don’t forget the names of those who’ll be coming with us.”

  “Thank you,” the man said, looking around at the circle.

  Again, he actively avoided looking at Zach.

  “Who’s next?”

  So the meeting went. Someone representing a key aspect of the camp came to the Function heads with requests, reports, or ideas on improving one thing or the other. The heads would hear them out, then make a decision on behalf of their Function.

  A few of them, like John, had brought their deputies with them, but John was the only one who let his deputy speak and make decisions without any consultation first. Though Peter did seem to make the exact same decision he would’ve made.

  Through all of it, Zach kept silent, watching everything with a sort of fascination. The level of organization was truly astounding. From what he could pick up during the discussions, the heads had the final say for their Functions, unless the Head overruled it later.

  Everything moved efficiently, all of them gradually forgetting his presence, gradually falling back into their usual routine, until a woman almost as old as the Head stepped up to the center of the circle.

  The mood seemed to change before she uttered a single word. Beside him, John shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably, the other Heads sharing an exasperated look.

  “Thank you for giving me this opportunity,” the woman began, turning in place to look at every last one of them. To his surprise, the woman spared a lasting glance in Zach’s direction.

  “I have to ask, don’t you get tired of this?” Toni Helia, Head of the Water and Sanitation Function, said. “You do this once a week. Let me guess, you want us to reinstate the devotional times?”

  “Toni,” the woman said with a sardonic smile. “The state of this world is all the proof you need to see that lack of devotion is what brought us here today. We should be ashamed of ourselves, abandoning our faith like that. Even that lix is still praying and reading from that dark book of theirs.”

  “Like we tell you every week,” Richard Gerd said, “what happened in the war is more than enough of a reason to remove devotion from our lives. This is the Head’s decision. And most in the camp support it.”

  A deputy, he still spoke with all the arrogance he could summon. With Kevin still at the Head’s house, Richard spoke at this meeting as the Head of the Security Function.

  “Most in the Camp support it, for now,” the woman said, finally looking directly at Zach. “Now that this boy has been released from the hold, sentiment is changing. There’s definitely enough to take this matter to the council.”

  “What are you talking about?” John asked.

  “Since Richard brought up the war, it’s important not to forget what happened there. Demons found their way onto our world, all of them from the Black End itself. He may be healed, alive, and kicking, but he was—is— still a Dreamer.

  “To escape the torment he might bring us in the future, more and more people are returning to their devotional times. Or want to, I should say. That brings us to the problem we need to address.”

  “Just say what you want to say already,” one of the other heads said. Oliver hadn’t known his name, and no one had said it yet.

  The woman turned to face the man and said, “Our Keys were taken. When we saw the results of the war, we gave them up in passion and in fear. A shameful act on our part, but there it is. We need them back.”

  She turned back to face John and Peter. “There must be Keys in the abandoned towns near us, Keys that people didn’t burn as we did, cowards that we were. The Expedition Function needs to retrieve them.”

  Zach frowned as Oliver’s memories came to him then. Keys were their holy books, called so because they were believed to be the key to connecting human souls to supreme beings.

  To his surprise, he’d inherited Oliver’s scorn for the things. It had been the main aspect of many, if not all, religions in the world, but evidently not in the Emery household.

  “Religion destroyed countries,” John began. “It sent men to their deaths—all that bloodshed brought the Knocking upon us. And now you want to bring it back? Because my son survived what religion brought to Earth in the first place?”

  “That wasn’t religion, John,” the woman said pityingly. “That was mankind. We need our faith back. It is the only thing that can stop us from losing ourselves.”

  “It didn’t stop the war,” John said, his voice filled with enough scorn to go against her passion.

  “That changes nothing. Your son has everyone on their toes. Even now, he’s here to join a Function, no? You think any of them will let him in?”

  John looked at the gathered heads and deputies, studying their faces.

  “People are afraid. They begged their heads not to let him in,” she continued, her face expressing nothing but a sad pity.

  Zach found that look sickening. Something in him stirred at it, and it had nothing to do with Oliver. It was that pity and the condescension that came with it. Pity meant people believed him incapable of handling something, believed him weak.

  “Even if that is true,” John said, looking at the other heads, “we have laws. We go by those laws, unless you want the Head involved?”

  There was a brief silence before one of them cleared their throat and leaned forward.

  “Here’s a question for you,” the man said, finally meeting Zach’s eyes. “What are cover crops?”

  Zach blinked, glancing at John, who only looked back at him with a sad gesture to answer the question.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, hating how small his voice sounded.

  The man nodded, then leaned back in his chair.

  “I have enough field hands as is; what I need is a manager.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I can’t very well take someone who can’t answer that simple question, John. Agriculture is out.”

  John’s jaws worked underneath his skin.

  Toni leaned forward, studying him closely. “What are our main causes for water loss, and what do we do to prevent them?”

  “Oh, come on,” Peter said. “What kind of questions are those?”

  “Questions that are important to my Function,” Toni responded calmly.

  At her raised eyebrow, Zach said the first thing that came to mind. “Cracked buckets?”

  “My Function has enough waste collectors. I need knowledge. Water and Sanitation is out.”

  Zach swallowed.

  They were trying to embarrass him just so that they wouldn’t have to take him. Worse, it was actually working. He clenched his fist in an effort to keep his face as calm as he could. His lashing out would only make it worse.

  “I won’t debase my Function with petty questions,” another woman said. “As head of the Medical Function, I simply cannot bring someone in who might bring distress to my patients. I know you’ll all understand this. Medical is out.”

  They all turned to Richard, who sat there with the slimiest smile. “What is the difference...”

  “Just stop it,” John said coldly.

  “So, you people really want the Head involved in this?” Peter asked.

  “Pete, we choose the Function aides, and she approves. Plus, I think you’ll find the Head prioritizes peace in the camp.”

  “Pathetic, all of you. Just pathetic,” John said, turning to face Zach. “As head of the Expedition Function, I accept you into our Function.”

  Zach didn’t know if it was his imagination or not, but he could’ve sworn there was a subtle sadness in his father’s eyes.

  Sadness and regret.

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