"How was that place?"

"Weird."

He went silent. His head hung down.

"What?" I asked.

Michael raised his head. "I was worried you weren't coming back."

"I promised, didn't I?"

He nodded. "Yeah. But I was thinking ... what if you couldn't come back?"

I had no response to that. We sat a moment until he finally broke the silence. "So, what'd you think of it?"

"Did you know they insert a neurochip in here?" I pointed to the back of my head.

"Where? Let me see." He touched my hair.

"I told you, I just went to check it out."

I saw the concern in his face, his eyes soft with kindness. Funny, I hadn't really noticed him much when he lived down the street from us. Strange that it had taken the Spore Wars to bring us together.

I stuffed my hands into my pockets and felt something. A paper. I pulled it out.

"What's that?" he asked.

"The man at the body bank gave it to me. It's a contract."

Michael leaned closer. "That's what they're going to pay?" He snatched the form from my fingers.

"Give it back."

He read the contract. " '... for three connections.' "

"I'm not doing it."

"Good." He paused. "But why? I know you. You're not scared."

"They'll never pay that much money. It's unreal. That's what tipped me off."

"How do they get around the law, anyway? Hiring Starters?"

I shrugged. "They must have some loophole."

"It's pretty much off the radar. You never see any ads for it."

He was right. "The only way I knew about it was from that guy who used to live on the first floor."

"He probably makes money for every Starter he brings in."

"He won't be getting any from me." I rested on my side, leaning my head on my hand. "I don't trust that place."

"You must be tired," he said. "That was a long walk."

"I'm beyond tired."

"Tomorrow, let's go to the loading dock and see if we can get some fruit."

His words faded, and my eyes felt heavy. Next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and he was smiling at me.

"Cal," he said gently. "Go to bed."

I nodded. I stuffed the contract back into my pocket and returned to Tyler. My body melted into the sleeping bag.

I set my lite to sleep mode. It glowed softly.

Winter in Southern California wasn't brutal, but it was going to get too cold for Tyler. I needed to get him into someplace warm, a real home. But how? This was my nightly ritual worry. I'd hoped the body bank would be the answer, but it wasn't. As I drifted off to sleep, my lite turned itself off.

My sleep was shattered by the screech of the smoke detectors. A bitter stench filled my nostrils. I felt Tyler, near me, sitting up and coughing.

"Michael?" I called out.

"Fire!" he shouted from across the room.

The time on my handband read 5:00 a.m. I felt for my water bottle and opened it. I reached into the drawer above me and pulled out a T-shirt. I splashed water on it.

"Hold this to your nose," I told Tyler.

Michael's lite broke through the smoke. "Let's go!" he shouted.

I locked arms with my little brother. Our handlites partly penetrated the smoke as we all crouched over and made our way to the door.

Michael put his hand on my back, guiding me to the stairs. Smoke clouded the stairway. It seemed to take forever, but we made it down. My legs were rubbery by the time we made it outside.

We stepped away from the building, worried about flames and falling debris. In the darkness of the early morning, we saw other friendlies coming out-two we knew and three others who must have been on the lower floors.

They were staring at the building in shock. I spun around.

"Where're the flames?" I asked.

"Where's the fire?" Michael said.

"Is that everyone?" a man yelled.

"Yeah." I saw an Ender, maybe a hundred years old, approaching. He wore a crisp suit.

"You sure?" The Ender looked at the friendlies, who nodded. "Good." The man raised his hand and three more Enders wearing construction gear walked forward.

One construction man ripped off the tape that covered the lock on the side door. Another used a hand tool to post a notice. The suit gave us a copy of the notice.

Michael read it. " 'No trespassing. Premises under new ownership.' "

"They smoked us," one of the friendlies said.

"You must vacate the area now," the suit said in a calm but authoritative voice.

When no one moved, he added, "You have one minute."

"But our stuff ..." I moved toward the building.

"I can't let you back in there. Insurance liability," the suit said.

"You can't keep our property," Michael said.

"Squatting is trespassing," the Ender said. "I'm warning you for your own good. Thirty seconds."

My heart sank. "All we have left of our things is in there. If we can't go in, please just bring our stuff out."

He shook his head. "There's no time. You have to go. The marshals are on their way."

That made the other friendlies run. I put my arm around Tyler and turned to go, but something made me stop. The man in the suit already had his back to us, but the construction man saw us and nodded to him. He turned.

"Please. Our parents are dead." My eyes burned with tears. "The last pictures we have of them are inside that building. On the third floor, end of the hall. Could someone just give us the frame? Even if they have to throw it out the window?"

He paused for just a moment, as if he was considering it. "I wish I could. But I can't. Sorry." He turned his back. I had never felt so hollow inside. It was hopeless arguing with him. More than a hundred years separated us; he could never understand what we had gone through.

"Callie, it's okay." Tyler pulled my hand. "We can remember them without the pictures. We won't forget."

Sirens blared.

"It's the marshals," Michael said. "Run!"

We had no choice. We ran into the darkness of the early morning, leaving behind the last physical links to our family and to the life we'd lived together just a year ago.

CHAPTER TWO.

We raced up the street, away from the marshals' sirens. I glanced back just long enough to see the silver hair and steel-gray uniforms rushing out of their vehicle. Michael scooped Tyler into his arms, and we ran as fast as we could. We ducked down a narrow walkway between our old building and another abandoned office building.

We heard the marshals chasing us, but we were out of the walkway before they made it to the entrance, so they didn't see which way we turned. They had guns and a hundred-plus years of experience, but we had young legs.

We hid in a long row of bushes in the courtyard between the buildings. They were dying and scratchy but still full enough to hide us in the darkness of the hour. Good thing we'd staked out hiding places when we first moved in. I pushed aside branches as Michael put Tyler on the ground, and we huddled together.

The marshals came out of the walkway. I peered at them through a hole in the bush, watching their movement. One headed left. The other came right toward us.

Tyler made a sound, that wheeze that was always followed by a cough. I felt the hair on my arms rise. Michael slipped his hand over Tyler's mouth.

The marshal was approaching. Had he spotted us? He crouched and edged closer, his gun drawn. My heartbeat echoed in my ears. I gripped Michael's shirt and pressed my cheek to his shoulder.

The marshal's hand groped through the leaves in front of my face. He was so close I could smell the oily scent of his gloves. I held my breath.

"He's over here!" the other marshal's voice called out.

Then the sound that made our spines tingle, that electronic, arcing crackle, broke through the cold night.

ZipTaser.

Excruciating screams followed the crackle. They ripped through us, making our teeth hurt and our souls ache. The leaves shook as our marshal ran off.

I pressed my face to the hole in the bushes to see. A boy lay on the ground, facedown. His screams were giving way to moans.

One of the marshals slapped autocuffs on him and turned him over. I recognized him as one of the newer guys in our building. The side of his neck was burnt black from the ZipTaser. That happened if they held it too close or the gun was turned up too high. They did it on purpose, to brand us.

He started yelling as they ran a strap around his cuffs and across his chest, begging them to leave him. They ignored his pleas, tilting him at an angle and holding a strap over their shoulders to drag him behind them. The boy's heels scraped the ground, and every bump was punctuated with a scream.

It was like they'd snared an animal.

They were cowards, conducting these raids in the dark of night, out of sight of any softhearted Enders who might intervene.

Inside the safety of our leafy cover, we hugged each other in a ball. This kept Tyler warm, kept him from coughing, and kept any of us from making the slightest sound. Every scream made us flinch. If only we'd had a few more friendlies, we could have jumped on the marshals' backs, biting, punching, scratching, until the boy could get away.

The screaming faded as they all entered the walkway. Then we heard their car start. They were leaving, satisfied with one capture. They had bagged their prize, and it filled their daily quota. But they would return tomorrow.

Tyler finally released his cough, which led to wheezing and more coughing. We crawled out of the bushes to get him off the damp ground. Michael removed his sweatshirt and put it over Tyler's so he had a double layer. They huddled together on a low concrete planter while I paced.

"Now what do we do?" Michael asked. "We've lost our sleeping bags."

"And my ZipTaser." I swallowed hard, remembering the marshal's weapon. "And our water bottles," I said. "And anything else we saved, scrounged, or built."

My words hung in the cold night air, the finality of it all too overwhelming. Then Tyler came up with his contribution.

"My dogbot," he said.

His lower lip jutted out, but it quivered as he struggled to pull it back. It wasn't just a toy, or his last toy-it was the last toy given to him by our mom. If I had been a better person, I would have confessed that I understood, that I was devastated over losing our parents' pictures. Those were memory triggers, gone forever. Our old lives, the ones we'd had just a year ago, were history now-undocumented history. The last cord was cut.

But I kept it inside. Falling apart wasn't an option.

"What're we gonna do?" Tyler asked. "Where'll we go?" He went into a fit of hacking coughs.

"We can't stay around here," I said quietly. "They'll come back tomorrow with more men, now that they made a score."

"I know another building," Michael said. "Not far, twenty minutes."