I lick my lips, sore from our hard kissing, and, even in the grim darkness between us, his eyes are drawn to the movement and slow slip of my tongue. My curls are loose and getting in my way again, but he brings up his hand and brushes my hair out of my face like he’s reading my mind.

     “You said we are in an all-or-nothing situation… yet it could be an all and nothing… We've had nothing but nothing up until now. So, when does the “all” portion of the program kick in, huh, Jaak? We could just go… let’s just go.” He’s got me not making any kind of sense anymore. What is logic, I wonder, as his lips linger over mine. So close, yet the furthest he's ever been.

     “Go…” I can feel his hot breath colliding with mine as he asks, “where?” His voice chases mine right out of this cave and echoes in our mutual desperation.

     “People have been uprooting more often than not these days. So much so that they are insisting on pushing up The Unions, hosting them twice a year. They want to focus on creating more population, not keeping the population they have. Because of the war, because of… well, everything… But what if you and I just left, Jaak? What if we just never went back?” Here I go speaking treason again. Uprooting is considered an act against The Hive as a whole, not very “patriotic” like those who once roamed this “America” now turned to rubble. As if our scattered civilization weren't divided enough. If I were a peacock, all of my ass eyes would be rolling… Yet, peacocks are an extinct species now.

    “Yvie, what of the rest of them… hmm? Those members of our families that we can't exactly leave behind? My brothers… your younger brother and sister, my mother? Your cousins? They'd come after us. You're too important for The Hive to even consider losing. Your brilliant mind alone would warrant a search party. We'd never stand a chance and you know it.” He's right. His firm grip on my chin only emphasizes it. I groan in protest of his logic ringing truth.

     My arms curl up between us and I press my hands against his chest, making a weak attempt at pushing him away. The black cord around my wrist lights up the space between us with a digital display of the time and my comm alerts– 3:18 AM and fourteen missed messages. Shit.

     “I have to go. Now.” I can hear the apprehension in my own voice, something is wrong. Jaak has his fingers wrapped around my wrist covering the light and reeling us back into the dark before I can break away.

     “This conversation, much like you and I, Yvie, is far from over.” His voice has this possessive promise underlining it and those shivers up my spine are a result I cannot deny.

     “I know. Just as well as I know that we deserve so much better than whatever the fuck this isn’t. I mean, we've been revolving within each other's orbit this whole time and each time getting just that much closer–but then we do get close–and then we get really close. Just for us to have to resort back to our enemy status once we part ways. I’m done putting on a facade for the sake of war. Their bigoted battles were never ours. Enough with the implied accountability simply based off of association. I know what I want. Who I want. And it will never not be you, Jaak Taylor.” I’m firm in my words as they bounce off the walls as assertively as I am when I stand upright and brush the dust from my shorts. He stands with me and once again towers over me the way he always has. I’m not even the shortest girl in The Hive, yet he makes me feel as though I could be.

     He runs his hands through his overgrown hair and quickly ties it back with a black band. Then he twirls one of my loose curls around his index finger as he draws me close once again. I welcome his warmth, his arms coming around me in a gentle hug. His lips settle on my forehead and I never can figure out how to begin to hold back my sigh of relief even if I decide I want to.

     “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say that will ease the frustration pent up for a decade between us. What I do know is that we are an actual ticking time bomb like the Old Ones would have had… and we’re about to go off. I don’t know how to handle that. I wish I knew how to handle you, us, this… but, I just don’t know, Yvie.” His voice is laced with this defeat. I can't wrap my head around it and I can't take it anymore, so I step out of his hold and back three steps toward the entrance of our hidden cave of conflict. I don't want to be witness to the disaster that is him and I any longer. It's heartbreaking.

     “Your indecision is a decision, Jaak. But, let's face it, lover, you already knew that.” I leave him with those words as they echo and settle into the dust at his boots.

     The wind is whipping my curls every which way but I pull myself forward and flash my palm over the locked scanner that grants entry to my Tumbler. It's a combination of fingerprint and bio-reading, which can detect sweat and skin particles to properly ascertain identification. It also prevents operating while under the influence.

     My Tumbler flashes red and I curse. I forgot to override the detection of prohibited substances when I landed. I make a mental note to have a chat with Cheyenne, my understudy, when I get back.

     Flipping open the hemp bioplastic panel underneath the scanner, I hit the third switch from the left to transition the holographic keyboard up to type in my backdoor password and dismantle the parameters. Done in less than two seconds.

     I can feel the heat of his stare on my back as he's made his way out of the cave by now and I use every fiber of my will power to not turn back to meet those eyes I search for within every crowd. I scan my palm again, green, flip the switch to hide the keyboard, panel placed back, and wrench open my Tumbler’s side door.

     I hoist myself up and into my seat, seal the cabin, and start her up. Within moments, I've launched myself at high speed into the fray of twisting pillars of storms we call Stitches.

     There's a rumble beneath my seat and I can feel my gaining even more ground as I weave in and out of pockets of debris, piles of collected trash, and nature uprooted and left discarded in heaps of disarray. There's no windows to look out of within the Tumbler so much as there are displays that relay the feed from the “eyes” of this bee-looking vehicle. My controls are sleek and simple, joysticks like flying tracker drones when we were kids so we could map out The Scar.

     Those displays show me Stitch 207, spiraling it's way southeast with winds upwards of 350 miles per hour. Stitch 207 travels across two “states,” as the Old Ones would have referred to them, and isn't as wide as some of the other Stitches digging repetitive paths all throughout The Scar, however, it's wide enough to warrant some caution.

     I veer down and quickly pass her by, knowing she won't be the last I'll have to avoid.

     It takes me a grand whole twenty-four minutes to make it back to The Mind segment; home, where I was born and raised by my older siblings, and the first Triplet Triad of The Nine, The Hive's central government and Innovation segment.

     My understudy is there to see me in the loading bay, quickly ushering me out and the tumbler shut down completely. I waste no time and cut off whatever she'd been about to say. Her thin lips purse in impatience.

     “Remind me when I demonstrate how to modify departure and arrival times, to also wipe red marks off the report's history, okay? It's good to know, should you ever be inclined to step foot outside this segment, Cheyenne.” I pull my backpack out and grab my bottle of herbal spray, and spritz my neck and wrists just for good measure.

     “Yvie, your family has been trying to reach you. Wren called more than four times. I've covered you thus far, saying you were tending to a malfunction in the lower east hydroponics labs in Sector 5C. It was a standard operating system malfunction but nothing you couldn't handle. I should also tell you that Michael was poking around looking for you too. He suggested you report to your brother and sister immediately. Rupert and Rosin should probably take precedent over Wren, considering they'd send Michael in person… he's an intimidating man, right there. I'm not so sure he believed my alibi for you–”

     “He didn’t, Cheyenne, Michael's anything but stupid. He'll have questions for me later, I'm sure. Do you know what this is all about?” Concern is building a twisted nest of sharp twigs in my gut and I recall my earlier thoughts about how my smooth travels lined up something inevitable to go wrong. I wish I wasn't right about things a majority of the time.

     “No, Miss Madison, he only mentioned you should locate him as soon as you'd finished.” Cheyenne has become a trusted assistant in the past year that she had been assigned to me upon completion of her academics. She is only fifteen, but Cheyenne has demonstrated her intelligence, despite being a little clumsy sometimes, and she's more than proven her competence. She doesn't know I'm off meeting Jaak, but in the last two times she's covered for me, she's been gracious enough not to ask questions. I wouldn't allude to the truth even if she did. That knowledge could have her condemned.

     “When I return, we shall go over the reports and their edits before they get automatically uploaded to the servers. If they hit the servers without edits, it could spell disaster for that alibi you worked so hard on…” I can't help but chuckle a bit at her efforts. She's been so ready to adapt to whatever challenge I throw at her, even my selfishly motivated ones. I make a mental note to treat her to something special when I can. Maybe a night off.

     I leave her at the bottom of the loading bay stairs and head up three levels to my living quarters. I change the quickest I ever have, wipe the dust and outside storm grime from my face and arms, and then head to the elevator at the end of the hall. My technician jumpsuit looks crisp and clean. Its dark hues of blues and gold threads on the seams are TumblerTech specific, and they make my hot pink curls stand out that much more. Right now those curls are settled at the nape of my neck in one giant messy bun, but I take this time in the ride down to the bottom to reassemble them into two cute buns on the top of my head. I squint into the reflective surface of the elevator door and check my appearance once more.

     My eyes look only sort of puffy, like maybe I got some dust in my eyes during my mission in Sector 5C instead of crying over a guy I can never be with. My cheeks look wind-kissed, but maybe I can chalk that up to the rushing it took me to get to the Nucleus.

     The Nucleus of each segment is a high-clearance operations and command center where my siblings reside while they are here in this southern Mind segment. They, as one set of triplets that combine to create The Nine, are typically full-time residents of Innovation, the segment which governs the rest. It lies sandwiched between the two warring segments of Mind and Body on the left side of The Scar. Their unscheduled combined visit is an omen of dread because it can only mean one of two things; someone is dead, or, someone is about to be dead.

     The elevator chimes and the door peels open, revealing them in the center rooms of the last level in this well thought-out underground fortress city. Michael is pacing nervously, Rosin, my sister, is sitting in a chair with her head in her hands, but it's Rupert who spots me first.

     “Finally, fuck, Yvie, where have you been? You should have buzzed in by now. What was so pertinent in 5C that absolutely couldn't wait, exactly?” Rupert might share an age with Rosin and Michael, but he's the eldest in his power dynamic between them.

     “There was a backup in the coolant lines, one that would have caused a flood of the entire sector if left unattended–they're lucky I got there when I did. Now, what is going on?” I keep my voice level and confident as I stare my older brother in the eye. He's never scared me my whole life, he's not about to start now.

     Rosin lifts her face from her hands and her streaked face gives her grief another tortured layer as she sobs, “Elizabeth is missing.”