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static as the signal strengthens. This is old technology, even by the Academy’s standards.
    Cassius’s voice spills from the speaker after a few moments, tinny and small. It’s the only version of my brother I’ve gotten to know these past few months. “This isn’t a good time.” There’s a hardness to his tone. Imposing, even now that we’re allies.
    I bring myself closer to the speaker, scared that Morse or someone could be out in the hallway listening. “Is something wrong?” I wait for a response that doesn’t come. “You’re still on the coast?”
    “Yeah,” he says. “Why?”
    “I just had the weirdest flash. Like, suddenly my eyes shut and I saw this place, right on the water. I haven’t had a vision that strong since last spring, when I saw Seattle clogged up with all that green mist.”
    He’s silent. I’m not sure if he’s thinking it through or if he’s decided not to respond again, so I continue.
    “I thought maybe, since it was a coastline, it might have something to do with you.”
    “What kind of coastline?”
    I close my eyes and recall the image. “Dirt, mostly. Bare.”
    “That’s not the Polar Cities,” he responds. “There are buildings everywhere. Docks and … small forests.”
    “Oh.” I move to a sitting position, resting on my knees. Suddenly the mad rush back to my room seems a little overdramatic, something a crazy person would do. Or someone with a massive anxiety problem.
    I stare into the speaker, wishing that we were sitting face to face. These short bursts of communicator conversation are never enough. And it makes it impossible to tell if he’s being honest with me. “Where are you now?”
    “Home.”
    “Where’s home?” I know he won’t tell me. He never does.
    He sighs. “Just home. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    His voice calms. “The Academy … how are they treating you?”
    “The same,” I start. “I broke a Pearl last night but they—”
    “You’ve got to do something,” he interrupts. “I don’t have your power. I can’t do what you can. They’re still hiding the other Drifters?”
    “They’re in Siberia somewhere. That’s all I know. We’ve had conference calls, but—”
    “You’ve got to find them,” he says. We’ve been through this before, countless times. And the conversation always follows the same path. I can nearly predict it word for word. “Talk to them. We’re being kept in the dark. We can’t do anything if we don’t know what’s going on.”
    “It would be a lot easier if you were here.”
    He scoffs. “Yeah? I’m sure Alkine’d be happy to have me after all I’ve done.”
    “But you’ve changed.”
    No reply.
    I wince. “I don’t know how.”
    “Next time they hook you up to the video feed, look for clues.”
    I think back to the last conference Alkine let me sit in on. He schedules them every few weeks, heavily scripted sitdowns with Ryel, one of the first, and most English-fluent, of the Drifters I’ve freed. Their prison can’t be far away. Otherwise Alkine wouldn’t have been able to install a video link.
    “It’s only a room.” I close my eyes and visualize Ryel’s worried face filling the video screen. I picture the feed breaking in and out like it always does. I think the faculty manipulates the frames. I’m not even sure that the conference is live. The grammar Ryel uses, the words and phrases he chooses to put together … it never seems right. “There’s nothing behind him. No markings or maps or anything. Just a gray wall and a pair of Academy guards flanking him.”
    “Maybe it’s on the coast,” Cassius says. “Maybe that’s what you were seeing. The Academy has to have the coordinates stored somewhere. You have to look around.”
    “Yeah,” I mutter. I know that finding Ryel is more important than freeing random Drifters from captured Pearls. He was the one who was able to relay the message from our mother on the rooftop last spring. He knows things that we need to know. But