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powerful people in the world before the Change had been part of a secret society called the Cult of Atlantis. These people, one of whom had been Quent’s father, were now the Strangers—or the Elite, as they called themselves—and had not only lived through the catastrophe, but had the crystals to keep them forever young. Crystals, as Quent had reminded them, were the source of energy in many an Atlantean legend. That, along with the new landmass in the Pacific Ocean, had created the unnerving suspicion that somehow, Atlantis really did exist . . . and that it had somehow erupted from the bottom of the ocean.
    Impossible. Fence knew it was scientifically impossible. He knew the Earth, and she didn’t move like that.
    But somehow . . . the pieces fit, and there seemed to be no other explanation for it.
    “I’ll increase the patrol along the shore side of the wall,” Vaughn said, looking tense. “We don’t go into the sea very often on the north side of Envy, or very far out when we do. Too many people have gone, and never come back.”
    Fence wasn’t one bit surprised.
    A week after the gray glop appeared on the beach, Fence was a little more than fifteen miles north of the city. He’d guided a group of travelers to a small settlement a bit farther east, and on his way back, he was stopping in a little seaside town to obtain some supplies for Elliott.
    He was not only alone with the song he was humming and the pack on his back, but he was at last moving at his own speed—without having to make constant pit stops. Every shift in the leaves, every new smell in the breeze, every sound of an animal, gave him information. He absorbed it like a starving man.
    This was his world, his life: in the bosom— heh —of Mother Nature. Fence grinned. I crack myself up.
    The salt of the sea tinged the air, and when he came to the top of a rise and was able to look down to see the rolling waves with their foam surging onto rocks and remnants of 2010, he paused and watched. The prickling of his skin and the nauseating flip of his belly warred with his admiration of the infinite expanse of the sea.
    The town he was looking for lay to the right of his peak, and he saw about ten neat little houses near the edge of the water. New construction, built after the Change, which was fairly unusual; for most people simply maintained or scavenged old buildings. Small boats lined up along one side of a dock parallel to the beach. Trees, ruined houses, cracked roads, and even a rusted-out car with branches thrusting from its windows were scattered along the shore.
    He wondered oh so idly if this happened to be the little town “up along the coast” where the sun goddess lived. Fence had learned that she—her name was Ana—came from a seaside village northeast of Envy. In the excitement over the gloppy gray stuff onshore, she had disappeared.
    He wasn’t sure if it bugged him because they’d left things so awkwardly, with his inept reaction to her handicap and her sharp words . . . or because she’d taken off without so much as giving him her name. And with all the other stuff going on, he hadn’t felt compelled to go after the woman or even to hunt her down . . . but he had taken on the task of traveling up the coast knowing he could possibly see her again. Just because.
    A shout from below and to the east caught his attention, and Fence turned to listen.
    “Tanya! Tanya, where are you?”
    Because the voice sounded urgent and a little panicked, he began to scramble down the hill, surefooted, with his backpack clunking rhythmically against him.
    “Tanya?” came another voice, from a different direction. “Tanya!”
    And then a male voice, from the original location: “Tanyaaaa!”
    Fence followed the first voice, and as he came closer heard others calling the girl’s name. When he emerged from between two overgrown houses, one whose roof had been flattened by a massive tree trunk some years earlier, he was conscious of his