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she never realized how much longer than everyone else. Now that Cecil mentioned it, she couldn’t remember anyone who had been there longer than she had other than Doctor Ball. She examined Cecil. His skin had a gray tinge and the last remnants of a blue-purplish rash covered his forearm. Meke glanced down on her own arm and saw the fading signs of a similar rash. A question occurred to her.
    “How long were you with Doctor Ball?”
    His mouth flattened. “Just three months. He hurt me. I hated it there.” He frowned a bit. “They took me away from my parents. Do you know where they are?”
    Arya shook her head. Meke’s throat hurt, but she didn’t need her throat to talk. “No, I’m sorry.”
    Cecil sighed. “They hid me for my whole life. They told me I’d be safe. Then one day—” his forehead creased and his lips stopped moving.
    Arya whispered something in his ear, which made his shoulder sag a bit. Cecil nodded, his blond hair falling over his eyes.  
    Arya looked at Meke and smiled a sad smile. “We’d best be going. The guards are still following us. They’re further off, but we can’t stop.”
    The steady pace lulled Meke’s body into a constant rhythm of movement. Her brain, however, buzzed with thoughts. Strangers surrounded her, pulling her toward an unknown fate. Just because you couldn’t see the strings didn’t mean they weren’t there.  
    She had no idea about this Sterling, this revolution. Her mother’s words nudged at her consciousness: Do not believe them. Meke chewed on her lip. Now, that she finally left the institution, Meke wondered if she should just walk away and live her own life as she had dreamed of doing when she had been stuck behind glass windows. Then Meke thought about Arya who had risked her life for a Zero and decided to stay with her.
    ◆     ◆     ◆
    That night, Meke slipped into her sleeping bag, grateful for horizontal sleep. Despite her body’s limp exhaustion, Meke’s brain ached. A day of forcing her sensory world into the right orientation had worn her out.
    Her headache reminded her of the reality. She had a twitching mass of sensation in her mind that interfered with her every thought and her every move.  
    The new sense—this thing—hadn’t faded as they drew away from the institution. Instead, feelings and images assaulted Meke from all directions. She could tolerate it during the day as her eyes settled her mind, but at night, her world spun, the notion of direction becoming meaningless.
    How could she live like this, at the mercy of some strange thing growing in her mind? It felt like a parasite, siphoning her energy and her thoughts from her.  
    Her mother had told her that she needed to master the absence of a sense. “If you want to, you can do anything,” she said, her light eyes all the more startling in her sun-worn face. “But you need to find ways around it.” Meke exhaled. She needed to master this thing. This sense wouldn’t beat her. Meke squeezed her eyes shut, trying to upright the world in her mind. The more she tried, the more the world swirled around her.
    Meke clutched her sleeping bag, letting her nails dig into the rough fabric. It was no use. Meke released a breath that she didn’t know she had held. Her brain strained to maintain the focus. After a day of righting and steadying her world, the wall between this sense and her mind crumbled.
    The world flooded her mind. Shapes, contours, textures saturated her, driving out all rational thought. All Meke did was feel. She felt the specks of dirt on the rock next to her as she felt the tip of the evergreen swaying in the breeze. She felt the wind’s current past the evergreen needles. Meke’s brain struggled to make sense of the shapes. Her mind couldn’t fathom the distance between the rock and the tree. A speck of dirt seemed as tall as a boulder.
    Meke squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push away the deluge. The feelings refused to leave. After what seemed to be