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handsome he was on the outside and how mean he was on the inside, seemed like thinking something positive.
    He asked her to forgive him for being so mean. His face was yellow. At first she thought it was because of the environmental change—Peyti normal, no human could survive that—and then she realized his skin was yellow and black in a pattern of an open human hand.
    I don’t want to go home , he said. Talia, please. Say you forgive me. Say I belong here. Help me—
    She tried to help him. He was in that room now, the room she could see even with her eyes open. Her stomach clenched and the air smelled of onions. The room was the Academy’s conference room.
    Her links were off; she couldn’t reach her dad or Kaleb or Mrs. Rutledge or anyone.
    Kaleb was all alone in that room with his dad, who was hitting him, and a Peyti lawyer, who played with its mask. The lawyer looked like every other Peyti to her, gray and long limbed, fingers like sticks. Only its eyes were different. They glowed red.
    Your lawyer, she sent to Kaleb . He wants to kill you. Get out of there.
    Then the Peyti lawyer disassembled part of the mask that covered half his face, squeezed the part in his hand, and the room exploded. She stood there, as debris rained around her like images of Anniversary Day, when nineteen domed cities on the Moon suffered horrible explosions. She felt like she was watching a vid, not experiencing anything.
    Kaleb was in pieces now, crying, saying, Talia, I don’t want to go home. Say you forgive me—
    She put her hands over her ears, a scream building.
    I can’t , she sent him, because her links worked now. I can’t forgive you. I can’t help you. You’re dead.
    You’re dead.
    She sat up, her heart racing. She always woke up at that point. The nightmare wasn’t an exact memory. It was wrong in so many ways, but it felt absolutely true.
    What was true was this: She had stopped Kaleb from beating up the Chinar twins because he said they were clones (they weren’t), and in doing so, she had actually started a big fight in the cafeteria. She and Kaleb had gotten into trouble for it. Her dad got mad at her, but Kaleb’s dad—he must have gone way beyond mad. He wanted to pull Kaleb out of school and leave him at home, which Kaleb didn’t want.
    Because Kaleb had had a bruise on his face that last day, and something about the way he was, something about what he was trying to tell her, made her think that he didn’t want to go home because he was scared his dad was going to hurt him.
    Her stomach ached. She popped off the bed as if it were causing the nightmares. Kaleb had wanted her to join him in that conference room. His dad and his dad’s lawyers, including a Peyti, were meeting with the headmistress, Mrs. Rutledge, to discuss Kaleb’s future at the academy.
    Talia had lurked outside because she had felt so confused. Part of her thought maybe she should help him, and part of her thought he was the meanest kid she knew, and he should get what he deserved.
    And while she was having that thought, her links shut off, a guard grabbed her, putting his onion-scented hands on her, and dragged her away from the conference area.
    But not before she saw the entire conference room’s environmental system change to Peyti Normal—a yellowish color. The Peyti lawyer removed his mask and squeezed it. Had the environmental system still been set at Earth Normal, the damn lawyer would have blown up the entire school, maybe even blown a hole in the dome.
    But her dad, working with Noelle DeRicci, the Chief of Security for the United Domes of the Moon, had figured out what was going to happen and ordered a change to environmental systems all over the Moon to Peyti Normal, just in time.
    The problem was…no human could survive without a mask in Peyti Normal.
    Talia watched ten people die.
    She watched Kaleb die. He screamed and screamed, then collapsed, and twitched. And died.
    Talia wiped at her face. It was wet again. Those