By the time they were at the animal shed, her brother had come back to them.

  “Hey, Denz, do you think you can drive yourself up this?” Kayda pointed to a ramp that was leaning against the side of the shed. With Chimma’s help, she lowered it, laying it against the tiny sill of the doorway.

  “Looks a little high still,” he said. And when he tried it, he was right. But then Kayda scooped a little soil out from beneath the front end, and he was able to drive himself up. His pod made a little bump as it dropped off the sill inside.

  They made sure to bring the ramp inside with them before closing the door.

  “Now I’ve been giving this some thought, Denz,” Kayda told him. “I reckon our fingers can’t do it, because it’s one of your fingers that opens your pod.” He glared at her. “Sorry, your body.” Oh, this was hard. If this worked, how on earth would he cope?

  “So first, we need to take those braces off.” That took a few minutes, as he struggled to hold his hands still to let them to do it. But soon loose mesh gloves jangled around his hands, which easily slid off.

  “Don’t forget that it takes a lot longer to put them back on again,” Chimma reminded them.

  Chimma did what she could to distract him, naming and touching the parts of his face, while Kayda carried his right hand behind his back, and she tried every finger.

  Nothing.

  “It must be the other hand, then.” She asked him to take his hand back. But when she let go, it just dropped to the floor behind him.

  “Where’s my arm?” Denzin asked. “I can’t feel it at all. It’s like it doesn’t even exist!”

  When she carried it to the front, and laid it on his lap, he sighed, and lifted it up, flexing his fingers.

  Kayda tried with his left hand. Yes! As his left thumb touched the pad, she heard the click she had been hoping to.

  Resting his left hand back on his lap, Kayda said, “Denz, we’ve done it. Your left thumb is the one. They must do it while you’re in that drugged sleep. I’m just going to open you up…” and with a little tick, the wide panel that had been both invisible and impenetrable swung open.

  She whistled. “Here, Chimma, you’re going to want to come and see this.”

  “What is it,” Denz asked. “Tell me, what do you see?” He tried to twist around, but as he did, his pod just began to twist on his wheels, and his whole body spun, nearly knocking Chimma over.

  “Woah, Denz. I think you just need to stay right there,” Kayda told him. “We’ll let you know what we see.”

  “Well, the first thing we need to find is come clothes for you,” Chimma said. “You’re stark naked in there!”

  “I bet that without your skin, your bones would be stark naked, too,” Denzin told them. “It is my body, after all.”

  His hands were stroking his handles. And even though Chimma was behind him, that sneaky left hand was sliding along the side of his pod towards the front. Kayda shook her head.

  It was hard to decide what to look at first. There were wires and lines everywhere. She could see one definitely was a catheter, attached to a bag that was nearly full. Another was in his rectum, but that bag had very little in it. Liquid diet, Chimma had said. Made sense.

  Then there was the line coming from a clear bag into a vein in his thigh. Intravenous fluids? Just water, or drugs of some kind?

  And the one that worried her the most. She heard that there was a drug they could insert into your spine to paralyze someone’s legs. If she were to guess, that’s what she’d say that last line was.

  “I think I know why you can’t feel our legs, Denzin.”

  “I have them still?” He sounded shocked.

  “They’re right there where they’ve always been, brother. But they’re looking mighty thin. It’s been far too long since you’ve used them. Nothing but skin and bones. Doubt you’ll be able to walk on them for a while.”

  “Walker. Walker’s my name, isn’t it? Denzin Walker.”

  “That’s right,” she told him. “When we get you out of here, we going to need some place to hide you until you get your strength back. Somewhere no one would think to look for you, but where we can look after you.”

  “Chimma,” Denzin said quietly. “Chimma, I’m scared. I’m so scared right now. Suddenly it’s so real. I want so bad to be free. But at the same time, I feel like you’re doing open heart surgery. Without my permission. While I’m awake. You’ve already torn my face in half, taken away the braces that keep my hands safe, and now you’re talking about skinning me alive.” His voice got louder and louder as he spoke. “I know it’s not true, because you’ve told me it’s not, and I trust you. But that’s what it feels like, and if you don’t tell me to be quiet, I think I might just scream.”

  Grabbing his hands, Chimma shushed him, and told him it wasn’t safe. He became silent, though his face tightened.

  “That’s better,” she told him. “I’m so sorry it feels like that for you. I really am. It’s just not fair and not right what they’ve done to you. Please trust us. Please.”

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  He shook his head a couple of times, his hands trembling so badly it made Chimma’s shake, as well. Then he nodded his head.

  “That’s it,” she whispered. “We can do this together, can’t we.” His hands clung to hers, skin on skin without the braces.

  “Does anyone use the hay loft up there?” Kayda asked.

  “I don’t think so, except, you know, for hay. But if we can hide him right in the back, and build up a mound in front of him, I guess he’d be safe for a while. But now you’ve asked that, I’ll need to talk myself down again in order to come back again.” Kayda grimaced, and Chimma responded, “Just being honest, here. You need to know.”

  Denzin nodded, and tapped his mouth.

  “You alright now?” Chimma asked him. When he nodded, she told him it was safe.

  “But is my body tracked in some way? Do they know where I am? Will they just come and find my body sitting there, and find me?”

  Of course. Another problem needed solving. They needed a plan not just for Denzin, but for his pod. Kayda gave a low whistle.

  “I hate to say it, but we need another day or two,” Kayda admitted. “Chimma, from what you’ve just told me, you can’t really do any of this, can you?”

  “I want to,” she said. “But I keep imagining all the things that could go wrong. I’m so frightened he’ll get caught and hurt, or that I’ll get caught. I don’t have nearly as many messages engraved in my brain as he does, but the few that are there are rock solid, I’m afraid.”

  “No, I get you. Just like I can’t get myself anywhere near the Boundary. And I can’t watch Denzin drive away from me without closing my eyes ‘til he’s gone. I’ve been following you for months you know, and I’m no closer to finding where they’re hiding all you Greymen. Something just won’t allow me to know. And then there’s all the things I can’t make myself talk about once I get through the Checkpoint, no matter how much I know I need to. Things I can’t even read – that I wrote down myself, in my own yassing notebook!" She stroked that skibbing pod. "I couldn’t even make myself tell Mam and Dad I’d seen you, much less give them your message. I think I’ve been gassed, too.” “Chimma, Kayda,” Denzin said. “I’ve just had my first warning. If I’m going back, I need to go now. Or I won’t be going at all.”

  Kayda slammed the boot of his pod shut, and pulled his thumb around to lock it. They each took a hand and scrabbled to get his fingers into the loose wire links of the gloves. As they activated them, sliding them onto the handlebars, his face fell into a peaceful smile. Chimma quickly kissed his lips before putting the mouthpiece in place, adjusted the earpiece, and touched the pad to turn it on. His face contorted around his mask, and he fought for breath, then relaxed, taking deep breaths.

  “Chimma, the ramp! Quick!”

  As he drove up it, Chimma straightened his poncho and put his hood up. Then his wheels slammed down the other side of the door sill.

  Kayda squeezed his shoulder. “Tomorrow, brother. Tomorrow for sure. Come here first. We need an early start.” She hated to do this, but it was an emergency. “Denzin, remember this: come here before you do your work tomorrow. Remember this: come here first tomorrow.”

  Her twin brother began to drive away. The further away he got, the harder it was to watch. She swore as her eyes shut involuntarily. And he was gone.

  “Action plan, with no risks. Not an option, I’m afraid. But can I give you some things that are low risk?”

  “What, like trusting you was?”

  “Yeah, kinda like that.”

  When they were finally were able to convince themselves to follow him, they walked to the Boundary – well, six metres from it – as the sky began to brighten. Her breath came more easily when they didn’t find him. He hadn’t been stranded. They’d been in time.

  That red sunrise worried Kayda, though. Winner was nearly over. And with it, the clear skies. Sunner looked like it might be about to ‘suddenly’ come for a visit.

  Kayda pretended to be very, very busy that day. She shuffled papers, ran around the biology lab with various documents in her hands, and always made sure she looked like she was on urgent business. She was. But it wasn’t the business they thought it was. She wasn’t doing anything they wanted her to do at all. She was looking for somewhere to hide her brother. She’d never been able to bring herself to actually lie. But obscure the truth? She could do that.

  Then, she found it.

  Pointing to a square in the ceiling, she asked one of the technicians, “What’s up there?” It had a border around it. Like a trap door would.

  “Archives, I think. Really old stuff, I’ve heard.”

  “Oo, just what I need, more paperwork!” Kayda joked, waving the papers she was carrying.

  That could be perfect. But how could they get him up there, and then keep going up to look after him?

  She hoped Chimma had found him some clothes. She’d gone back to their parents’ partment on her lunch break to see if any of his things were still in there. If anyone asked, she was on an errand for her friend Kayda. It was true. And it made it a reasonable risk where Chimma felt confident she could do it.

  The biology lab had plenty of medical supplies. And they usually weren’t counted, so Kayda gradually pocketed some tape and bandages and saline and catheters and bowel bags – because their favourite Greyman was probably going to be incontinent for a while.

  In a cleaning cupboard she found just what she needed – another hatch. And a ladder. When she tried it out during her lunch break, it creaked a little, but it was an easy climb. The door swung upwards relatively soundlessly. Besides a few cobwebs, it was perfect. There were stacks and stacks of boxes, obviously untouched for years. She dumped the medical supplies from her bulging pockets under a window behind a row of large, ancient cardboard boxes that looked like they’d been there so long that the building had been built around them.

  Light. That would be an issue. Then she found the switch next to the hatch. She flicked it, and a lightbulb went on.

  But what would they do with that skibbing pod?

  When she went to the Caff for dinner, Chimma gave her a bag.

  “It was all still there, washed and ironed and folded, as if they expect him home any day now,” she told her. “Sad, really. But so helpful.” Then she told her about a pond she’d seen the other week, not far beyond the shed. “Think pods can swim? Me neither.”

  That Chimma – she was a genius at times.

  What they still hadn’t figured out, though, was how to get him from the shed and into the locked biology lab. She could just imagine herself shoving him through a window, and carrying him up that ladder, with his bowel bag flapping in her face. The things he got her into. And so she went looking for a window. And hid a few more roles of tape in her pocket, to stick the bags and wires in place.

  Dad would have helped if she asked. Dad and Mam would be here in a flash. If they could cross that yassing Boundary, anyways. But that was another impossibility.

  As the sun headed for its bed, the rest of the residents of the Over did likewise. Kayda, however, was busy relocating a ramp, and finding another wedge, propping open the window she’d found in a broken toilet block on the ground floor of the biology lab.

  This had better work. They had only one chance. She hoped Chimma hadn’t really understood the risks involved. If it went wrong, they could all end up like him.

  Because this side of the Checkpoint, she could read the rest of that list. Greymen who were disabled people had numbers started DEP; naturals like Denz, had numbers starting DEN; criminals had numbers starting DEC. But there was another prefix on the list: DEX. She could only imagine what the X stood for.

  Senda. Denzin was so sure. Nor harm trying, she guessed. And she prayed.