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Mika went up after her.

Then the three of them hauled up A.J.

Then Jax.

I stood at the bottom of the cave still, my arms wrapped around my torso, my cold hands rubbing ineffectually at my biceps.

I hadn’t fully realized until then that every one of our group had come down either via the cave wall or the ropes. Manny. Yarli. The seers and humans they’d brought with them. Everyone we’d brought with us from San Francisco. Javier. Angel.

Angel was just walking over to take her turn on the rope and harness, when Yarli yelled out. “HEY! Look! Look!”

All of us turned.

All of us froze, staring at the rift in the wall.

Angel, who’d just picked up the harness, stared into the rift, too. She seemed paralyzed for a few seconds, her brown eyes reflecting the light from the rift as she looked where Yarli pointed. Then she dropped the harness and walked back over to where the remaining seers and humans stood at the bottom of the cave.

We all huddled there, together, in a tight, nearly straight line.

Angel gripped my hand on one side, as soon as she stood near me. Black half-crushed my fingers on the other side of where I stood. After Yarli’s first, panicked words, none of us made a sound. We just stared, holding our breaths.

The fissure in the cave was brightening again.

It was brightening, and the mist that writhed around it swirled increasingly faster.

The blue and green light was washing out.

It left a sharp, near-blinding white in its wake.

That crystalline, sun-like light grew brighter and brighter and brighter as we watched.

The portal was opening.

Icouldn’t make sense of what I was seeing at first.

Shadows poured through the light and mist, far more of them than I could make sense of.

More than I ever would have expected.

I counted three… four… five… six…

My mind fuzzed out about then, unable to focus on their number as I found myself staring attheminstead, at what they looked like, who they were.

They wore strange clothes.

I stared around at their different ages and faces, at how beat-up they looked, how exhausted and bruised and bloodied… but somehow, it was the odd clothing and weapons that bewildered me the most. I saw what looked like armor on some of them, strangely cut shirts and pants, guns that looked completely bizarre, like something out of a science fiction movie, even compared to the most advanced seer tech I’d ever seen. Their boots were strange. They wore odd headsets and wristbands, and even jewelry that looked strange.

Then I saw Nick’s face and I let out a shriek.

I couldn’t help it.

I didn’t wait. I ran towards him. I leapt at him, and wrapped my arms around him, and for those first few seconds I didn’t notice anything else.

He hugged me back, but stiffly, like he’d done it more in reflex and confusion than because he was happy to see me the way I was him.

When I released him, I didn’t see relief on his face.

I saw shock.