Infinite by Jodi Meadows Page A

built the prisons, it seems likely they would have had the key, as well. Someone must have stolen it from them.”
    “That seems like a reasonable conclusion,” Whit said, but I wondered how much of the conversation he was actually retaining. “Perhaps your books will give us the answers.”
    “That’s my hope.” I turned the page. The spiral of writing was easy to see now, and I’d gotten better at spotting the symbols I knew, without having to search for them. But it wasn’t enough. Time was running out, and what if I deciphered the text only to realize it was a list of complicated instructions that I couldn’t possibly complete before Soul Night?
    What if the books only told me I was too late to stop Janan?
    I couldn’t think like that.
    “Well, let’s keep working for now.” Sam turned my notebook toward me again. “Just tell us what you need us to do, and hopefully the sylph will show up soon. It took them about a week when we were here before.”
    “Thanks.” But we’d been here a week and a half now. Either they’d come, or I’d misinterpreted their actions before, and they wanted nothing to do with us.
    Shrill beeping jerked me from my slumber.
    In his sleeping bag next to me, Sam squinted around the front room, looking just as confused as I felt. “What’s that?” Whit echoed the question from his place on the sofa.
    It was Stef’s turn on the bed. We all looked up at her as SED light illuminated her face, making her skin eerily white. “We have to go.” Her voice was rough with sleep, but something in her expression snapped. “We have to go. Now. ”
    Everyone scrambled up, elbows and knees thudding on the floor, and within five minutes, we’d swept our belongings into backpacks and rolled up our sleeping bags. When everything was ready, we turned off the lights and headed outside, leaving the soft thrum of the machine in the lab.
    The night was crisp but motionless as we headed east down an overgrown path, continuing away from Heart. Darkness made the unfamiliar ground difficult to navigate, but moonlight shone down, reflecting off ice and snow. Our breaths misted, reverse sylph.
    When the lab was out of sight, I adjusted my winter clothes, which I’d thrown on too hastily, and took in the midnight surroundings. “What was that alarm, Stef?” My voice sounded so loud in the darkness.
    “A warning that someone had overwritten my commands for the drones. Before, I could keep them away from the lab, searching other areas of Range. But someone else is in control now.”
    “Can’t you take back control?” Whit asked.
    “If I had more time, and a data console. My SED just isn’t powerful enough.”
    “Stef’s Everything Device isn’t everything after all?” Whit teased.
    Stef glared, and no one laughed.
    “What about Orrin and the others?” Whit asked. “Will the drones be able to find them?”
    Stef’s nod was barely perceptible in the dark. “It’s possible, but unlikely. They’re far enough out of Range now. It was the lab we needed to worry about.”
    “And he’ll find it,” I added, “because he’s seen Menehem’s research. He wouldn’t come out here himself, though. Not after the guard station.”
    “Right.” Stef tapped her SED, bringing up a screen filled with unfamiliar codes. “He doesn’t know what’s in there that we might use to fight back. Menehem has always made Deborl nervous.”
    Menehem had probably made a lot of people nervous.
    Maybe that was part of what made me so frightening to others: not only was I a newsoul, I was Menehem’s daughter.
    We stopped to rest where the wide path dipped into a hollow, keeping us out of sight. Trees and mountains rose high around us, blocking most of the moonlight. It looked as if the path kept going for a ways beyond Range, but it wasn’t maintained regularly. Mostly deer and other large fauna had been using it; tufts of fur had caught on brush, and hoof and paw prints stamped the snow.
    There was little