“Someone’s here.”

Kris couldn’t explain how he knew it, but he was positive that their brothers were somewhere in this city.

Tao took off running, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Where are you? Guys, come on out!”

Sehun grabbed Lu Han and followed suit, Kai and Kris scrambled for the heart before dashing after them.

“Wait,” Kris called. “We have no idea where we’re going!”

Tao stopped dead in his tracks and Kris felt a little surprised that what he’d said had worked, but it turned out that  Tao wasn’t even paying attention to him.

“Listen,” he said, turning around in a slow circle. “Can you hear that?”

Kris listened, but all he heard was the wind.

“Yeah,” Kai cried. “I do…” he turned to his left. “It’s coming from over there!”

“What are you even talking about?” Kris yelled in exasperation.

Sehun caught up with them, pulling Lu Han along behind him. “I don’t hear anything either,” he panted.

Kai waved his hand distractedly. “It sounds like a…wolf?”

Kris went on instant alert, looking around the empty street. Up ahead was a huge building, which could have hid any number of things behind it. Any kind of wild animal encounter would be the worst thing right now, especially with Lu Han being the way he was. Could they outrun a hungry wolf? Could they fight it off?

“Whatever it is, it’s with them,” Tao said. “The sound is coming from the same direction I’m being pulled to.”

“How far away do you think they are?” Sehun asked, looking around. “I feel like they’re really close.”

Kai suddenly smacked Kris’ arm. “Cover Lu Han’s ears.”

Kris shot him a blank look. “What?”

Kai inhaled deeply. Kris had barely enough time to clap his hand over Lu Han’s ears before Kai let out a long shriek, which was answered by an eerily familiar scream.

“That’s Yixing!” Tao yelled as a large, white ball of hair came hurtling around the building and ran right at them, howling it’s head off.

They heard a shout in the distance. “Guys, wait—no, Keen, come back!”

Three boys raced out behind the creature.

Bent over a broken butterfly, determined to help it fly again…

Racing out into a lightning storm…

Light bouncing off the glass chandeliers, casting rainbows all over the boy in the center of the room…

“Lay! Chen! Baekhyun!”

“You’re okay, you’re safe!”

“We’ve been so worried!”

Exclamations bounced around and echoed off the walls, the creature continued to howl and yelp and there were arms and hands all over the place—everyone wanted a hug, Tao and Chen were in tears, Lay was not far behind, people kept using each other’s given names by accident…at some point everyone stopped talking and they found themselves in something like a group hug. Kris had one arm wrapped around Lay’s waist and the other holding tight to Lu Han, who wanted nothing more than to touch the fluffy-thing.

“We have so much to tell you!” Baekhyun blurted.

“We have a lot to say, too,” Kai said, glancing at Lu Han. “Not all of it is good news, though.”

Chen knelt down and beckoned the fluffy-thing over. “Come here and stop barking.” It obeyed immediately, trotting over to Chen and sitting next to him.

“Maybe we can start this with an explanation as to what that is?” Tao asked somewhat breathlessly.

The other three laughed. “He’s funny looking, isn’t he?” Lay conceded. “It’s a dog, they’re pets. We found him a while ago, but there’s lots of them around. They were left behind in the Migration.”

“Migration?” Kris echoed. “Do you know about it then? What happened to this planet?”

Baekhyun nodded. “But before we talk, maybe you could tell us what’s up with Lu Han.”

Kris felt his stomach drop and he swallowed nervously, thinking about how many times they would have to tell this story before everyone would know what happened. He looked over at Lu Han, who had his eyes fixed on the dog and was immune to everything else around him.

Tao spoke up. “Maybe we should sit down first.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lay, Baekhyun and Chen led them into one of the high-rise buildings, where they had been living in one of the abandoned apartments. It wasn’t small but it wasn’t too big; it was, Kris had realized with a slight pang of resentment, perfect for three people. But he had pushed that thought aside very quickly; this was not the time to resent any one. There weren’t enough seats for everyone, so they sat on the floor. Lu Han stood in front of the huge window overlooking the empty city and tapped a melody onto the glass.

Kris wound up doing most of the explaining, starting from Lu Han’s actions on the ship and ending with what they had found out that morning. He wondered if Kai should have been the one to talk, seeing as he was the most knowledgeable on the subject, but his younger brother remained tense and tight-lipped.

Once Kris finished talking there was the initial reaction of panic, then confusion, and finally grim determination from the other three.

“So, we won’t know for a while yet,” Chen concluded.

“Exactly,” Kris said.

“Maybe now you can tell us where you’ve been all these years?” Kai asked, his tone just shy of scathing. Kris resisted the urge to call him out on it and instead decided to warn him later that of he could not be this cold every time they met up with one of their brothers.

The three caught on to his tone and looked down in guilt. “We were looking for you, I swear we were,” Lay started. “We only just got to this place a few day ago, we had to rest a bit. We came here from Tianjin.”

“Where?” Tao blurted.

Kris held up his hand. “Start from the beginning, after your pods crashed.”

They took turns explaining, sometimes one would trail off in confusion and someone else would take over—it seemed as if they too had suffered some memory loss, even things as recent as two years ago weren’t so clear.

The three of them had been together in one pod; Chen should have been partnered with Kai, and when he couldn’t find him (he didn’t know Kai had gone with Sehun) he’d panicked, not wanting to be alone, and crammed in with Lay and Baekhyun.

They’d landed in a forest in a country called the United States of America. It had taken them a week to get out of that forest, another two weeks to find someone, and elderly man, who could understand them and tell them where they were. Apparently the language they spoke on their home planet had been similar to one of the languages spoken on Earth. The man had given them a map, which Lay pulled out to point to their landing site. Even on the small map, Kris could tell just how vast the country they’d landed on was.

“This planet is huge,” Lay told them. “we had no idea where anyone was or even where to start to look.”

Even eight years ago, the planet had been in a state of distress. They’d wandered the country for almost two years, and they’d seen signs of collapse—people did what they wanted without fear of consequence, and nobody cared enough to stop them. People openly cursed the government, their gods, turned their backs on each other. They spent a lot of money on ridiculous things, killed their bodies and minds with poisons. The three of them used the rising fear and uncertainty to their advantage—being scared and uncertain themselves, they fit right in with the rest of the population.

“Do you know what was happening?” Sehun asked.

Baekhyun closed his eyes, lost in memories. “The planet was basically dying,” he said. “Have you noticed how dry everything is? How desolate? The people were using things up faster than they could be replaced, the population was too big. There was famine in some places, plague in others, but most of all there was overcrowding and general fear of the end. In some regions they stopped being able to have kids, in others there was civil war. Someone dropped bombs all over, the atmosphere is basically shot; I have no idea how we were still breathing okay. That was another thing, a lot of people walked around in masks because the air was filthy.”

They’d wandered South, pulled by some kind of feeling that if they continued, they’d find something important. After almost two years they came to the border that divided the United States from another country called Mexico. It wasn’t at all like the divide between North and South on their planet; this was a real barrier that nobody could cross unless they had passes and paperwork and all kinds of things. But the three of them had known that something was on the other side of that border.

They waited there for another year, spending their nights in an abandoned, one-room house and their days several hundred feet away from the border. They didn’t know what they were waiting for, but they were afraid that if they didn’t pay attention they’d miss something. Then one day they went to the border and found it deserted.

“What?” Kai exclaimed.

“Everyone was just gone,” Chen told them, sounding like he still couldn’t believe it himself. “The guard posts were empty, there were no cars or dogs…every one we’d seen over the last year had just vanished.”

Previously when they’d attempted to get close to the barrier, they’d be shouted at and shooed away, but now they walked toward it and still nobody stopped them.

“It was the weirdest feeing in the world,” Lay said. “Like even though nobody was stopping us, we shouldn’t have been there.”

They found an entrance gate unlocked and ran through it, and even after they’d gotten past it they didn’t stop running. It was like the pull was getting stronger and stronger, and eventually they saw someone in the distance. They were running as well, right at them.

“Who was it?” Kris asked.

Baekhyun grinned. “Suho. He had the other half of the heart with him.”

Kris felt his heart leap to his throat.

“That’s how we knew you were here,” Lay said. “You have the other half—the heart was what was pulling us, it lead us to the others.”

“All of them?” Kris gasped.

Chen nodded. “Suho ran out to meet us, the others…” he trailed off.

“Chanyeol, Xiu Min and Kyungsoo,” Lay supplied. As he said their names their faces flashed in Kris’ mind. It was so frustrating, knowing he had been missing people, exactly how many, but unable to recall their names or what they even looked like.

Lay went on to explain that the other three had fallen back, but they soon caught up to Suho. The seven of them had a short, happy reunion before realizing they were short five people and one half of the heart, and it was then they began to realize that they had their work cut out for them.

“We knew that you weren’t on that side of the planet,” Baekhyun said. “Don’t ask how we knew; we could just feel it. But for the longest time, there was no way we could get to the other side of the world.”

Together they’d wandered back to the North. Then three years ago they got lucky.

“We helped an old woman fight off some thugs,” Baekhyun recalled. “In return, she told us that we could get to Asia if we went to a certain port late at night. The people there would sneak us on to a ship, and it would leave us off in either China or South Korea.”

Apparently when your planet was on the verge of collapse, you no longer cared who went where and why.

They went where they were supposed to go, only to find out that they had to split up again. Two ships were leaving, one had room for four, another for nine. It was the seven of them and a family of five, and anyone could see that the family would not be split up. They thought of waiting, but the Captains told them (or, this was what they managed to grasp through their broken understanding of the language) that there was no guarantee the ships would be back.

The ships were both supposed to go to Hong Kong—the Captains told them that there was a statue of Bruce Lee in the city; everyone knew where it was, it was the perfect meeting spot. So they decided to meet up there. They split back into their original groups of three and four; Suho took the heart with his group, since he’d had it from the beginning.

“That was the last time we saw them,” Lay said, his voice cracking as he teared up.

“What?!” Sehun and Kris gasped at the same time.

Chen spoke, his voice wavering as he too began to cry. “There was a storm, and our ship went off course. We wound up in Tianjin, it was hundreds of miles away from Hong Kong. We had agreed that if we waited at the statue for two weeks and there was no sign of the other group, we should continue on and try to find the rest of you.”

Kris felt his heart break. It must have been bad enough for Chen, Lay and Baekhyun, what about Suho, Chanyeol, Xiu Min and Kyungsoo? Especially Suho, who had been with Chen and Baekhyun since they were toddlers? For all he knew they could have been dead.

“So then what happened?” Kris prodded.

“We kept walking,” Chen continued flatly, like he was forcing all the emotion out of his voice. “We made it half way through North Korea before the migration started.”

Kai leaned forward. “We saw that, or part of it. Really we just saw a bunch of huge space ships. Where did they come from?”

Baekhyun shrugged. “Some planet in Andromeda. No idea what they called themselves, the people here called them Angels. We missed a lot of it, but they landed all over the planet, picked up the population and left.”

“And they missed you lot?” Tao asked.

“They only took the people who gathered in the cities,” Lay responded.

“But what about the rest of the population?” Sehun cried. “This planet was home to billions of people! We saw the ships leave, they couldn’t support a population—”

Lay cut him off. “They died, Sehun,” he sighed. “A lot of them were dead when we got here. More than 90% of those remaining died over those last seven years. There were only a few million people left, maybe a thousand stayed behind, and that was because they decided to. They were mostly elderly people, about a month after the ships left they were all gone too.”

They all sat in silence for a while.

“So, we’re really the only ones left?” Tao asked in a small voice.

“And we’re not even natives of this place,” Kai added, “So we don’t even count. We shouldn’t be here.”

Lay shrugged. “I’d say we’ve got as much right as anybody.”

Kris shook his head. “I just can’t believe it. They all died so quickly…”

“No,” Baekhyun cut in. “It was a long process. Chanyeol was talking about it. It started years ago.”

“Even so,” Kris muttered, “The entire planet just emptied out.”

“Not the entire planet,” Sehun reminded them. “We’re still here after all.”

“That’s right,” Tao agreed, standing up. “We’re still here, and there’s more of us out there. So let’s all get out there and try to find everyone. Good plan?”

They all nodded. “Good plan.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of course, nothing ever goes as planned.

By this time the sun had begun to set, and they had realized that a bit of preparation was needed before they went gallivanting off like a bunch of heroes in an epic.

First of all, they needed food and water, as well as something to carry it in. They needed good shoes and something warm to wear during the night. And they had to decide if they wanted to walk or find a bigger car.

They’d come to realize that they needed to physically touch the floor if they wanted to feel their way toward their brothers. If they walked, they’d be able to sense the missing members of their group, but it would be slow going. If they took a car they’d be going in blind, but they would be able to cover more ground and the car would offer shelter at night and in the rain.

As much as Kris hated the thought of having to guess which way to go, he had to admit the car was the better choice. Who knew how far they’d need to go, and what state their brothers would be in when they found them? He knew that cars ran on gasoline, and when the gasoline was gone the car wouldn’t run, but they’d seen a lot of cars abandoned in this city, he figured there would be more in other cities and they could take another one if they needed to.

They decided to head out the following morning, and despite their worries they managed to have a pretty fun night. It was just like being back at the Sanctuary, gathering together in one room, talking about their day and just having fun. They started to remember things from their childhood, things they hadn’t done in years. They wound up going to sleep obscenely late and thus woke up late.

“Guys, it’s late,” Kris muttered sleepily. The boys passed out around him groaned in response.

Kris hit the person next to him (Sehun) and said again, louder, “It’s late, come on. We need to get moving. Where is Lu Han?”

He muttered the last part to himself. Looking around he spotted Lu Han sitting on the floor happily petting the dog.

“Oh yeah,” Kris said. “When did you get the dog?”

Baekhyun waved his hand sleepily. “We found him in Tianjin. Well, Lay found him. He was a baby, and he was all skinny and wet and cold…pathetic really. Started following us around, didn’t have the heart to turn him away. We named him Keen.”

Lu Han looked over. “After the scholar who wrote the first biography of the Guardians, right?” He asked.

Everyone bolted up and gaped at Lu Han, who had gone back to cooing over the dog.

“Uh…yeah,” Lay finally said.

“His memory is coming back,” Kai said disbelievingly. “We were right!”

Chen, Lay and Baekhyun all looked very excited and questioned Kai further, but Kris was focused on Sehun, who was looking a bit lost himself. He reached out to touch Lu Han’s shoulder, but drew his hand back at the last second.

Kris went over to him and laid a hand on his arm.

“Help me carry the bags down to the car?”

Sehun nodded, keeping his eyes on the floor.

The trip down the stairs was so quiet that Kris could hear Sehun’s attempts to keep his breathing under control. When they got to the car, Kris threw the bags into the back and turned his attention to his youngest brother.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked.

Sehun laughed a bit hysterically. “Honestly, I really just want to cry right now,” he confessed, tears already slipping down his cheeks. He moved to brush them away but Kris stopped him and pulled him into a hug.

“So cry,” he said. “When you’re ready we’ll go back inside.”

Sehun rested his forehead against Kris’ shoulder. “He hasn’t even looked at me,” he sobbed. “In years, Kris. It’s been years. Why doesn’t he remember me?!”

Kris gently patted Sehun’s back. “He will baby,” he assured him, using the pet name they’d all used when Sehun was a child. “He loves you. You know it as well as I do.”

Sehun calmed down not long after that, though Kris could tell that he was by no means feeling any better.

“We should get a move on,” Sehun insisted. “The sooner we find the others, the sooner we’ll know if Lu Han will get better.”

Kris nodded. “Go upstairs and tell everyone to come down,” he said, figuring that Sehun would need the few extra minutes to compose himself. Once he’d left, Kris climbed into the back of the car, picked up the chest containing the Tree’s heart and hugged it to his chest. He could feel it beating, and that along with the heat of the wood made it almost seem like he was back on his home planet, hugging the Tree itself.

“Please, please let Lu Han be okay,” Kris whispered. “If I can only have one thing, please let it be for Lu Han to come back to us.”

He repeated this wish a few times before he put the chest away and climbed into the driver’s seat. The rest of the guys came down not long after.

The previous night Kris had found a larger car and figured out how to start it without a key. He had no idea why a book about such things had been in the Sanctuary library, but he was glad he’d read it. The car could seat nine people, and even though they were technically eight people they did have a fairly large dog with them, and so the car was still a bit crowded and there was some initial frustration over who was in who’s space, and eventually Kris casually suggested that somebody ride on the roof or else walk behind them, and everyone shut up after that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Weeks went by. They drove for maybe six hours every day, in every direction, trying to feel the tugging presence of their brothers and the other half of the tree. They only felt the slightest pulls, and they seemed to come from conflicting directions. It made them wonder if perhaps the other four were not in one group. And no matter what, they never seemed to get any closer.

The only upside in the weeks was Lu Han’s recovery. By day three of their travels, he could remember all of their names, although he rarely called the right person by the right name. They started playing a game where they’d all take turns telling stories of things that happened when they were kids. It actually wound up helping all of them.

The best moment for Kris was something he really shouldn’t even have overheard. It was the tenth day of their travels, and it was a nice night so they had grabbed a bunch of blankets from the back of the car and slept outside. They had a limited number of blankets though, and had to double up. Kris woke up after only a few hours of rest, and at first he thought it was because Tao had stolen all of the blanket (as he’d been known to do), but quickly realized something else was amiss. They’d had a fire, but now only the coals remained, and the slight orange glow coupled with the moonlight was just enough for Kris to be able to see Sehun, across from the fire pit, sitting up with his knees drawn up to his chest. Kris listened hard and just managed to make out his uneven breathing. He was crying again.

Kris was about to get up and go over to Sehun when he saw the figure next to Sehun rise up.

“What’s wrong?” Lu Han asked.

Kris gripped the edge of his sheet and held his breath, as he always did whenever Lu Han spoke to Sehun. So far, Lu Han hadn’t seemed to remember that he and Sehun had been in love.

Sehun waved his hand in Lu Han’s direction. “It’s nothing,” he said, and Kris was surprised at how steady his voice was. “Go back to sleep, Luhannie. I promise I’m alright.”

Lu Han sat up and wrapped his arms around Sehun’s shoulders.

“You haven’t changed,” He sighed.

Sehun was quiet for a few seconds. “What makes you say that?” He asked.

Kris heard Lu Han laugh. “You always were a horrible liar.”

Sehun turned around in Lu Han’s arms. “You remember that?” He asked. Kris could almost see the look of wonder on his face.

Lu Han nodded. Sehun turned around all the way; he was practically sitting in Lu Han’s lap. “What was the worst lie I ever told you?” He demanded.

Lu Han reached up and his face. “That you weren’t sure how you felt about me.”

Sehun slumped forward and rested his head on Lu Han’s shoulder. “Yeah, that was it.” He muttered before he started crying again.

Lu Han hugged him tightly. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I love you,” Sehun sobbed.

“I love you too,” Lu Han said.

Kris felt something grab his arm and he nearly screamed, but Tao clapped his hand over his mouth just in time. Apparently he’d woken up as well.

Sehun leaned back and grabbed Lu Han by his shirt. “Do you know what that means, Luhannie? Do you know what you’re saying?”

Lu Han nodded. “I do. I don’t know how to say what it means but…I remember I said it to you a lot. I remember how it made me feel—how it made you feel. I remember that you were the best thing that ever happened to me. And I remember that you cried the first time I said it, because you were scared that we wouldn’t stay together, and I told you that I would never hurt you.” Lu Han pulled gently pulled Sehun’s hands off his shirt and twined their fingers together. “But I think I did hurt you. I’ve been making you cry. I don’t want you to cry anymore, Sehun. I said I remember how you made me feel, and you still make me feel that way. I called it love before, and a lot has changed since then, but…but I think it’s still called love. So yes, I do love you.”

Sehun froze for about five seconds, then he flung himself at Lu Han and tackled him to the ground with the force of his hug.

“You really are back,” Sehun told him through his tears.

Kris looked over at Tao, who also had tears in his eyes. Kris grinned at him and pulled the blanket over their heads.

“Should we…?” Tao asked.

Kris shook his head. “Let them have this moment to themselves.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Three weeks into their journey, their 12^th car ran out of gas in the middle of a forest. It had been a crummy car anyway, with only seven seats and broken windows. Lu Han was well enough for them to keep up a good pace while walking, but even they didn’t make much headway. It took them two days to make it out of the forest, and from the edge of the trees they couldn’t see a town. Kris made an executive decision to stop for the night.

They made a small fire and ate bags of chips. They were running low on food, Kris hadn’t planned for them to get stuck in the middle of nowhere for this long. He was sitting away from the rest of the group going through their supplies, trying to decide how to ration what they had, when Lu Han came over and grabbed his arm.

“Chen,” he said, pointing into the distance. “What’s that?”

Chen looked up upon hearing his name and sighed when he realized Lu Han wasn’t talking to him.

“I’m Kris,” Kris reminded Lu Han gently. “And what is what?” He asked, looking out.

Lu Han hauled him to his feet and turned him around. “That,” he said again, pointing out into the distance. Kris squinted and finally saw it—it was getting dark, so it was hard to see the spindly structure against the sky.

“I think it’s a Ferris wheel,” he told Lu Han. “It’s a carnival ride.”

The rest of the group filtered over to join them, intrigued by the conversation.

“What’s a carnival?” Tao asked.

Kris thought back to the books he’d read in the Sanctuary. “It’s like a circus, only without animals…and more rides.”

Kai scoffed. “It sounds nothing like a circus.”

Lu Han grabbed Kris’ arm again. “Can we go there?”

“Where? The circus?” Sehun asked, bewildered.

Lu Han nodded enthusiastically. “I want to go.”

Kris was puzzled, but nodded. “Sure, we can go.”

Lu Han smiled and, before anyone could stop him, took off running. The dog ran after him, barking his head off.

They stood there for a few seconds, dumbfounded. “Wait!” Kris yelled, finally snapping back to his senses. “I didn’t mean now!”

“Lu Han come back here!” Sehun shrieked, running after him.

Kris scrambled to collect their belongings. He shoved the bags of food at Baekhyun and Tao and grabbed the Tree’s heart. Kai, Lay and Chen were already chasing after Lu Han.

“Where does he think he’s going?” Tao yelled as they too took off.

Kris laughed. “To the carnival, I guess.”

In the distance, Sehun tackled Lu Han to the ground, a cloud of dust rising around them. Everyone quickly caught up after that.

“I thought we were going,” Lu Han said from the ground. His voice was kind of muffled—Sehun had thrown himself on his lap. The pair of them were covered in sand.

Kris knelt in front of him and grabbed his shoulders. “We will,” he assured. “Tomorrow, when it’s light out.”

Lu Han shook his head and struggled under Sehun. “No, we have to go now,” he insisted.

“But it’s dark,” Kai reasoned. “And we have no idea where we’re going.”

Lu Han looked up at Kris and he was taken aback. He’d never seen Lu Han look so serious before.

“Trust me,” he pleaded. “We need to go there.”

Kris hesitated for half a second. “Well, we ran pretty fast, and we’ve already covered a lot of ground. It hardly makes sense for us to turn back now.”

Lu Han grinned and easily shoved Sehun off of him. “Then let’s go!” He cried, and led them off across the sand. The rest of them shot Kris confused looks before hesitantly following, as if they half expected Kris to announce that he was joking.

Baekhyun pulled Kris back. “You think this is a good idea?” He asked. “Taking his advice?”

Kris shrugged. “What have we got to lose?”

It was dark and for a while they lost sight of the Ferris wheel, but Lu Han insisted he knew where it was. After a few hours of walking the sky grew lighter, and they could see the wheel and several other structures in the distance.

“How did he know which way to go?” Tao wondered.

The carnival was at the far edge of another city, which meant they could at least find another car at some point. The carnival itself was a dreary looking place, trash floated around in the breeze, the stands were covered in a layer of grime. Stuffed animals which had once been prizes were now homes for mice. Lu Han stood in the middle of it and looked around like it was the greatest place he’d ever been in.

“Can you make it all work again?” Lu Han asked Kris.

Kris looked around doubtfully. “I don’t know if it would even be worth it to try. These things have probably been out of use for eight years.”

Lu Han pouted and looked up at him with big eyes. “Please? Can you try?”

The dog came and stood next to him and looked up with so same eyes. Kris swore Lu Han had trained it to look pitiful.

“Alright,” he sighed. “I’ll give it a try.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took Kris all day, but he finally got the carnival up and running and again. It seemed as though it really hadn’t been out of use for too long, maybe it had even been running right up to the end. He turned the major rides on one by one, and after shaking off some dust and dirt they were running pretty smoothly.

“Well,” Kris said to Lu Han, “What now?”

Lu Han grinned at hum. “Turn them on.”

“I did,” Kris reminded him. “They work.”

Lu Han shook his head. “Turn them all on at once. Light this place up like a star. Turn up the music and the sound effects.”

Slowly, a picture formed in Kris’ mind. Lu Han saw the light switch on his brain.

“Loud, bright—in this dark and silent world, we’ll be seen and heard for miles.”

“They’ll have to find us,” Kris gasped. Then he threw his arms around his brother. “Lu Han, you are a genius!”