"I am so freaking dead," Clemont said, rubbing the palms of his hands on his head so hard I thought he'd leave bald patches. "My dad's going to tear off my arms and beat me to death with them."

   I looked at Serena, and she rolled her eyes. Clemont had been talking for hours about how excited he was to be home again, and it was only as we exited the highway into Meridian that it occurred to him that his parents would be angry that he's run off without telling them.

  "Relax," I said. "They'll be so happy to see you they'll forget they're mad. Besides, you've never been grounded before."

  "I've never run away from home before either."

  "I'll go with you," Zeus said from the front seat. "I'll be your wingman. If it gets ugly, I'll take them down."

   Clemont's eyes widened. "You can't shock my parents."

   Zeus held his hands a few inches apart and arced electricity between them. "Sure I can. It's easy."

  "I mean it's not okay to shock them."

   Zeus blinked. "Why not?"

  "They're my parents," Clemont said.

   Zeus still looked confused. "Then Serena can just reboot them until they forget who you are."

  "I'm not going to do that," Serena said.

  "I don't want them to forget who I am," Clemont said.

   Zeus shook his head. "Make up your mind. You want to get in trouble or not?"

  "I don't want to get in trouble and I don't want to hurt them."

  "Sometimes you can't eat your cake and have it too," Zeus said.

  "Technically," Serena said, "you can never eat your cake and have it too."

  "I wish I had some cake," Clemont said, leaning his head against the back of the seat in front of him.



   A few minutes later we passed the 7-Eleven where we'd started our journey, then turned into my apartment building's parking lot. Calem put his Camaro in neutral and turned off the engine. "We're here," he said, even though it was kind of obvious.

  "Where's Drew?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Calem said. "Last time I saw him was about a half hour ago."

   I didn't like the sound of that. "He was supposed to stay with us."

   We'd left Pasadena with Calem's car and one of the vans from the Galactical Academy, which Drew had driven with Brock, Shauna, Lillie, and Korrina. Calem drove his Camaro with Serena, Clemont, Zeus, and me.

   Zeus sat up front with Calem and helped drive while the three of us crowded in the back, which, since I was next to Serena, wasn't the worst ride of my life. Around Barstow I fell asleep against her. When I woke up she whispered to me, "That was the strangest dream."

  "You had a strange dream?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "You did."

   It's a weird thing sitting next to someone who can read your mind. At least she never has to wonder how I feel about her.

   Our plan was to drive back to Idaho and hide at my apartment while we figure out how to rescue my mother from Cyrus and Galactic. But first we needed to find out where to find where she was. Galactic are global, which means my mother could be anywhere in the world. Anywhere.

   As I said, before we left Pasadena, Lillie downloaded the Galactic computers. We were hoping that somewhere in all that information was my mother's whereabouts. All we needed now was a computer powerful enough to hold everything Lillie had saved.

   Fortunately, Galactic didn't know where we were. At least I didn't think they did. I couldn't be certain about that either. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to rescue my mother—or die trying.





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