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hurtling over snaring vines. When we’ve gone a ways, he slows to let me pass him so I can lead the way to the cabin.
    We’re almost there. We jog past the tree with the huge hole in its side, past the skinny tree with a ragged bird nest in the first fork, past the small clump of mushrooms I found last week. Only a minute more and we’ll be to the clearing and the cabin. The light has just begun to brighten and the trees thin when I screech to a halt. Jack almost runs into me I stopped so fast.
    “What is it?” He puts his hands on his knees.
    I point.
    Three watchers stand guard over the clearing.

Chapter Three
    “What is it?”
    If you hadn’t been here before, it could be easy to miss them. Two are buried in the trees, the other is mounted on the eave of the roof so it’s tucked in shadow. But I know every tree and every shingle of the cabin.
    Watchers. I point them out.
    “I’m assuming those weren’t here before, either.”
    I can’t even move to shake my head. My clearing, my cabin, my home , and I don’t even dare take another step closer. I’m trembling all over, shaking so hard I can’t even think straight. I’m angry. Angry at the government for once again taking something that was mine, something they had no right to, something that they wouldn’t even have cared about except for the fact that I had been there.
    Jack prods me with his elbow, and my legs shuffle into motion, taking me to the nearest tree. We slump down behind it.
    “How long have you been gone?”
    Six days .
    “If they knew for sure you lived here, they wouldn’t have put the watchers up. They would have just camped out and waited for you to come back. They’re still not sure. That’s in our favor.”
    My head sinks into my hands. Jack the eternal optimist. If you say so.
    “We could take them down. We could disable them somehow.”
    No. They’d be even more suspicious. I don’t want to prove them right. I was never here.
    “So where do we go?”
    I peer around the clearing. One watcher is trained on the cabin’s front door. The one on the roof watches the path we were about to follow to the cabin. The third is on a tree at the very edge of the clearing, watching the entire scene. But there isn’t a watcher watching the back of the cabin.
    We get a few supplies.
    Streams of light drift down through the leaves and reflect off the watcher’s lenses. The black eyes don’t move. They sit passively, lurking. We stay low and keep just beyond the clearing, following the edges until we’re behind the cabin. We stalk through the brush even though I’m sure the watcher can’t see us here. As soon as I’m behind the cabin and I can’t see a watcher’s lens any longer, I creep across the few feet of open space until I’m pressed up against the wood slats. I push on the window. It groans in protest and then swings open.
    Jack glances up. “Unlocked? That’s not very safe.”
    No one lives here, remember?
    “Of course.”
    I pull myself up, swing a leg through the window, and then drop to the cabin floor. The opposite window—the one by the door—is nothing but a thin pane of glass to keep us from the staring eyes of the watchers. The curtains hang in ragged strips on either side and the cameras can see right in. The glare of sunlight should be enough to keep them guessing for a few minutes what’s inside the cabin, but it won’t last for long. I keep to the floorboards and get a shirt covered in grime for my secrecy.
    Jack looks around, but the cupboards are bare. “Where is everything?”
    I point to the floor. I fold back a ratty rug and then pull up the floorboard that reveals the hiding space under the cabin. Jack has a look in his eyes—admiration, I think.
    What?
    “I admit I wondered how the government never realized you were here. But that’s smart.” He peers inside the hiding space. “You never stop surprising me, Terra.”
    I blush and reach in and pull out some freeze-dried food packs and some foil