"We couldn't even see it until we were out of Placid Meadows." Risha's whole body is trembling. "Jaden, it was . . . It had to have been an NF-7 at least, it was just-"

"We're fine," Alex interrupts. "But for a minute there . . ." He shakes his head. "We thought we were okay, but then it turned, and I had to gun the truck, but we made it. I could tell it was still growing, so-" He stops when he sees the radar on the big screen. I watch him process the mix of images, the moving blobs of green and red, and I hold my breath, waiting for him to see the path this storm is on now. He curses, and Risha rushes over to face a radar image of something too terrible for words.

She lets out a scream that shatters my heart like the glass in Grandma's picture. The scream of someone whose whole world is about to be destroyed. The scream of someone who knows she may never see her parents again.

She drops to the floor, sobbing.

I run to her, put my arms around her. Her body is hot with fear, cold with rain and air-conditioning, and she shakes harder.

"Risha, call on your DataSlate. Warn them!"

She tries twice but can't get a message through.

I jump to my feet and grab Alex's hand. "We have to stop it."

He steps up to the computer. "Where's the program to redirect? We'll have to find a track that-"

"No!"

He wheels around, bewildered. "Jaden, if we don't change this course, then-"

"Changing it won't help. We have to stop it. We have to kill this storm." I say the words out loud, even though I know they're impossible.

Alex shakes his head. "We can't. We never got to run the simulation successfully. We have no idea what the outcome would be, and we-"

"We have to try, Alex! Look!" I fling my arm toward the radar wall, where Risha is still crumpled on the floor. "We have to try. Otherwise, we're sending it at somebody, and even if that's not us, it's still somebody, and then we're just like-" The words get stuck in my throat. "Just like my father."

Alex closes his eyes, squeezes them tight, and I can almost see thoughts swirling behind his dark lashes. Finally, he shakes his head and opens them. "We can't take that chance. What if we end up making it worse?"

"But what if-"

"Jaden, no. There's no precedent for this. There's no research to support it. There's no-just, no!" He bends down and starts scrolling through the folders still up on Dad's screen. The dozens of data files with different codes. "Did you use one of these before?"

"Yes. And look what happened, Alex! We can't do this again. We have to-"

"Just wait!" He holds up one hand and keeps scrolling with the other. Risha has managed to pull herself together enough to stand behind us, her face red and puffy. Alex pulls her forward so she can see the screen, too. "There has to be a path here that doesn't hit any developed areas. Everybody, look. There has to be."

"Which one?" I throw my hands up. "Alex, there must be two hundred separate codes there. We can't keep trying them all until-There's no time for this!"

"Wait." Risha reaches a thin arm between us and scrolls back up through the list. Her bracelets clink together, and her eyes focus on the data scrolling past on the screen. The numbers, the patterns seem to calm her. "Which one did you run before, Jaden?"

"I don't even know. About halfway down, maybe?"

She scrolls halfway and leans in, squinting at the numbers. Then she picks up her DataSlate, calls up a map, taps at it a few times. "Yes," she whispers, and leans in to point at the computer screen again. "These numbers . . ." She runs her finger down the center part of the list. ". . . are all sequential in terms of geographic coordinates." She taps at one of them. "This must be the code you ran. It corresponds with the latitude and longitude of Placid Meadows."

"So that means . . ." I pull up a map of Logan County on the DataSlate and choose the satellite view, the one that shows all the roads and buildings. "If we can find a path without people . . ." In my mind, I draw imaginary lines from where the storm is now, trying every direction. But eventually, no matter which way it goes, the storm is going to hit someone. "It won't work. No path goes on forever."

"It doesn't have to. Hold on." Alex pulls up Dad's historical storms database. "The path just needs to be long enough for the storm's energy to run out. No tornado can last forever, and we already know what this one's got in it. It's already happened once." He calls up the 10-10-20 storm and runs his finger down the screen, stopping at a line close to the bottom. "Thirty-eight miles. We need a path that's empty for thirty-eight miles."

I look down at the map in my hands. It feels impossibly full of buildings. The path might as well be a million miles. "I can't-" The wind gusts, and the sound of rain on the roof turns harder, louder, like someone throwing stones. Hail.

"We have to hurry!" Alex brings the redirection folder back up. "I'll get this ready so when you find the coordinates, we can just do it."

Risha leans in to look at the DataSlate, so close her hair brushes against mine. "What about here?" She drags the line I've drawn a bit farther southeast, and we zoom in to see the track. It would take the storm mostly through woods near one of the energy farms, then past what looks like a few orchards from the satellite view, and close-too close-to one old farmhouse.

"That won't work." I point to the energy farm.

"They all have huge safe rooms," Alex says. "They'll get a warning."

"What about that house?" I point.

"It's not perfect, but we have to do something. That's the only building in the path," Risha argues. "It's thirty miles out. The storm will be starting to weaken, and they'll have plenty of warning time."

She starts to pull the DataSlate from me, but I hold on. "But it's still somebody's-"

"Jaden, will you look!" She lets go and points to the radar wall, where the storm on its current path is churning toward Placid Meadows. Ten minutes, maybe less, from swallowing up Risha's family. From Mirielle and Remi, who are sure they're safe inside the gates. None of them will ever see it coming.

I hand her the DataSlate, and she slides it onto the desk in front of Alex.

"Okay . . ." The computer screen reflects in his dark eyes. "What am I looking for here?"

Risha reads him the coordinates, and he scrolls down the list of command codes until he hits the one that matches. "Here?"

She double-checks it. "That's it."

He clicks it open, copies the code, and taps back to the command entry field. "Jaden, you just typed it in here before?"

"Yeah. Then run it." I look away from the screen, toward the radar, and hear his fingers tap against it.

Then quiet. Except for all of our breathing. All of our hoping.

Then the hum of the computer processing.

Risha and Alex turn to watch the radar. We hold our breath, and it feels like all of the air in the room has gone still while we wait.

The storm on the screen inches closer to Placid Meadows.

"Why isn't it turning?" Risha's voice trembles.

"It will." I take her hand, and she squeezes so hard she crushes my fingers, but I don't let go. "It should. Any second."

But it doesn't.

"It's not going to stop." She doesn't scream or cry or yell at the screen. Her voice is flat, as if she's already died with them. "It's going to hit them."

Turn, turn, turn, I think, staring at the ceiling, imagining the satellites miles above us. Why aren't they doing their job? "Wait, look!" Alex's voice brings me back to the screen, and just as the storm is about to hit the fence, it slows, like it did that day in the park, the day Risha and I listened as the moms and kids shouted their rhyme to the sky. It listened.

And it's listening now.

"Oh, thank God, thank God!" Risha's tears flow again, this time tears of thankfulness. She takes a deep breath and walks to the window. Her fingers trace raindrops down the glass.

Alex sinks back into the chair as if the storm sucked away all his energy when it turned.

I stay at the radar screen, watching the storm pick up its pace, starting a race in its new direction, ready to devour the new meal set before it.

I pick up my DataSlate and zoom in to follow its path as it moves.

The trees planted alongside Placid Meadows. When the sun comes up tomorrow, they'll be in splinters scattered over miles.

Better trees than farms, though.

I follow the path past the energy farm. Criminals or not, I hope they all get to their safe room in time.

I swipe the screen through ten, twenty, thirty miles of woods until the trees thin and arrange themselves into lines, and I know this is the orchard that the storm will level soon-in twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five.

Past the orchard and just a hair off to the east is the one house still in the path.

I zoom into the satellite view, hoping in a corner of my heart that I'll see a FOR SALE sign or already-broken windows and an empty garage to tell me no one lives there.

In another corner lives the cold, raw fear of what else I might see. Cars in the driveway. Dogs on a leash, waiting for someone to come play. Swing sets and tricycles.

I take a deep breath and zoom in as far as the satellite view allows.

And there is something I hadn't imagined even in the darkest corner of my heart.

A house with peeling white paint.

A stable and a brown mare.

A split-rail fence that I reached over with a handful of sugar cubes.

A rickety farm stand with a sign that I can't read in the satellite image, a sign I don't need to see to know that it offers sweet raspberries, fresh peaches, and compliments.

This is Aunt Linda's house.

And we have just sent a storm to swallow it up.

Chapter 30.

This can't be happening. Not now. Not when it was all supposed to be over. I let out a moan.

"What?" Alex jumps from the chair, but even his shoulder brushing mine can't warm the chill that's settled on me.

"This house." I tap the screen, and it zooms in closer. The wreath Mom sent last Christmas is still on the door. A bird has built a nest in its gentle curve. "It's my great-aunt Linda's."

Aunt Linda, who fed me pie in that kitchen. Who gave me the poetry book, the one thing that's made Oklahoma feel a little like home. Who told me the truth.

Alex's face darkens. He stares at the screen, processing the information, then hands the DataSlate to me. "Call her. She may not even be home."

I nod and bring up her contact page. The call goes through, straight to Aunt Linda's video-mail, and I've never been more relieved. "Leave a message!" she says, but I don't. If she were home, she'd have answered.

"Feel better?" Alex asks, and I nod.

But then my DataSlate dings with a new message. "That's weird," I say. "I've had it on all day."

"We've probably been getting interference," Risha says, turning away from the window. "I couldn't get through before." Her eyes have relaxed some; they aren't as puffy, and her breathing is finally back to normal. "My DataSlate never connects right on storm nights."

"It's my father." Where is he? Is he on his way up here? I need to know, but I can't bring myself to open the message. Can't make myself let him into this room, even if it's only a recording. I can't help imagining him, looking right through the dark, shiny screen, seeing us here, seeing everything we've done.

But Alex is insistent. "Play it."

So I do.

Dad's face fills the screen. He's not 3-D like he is on the holosim at Eye on Tomorrow, but otherwise, it's just as realistic.

Only where did he record this? The shelf behind him is full of old dishes. He's definitely not here at StormSafe. And it's not our house in Placid Meadows, either.

"Jaden," Dad says from the screen in my hands. "I know where you are." He puts a hand up toward the camera in a gesture meant to keep me from freaking out, meant to keep me from throwing the DataSlate across the room and running like I want to. "I need you to stay there for now. You're not in trouble, and I-" He takes a deep breath, and instead of the usual fire in his eyes, the focused intensity, there is something else. Are they shining with tears? "I don't want you in danger. I can explain things to you later. It's not what it looks like." His voice breaks, and he looks down.

Alex laughs a quick, bitter laugh and walks away, but Risha stays by me and listens as Dad goes on. "But no matter what, I'm sure you're going to want to go home with Mom. She's on her way here now. So as I said, please stay where you are. Mom will be here in"-he looks at his watch-"ten to fifteen minutes, and after she and I talk, she'll be right there to pick you up."

The screen goes black.

Mom?

Mom is in town? Does that mean she was getting all my messages but couldn't respond? Did she get the last one? Does she already know what Dad has done?

And Grandma! Does Mom know Grandma Athena is alive?

Where is Grandma Athena now? I picture her bony fingers, curled around the Shock Wand, and I shiver.

"We can't stay here." I run to the window, where the rain should be letting up, but it's swirling harder, faster in the wind. "My grandmother might come back."

"Your grandmother?" Risha looks bewildered, and I realize I never told them. There was no time. There is no time now.

"We just-we have to go."

"Now that the storm's gone, let's go back to your house. Wouldn't that make more sense than you waiting here for them to come pick you up?"

"They're not at the house." It wasn't Dad and Mirielle's house in the video; there are no painted plates in Mirielle's shiny steel kitchen.