Crossed

Finally reunited, Cassia and Ky kiss and tell each other everything that’s happened during their time apart: Ky tells Cassia about Vick and Laney, and Cassia tells Ky about the boy with burned hands, Indie’s Pilot story, and the “blue-marked Anomalies” who might “have been part of the Rising” (205). Ky and Eli tell the girls about the tracking disks in their coats. Cassia has Ky cut hers out, while Indie chooses to keep hers intact. The four consult the township map and decide to go back to the settlement before they try to cross the plain, despite other people possibly being there. Seeing the cave paintings for the first time, Cassia marvels at their vibrant color, noticing the difference between the farmer’s paintings and the older ones. She focuses on one painting she doesn’t understand—that of one group of men and one group of women, all in motion. Ky explains that they’re dancing, and he promises to give her a demonstration someday.

Ky recalls his parents. His mother “could dance and sing and she went out to watch the sunset every night” (210). His father held meetings and wanted to make lasting change. Both of them supported each other in their pursuits. Ky sees Cassia “dancing” as she flits from painting to painting in the cave and understands why both of his parents believed what they believed—he wants to make this moment last forever.

Ky turns off the flashlight when Eli and Indie fall asleep, leaving him and Cassia in the dark. He asks her to come outside with him, and she hears a “complicated mix of emotion in his voice […] Love, concern, and something unusual, something bittersweet” (211). Ky holds Cassia, keeping her warm in the cold, and wonders if it would be too much to ask for one night in which they don’t think about anything besides each other. Cassia says they can’t have their one night, but that it’s not too much to ask for.

Chapter 27 is an untitled poem by Ky. The poem comprises 16 lines of varying lengths, written in free verse. Ky writes that he doesn’t title his poems because they would all be called “for you” (213). If he did title this particular poem, he would name it after the one night when he and Cassia forgot the world for each other.

Last night was the first time Cassia and Ky spent a night alone together, and now Cassia can’t stop thinking that it’s the only one they’ll ever have. Like they planned, the four return to the township and settle into a house far from the one with a lit window (mentioned in Chapter 13). A painting on the wall depicts people floating high in the air, looking down at the Earth. Cassia immediately recognizes them as angels.

Cassia and Ky are on watch when a man leaves the house with the lit window, carrying a young girl in a white dress. Cassia is shocked, as she has never seen a dead child before. The man places the girl on the ground and sings while he digs a grave with his hands, not stopping for the rain. He redraws the blue lines on the girl’s skin over and over again until the rain stops. Cassia pleads with Ky to leave the man alone for the day so he can mourn. Ky, “gentle and firm,” says the time is now (219).

The man calls out to Ky and Indie when they approach the graveyard, saying they can do what they like: “It doesn’t matter. I am the last” (220). Cassia and Eli follow close behind. The four introduce themselves as Aberrations from the Society. The man introduces himself as Hunter, and offers the four access to supplies if they help him with something. Night is falling, so they agree to meet again tomorrow.

Indie finds Ky in the morning, wearing her and Cassia’s one pack. Ky asks her what she’s keeping in it. Indie asks Ky why he won’t join the Rising. When he doesn’t answer, she tells him that Cassia calls to Xander in her sleep. She then hands him the note Cassia dropped from the packet of blue tablets. It says that Xander “[h]as a secret to tell his Match when he sees her again” (224). Ky refuses to tell Indie Xander’s secret or how to find the Rising. They accuse each other of hiding things. Having reached a stalemate, Indie walks away, and Ky releases the note into the wind.

Cassia notices a painting on another wall of the house. Unlike the angel painting, this one has no recognizable images, just abstract shapes. She asks Ky what it is. He finally answers love, explaining “I think ‘love’ when I look at it” (228). Cassia and Ky walk outside, and she notices how at home he is here. All that’s missing from this picture is a township of “people for him to help lead” (229).

The couple embraces for a moment, not realizing they’re in a graveyard until they see the stones on the ground. Cassia learns that the writing on each stone is an epitaph, a lyric or phrase chosen specifically for the deceased. She observes that several of the stones mark children’s graves. Ky mentions Matthew. It takes Cassia a moment to remember Patrick and Aida Markham’s son, the one who died before Ky came to live with them. Ky suggests there were more children who died whom she doesn’t remember. Cassia finds Hunter’s gravestone. Underneath the name, Sarah, the epitaph (a line from Emily Dickinson’s “They Dropped Like Flakes”) reads: “SUDDENLY ACROSS THE JUNE A WIND WITH FINGERS GOES” (232).

Hunter meets Ky, Cassia, Indie, and Eli at the graveyard. Eli asks Hunter if Sarah was his sister, and Hunter says she was his daughter. The four follow Hunter to the canyon where Cassia and Indie climbed out of the Carving. The strange Society-looking portion they previously passed over is the outside of a cave called the Cavern. The farmers protected these canyons from Society interference for a long time, until the Society suddenly became much more aggressive. The township split into two factions: one group decided to stay and fight the Society, and the other group left the Cavern. The blue-marked bodies that Cassia and Indie found on top of the Carving were the farmers who died in the fight. The Society took control of the Cavern and is using it for an unknown purpose. Hunter needs people from the Society to provide answers on what exactly is inside the Cavern, and why.

The door—the same one that the boy with burned hands died trying to get into—is sealed, so Hunter takes the four in a different direction. They all climb to the secret cave entrance together. Hunter and Indie, the most experienced climbers, each take one person with them inside (with Eli temporarily staying behind). Ky worries that this is a trap, or too much for Cassia—but the “glint in her eye” reassures him (240).

Eli blanches at the small tunnel the group has to squeeze through to get into the Cavern. Cassia comforts him, affirming his choice to stay outside. She herself panics in the tunnel, but Ky’s gentle encouragement from behind gives her the courage to continue.

The Cavern is massive, the walls studded with fossils; the blinking lights and smooth surfaces of the Society’s contraptions look wildly out of place. Cassia opens the glass door of one of the cases and investigates a tube. It’s a tissue sample, just like the one collected from Grandfather at his Final Banquet. The rows of cases likely contain hundreds of thousands of samples. Ky notices the odd dates on some of the tubes and realizes that the Society secretly takes DNA samples throughout a person’s life, not just when they die. There are samples from Cassia and Xander, but none from Ky.

Cassia tells Hunter about the samples, explaining the Society’s plan to use DNA to resurrect its Citizens one day. Hunter pulls a tube from a case, studies it, and snaps it with his fingers. He asks why “they killed us to store themselves,” and if they’ve found a way to bring back the dead yet (250)—but no one has answers for him. Indie asks Ky if Xander’s secret has something to do with this. A red light on top of the case Hunter opened starts flashing.

Hunter breaks multiple tubes of tissue samples. Ky tells Cassia and Indie to leave the Cavern. Once Ky and Hunter are alone, he gives Hunter a rock. Hunter uses it to smash rows of tubes at once. Ky leaves him inside and climbs on top of the Carving with Cassia, Indie, and Eli. Cassia asks Ky what Indie meant about Xander’s secret, but he feigns ignorance. The four run from the Cavern, listening for the sound of Society airships.

Ky remembers stealing red tablets with Xander (mentioned in Chapter 13). It was at this time that both boys discovered they were immune to the tablets. Ky tells Cassia about Xander’s immunity, but resolves not to tell her his other secret.