“The kidnapping, the kiss. I brought him here, after all. I rescue him an pulled him into this new life, a life of freedom and feeling.”

“For a moment, my heart aches for him. I should never have asked him to join me here; I shouldnever have asked him to cross.”

“i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought me here. Brought you here, and it feels like the biggest miracle in the world.”

“I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I'm breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed in my life.”

“I need him to know that I came for him. I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him.”

“Alex's T-shirt is red, and for a second I think it's a trick of the light, but then I realise he's drenched, soaked in blood: blood seeping across his chest, like the stain seeping up the sky, bringing another day to the world. Behind him is that insect army of men, all running toward him at once, guns drawn. The guards are coming too, reaching for him from both sides.....The helicopter has him fixed in it's spotlight. He is standing white and still and frozen in its beam, and I don't think I have ever, in my life, seen anything more beautiful than him.”

“it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.”