“I’m not hungry,” she mutters. When she shifts her head against my chest, I feel the heat of her brow through my shirt.
I squeeze her hand. My arms are so numb that even this seems difficult. “Fine. But you’re going to have some water, okay?”
“Fine.” June huddles closer to me and rests her head in my lap. I wish I could figure out a way to keep her warm. “Are they still following us?”
I squint down into the black depths we came from. “No,” I lie. “We lost them a long time ago. Just relax and don’t worry, but try to stay awake.”
June nods. She fiddles with something on her hand, and when I look closer, I realize it’s the paper clip ring. She rubs it as if it can give her strength. “Help me out. Tell me a story.” Her eyes are half-closed now, even though I can tell she’s struggling to keep them open. She’s speaking so softly that I have to lean over her mouth to hear it.
“What kind of story?” I reply, determined to keep her from fading into unconsciousness.
“I don’t know.” June tilts her head slightly to face me. After a pause, she says sleepily, “Tell me about your first kiss. How was it?”
Her question confuses me at first—no girl I’ve ever known has liked me talking about other girls in front of her. But then I realize that this is June, and that she might be using jealousy to keep herself from dozing off. I can’t help smiling in the dark. Always so goddy clever, this one. “I was twelve,” I murmur. “The girl was sixteen.”
June’s eyes become more alert. “You must’ve been quite the smooth talker.”
I shrug. “Maybe. I was clumsier back then—almost got myself killed a few times. Anyway, she was working a pier in Lake with her dad, and she caught me trying to smuggle food out of their crates. I talked her out of turning me in, and as part of our deal, she led me off to a back alley near the water.”
June tries to laugh, but it comes out as a coughing fit. “And she kissed you there?”
I grin. “You could say that.”
She manages to raise a curious eyebrow at my short reply, which I take as a good sign. At least she’s awake now. I lean closer to her and put my lips next to her ear. My breath stirs soft wisps of her hair. “The first time I saw you, when you stepped into that Skiz ring against Kaede, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I could’ve watched you forever. The first time I kissed you . . .” That memory overpowers me now, taking me by surprise. I remember every last detail of it, almost enough to push away the lingering images of the Elector pulling June to him. “Well, that might as well have been my first kiss ever.”
Even in the dark, I see hints of a smile creep onto her face. “Yeah. You are a smooth talker.”
I give her a wounded frown. “Sweetheart, would I ever lie to you?”
“Don’t try. I’d see right through it.”
I give her a low laugh. “Fair enough.”
Our words sound light and almost carefree, but we can both feel the strain behind them. The effort of trying to forget, to push down. The consequence of things neither of us can ever take back.
We linger there for a few more minutes. Then I wrap up our belongings, carefully pick her up, and continue down the tunnel. My arms are shaking now, and each breath I take sounds ragged. There are no signs of any shelters ahead. Despite the tunnel’s wetness and the cold, I’m sweating as if it’s the middle of a Los Angeles summer—my breaks become more and more frequent, until I finally stop at another dry stretch of tunnel and collapse against the wall.
“Just taking a quick breather,” I reassure June as I give her some water. “I think we’re almost there.”
Just as she said earlier, she can see right through my lie. “We can’t go any farther,” she says weakly. “Let’s rest. You’ll never last another hour like this.”
I brush off her words. “This tunnel’s got to end somewhere. We must have gone right under the warfront by now, which means we’re already on Colonies land.” I pause—the realization hits me at the same time my words come out, sending a thrill down my spine. Colonies land.
As if on cue, a sound comes from somewhere beyond the tunnel, somewhere far above us. I fall silent. We listen for a while, and soon the sound comes back—a whirring, humming noise muffled through the earth, coming from some massive object.
“Is that an airship out there?” June asks.
The sound fades away, but not before it brings an icy cold breeze into the tunnel. I glance up. I’d been too exhausted to notice earlier, but now I can just make out a tiny, rectangular sliver of light. An exit to the surface. In fact, there are several of them lining the ceiling in sporadic intervals; we’ve probably been passing them for a good while. I force myself back to my feet and reach up to run my finger along the edge of that sliver. Smooth, frozen metal. I give it a tentative push.
It shifts. I push harder on the metal and start sliding it to one side. Even though I can tell that it’s nighttime outside, the light coming into the tunnel is more than we’ve been getting for the past few hours, and I actually find myself squinting. It takes me a second to realize that something cold and light is falling gently onto my face. I swat at it, confused for a second, until I realize that they’re—I think—snowflakes. My heartbeat quickens. When I’ve slid the metal as far as it will go, I shrug off my Republic military jacket. No fun getting shot by soldiers right when we’ve reached the promised land.
When I’ve stripped down to my collar shirt and waistcoat, I jump up and grab the sides of the opening, arms trembling, then pull myself up halfway to see where we are. Some sort of dark corridor. Nobody around. I jump back down and take June’s hands, but she’s starting to fade away into sleep again.
“Stay with me,” I murmur, gathering her in my arms. “See if you can pull yourself up.” June unwinds the blanket. I kneel and help her step up onto my shoulders. She wobbles, breathing heavily, but manages to pull herself to the surface. I follow with her blanket tucked under an arm, then pop up through the ground with one thrust.
We come up into a dark, narrow alley not unlike where we came from, and for a second I wonder if somehow we’ve come all the way back around into the Republic again. Wouldn’t that be something. But after a while, I can tell that this isn’t the Republic at all. The ground is even and nicely paved under a patchy layer of snow, and the wall is completely covered with brightly colored posters of grinning soldiers and smiling children. On the corner of each poster is a symbol that I recognize after a few seconds. A gold, falconlike bird. With a shiver of excitement, I realize how closely it resembles the bird imprinted on my pendant.
June’s notices the posters too. Her eyes are wide and hazy with fever, her breath rising in faint clouds of steam. All around us are what appear to be military barracks, covered from top to bottom with the same bright posters. Streetlights line both sides of the road in neat, orderly patterns. This must be where the tunnel and those underground shelters get their electricity. A cold wind blows more snow in our faces.
June suddenly grabs my hand. She sucks in her breath at the same time I do. “Day . . . over there.” She’s trembling uncontrollably against me, but I can’t tell if it’s from the cold or from what we’re seeing.
Stretching out before us, peeking through the gaps between the military buildings, is a city: tall, shining skyscrapers reaching up through low clouds and delicate snow, and each building illuminated by beautiful blue lights that pour from almost every window and every floor. Fighter jets line the skyscrapers’ rooftops. The entire landscape is aglow. My hand tightens around June’s. We just stand there, unable for a second to do anything else. It’s exactly how my father described it.
We’ve reached a glittering city in the Colonies of America.
METIAS HAD ALWAYS TOLD ME THAT WHENEVER I DO GET sick, I pull out all the stops.
I know it’s cold, but I can’t tell what the temperature is. I know it’s night, but I can’t tell what time it is. I know Day and I have somehow made it across the border and into the Colonies, but I’m too tired to figure out which of their states we crossed into. Day’s arm is wrapped tightly around my waist, supporting me even though I can feel him shaking from the effort of carrying me for so long. He whispers encouragingly to me, urging me on. Just a little longer, he says. There must be hospitals this close to the warfront. My legs are trembling from the effort of keeping me up, but I refuse to faint now. We crunch through light snow, our eyes fixed on the sparkling city before us.
The buildings range between five stories and hundreds of stories tall, some of them disappearing into low clouds. The sight is familiar in some ways and entirely new in others: The walls are lined with foreign flags shaped like swallowtails, colored navy blue and gold; the buildings have archway designs carved into their sides; and fighter jets line each rooftop. They’re distinctly different models from the ones in the Republic, with a strange reverse-swept-wing structure that makes them tridentlike in appearance. The jets’ wings are all painted with ferocious gold birds, as well as a symbol I don’t recognize. No wonder I always heard that the Colonies had a better air force than the Republic—these jets are newer than the ones I’m used to and, considering their rooftop placements, must all be able to perform vertical takeoffs and landings effortlessly. This warfront city seems more than prepared to defend itself.
And the people. They’re everywhere, both soldiers and civilians crowding the streets, huddled under hooded coats to shield themselves from the snow. As they pass under the neon glow of lights, their faces are tinted shades of green, orange, and purple. I’m too exhausted to do a proper analysis of them, but the one thing I notice is that all of their clothes—boots, pants, shirts, coats—have a variety of emblems and words on them. I’m shocked by the sheer number of ads on the walls—they stretch on as far as the eye can see, sometimes bunched so closely together that they completely hide the walls beneath them. They seem to be advertising anything and everything under the sun, things I’ve never seen or heard of before. Corp-sponsored schools? Christmas?
We pass one window where a bunch of miniature screens are displayed, each broadcasting news and videos. SALE! the window display reads. 30% OFF UNTIL MONDAY! Some channels’ broadcasting programs are familiar—headlines from the warfront, political conferences. DESCON CORP SCORES ANOTHER VICTORY FOR COLONIES ON DAKOTA/MINNESOTA BORDER. REPUBLIC RUBBLE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AS SOUVENIRS! Others broadcast movies, something the Republic only shows in rich sector theaters. Most screens are showing commercials. Unlike the Republic’s propaganda commercials, it’s as if these ads were trying to persuade their population to buy things. I wonder what kind of government runs a place like this. Maybe they don’t have a government at all.
“My father once told me that the Colonies’ cities are like glitter from far away,” Day says. His eyes skip from one brightly colored ad to the next as he helps me through the shuffle of people. “It’s exactly like he described, but I can’t figure out all these ads. Aren’t they strange?”