“He is, isn’t he?”

“I won’t lie to you, Sissy.” My voice is softer now. “He probably is. But we can’t let that get to us. We need to think of David, okay? Even if we can’t find Epap, we still have David to rescue. Which means we still need to get to Ashley June. For David’s sake.”

Sissy stares hard at me. A wind gusts then, blowing the hot air rising off the boulders through our hair.

“I keep thinking of David,” she says. A vertical line creases down the middle of her forehead. “That right now while we’re free under blue skies, the sun on our faces, able to talk, able to breathe fresh air, he’s confined in a tank. He’s submerged in liquid, alone, in almost pitch-darkness.” She clamps her jaw, her teeth grinding. “It’s more than I can bear.”

Sissy gazes back at the Palace. Muscle juts out of her arms, tinseled with sweat. “I feel like I’m deserting him. I’d do just about anything to take his place; I’d be willing to die a thousand deaths. I should go back for him.”

“You can’t,” I say, almost too quickly.

She pulls her hair behind her ear. “You go to the metropolis, get Epap. I return to the Palace, get David.”

“No, Sissy,” I say urgently. “We stay together.” I can’t let us separate; I need her; I need her blood. How I get it—how I’ll explain why to her—that I haven’t figured out yet. But I can’t rush things, not without a proper container to store her blood, not with so many hours for her blood to spoil in the heat. Not while she still has a chance to walk away.

She squares her body with mine, and her look is surprisingly tender. Sweat droplets bead her forehead, dot her upper lip. She sees the desperation in my face, and something in her relents. She presses her forehead against my collarbone. I wrap my arms around her damp back.

“We stay together, okay, Sissy?”

She nods against my chest.

I close my eyes, swallow hard. Hoping she’ll forgive me when this is all over.

We test out the weapons. Better to practice firing the weapons here at the boulders than in the metropolis where the loud bangs would attract attention.

Sissy is a quick study when it comes to the handgun. She figures out how to load it and, after only a few minutes, is able to do so with eyes closed, her fingers snapping in cartridge after cartridge, all in under five seconds. She picks out a rock as a target, and after only a few practice rounds she’s nailing the target each time.

My weapon of choice is the sniper rifle, which I find only after opening the silver briefcase. Also embedded in the case are two tubelike cylinders.

“Silencers,” Sissy says with awe, taking one. “I read about them in the dome.” She stares down at the handgun. “I think this silencer is compatible with both the sniper rifle and this handgun!” she exclaims, screwing it in. “I always wanted to try one of these.” When she shoots, instead of an explosive report a whistled zip is all that sounds. She nods approvingly.

“You keep that one,” I tell her.

Turns out, I’m a crackerjack at the sniper. From the moment I place my eye on the eyepiece and stare down the scope, the stock pressed snugly into my shoulder, it feels right. I’m overeager at first, too hungry to feel the sniper’s power, and end up pulling the trigger too hastily. But after the first few shots, I steady my breathing, slow my finger on the trigger. My shots are still a bit off, a touch to my left each time. I make some minor tweaks on the scope, and from that point on I bull’s-eye every one of my shots.

“Hotshot, you are,” Sissy says, smiling. Her face turns serious. “This is good. In terms of strategy. When we take out Ashley June, we’ll position ourselves both close and far from her. You get the first shot, from afar. I’ll be up close with a short-range weapon, in case you miss. Two chances at the same target.”

I nod in fake agreement, glancing up at the sun. “Let’s get going,” I say. I break down the sniper and pack the parts back into the case.

“Check the TextTrans,” she says.

But there’s nothing.

Silently we slide down the boulder, untether the horse. But despite Epap’s TT silence, I can tell that Sissy’s mood has lifted. Her skin glows; her body seems more vibrant. The weapons, the shooting, the sense of working toward a goal—these have all buoyed her spirits.

I secure the backpack to the saddle and am about to mount the horse when she puts her hand on my shoulder. “This time,” she says with a grin, “I’ll ride in front. It’s your turn to sit behind and be the useless seat belt wrapped all around me.”

Twenty-one

IT IS ALREADY late afternoon when we trot into the business sector of the metropolis. Heat lies oppressive in the empty asphalt streets. Skyscrapers tower over us, and their slanted shadows cut diagonally across the street, offering us spurts of reprieve from the scorching sun that has unremittingly pounded us the whole journey here. These buildings, looming tombstones of sun-blasted concrete and shuttered metal grates, are silent spectators to our slow, cautious progress.

The horse’s clip-clops echo back at us, an eerie sound. And though I used to walk these same empty daytime streets many times when I was younger, they spook me in a way they never used to. More than once, I glance back, half-expecting to see a figure silently chasing us down, bounding on all fours.

“Turn left at the next intersection,” I tell Sissy, and she guides the horse with a gentle pull on the reins. We pull up in front of a large circular building. A wide driveway loops up an elevated bank to the entrance. In front of the building is a deep, wide body of water larger than the municipal pool. Not that anyone would ever swim here, not with the water at a depth of almost six meters. A dangerous depth—duskers easily drown in much shallower water—but necessary for the majestic water shows at night. I’d seen a few shows before, on school field trips and on television. An awesome spectacle of high arching coordinated jets of water, colored lighting, sprays and splashes everywhere.

We dismount, lead the horse to the water. It sticks in its snout, drinks in messy gulps.

“Is this the hospital?”

“No. The Convention Center.”

“A little early, don’t you think?”

“The horse needs to drink. As do we.” I cup water into my hands, take in large swallows. It’s warm and metallic tasting but a salve to my thirst. I douse my head underwater, then flick my head back up, letting the water stream down my neck and under my shirt.

Sissy’s done the same, and water drips off the tips of her bangs, dampening her shirt. She squints at the Convention Center. “Look there. At the roof. It’s shining like glass.”

I nod. “People rave about that glass roof. On rainy nights, it sets the perfect ambience. The raindrops hitting the roof, just the right amount of filtered light. If there’s a full moon, they’ll darken the tint of the glass. Push of the button.” I douse more water over my head.

Sissy cups another handful of water, combs her bangs to the side. “It’s hours before dawn. Find a place to hide out here?”

“We can’t stay here.”

“Then should we head to the hospital? Find Ashley June’s room, take her out there?”

I shake my head. “The hospital’s likely to be packed. With journalists. Doctors, nurses. We won’t get far before being recognized.”

“We can put on the Visors. They’ll shield our faces.”

I take another gulp of water. “Won’t work. People don’t wear them indoors. And besides, look at us. We stick out in other ways. Our hair’s disheveled, we’re caked in sand and dirt, we’ve got streaks of dried sweat along our faces and necks. I’m badly in need of a shave—not just the facial hair, but I’ve got hair on my arms and legs, too. And then there’s our odor. When’s the last time we bathed? Trust me, they’ll smell us a block or two away. A Visor isn’t going to conceal our smell.”

Sissy’s eyes scan over my face, my body, as if for the first time noticing the dirt and hair. “We could use a wash, I suppose. But honestly, I don’t smell any odor.”

“We’ve gotten used to each other’s smell. We reek.”

“So we wash ourselves with this water?”

I shake my head. “It’s not enough. Our odor is too deeply recessed into our pores. We need soap, scruffy pads, detergent. Paling cream for our sun-darkened skin. Whitening agents for our teeth. And I need razors.”

“And something tells me we’re not going to be able to walk into a neighborhood store and find these things. Where do we go?”

I rub the horse’s neck. “We go back home. My home.”

Twenty-two

IT’S STRANGE TO be walking in my neighborhood again. We’d tethered the horse to a road sign as we entered the suburban district, worried that its loud clip-clops might wake the light sleepers in curbside homes. We’re glad to be walking, anyway, the first time in days it feels like we can stretch our legs, get the muscles working again.

We walk in silence. This is all new to Sissy, and the scale of civilization has both spooked and awed her. She’s never seen streets aligned in perfect grids, flanked by houses that are perfect copies of one another. Never walked out so fully exposed, without protective glass encasing her, with so many hundreds of duskers in the immediate vicinity, so many millions more in every direction around her. She stares at the shuttered windows and doors, looks anxiously at the sun that will soon begin to set.

“Not much farther,” I whisper.

We turn the last bend, and now we’re on my street. Nothing has changed since the last time I was here only two, three weeks ago. But I have. The person who once walked in my skin and on these streets no longer exists. Everything is familiar, everything is alien, all at the same time.

Until we get to my house. Then nothing is familiar; everything is a devastating new. Because my house is barely there. The windows have been shattered, the front door smashed off its hinges. Even the walls have been pummeled, whole chunks of cement blocks pushed out and ground to dust. The house has been ransacked. Virtually everything has been stolen, to be later sold on the black market. What remains is only fragments, shards of glass scattered on the floor, splintered wood from the table and chairs strewn everywhere. The sofa has been gutted, and only the twisted metal skeleton frame remains. The walls, the floors, the corners where dust once gathered—all of it has been licked clean five times over by people trying to find a molecule of heper: my dead skin, my hair follicles, my fingernails, my droplets of mucus from a wayward sneeze, anything. The walls are covered with hundreds of swirls of dried dusker saliva, gleaming like prickly coats of dried varnish.