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“She’s right again,” Erik calls from the dark recess he’s crouched in. “Look what she’s gotten us into.”

I bite my lip.
That
was hostile. Definitely not his usual friendly banter.

“I know that,” Jost says loudly. “But none of us should be wandering around on our own.”

I study his face for a moment, wondering if he would be so eager to escort his brother to check out the landscape. I decide not to ask.

But Jost continues. “Of course you’re welcome to wander off anytime.”

I guess that answers that.

“Clearly the fact that we are in some type of forsaken alternate reality is much less important than your grudge against me, so can we get this over with and move on?” Erik asks. He moves out of the shadows to face his brother. Standing there, they mirror each other, and for the first time I study them as brothers. I’d only just figured out the real reason they were cold to each other at the Coventry: they were both hiding that secret. They’re exactly the same height, something I’d not noticed before, but Jost is bulkier from his work at the Coventry. He’s dressed in casual work clothes, unlike Erik, whose suit, while wrinkly, is still smart. Erik’s hair brushes his shoulders and Jost’s is longer, but although they share the same unruly waves, Erik’s silvery hair is smoothly slicked into place. Jost’s wild dark locks look like you’d expect after as much action as we’ve seen. The one thing that’s exactly the same is their piercing blue eyes.

“Grudge?” Jost laughs, but there’s a hollowness to it. “You think watching my wife, our sister,
our mother
get wiped from Arras resulted in a grudge?”

“Then why are you here? What purpose does it serve to run to the Guild if you hate them so much for what they did to Rozenn?” Erik demands.

“That’s our problem.” Jost steps closer to him. “You’ve never understood. Even I knew why Rozenn’s brother and his friends were discontent. I know what the Guild is capable of, and so do you. How can you turn a blind eye? You’ve become one of them.”

“Jost, you were at the Coventry for two years, and I never once let it slip you were from Saxun.”

“It would have given away your own secret. You wouldn’t want those officials knowing you were a fisherman’s son,” Jost accuses.

Erik’s jaw tightens. “I never once gave them a reason to suspect your motives, but I’ll be honest with you, I don’t understand what you were waiting for. I expected you to attack them, maybe even kill the Spinster who did it. Anything,” Erik says. “I wouldn’t have blamed you. I stood back, and you did nothing. I actually thought maybe you’d formed some type of twisted dependency on them.”

“That’s not it.” Jost sighs, and the lightest of lines remain on his forehead and around his eyes. “If you understood, then you’d know I wasn’t looking for some quick, simple payback. I want to understand how the system operates.”

“How will that help you heal?” Erik demands. “What can you possibly gain?”

“
Myself?
Not much. But understanding the system and getting the information into the right hands could do more damage.”

“So that’s it,” Erik says in a quiet voice. “You were plotting treason.”

“And killing Spinsters wouldn’t have been that?” Jost asks, responding to the allegation in his brother’s voice.

“Killing the one responsible would be reasonable,” Erik says. “But destroying the system would undermine the peace the Guild has established.”

“Peace?” Jost echoes with a laugh.

I think of the people who have been ripped, the neatly organized proof in storage at the Coventry, the look of defeat on my father’s face as he tried to shove me into the tunnel the night the Guild came to claim me. No part of me wants to laugh.

Jost grabs my arm. “Ask Adelice. Ask her what it’s like to rip someone from Arras. Ask
her
if it’s peaceful for them.”

I open my mouth to protest being dragged into the middle of this, but Jost doesn’t wait for me to respond to his point.

“Or better yet, ask me, Erik. Ask me what it was like to see it happen.” Jost’s voice drops down and trails off. None of us speak. “I watched it. I saw her slip away piece by piece. I watched as they took her away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik offers. He sounds sincere, but even I know his words are far from enough.

Jost shakes his head slightly as if to clear his thoughts and looks out into the dark. “Rozenn was better than any of us. You or me. So was our mother.” He pauses. “And my daughter.”

Erik’s shock registers like a slap across the face. “Daughter?” he mouths. No actual sound comes, but the heaviness of the word presses on my chest, and judging from their expressions, they feel it, too.

“You missed out on a lot when you took off.” Jost’s words are dismissive, but he doesn’t look away from Erik.

“You could have telebounded me,” Erik insists. Now he’s the one who sounds accusatory.

“And what?” Jost asks. “You would have come to visit? You didn’t come when Dad got sick or I got married. I knew where we stood with you when you left to serve the Guild. Your family couldn’t help you move forward politically, so we were of no use to you.

“You wouldn’t have cared,” Jost continues. “You were busy cozying up to Maela, following her orders like the perfect Spinster’s errand boy. Just like you’ve been busy weaseling your way into Adelice’s heart.”

I should put a stop to these accusations before they kill each other, but part of me wants to see how Erik reacts. I know how Erik feels about Maela, the power-hungry Spinster he worked for at the Coventry. Erik and I both counted her as an enemy. Jost’s charge sends a thrill through me, because deep down I always suspected Erik’s reasons for getting close to me were about more than friendship.

“But that backfired when Ad brought you here. All that work you did to get to the top is gone. You’ll never convince them that you’re loyal again. You’re through with the Guild,” Jost says.

Erik’s face contorts into a mask of rage. “You barely know me or why I came to the Coventry, but don’t let that stop you from making unfair accusations. It’s rather entertaining, and it doesn’t look like there’s much else to do around here,” he spits back.

“There
is
a lot to do around here and fighting isn’t on the list,” I intercede, before things get more out of control. “Save your personal problems for later, we have work to do.”

“What do you have in mind? Rebuild the city?” Erik asks. “Or should we skip to the repopulating part?”

“Shut up,” Jost commands. “You aren’t funny.”

“Why? That’s the nice part of getting stuck on a completely forsaken piece of dirt.”

“You better hope that you find someone to help you do it then, because she’s taken. I’m sure there’s a nice dog around here somewhere. Maybe you should stick to your own species,” Jost says.

I’m between them before Erik releases his fist, and I barely cringe when I see it moving toward my face.

Jost catches Erik’s fist, and Erik freezes. But his surprise at my near-disastrous intervention is quickly replaced by a glare, leveled directly at his brother.

“We’re going to check things out,” Jost says through gritted teeth.

“Suit yourself,” Erik says. “I certainly don’t need you here, moping about the joint.”

Jost grabs my arm, a bit more roughly than usual, and drags me from the shack. I pull out of his grasp, my hand flying to rub my throbbing skin.

“That hurt,” I inform him.

He stares at me for a moment and then his eyes soften. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Erik just—”

“I know,” I say quietly, “but I’m not Erik. Don’t take it out on me.”

He nods his apology and I take his hand to let him know we can drop it. We have more important things to worry about right now.

The metro is still several miles away if I can trust my generally poor sense of direction. The ocean now lies far enough behind us that although I can make out its glassy surface, I no longer hear the beat of its waves. We stand between this world and the one we left. Between the danger that lies ahead of us in the metro and the abyss behind us that will swallow us whole. Every choice we make now will have a consequence I can’t foresee, because I don’t understand this world yet.

The quick crunch of approaching footsteps makes it seem as if someone has made a choice for us. We’ve been caught. A handlight blinds us to our approaching captor.

“Who’s there?” Jost calls. He pushes me behind him, but I step back out. He doesn’t try again.

“I should be asking you that.” The voice is rough, but feminine. The light fades away, and I blink against spots of phosphorescence left in my vision. A girl blurs into view. She wears no cosmetics but is still quite beautiful. Not in a Spinster way though. Her features are angular, sharp and chiseled, and her dark hair cascades down her back. There is nothing artificial or stylized about her. Her clothes are practical—leather pants that lace up the side, a belt slung low on her hips, and a thick silk tunic. This is a girl who doesn’t belong in Arras.

“We saw the ship go down. We came out to see what happened,” I lie, hoping against everything I’ve been led to believe about Earth that the metro ahead of us is populated.

“And you had nothing to do with bringing the ship down from the Interface?” She gestures up to the raw weave that covers the sky.

The girl’s eyes sweep over us. Jost might pass her inspection. His clothes are as utilitarian as hers, but there’s no denying that I look out of place in comparison, in my lavender suit, stockings, and pumps. Nothing about me, down to the emeralds clipped to my ears, correlates to what I’ve seen of Earth.

“Let me see your necks,” she says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Credentials.”

I hesitate for a moment but then acquiesce. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but I know she’s not going to find it. I pull my hair up, Jost does the same, and when we turn back around to face her, a rifle is leveled at us.

She utters one word: “Fail.”

Time seems to slow as her finger presses against the trigger, and I scream, “Wait!” It surprises even me, and the girl takes a step back. She’s checking for a mark, and I have one—a techprint burned into my wrist by my father, who was hoping I would escape the retrieval squad.

Shoving my sleeve up, I thrust my arm out to her and point to the pale hourglass imprinted on my skin like a scar.

The rifle slips in her hand, the barrel now pointing at the ground.

“Your left hand?” she whispers.

“Yes.”

She’s shocked, but as quickly as the rifle appeared, it disappears across her back. She pushes my sleeve down to cover the techprint.

“Go to the Icebox,” she says, “and lie low. We’ll find you. You aren’t safe here.”

“What’s the Icebox?” Jost demands.

“The Icebox is the city ahead of you,” she says. “It’s Sunrunner territory and outside Guild control.”

“Where are we?” I ask.

“The remains of the state of California,” she says. “The Icebox is the only inhabited city in this territory. You’ll be safe from the Guild there—for now. Stay put and stay hidden. Don’t go out after hours and don’t let anyone see that techprint.”

“Sure,” I mutter, and the girl’s hand seizes my arm.

“Your life depends on it,” she says.

I nod to show that I understand, even though none of this makes sense. What does my father’s techprint have to do with Earth? What’s a Sunrunner? But I know she’s right about one thing: the Guild is coming for me, and we aren’t safe here.

She strides away without giving us her name. Her warning hangs in the air. I don’t watch her, even though she’s not headed to the metro but back toward the ocean.

“Why would she care about your techprint?” Jost asks, but I ignore him as we start to jog back to where we left Erik. We need to get out of here, and if there are people in this Icebox, we can blend in and hide until I figure out how my techprint is linked to this girl.

Nothing tied to the night of my retrieval can be ignored, especially when that thing is a mark left before my father showed me that he and my mother were more than dissenters.

They were traitors—like me.

THE SCENTS OF THE METRO MINGLE, PERFUMING it with the aromas of sewage, baking bread, rotting fruit, and the sweat of its bustling inhabitants. It is pleasant one moment and stomach-turning the next. We’ve been here for a week, but it doesn’t feel like home and no one’s come looking for us yet.

But bit by bit I’m growing more accustomed to the strange world I’ve found myself in. We stumbled into the Icebox not knowing what to expect and found people, shops, and solar-powered lights. Erik discovered quickly that the small items we had on us could be pawned for currency, which bought us access to a cheap hotel room. Today Erik and Jost let me come with them to the grey market, the seedy part of the metro, where illicit trade takes place, on the condition that I don’t speak to anyone. I agreed but only to get out of the rat trap masquerading as a hotel I’ve been stuck in during their other trips, trips that produced stale food and little else. But I’m not looking for a meal; I want information. Erik has learned a lot on his trips to the market, and we’re starting to understand how things work here. But we still haven’t found the mysterious girl who sent us to the Icebox.

The Icebox is a conglomeration of buildings from before the war and ones constructed by the syndicate that runs the entire metro—the Sunrunners, the powerful group that controls the Icebox by monopolizing solar trade. Our hotel’s manager patiently explained the lighting systems to us our first night. He does a fair business off new refugees coming into the Icebox, and he assures us the Sunrunners are not friends of the Guild. Apparently, Sunrunners keep control of solar energy because they are the only ones brave enough to venture outside the borders of the Interface, where the Guild mining zones begin. I think I saw a Sunrunner out on patrol one day, but so far we’ve steered clear of them. Even if we share a mutual enemy, it doesn’t mean the Sunrunners are looking for allies.