“The Lunar anthem,” said Wolf, his expression dark, as if he had long harbored a deep hatred for the song.
The anthem was followed by a pleasant female voice: “This workday has ended. Stamp your times and retire to your homes. We hope you enjoyed this workday and look forward to your return tomorrow.”
Thorne grunted. “How considerate.”
Soon they could hear the drumming footsteps of exhausted workers pouring into the streets.
Wolf cocked his head, indicating it was time, and led them up the steps. They emerged into artificial daylight, where the dome’s curved glass blocked out the glow of stars. This sector was not much of an improvement over the tunnels below. Cinder was staring at a patchwork of browns and grays. Narrow streets and run-down buildings that had no glass in their windows. And dust, dust, so much dust.
Cinder found herself shrinking away from the first sparse groups of people they saw—instinct telling her to stay hidden—but no one even glanced at them. The people they passed looked weary and filthy, hardly talking.
Wolf rolled his shoulders, his gaze darting over the buildings, the dust-covered streets, the artificial sky. Cinder wondered if he was embarrassed they were seeing this glimpse into his past, and she tried to imagine Wolf as a normal child, with parents who loved him and a home he grew up in. Before he was taken away and turned into a predator.
It was impossible to think that every member of Levana’s army, every one of those mutants, had started out this way too. How many of them had been grateful to be given the chance to get away from these sectors with the dust that coated their homes and filled their lungs?
How many had been devastated to leave their families behind?
The graffiti echoed back at her: Have you seen my son?
Wolf pointed down one of the narrow streets. “This way. The residential streets are mostly in the outer rings of the sector.”
They followed, trying to mimic the dragging feet and lowered heads of the laborers. It was difficult, when Cinder’s own adrenaline was singing, her heartbeat starting to race.
The first part of her plan had already gone horribly wrong. She didn’t know what she would do if this failed too. She needed Wolf’s parents to be alive, to be allies. She needed the security they could offer—a safe place to hide while they figured out what they were going to do without Cress.
It was as far ahead as she could think.
Find a sanctuary.
Then she would start worrying about revolutions.
They hadn’t gone far from the maglev tunnel when Cinder spotted the first guards, in full uniform, each clutching ominous guns in their arms. Unlike the civilians, their noses and mouths were covered to protect them from the dust.
Cinder shivered at the sight of them and cast her attention around, searching for the signature aura of a thaumaturge. She had never known a guard to be far from one, but she didn’t sense any here.
How was it possible that a few weak-minded guards could hold such power over hundreds of gifted civilians? Though she guessed the Lunars in these outer sectors wouldn’t be nearly as strong as Levana or her court, surely they could manipulate a few guards?
No sooner had she questioned it than the answer came to her.
These guards may not have a thaumaturge with them, but the threat was still there, implied in their very presence. The people of this sector could revolt. They could have these guards killed or enslaved easily. But such an act of defiance would bring the wrath of the queen down on them. The next guards that came would not be without the protection of a thaumaturge, and retribution would not be merciful.
When they passed by the guards, Cinder made sure to keep her face turned away.
They shuffled through the dome’s center, where a water fountain stood in the middle of a dust-covered courtyard, forcing the crowd to flow around it. The fountain was carved into the figure of a woman, her head veiled and crowned, clear water pouring from her outspread hands as if she were offering life itself to the people who crossed her path.
The sight of it made the blood freeze in Cinder’s veins. Levana had been queen for barely over a decade, yet she’d already put her mark on these far-reaching sectors.
Such a beautiful, serene fountain, but it felt like a threat.
They followed the dispersing crowd through blocks of factories and warehouses that smelled of chemicals, before the industrial buildings gave way to houses.
Though houses was a relative term. More like shacks, these homes were as unplanned and patched together as the overcrowded Phoenix Tower Apartments in New Beijing. Now Cinder understood what Wolf meant by how they had become experts at recycling materials. Every wall and roof looked like it had been cut and chopped and resoldered and rebolted and twisted and reconfigured again. As there was no weather to rust or corrode the materials, they were left to deteriorate at the hands of people. Houses pulled apart and reconstituted as families moved and changed and grew. The entire neighborhood was a ramshackle assortment of metal sheets and wood panels and stray materials left abandoned in the spaces between, waiting to be given a new use.
Wolf froze.
Nerves humming, Cinder scanned the nearby windows and opened the tip of her pointer finger in preparation for an attack. “What is it?”
Wolf didn’t speak. Didn’t move. He was focused on a house down the street, unblinking.
“Wolf?”
His breath rattled. “It might be nothing, but I think … I thought I smelled my mother. A soap that seemed familiar … though I didn’t have these senses last time I saw her. It might not…”