Her breath catches in her throat. Her mouth curves into a reckless smile. This is fear. This is real fear!
She can hear her own heartbeat, taste her own panic. She draws in a sharp breath and is almost certain she can smell something serpentine. Thrilled, terrified, she looks around to find the source of the sound, be it alligator or snake or some other evil—
Her eyes lock with another pair of eyes—not evil, but warm. The eyes belong to a boy.
Chapter 8: Ere
Ere is rooted to the spot, unable to take his eyes off the incredible sight before him. His fingers remain locked, vice-like, around the handle of his water bucket. Alone, scouting for water while others set up camp, he hadn’t paid attention, stepped on a dry twig—and now here he is, a speechless idiot statue, staring.
Staring at a girl.
An unbelievably beautiful girl.
Though flecked with mud, she’s still somehow cleaner than anyone he’s ever seen, radiating with a sort of glowing… glow, he thinks stupidly. She’s wearing all black, blending in with the night; her hair, too, is black, but there’s a radiant light to her skin, her eyes. He tries to remember a word, the word for something as ethereal as she. The word reveals itself: an angel.
Then the angel speaks.
“Who in Heaven and Hell are you?”
Her voice is not nearly as angelic as her appearance. It’s sharp and oddly accented. He hesitates, and she looks at him, her eyes traveling from his face to his arms, his water bucket, back to his face. She speaks again, with less command and more curiosity.
“Can you speak?”
“Of course I can speak,” Ere retorts.
“Then tell me your name.”
“Ere.”
“Air? That’s a weird name. Like ‘the air we breathe’?”
“No, Ere, as in—the way things were.”
“Huh. I don’t know if that’s weirdly nostalgic or just stupid.”
“I’ll have to ask my mother whether she was being ‘weirdly nostalgic’ or just stupid when she chose it. What’s your name?”
She does not hesitate. “Ever.”
“Ever?” He repeats incredulously. And then, before he can stop himself, he snipes back: “Well, yes. Ever. That’s definitely a less stupid name than Ere.”
The girl bursts out laughing, then stops as abruptly as she started. She narrows her eyes.
“Are you… teasing me?”
It strikes him as odd that she would have trouble selecting that word. “Um, yes.”
“What gives you the right to tease me?”
“The right…?”
“Do you know who my father is?”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Ere says, bemused.
Her eyes narrow further. “Where are you from?”
What’s wrong with this girl?
Her questions made no sense. Where was anyone “from”? Who would ask such a question? He starts to respond, then realizes. That was too odd a query. A question no Original would ever ask another Original. Nomadic people don’t compare many notes on “home sweet home.” Ere cocks his head and listens closely—he has never been close enough to hear the sound before, but now—yes. There it is. A soft but unmistakable humming. Coming from the girl.
She can’t be….
But even as he resists accepting the fact, he knows it to be true. The beautiful girl is not an Original. Despite the heat of the evening swamp, a cold sweat breaks out on Ere’s forehead at this realization. He tries to quickly calculate why a Syn would be here, apparently alone, in the middle of the swamp. Unless she wasn’t alone.
“I asked you where you are from,” the Syn girl says, repeats, louder. “Identify yourself and your sector. You are required by law to do so, and you know it.”
“I…” The boy’s voice cracks and goes out on him. He wonders if he should run, or hold his ground and try to mislead her in some way. And then he sees it happen—the moment when his hesitation gives him away, and realization widens the uncanny girl’s perfect eyes.
Chapter 9: Shadower
The incoming message wakes Shadower with a start. It’s encrypted in an entirely new code. But even before it is unlocked and deciphered, it has Shadower’s attention. Whatever the content might be, it was critical because of its sender.
It’s from Karma.
Messages from Karma are rare, and always urgent. Shadower does not know Karma’s identity, just as—Shadower hopes—Karma does not know Shadower’s identity. But each has honed the ability to message the other, sending missives encrypted in such a way that only a handful of people would ever be able to decipher it. Shadower unlocks it in under two seconds:
Traveling to the old world. Must find the warrior.
Will send messages only when safe to do so.
Shadower has been expecting this message for some time, and is relieved and terrified to know that Karma’s journey has begun. Shadower will have to be even more watchful.
Shadower does a quick scan for any flagged communal uploads, and notices a small alert regarding the unauthorized use of a Chariot, taken in the night from Sector 27. Curious, Shadower follows this rabbit down a hole, which proves a shallow one. No one else has yet accessed the dark and distant image from the nighttime security camera. The footage reveals the faraway but distinct profile of a very recognizable Syn, running ashore, taking a Chariot, zooming away.
Ever Hess?
What the hell is that girl doing out there?
Chapter 10: Ever
She says it aloud, curiously—but as a statement, not a question.
“You’re an Original.”
She sees his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows nervously, sees the sweat trickling down his face, can almost smell his fear. She practically starts clapping, she’s so damn excited.
An Original boy. In the flesh. One who looks her age, which should be impossible. The water treatments and population regulations in place should mean that the youngest of the Originals would be forty-ish. This boy is much younger. From his beat-up jeans to his messy light-brown hair, he is trapped somewhere between boyhood and manhood—an intersection that feels at once familiar and foreign to Ever.
Ever has rarely interacted with Originals. A handful live in Central City, primarily working in menial jobs—waste collection, housekeeping, vintage electronics repair. They’re easy to overlook, reporting to the Syns who supervised them but refraining from exchanges with any other Syns. Each year, there were fewer Originals in the Syn cities. When they died, no one replaced them.
No Originals worked for Ever’s family. Even their maid, Angela, was a Syn. An older Syn, synched in her late forties, who enjoyed cooking and cleaning and was utterly boring. But a Syn, nonetheless. They had never employed any Originals in the Hess household. Her father would not hear of it. (“Why hire someone with a terminal disease?” That’s what he called the human condition: a terminal disease.)
Ever