My eyes drifted from her body to the lapping, almost-still waters behind her. I looked farther, over the reeds and lotus flowers on the far edge, my eyes skimming across the bright green new grass.

Where they crashed against a metal wall.

A hard, cold, relentless metal wall, studded with rivets and stained with grease and age. My eyes burned as I followed a seam in the wall up, up, curving higher up, until it met with the bright solar lamp in the center of the ceiling. Above that, I knew, was the Shipper Level, and above that, the Keeper Level.

And beyond that—beyond tons and tons of impenetrable metal—was a sky I had never seen.

A sky Kayleigh had never seen.

And she couldn’t live without the sky.

22

AMY

ELDER FINISHES HIS STORY AS WE ENTER THE CITY. I WANT TO say something to comfort him, but this memory happened years ago, and there’s nothing to really say, anyway.

I’ve never been this far into the City before. The whole Feeder Level looks different now, in the middle of the day, even though there’s not that much difference in the solar lamp between morning, when I used to run, and day—this false sun doesn’t move across the sky, doesn’t paint the horizon with pink and orange and blue.

The City is bigger than it looks from the other side of the Feeder Level. When I look at the City from the Hospital or the Recorder Hall, it seems like it’s made of Legos. The buildings are brightly colored boxes stacked one on top of the other, and the people are almost too tiny to see.

But here, it’s different. The streets are crowded. Men—and a few women—pull carts, running through the paved streets and pulling their loads behind them as if they were nothing. Produce, meat, boxes, bolts of cloth—all fly from one street to another. It’s louder than I expected. People call to each other across the street, and a couple at the corner are shouting at each other, waving their arms about. I smell smoke, and I’m worried that something bad has happened, but no—it’s wafting from an outdoor grill.

The City itself seems more chaotic too. There are so many people. And for the first time, I really think of them as individuals, each with their own story. I try to imagine their lives. The man behind the window, slamming his cleaver into a rack of ribs. Is he bored or hiding anger behind the brutal attack on the meat? The girl leaning against the building, sweating and fanning herself—what’s made her want to leave the comfort of her home to just stand there? What’s she waiting on?

And what will they all do when they find out the truth? How much of the City will be destroyed when they discover, as they inevitably will, that Godspeed isn’t even moving?

Although I keep my head down, wary of these people who could so quickly turn on me, Elder greets them all with a smile. He seems to know everyone, and they grin back at him.