“You really don’t have to tell me that.” Sorrel took two deep swallows.

The musty darkness of the tree root cavern settled around them. Finally, they heard the retreating footsteps of the feral. “Let’s push some of the loose dirt out,” Bibi said.

When they had finished, Sorrel’s limbs felt heavy and she could barely keep her eyes open. Despite the danger they were in, she was suddenly sure she could sleep, even though the sun was beginning its climb into the sky. She settled her shaven head against the earth and found herself thinking about earthworms. They had all died in the Convergence, along with the reptiles. Bajacu had no lizards anymore. Ants had survived, though, and it was said there were bees in the mountains. Still, she expected to feel the squirm of some kind of life, but the soil gave up nothing. She looked up at the tree roots above her and thought they were like fingers. Her mother made a little snore and Sorrel closed her eyes.

CHAPTER 7 – BIBI

I met Drew after my father died outside the dawn bunker. My mother came to me and said we were almost out of money and the Domins were going to get rid of the old currency. She had an old friend at the tech centre and she convinced him to give me a job rebuilding obsolete electronic devices. Drew sat across from me and showed me how to build functional PlAKs out of almost nothing. I used to watch his long, nimble fingers and the spray of hair across the back of his hand as he soldered. I began to imagine those hands touching me.

We were there at night, of course, and spotlights from the roof lit our work area, leaving our faces and bodies in shadow. We were not supposed to talk, but we techs had developed a rudimentary sign language that the supervisors never noticed. I was more familiar with Drew’s hands than his voice. One day he offered to walk me home at the end of our shift.

By then my mother and I lived in a small ground floor apartment in an old part of Bana. Six nights a week, Drew walked me home and we parted at the front door. He lived with an older brother; his mother had died giving birth to him during hurricane Chi 18 and his father had died of one of the new viruses two years before we met. He asked me what my dreams were and listened to my answers. I loved him for that.

We had found a bench under a tree on a patch of open land and would sit there in the dark, sometimes for as long as three hours. He kissed me and I opened my mouth to him, and I felt the world step back. He stroked my face with the hands I had begun to dream about. He smelled slightly of metal.