The glass walls of my hospital room were still darkened, so the bright artificial lighting of the hallway was jarring. I winced, blinking it away, waiting for my vision to realign. When the sand cleared from my eyes, I saw that the room across from mine had three beds inside, each of them filled with people I didn’t recognize—plivoi, obviously, since patroi would warrant their own private rooms. I watched them for a moment, a small pang of sympathy clawing its way inside my chest. Then I shook it off and continued down the corridor.

There were three beds in the next room as well, but two of these were empty. The room had been dimmed inside, and the eerie blue phosphorescence made the lone patient’s skin appear to glow. I took an involuntary step closer, my hand on the glass, peering at the prone figure on the bed.

I should keep moving. There was no reason for this. It was none of my affair. My role in his story was over. The geroi had ordered as much. There was no point in me lingering here, staring.

But I just couldn’t make my eyes move away from him. He was so different, so strange—so impossible.

The boy from outside the city.

Chapter 17

I hovered in the hallway a few moments longer before finally glancing over my shoulder. The corridor was deserted; the medics in the plivoi’s room were preoccupied with their own patients. I was alone.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I had shoved the sliding glass aside and slipped into the boy’s room.

The artificial lighting flickered on as I entered the room, illuminating his strange features. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling slowly. There was a breathing tube over his mouth and nose, like the one they’d fitted me with. His face had been cleansed, and a System scanner fitted over his cranium, monitoring his brain waves. Where the rust-red dirt had obscured his features before, I could now see that his light brown skin was even and smooth. Not blotchy like exposure poisoning. This must be his natural skin tone.

My brows furrowed as I ran a hand across his forehead, brushing soft, dark hair away. I had never seen these traits before. I couldn’t begin to guess as to which city would have selected them. There couldn’t possibly be enough melanin in this tone to protect against ultraviolet photodamage…

His eyelids flickered under my touch, and I jerked my hand back in alarm. Before I could move away, he’d opened his eyes, blinking at me with eyes as dark as his hair.