He snorted. “Come on, Captain. You know that’s not true. Didn’t you spend some time in the dark city? Are you telling me every person wanted to leave?”

He was right. A lot of people had wanted to get out, but a few seemed determined to stay where they were, growing themselves houses, collecting junk, pouring drugs and booze into their bodies, anything to fill the empty spaces inside them that had led them to kill themselves in the first place.

“The human capacity for self-delusion is limitless,” he said, seeing that I wasn’t going to argue. “That’s what she said to me. The Judge. After I tried to sneak into the Blinding City.”

“You tried to sneak in? To a place where people get punished?” I nearly tripped as my shoe snagged on the jutting, cracked sidewalk.

“You don’t understand. One day, it just … appeared. No one around me seemed to see it, but I could. Everywhere I turned, it was there at the horizon. From the outside, it looks like a playground. Anything you want. It was everything I wanted. So when the Guards caught me scaling the wall and took me to the Sanctum, the Judge said I could have it. She assigned me to Guard it.”

“Did you actually like it there?”

“Yes, absolutely.” He chuckled. “And no, not at all. It’s a terrible place.” He ran his hand along a brick wall. “The diamond-encrusted walls will cut you. The luscious food turns to ashes in your mouth. Every alley caters to a different addiction, but it all turns to shit as soon as you touch it. Or snort it. Or inject it. After a moment of pleasure, it does nothing but hurt.” He shuddered. “It’s a gorgeous, perfect kind of torture, and the citizens inflict it on themselves every day. I was no different. I couldn’t stop. I punished myself over and over again.”

“Do you like it better here?”

He looked up at the sky, where wispy clouds obscured the fingernail moon. “Yes, but it’s still torture. There are things I want here, too. Real things. But I can’t have them because of what I am.”

“A Guard.” This I understood. I felt the same way.

Jim pulled up short and poked my arm. “Check it out. Two blocks up.”

An ancient, enormous Cadillac pulled slowly up to the curb where a solitary woman leaned against a darkened storefront. As the car’s window rolled down, she pushed herself away from the wall and walked forward, wearing a lazy smile.

“Probably a prostitute,” I said quietly to Jim, already sniffing the air. “Crap. Do you smell that?”

The woman leaned against the door of the car, and a hand reached out from the open window and stroked her mane of curly blonde hair. Jim and I both broke into a jog at the same time.