If Nick didn’t want me to leave the ALC, he shouldn’t have shown me how easy it was to get out without the sniper guard noticing. He had to whistle to get the guard’s attention when we left for Wagner Commons, and only then did they notice, acknowledging us with a wave: Fine, I won’t shoot you since you asked so nicely. All I have to do is wait until dark, then pull up on the gate handle so the hinges don’t squeal when I open it.

I am alone in Acheson.

The city is beautiful if you can ignore that, for months after Judgment Day, it stunk of dead bodies decomposing in beds, hospital gurneys, carpets, and alleyways. They baked in the sweltering sun, splitting down the stomach when they swelled too large with putrefaction gases. If you can ignore that some of the corpses track you with their eyes when you walk past. If you can hide well enough from the death squads.

But there is a beauty to the city. There’s no light pollution anymore, so you can look up at the night sky and see the entire universe twinkling between clouds and skyscrapers. Nature creeps back between cracks in the road and up the sides of buildings. I pull down my mask and breathe in fresh, cool, silent air on a street corner.

I understand how the Angels could radicalize somebody. Eternal life and a sky like this could convince a lot of people to join their cause. But that beauty is always dragged down by the desperate hands of the billions of people who were slaughtered to make it. I keep moving.

If I’m going to face Seraph, if I’m going to coax this virus to life and meet it in the middle, I need a Grace.

I’m not sure where I’m supposed to look. I don’t know this city nearly as well as anyone from the ALC does, so I count turns on my fingers and memorize street signs to make sure I don’t get lost. I open front doors to find bones and don’t stay because the dusty picture frames scare me. I startle stray pets and scavenger animals that wander the streets. No Graces.

My path takes me to a bodega between two crumbling storefronts. The windows are plastered with sun-bleached ads and government-distributed signs about water shortages and electricity limits. Might as well. I pull open the front door and a bell rings, the first sound I’ve heard all night that isn’t my sneakers on the asphalt. It’s immediately followed by the yowl of a cat as an orange blur scatters from the counter, knocking over pens and hissing and spitting the whole way.

I frown. I miss pets. “Sorry, kitty.”

The store was ransacked. The shelves are naked and only the most useless items have been left behind—zip-tied clusters of brooms, sludge that had probably once been fresh fruit, stacks of lottery tickets that are all scratched off for some reason. Considering how close this is to the ALC, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone I know stripped these shelves of everything they had. If Erin, Aisha, Faith, and Nick lived off Doritos and beef jerky for a time.