Sam takes a drink from her glass and handles it far more calmly than I did. “Yep,” she breathes, “that’ll work.”

Day 3

There’s no way we can make the rendezvous with Akimi with so many soldiers on the streets, so instead, we drink for the next three hours. Or rather, I drink for the next three hours. I only intended to have one or two, but I must have lost track. Sam stopped after one and moved on to water.

“All right, all right,” Sam says, swirling the water in her glass around as though it were a fine wine. “How many times have you almost died since the end of the world?”

I think about this, laughter escaping my lips as I remember Wren trying to kill me, two trips through the rat tunnel, Smilers attacking me in the village on the outskirts of town, Tyco Roth trying to end my life twice, falling into the ice river, and many, many more. “Honestly,” I tell her, “I’ve lost count.”

We both laugh hysterically at this, and I lean so far to the side that all my whiskey pours from my glass onto the floor. We stop laughing, look at the mess, and then laugh some more.

“Okay, okay,” she gasps, “your turn, what do you want to know?”

I think about it for a while and then an obvious question pops into my head. “How the hell did you survive the end of the world? Ebb users survived because they were on Ebb, prisoners survived because of the Delay, the Alts survived … I don’t know, because they’re Alts. How did you survive?”

“Junk barges,” she replies nonchalantly.

“Junk barges?” I repeat.

“Junk barges.”

“Care to expand?” I say, and this makes her laugh once again.

“I was one of the Junk Children,” Sam says, her eyes moving to the floor as if she’s embarrassed by this fact.

“I heard that you prefer to be called refuse adolescents,” I say, breaking the tension.

Sam snorts water out of her nose. This sets us off again and we’re rolling on the floor laughing. Sam, finally managing to get ahold of herself, hits me in the arm.

“You bastar—” she starts, and then falls silent, grabbing my hand as the sound of soldiers patrolling the streets outside the abandoned pub drifts through from the main room.

We stare at each other as we lie on the floor, fear in our eyes.

A minute later, all is silent once again.

We get to our feet and then take our makeshift seats (me on an old crate, Sam on a small side table).