Chapter XXX

Elias and my sister don’t want me leaving the flat. I understand their fear—it’s not like the Recruiters don’t have enough reasons to cause me trouble. Under normal circumstances I might have listened but I’m not willing to sit around and hope that someone else finds a way off the island.

There has to be another place we can go because I don’t see the point of staying in the Sanctuary if it’s not ultimately going to keep us safe. And I certainly don’t feel safe here anymore.

For the day my sister and I do as Elias asks and stay in bed. My muscles still spasm from the memory of being frozen the night before and my hands and feet are painfully swollen. My head pounds and I have a hard time keeping food down, but Elias is persistent: he will make my sister and me healthy again.

Long after dark, when the flat is silent and I’m sure they’re asleep, I pull on clothes dried stiff by the woodstove and find Elias’s machete by the door. I slip it into my belt and sneak down the stairs, wincing until my body gets used to moving again and the ache in my joints subsides.

Outside the night sky’s clear and sharp, a million tiny lights exploding overhead—more stars than there ever could have been people in this world.

I think about how fascinated with space Elias always was growing up. How one year I saved every credit I had and traded them all over the months so that on the winter solstice I could present him with an old book mapping the stars. It was the longest night of the year and he spent the entire time on the roof, staring up at the sky and comparing what he saw to the little book in his lap.

It was freezing outside and I’d hauled every blanket we owned up to the roof. While I drifted in and out of dreams, he read to me stories of the stars, origins of their constellations. Over the years I’ve forgotten most of it, but there’s one detail I’ve always remembered: he told me how long it takes the light from stars to reach through space to us.

How most of the points of light we see actually no longer exist. We’re just seeing the remnants of what was—ghosts of what used to be.

I glance at the Dark City across the river, a few buildings still flickering with light as the handful of survivors huddle behind thin curtains slung across broken windows. All of them tiny little stars in their own constellations waiting to fall to infection and become ghosts of what they used to be.