It was the first sign of life I’d seen since I’d left Lantern-Eyes and Indigo to finish murdering manikins. I stared blankly after the wall where the cockroach had vanished until it clicked in my head: Even cockroaches needed water to survive.

I turned on my heel and set off in the direction the cockroach had gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE:

The Roach

Instead of looking for water, I looked for roaches. When I found one I followed it until it vanished, and slowly I found more and more, tracking them by light and the chitinous sound of their skittering.

At long last I heard it, faint and unearthly in the silence of the Nameless: the dribble and burble of water. I left off following cockroaches and strode straight for that sound, no longer caring if I stumbled across a manikin along the way, and finally, finally, I found it: an old sink with a broken faucet, and water dribbling out of that hole to splatter on the floor and stain the ancient tile and metal with minerals. I knelt beneath that faucet, dropping the flashlight at my side, and cupped my hands beneath the water to drink until I was breathless. Then I sat back on my heels and looked at where I had ended up.

It was a lab, or a kitchen. I could tell by the broken mounds of tiled islands, an oven hood still clinging to the wall by its nails. Judging from what else I’d seen in this part of the Nameless, I was willing to bet lab over kitchen. I drank deeply again, then patted myself down for something to carry water in. The contents of my pockets hadn’t changed since last I checked. All I had was this flashlight and the lieutenant’s tablet. Oh, and a very small notebook and pen that were zipped up in an inner pocket of my jacket where I’d forgotten they existed for who knew how long. The notebook had a stiff plastic cover and was full of scribbled notes even I couldn’t interpret. I could fold a little origami cup out of the paper, but it wouldn’t exactly work as intended.

I started rummaging through the debris of old counters and old cabinets. There were some clouded old shards of glass that might have once been cups or containers but did me no good now. Every time I disturbed a dark corner of the room, roaches ran out of it with frantic abandon. Eventually I turned up a battered old tin. I didn’t know what it had been used to hold once, but although the metal was soft and discolored, it hadn’t corroded through. I tested the strength and found I could bend it but not poke my finger through. I washed the tin out carefully in the flowing water and, when it was as clean as I could get it, filled it up halfway. Then I carefully bent the top edges of the tin closed, forming an imperfect seal. It would probably leak, but that was the best I was going to do.