Neither Zeke nor Rector brought this up, even when they hiked through the fog-shrouded streets and sometimes kicked a gun, or noticed a nearly new gas mask lying beside a body.

Not all of the bodies became rotters. Most of them, yes. But nothing on earth is any use without its head. Few things are any use when they’re cut or blown or chewed in half. Whatever the cause, no rotters reached out with rickety, grasping fingers as they slogged up the hills and between the narrow blocks of the time-blasted city. So instead of talking about it, the two boys only considered it as they walked side by side. They were careful to stick to the walls for shelter and cover, and they guided each other away from any debris that made them wonder, even in the slightest.

The prison itself was as they’d left it, quiet and squat. Missing its front door and still as clogged with Blight as ever, it was the very picture of someplace unloved and unused, and almost certainly forgotten.

Inside, Seattle’s second city jail felt like the tomb it’d almost become seventeen years ago and change. Not a sound. Not a motion. Not a breath to stir the dusty beams of light that cut inside halfheartedly and none too efficiently. Not until Rector and Zeke came inside. Their filters gusted as they exhaled, and sparkling motes of yellow-brown dust eddied in the puddles of ill-formed illumination.

But then, listening and walking with exaggerated care, they heard the faint, rhythmic sounds of something large drawing steady breaths and pushing them out again. The barest hint of a filter’s hiss underscored the sound, and then the slow, sad scrape of some fur-covered body part sliding along the floor.

Past the empty cells, with their leaning doors and rusting bars, they walked. Down the corridor of legend, where Maynard Wilkes had set the prisoners free and then raced to outrun the Blight.

It felt far away, same as the night before, and same as the silence after the fire.

And here was the great peacekeeper’s descendant—a spindly thing, smallish and slender. A kind boy, if not the imposing man his grandfather was alleged to be. But his mother was a little woman, and come to think of it, Rector didn’t know anything about Leviticus Blue. So this was what you got when you stirred up people and made families. Unexpected combinations. Unlikely weaknesses. Uncommon strengths.

Ezekiel Wilkes was not a bad sort. He’d worked so hard to save that fox, and he’d held his own on the top of the governor’s mansion with the mirrors and lights. Perhaps Rector needed to rethink the things he thought.