He didn’t yet know his way around as well as he’d like, but he had one of Mr. Miller’s hand-drawn maps and he’d been up and down the hill enough to know some of the landmarks. He knew where the wall was, anyway—and if you found the wall, you could find your way almost anywhere.

If you had enough filters. If you didn’t die of thirst.

Every trip to the surface was a risk even once you got used to it, like most of Seattle’s residents had. Even if you were ready for anything, and in tip-top physical shape, the rotters could still get you. The gas could still get you.

Rector thought maybe this was the only place in the whole world where you could die just from standing still. But he wasn’t standing still. He was on his way to the old jail.

Dark, cool, and spooky, it was a relic of a place. Rector could feel it: Here was a spot where a story happened … a real story, not something made up and fed to small children so they’d sleep, or be proud, or behave.

Not every place had a story like the jail, or Maynard. Or the sasquatch.

It was brighter inside the jail today.

The sun was up above the Blight, burning clear in a vivid blue sky for the first time all year. If Rector was lucky, it’d be dry and bright for a couple of months—and even warm, for a while. If he was less lucky, better weather would come in fits and starts, without settling in until September, at which point summer would vanish one afternoon as if it’d never been there at all. Since it hadn’t.

But for now, while the brilliant sky worked hard to cook off the ever-present fog, everything was kind of all right.

Dust specks and dirty air polluted what sunlight made it inside the old jail. The bits of abandonment floated smoothly, silently, stirred only by Rector’s presence. His foot kicked against something that clinked.

When he looked down, he saw the jailer’s key ring, cracked and crumbled almost to dust. It’d been discarded by the door and forgotten for almost as long as Rector had been alive, but it was a token. A relic more than an artifact.

He picked it up because it seemed rude to leave it. Maybe he’d give it to Zeke. Maybe he’d put it on a saint’s card.

“He’s gone.”

Rector whirled around. He knew the voice, but it nearly stopped his heart since he’d thought he was alone. “I know the inexplicable’s gone. Me and Zeke took it outside yesterday. What are you doing here, Miss Angeline?”