“I’m not,” Annika says. “Not after I learned what this place was. It gives me comfort, to think my little girl is somewhere Queen Ophelia can’t touch her.”

I wish I could have the same comfort when it came to Mei, but Mei isn’t a baby. And maybe the world would still call her a child, but something tells me Infinity doesn’t follow the same age restrictions.

Shura died before she was even old enough to drive a car, and she’s here with the rest of us.

One day Mei will be here too.

I distract myself with more tea.

“We’ll stop her,” Annika says seriously.

I look up and find that her eyes have hardened into a deep bronze. The eyes of a fighter.

I hope she’s right. The last thing I want is for anyone in the Colony to get hurt. If it weren’t for them, I probably would’ve been carted off to War.

They saved me; I owe them more than gratitude. I just wish there were a way to give them what they want without betraying my own heart.

“Can I ask how you died?” I set the mug back in my lap. “Shura said she met you in Famine.”

Annika nods, shifting her braids in front of her shoulder. “It was cancer that got me, but if I’m being honest, I died long before that. Everything changed when my baby passed. It was like—it was like someone sucked all the air out of the room and never put it back. And I think for a long time I was going through the motions of someone living, but in my heart? I’d checked out.”

“That must’ve been hard.”

“We all have our struggles,” she says. “And Famine… Famine was a different kind of hopeless. Every horrible thing I’d ever thought about myself—blamed myself for, even when it wasn’t my fault—consumed me. If War is meant to break you physically, Famine is meant to break you mentally.

“But then I found Shura. And I know we’re supposed to live for ourselves, but being a mother again… It gave me a purpose I hadn’t felt in a long time. It gave me something to fight for. So now I fight for the babies who deserve better. I fight for the afterlife they were promised. I fight for their peace.”

She speaks with a voice that could cause earthquakes if she wanted it to. Annika was born to be a leader.

I have no idea what I was born for, but I don’t think it’s to lead an army. I don’t even know if I’m meant to be in an army.

“How’s your training with Gil going?” she asks, breaking my thoughts.

I can’t hide the bitterness that takes over my face. “Fine.”

She laughs. “Gil is an acquired taste.”