He ignored her, his focus locked on Aria. “You’re wasting your time going north, Dweller. The Still Blue’s nothing more than a rumor spread by desperate people. Better watch yourself, though. Sable’s a mean bastard. Cunning as a fox. He’s not sharing the Still Blue with anyone, let alone a Mole. He hates Moles.”

Aria stood. “How do you know that—from rumors spread by desperate people?”

Wylan stepped closer. “As a matter of fact, yes. They say it goes back to the Unity. Sable’s ancestors were Chosen. They were called into one of the Pods, but they were double-crossed and left outside.”

In school, Aria had studied the history of the Unity, the period after the massive solar flare that had corroded the earth’s protective magnetosphere, spreading Aether across the globe. The devastation in the first years had been catastrophic. The polarity of the Earth had reversed over and over again. The world was consumed by fires. Floods. Riots. Disease. Governments had rushed to build the Pods as the Aether storms intensified, striking constantly. Other, scientists had called the alien atmosphere when it first appeared, because it defied scientific explanation—an electromagnetic field of unknown chemical composition that behaved and looked like water, and struck with a potency never seen before. The term evolved to Aether, a word borrowed from ancient philosophers who’d spoken of a similar element.

Aria had seen footage of smiling families, walking through Pods just like Reverie, admiring their new homes. She’d seen their ecstatic expressions when they’d first worn Smarteyes and experienced the Realms. But she’d never seen footage of what had happened outside. Until a few a months ago, Aether was something other to her—as foreign as the world beyond the safety of Reverie’s walls.

“You’re saying Sable hates Dwellers because of something that happened three hundred years ago?” she said. “Everyone couldn’t fit in the Pods. The Lottery was the only way they could make it fair.”

Wylan snorted. “It wasn’t fair. People were left to die, Mole. You really believe in fairness when the world is ending?”

Aria hesitated. She’d seen the survival instinct enough times now, and she’d felt it herself. A force that had pushed her to kill—something she’d never thought she’d do. She remembered Hess tossing her out of the Pod to die in order to protect Soren, his son. She could imagine that in the Unity, fairness wouldn’t have counted for much. What had happened wasn’t fair, she realized, but she still believed in it. Believed that fairness was something worth fighting for.

“Did you come here to be a nuisance, Wylan?” Molly asked.

Wylan licked his lips. “I was just trying to warn the Mole—”

“Thanks,” Aria interrupted. “I’ll make sure not to ask Sable about his great-great-great-great-grandparents.”