Page 54 of Blightfall

“We’d better hurry casually,” Nedd said, “to avoid drawing attention.”

“Right,” I said.

We hadn’t gone far before I realized I had no idea how to hurry casually. I was pretty sure I looked anything but casual, bouncing down the road, trying to take everything in. Nedd was walking with his thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack, which held Squeeze and Twist. I had Nope in my own pack, though I didn’t think we would need a cytonic inhibitor, and even if we did, throwing one up might alert the enemy to our location.

I’d expected the streets to get less crowded as the day went on, but the level of traffic hadn’t changed much with the new shift. We must have arrived in the morning, because the city wasn’t winding down at all. Some of the buildings had lights on inside, and streetlights constantly illuminated the perpetual twilight. Most buildings had large windows set into the same side, facing the sun to catch what light they could.

We found the mill—a large industrial building with a water duct running directly into it, coming from the direction of the water tank atop the city wall. It had a large mural on the side with an image of a ship flying in front of a blue-and-green planet that could have been Earth. The words For One, For All, For Elysium! were emblazoned across the top.

Beyond the mill, the water duct flowed on like an artificial river, lined with rocks and flanked by benches and beds of…Oh stars, that was green grass. I’d heard of grass before, but I’d never seen it. It was oddly spiky, little blades poking out of the ground like so many tiny swords. It couldn’t be as violent as it looked, though, because people were sitting right on top of it, eating and chatting and enjoying the day. Or night. Or whatever hour it was. My radio had a clock that would tell me what time it was back on Detritus, but that wouldn’t help here.

“Do you think anyone would notice if I touched it?” I asked.

“The river?” Nedd asked as we approached the bridge that stretched over the stream.

“No,” I said. “The grass.”

“Oh, that,” Nedd said. “Go for it. I’ll cover you.”

Nedd stood at my side as I stopped by the edge of the grass and pretended to adjust my boot, then reached to the side to touch the green plant.

Stars, it was soft! And fuzzy! I stifled a squeal and hopped up. “You have to try it,” I said.

“I’ll do it on the way back.”

Right. We shouldn’t both be freaks who pet grass. No one else was doing it, so I guessed it wasn’t some kind of custom, though it should be.

We wandered down a street with several restaurants, passing terraces where people gathered around tables, playing games with dice or cards, or sitting and talking over their food.

“So what’s our story?” I asked Nedd.

“Our story?”

“Yeah. Who are we? Why are we here? Where do we live?”

“You’re Sadie and I’m Nedd,” Nedd said. “That seems easiest, right?”

“Right.” I’d already told Liba my real name. It would be easiest to stick to that. We’d used our callsigns over the radio, so Ivy didn’t know our names. “And we’re…friends? Siblings? Total strangers who have never met before?”

“Friends,” Nedd said. “That’s also true.”

Oh nice. Nedd thought of me as a friend! I mean, it would have been ideal if he’d thought of me as more, but thinking of me as more than just a flightmate was amazing—and at least he didn’t want to pretend to be siblings. That would be weird, and I’d probably be bad at it.

“Great. Friends. Who are fans of the Ascension Games. Of which we have seen exactly one match and don’t totally understand the rules.” I scrunched my nose. That didn’t add up. It was a good thing I was talking through this now and not in front of people.

“We’re new fans,” Nedd said. “We work on a rice farm and traveled into the city to see our first match today.”

“And we have all the questions!” I said. “Hey! We’re so good at this!”

Nedd grinned at me, and I almost forgot who I was supposed to be again.

Oh right. Myself. The only lie we’d come up with so far was that we worked on a rice farm.

“Do you know anything about farming rice?” I asked. We’d seen dishes with rice in them outside the coliseum, so we knew they farmed it here.

“Didn’t you grow up in the farming cavern?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But the only rice we grew was made of coagulated algae. I’m pretty sure rice doesn’t naturally grow in a vat.”