Page 187 of Everdoll

“Are the comms out?” I asked.

“Orders from the white soldiers. They shut down everything emitting radiation.”

My brows knitted together again. Quick to react, I pulled on one of my practiced masks and forced a faint smile. “I see. Take care of yourself, sir.”

I turned to move on, but the officer lingered behind me.

“Um, I can find my own way…”

“Oh, sorry. I just wanted to warn you about the cemetery. You’ll need to cross it without inhaling the air. It’d be much safer if you cut around it entirely.” He gestured into the fog, though I couldn’t see a thing. “That’s what we’re doing. If you’d like to join us—”

“Thank you,” I cut in immediately.

I picked up my pace, finally leaving him behind, but the unease in me refused to loosen. Without dropping my guard, I cast a glance over my shoulder; no one was tailing me. Even so, I couldn’t shake the eerie sensation of being trapped inside a reverie. The entire planet felt like my personal cage, and there I was, flying blind, beating my wings against the bars.

I won’t fall.

When I reached the gates of the cemetery he’d mentioned, I veered right, following the perimeter wall. The orange mist choking the streets gave way to the sharpest, most venomous shade of blue. The biting cold shifted to a strange, suffocating heat, as if I’d stepped straight into a furnace.

With it radiating from every direction, I held my breath just as the officer had advised. It had been an easy trick in the freezing air, but now the heat seemed to scorch my skin, and holding my breath only left my throat drier.

“Miss! Don’t go near the cemetery!”

A woman materialized out of the fog, threw the words at me, and kept walking without breaking stride. She didn’t leave me a second to thank her. I looked back at her fading shadow.

When I faced forward again, another figure emerged from the mist. Shorter, a child.

“Miss! Be careful! Don’t get close to the cemetery!”

I stared after him in bewilderment. Right where he had vanished, another youth, roughly my age, burst into view, breathless.

“Stay away from the cemetery!” he gasped out, echoing the same eerie mantra before running off.

Alright. This was getting funny.

I set my jaw and walked forward with firmer steps. Well, I suppose I had to enter that cemetery now.

Just as I turned back toward the main gate, a small, golden glimmer drifted through the air. My eyes widened at the sight of the metallic butterfly. Again? In the cemetery?

My eyes followed its path, leading me straight to the face of the person who had watched me fall into the abyss.

“Eleanor!”

The woman flinched visibly at my yell. She wasn’t wearing a mask this time, and the face I remembered from the recording stood before me now, lined with a few extra wrinkles.

I strode toward the double-barred iron fence surrounding the cemetery, pressed my hands against the cold metal, and raised my voice.

“Eleanor! What on earth are you doing here? Where is your mask?”

I spoke casually, as if she were an old high school acquaintance. As if this woman—my ex-lover’s mother, whom I had presumed dead—hadn’t just shoved me down a damn manhole. As if, ten minutes after falling, I hadn’t tumbled into the middle of a brawl and crossed paths with Raymond all over again…

The damned woman calculated every breath, every move, and I was done asking questions. If I was going to dismantle her, I needed to be just as calculated, and just as unbothered.

She looked genuinely astonished to see me, taking a few seconds to shake off her disbelief. “Mina. Why are you here?”

“So you know I shouldn’t be here, then.”

“Raymond wouldn’t have left you behind.”