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FIVE

SOMEONE HAS LAID OUT A FEAST ON a polished black table. The setting is utilitarian. No time wasted on decorations or fancy utensils, but the food is another story. The first course is a salty soup with chunks of white fish and leeks simmered slowly so they melt on my tongue. The soup scorches my throat, and I savor how it floods and stings my mouth, coming to rest hot in my belly. Next a crisp salad smothered in heavy dressing and bits of buttery toast. And then meat. I never knew how much I could miss meat until it sits in front of me. My portion is very small. The large cuts are given to the men, so I cut mine up into tiny bites, watching the red juice seep from my incisions and chewing each bite for minutes.

This is what Dante calls scrounging something up.

There was a time when I would have pushed my plate away, too anxious to eat, but even though I need answers as to what’s happening around me, I’m not passing up a meal after a week with so little food.

“Tell me more about Sunrunning,” I say. “I think I’m interested in joining up.”

“You’re an easy sale,” Dante says.

“The way to my heart is through my stomach,” I admit.

Jost eats slowly beside me, not saying much. He looks even more thoughtful now that our secret is out and Dante knows we’re refugees, but for me, it feels as though a boulder has been lifted from my chest. Dante hasn’t said anything more about the techprint, although I’m sure we’ll get back to it. It’s probably hard to discuss something serious with someone who’s stuffing her face.

“One of the perks of the job is food, obviously. We take a quota of goods from the various hydroponic farms in the area and we trade meat and fish with the hunters. There are a few farms on the outskirts of the Interface, but it’s a rough business keeping livestock there. Meat’s fallen from favor in most of the Icebox since it’s so hard to get. Although there’s still some canned meat about,” he says.

“Lucky for us,” Jost says, but his face is dark.

“It’s a dangerous job. Most of the area outside of the Icebox is uninhabitable.”

“Uninhabitable?” I ask.

“From the mining operations and the bombings during the war.”

Loricel had told me another story about Earth. She had assumed the people left on Earth annihilated one another. It seems they only succeeded in destroying most of the planet.

“I’m talented,” I say, although I’m not actually interested in the occupation. I’m looking for information.

Dante hesitates, running his hand over his short hair. He drops it down and pushes his empty plate away. “You lack certain necessary qualities.”

“How would you know that?” I demand.

“Because you’re a girl.”

“A girl?” I repeat.

Beside me Jost trembles with held-back laughter, and I smack his shoulder.

“You don’t want to underestimate this girl,” he warns Dante.

“I’ve been gathering that much,” Dante says. “It’s more of a policy. Kincaid, my boss, only employs men. Very particular kinds of men.”

It’s implicit in his words that Jost doesn’t qualify, which begs the question of why we are still here. Dante gains nothing from helping us. We have no value in his line of work.

“Kincaid only has interest in women for one reason, and something tells me you, Adelice, might object to the position,” Dante adds. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want to get tangled up in Kincaid’s business. It’s better if you steer clear of him.”

“So you capture sunlight from outside the Interface and sell it as power,” I say, changing the topic before Jost gets upset. If Dante is still talking, I might as well keep him at it.

“We have containment units that turn it into a form of electricity, and then we ration it out to shops and homes.”

Or the highest bidder, I think. “Is that why there is a curfew?”

“Yes,” he says. “We couldn’t supply enough energy to keep the Icebox lit at all times. Here in the Icebox, we’re close enough to the border of the Interface that the city has longer daylight hours. It’s easier for us to replenish the solar panels on the city’s power grid.”

“Is that why you chose this place?” I ask.

“That,” Dante says, “and because Kincaid liked San Simeon. He claims it’s because the mountains near his estate prevent Guild interference.”

“But you don’t think that’s it?” I guess.

“When you see his estate, you’ll understand what I mean.”

“So the people are left in darkness because Kincaid wanted an estate,” I remark.

“They have candles. Many ration their supply for private use after hours, but the streets are dark,” he says. “It’s not possible to set up a community outside the cover of the Interface. There’re too many Guild mining operations. We do the best we can.”

“We’ve heard rumors of predators that roam after hours,” Jost tells him.

“An unfortunate side effect of turning off the lights. It’s why the curfew is necessary.”

“But no one is around to enforce the curfew,” I point out.

“The curfew isn’t enforced so much as understood. If you’re out after hours, the Rems could get you. Most don’t chance it. There’s always a suicidal few though. Rems like the darkness,” Dante says.

“Rems?” Jost asks. We’ve heard the term before but we’re no closer to understanding it now.

“Remnants—nasty lot,” Dante says.

“Why do they take people?”

“Food mostly.”

I’m suddenly glad my own meal is gone and that I haven’t asked for seconds.

“Food?” Jost echoes, not quite following him.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s not a lot to go around. They don’t discriminate when they hunt and the livestock we do keep is heavily guarded. Wild animals don’t make it out of the mining zones. Who knows what the Guild does with them. Anyway, you can cook a human, too,” Dante says with a wicked grin, and the contents of my stomach churn a little.

“So they’re cannibals?” I don’t bother hiding my disgust.

“They don’t have the same moral code we do.” He shrugs. “They don’t have souls.”

“I guess not,” Jost mutters, setting his fork down.

“No, literally, they have no souls,” Dante clarifies. “The Guild sends them here, and they’re different from us. They’re smart, capable. They keep to packs. But they’ve been hollowed out, stripped of what makes you and me human.”

Jost’s face pales, and I know what he’s thinking. Rozenn, his wife, who the Guild ripped from the docks of his hometown—has she met a similar fate? I’ve been haunted by the violent death of my father at the barrel of a Guild gun during our escape attempt, but knowing what would have happened if he’d been caught changes things. Although nothing can erase from my mind the image of blood seeping from a black body bag. My mother could have been turned into a Rem, but she was terminated, according to Cormac. Amie, my sister, was safely rewoven to another family. It eases some of the guilt that’s weighed me down since we got here to know that my family was spared from the worst. But how long will Amie be safe?

“Don’t worry, Rems don’t make it long around here,” Dante tells us, responding to Jost’s expression. “The conditions are too uncontrollable, the food too scarce, and sooner or later, the packs turn on each other.”

I remember the storage units housed at the Coventry. I stumbled onto them while searching for information on Amie. Thin strands in crystal boxes. Personal identifying sequences marked ACTIVE. Something clicks into place, leaving a sickening realization in my mind. When I’d ripped people in Arras, their remains had been sent away, and yet I’d known the first time I saw those strands in the depository that they couldn’t possibly be people’s remains. The strands were what was left of them after the Guild had created these monsters. Their souls.

“Why though?” I ask. “Why would the Guild send them here?”

“How do you wage a war without an army? Do you think Guild officials would willingly volunteer? And they can’t send citizens without revealing that Earth exists,” Dante says in an even tone, but there is a fervor simmering below the surface of his words. “The area under the Interface is totally controlled by Kincaid, but that doesn’t mean the Guild is willing to let it go.”

War. The inhabitants of the Icebox struggle enough day to day, barely surviving in the conditions caused by the Interface blocking the sun. The Remnants can’t merely be to keep them out of the mines, and somehow I know everything is related to the paper we took from Greta’s shop. It all comes back to the looms.

“If Kincaid controls the Icebox—” I begin.

“He controls all the territory under the Interface,” Dante corrects.

“Okay,” I say, “but outside the Interface?”

“That’s Guild territory,” Dante says. “Their mines occupy a large portion of the uncovered area on Earth.”

“But how do you collect the solar energy then?” Jost asks.

“Kincaid doesn’t care much about Guild boundaries, but it makes Sunrunning dangerous. If you get caught, you don’t come back.”

“How do you manage it?” I ask.

Dante leans in and grins. “I don’t get caught.”

Neither side respects the other’s territory. That much is clear. Sunrunners might be dangerous, but they’re also the only people with the courage to stand up to the Guild.

“Why did you run from Arras?” Dante asks us.

“We’ve lost people to the Guild,” Jost answers for us. “We saw through the Guild’s lies, and the truth brought us here.”

Jost is telling the truth without giving anything away.

Dante isn’t appeased by this answer. “Strange things have been happening around here. More Guild presence. A ship was downed from the sky. I can’t help thinking that your typical refugee doesn’t show up with the sign of Kairos printed on her arm.”

This is why he’s interested in us. “My father did it before the Guild killed him,” I admit. “Before I ran.”

“And he never explained to you what it was?” Dante presses.

“There wasn’t time. The Guild was onto us, so I had to go before I could ask. I assumed it was another Lewys family secret.”

“What did you say?” Dante asks.

His face is ashen, and I replay my last words, trying to determine which triggered such an intense reaction. Before I land on an answer, a red light pulses through the room in sync with a shrieking alarm.

“That’s not possible,” Dante says, jumping up and knocking his chair over in the process.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, unease creeping, unwanted, into my chest.

“It’s a perimeter alert. We’ve had a breech in one of the entrances.” He’s already starting down the hall, and we have to race to catch up.

“Remnants?” I ask.

Dante doesn’t respond. He’s busy sliding through screens on a companel. It’s Guild tech, much more advanced than anything we’ve seen on Earth so far.

How flexible are the Sunrunners in their alliances?

He lands on the security stream that shows the point of access. The feed glows green and white, so we can see the movement in the darkness outside. A handful of humans are tearing at Dumpsters in an alley.

“Is that here?” I ask.

“In the back,” Dante murmurs.

Jost thinks to ask a more useful question. “Is this normal?”

“That, maybe,” he says, pointing to the Rems leaping out from the garbage bins, but then he swipes the image to the next feed. “This isn’t.”

The stream shows a crumpled steel door lying on its hinges in the alley. One of the Rems is caught underneath it. It’s a woman from the look of her long hair, but I can’t see her face and she isn’t moving. The feed shifts to show Remnants inside a concrete holding area, much like the sally port we entered through.

“The Guild must have given them some fancy explosives to get through our doors,” Dante says. “They’re not here to blow us up, they’re trying to reap us.”

“Can they get in?”

“Doubtful. The holding areas are triple reinforced—two layers of concrete and steel supports in between. Anything they used to get through that would kill them, and we have our own booby trap that will be triggered if they try to take out the other door.”

The camera feeding us the stream of the holding area circles to the next corner of the room, and I feel my heart thumping hard in my chest. I’ve barely glimpsed the footage before the stream changes again, but the last image is all I can process.

They have Erik.