Mara doesn’t miss a beat as I drag my sorry self into the dining hall. She whistles loudly, drawing the attention of every last trainee and soldier alike as I plop down wordlessly beside Claire.

Mara passes me, grinning, on her way to retrieve a tray and thumps my shoulder so hard I feel like my weight might crack the wood. “Off to a great start,” she says, laughing.

I laugh bitterly and try to ignore the gazes of my peers. A few times I even glare at some of the recruits, and they quickly become engrossed in their meal. Maybe my face is that mortifying, because slowly the chatter picks back up as everyone returns to their meals.

Quinn offers me a piece of fruit on his fork, his face very much like a puppy dog wanting to console his owner. I take the fruit with my fingers, trying to smile.

“Don’t worry about Mara,” Claire tells me. I chew the fruit, trying not to wince as my cheek protests. “We put up with her, but she’s never exactly a bundle of joy.”

“Why hang out with her, then?” I ask. It slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“You take what you can get down here,” Quinn says, his mouth already half full. “If we don’t stay on speaking terms with her, we have to deal with the entire group.” He uses his fork to gesture towards another table where Mara is bent over, cackling. Quinn is big, but Mara’s friends are bigger, and most of them share Mara’s cruel, pointed face. “I spent my first week here being beaten into a pulp by most of them,” he says. He offers me another piece of fruit, which I take mutely. “It’s better for all of us this way.”

“Quinn likes the enemy he knows,” Claire says. Quinn nods, his eyes shooting nervously to Mara’s group. My cheek is throbbing too viciously, and suddenly, with the water roaring all around me, I find myself homesick. Which is ridiculous, really. I never had a home after my parents died. That hole was too deep to fill. But I miss my quiet days with Oliver all the same.

It takes me several seconds to notice Quinn’s eyes lingering on my face. I meet his dark green eyes and smile slightly. It’s hard to look at Quinn and not smile, with his boyish face always hinting at laughter. But he’s not smiling.

“What?” I ask. I reach for a roll and tear it in half, offering him a piece. He shakes his head, which floors me. I haven’t seen Quinn refuse food once since coming here.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, his voice lowered. He leans over the table, throwing nervous glances over his shoulder to where Arlette and Rowan stand conversing. “Day one, and you’re already on Morran’s list. The last trainee on his list got thrown off the balcony,” he hisses.

Claire says nothing, but she watches my face carefully as they wait for a reply. For a second I just stare at him, still holding my roll. Then I shrug. “I don’t have any other choices,” I say.

My new friends seem to know what my other choice would have been. Claire’s eyes find Arlette, towards the back of the room.

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“At least Arlette would’ve made it quick,” she says. “She’s fair for all she’s terrifying.” Her sharp eyes flick back to my bandaged cheek. “Morran, not so much.”

I tear my roll into little bite-sized pieces quietly. The idea of staying here is likely insanity, but I have no other options. Out on the street I’m a sitting duck for the military presence, and I’ll either starve to death or get completely lost before I have any idea of where Oliver might be. At least here my chances of survival are a sliver higher.

I reach for a piece of fruit from the basket in front of us, but Quinn grabs my wrist suddenly, shaking his head.

“You don’t want that one,” he says. My eyes train back on the fruit. It looks exactly like the one he was holding for a brief second before devouring it.

“Why?” I ask. “Is it poison or something?” Quinn laughs at my question, but lets go of my wrist. “Go ahead,” he says. “Try it.” I scowl at the catlike smirk on his face. I hear Claire sigh next to me, and her quiet, “Do you have to always be right?” addressed to Quinn.

I snatch the fruit from the basket and cut into it with my knife. I stuff the fruit inside my bruised cheek, holding Quinn’s smiling gaze while I chew steadily. I wait for a spice, or something sour, but frankly, I can’t taste anything at all.

I finish the unpleasant bite and stare at the fruit in my hand. “Tastes like sawdust,” I tell him. Quinn bursts into an outright cackle as I rinse my mouth out with water.

“That’s non-Errant food for you,” he says.

“Non-Errant food?”

“Were you born under a rock?” I open my mouth to reply, but he shakes his head. “Nevermind. The less I know, the better.” I squint at the fruit, trying to determine what makes it so different from the piece Quinn was holding before.

“You won’t find answers by looking at it,” Claire says. “It’s a genetic thing. The Errant spend extra time growing their food. It gives the flavor more time to soak in.” She wrinkles her nose at the half-eaten piece still occupying my hand. “For the regular people, they grow it as fast as possible and then hoard the supply.”

Quinn snatches the fruit from my hand and tosses it over the dock into the water below. My ears roar as I listen to the splash below. Suddenly I’m no longer hungry.

“Control the food supply, control the people,” he says.

The rest of the meal continues with little of note. Mara rejoins the table and makes bets with Quinn involving people I’ve never heard of before. I watch the interaction between them quietly, but I can’t shake Quinn’s comment about the food supply.

How does the Resistance expect to win any kind of battle if they can’t even feed their people? And that’s another thing— how is the Resistance managing to bring in enough food to run an entire underground operation?

When Quinn and Claire move to put their trays up and take the long winding staircase down to the training hall, I follow them, my legs wobbly from the water rushing around us. I still don’t approve of so much water in one place, and already my mouth is turning dry at the thought of more training near or around it.

Rowan meets my eyes as I set my tray down, a scowl marring his face as his eyes light on my bandage. I scowl back, noting his own injuries. He shakes his head and turns back to Arlette, but not before I see something clenched tightly inside his hand.

He pockets it quickly with another glance at me, but it’s too late. I would know that design anywhere. The dull silver, the intricate lines drawn on the back of it, the size— smaller in his hand than it is in mine— it is the exact same locket that I keep carefully tucked behind my shirt. The same locket that the Errant men and women wore in the streets.

If that locket is deadly to possess, why does Rowan have one?

I’m so lost in my questions that my foot misses a step on the staircase and I go pitching forward into Quinn. I nearly slam my face into the staircase, but he grabs my arm before gravity can further ruin my day.

“Watch it,” he says. I can only nod as he helps me to my feet. I can’t afford to think of the questions the locket poses yet. Not with another session with Morran looming ahead. I steel my focus and follow my friends down the hall.