“The unrest is getting worse,” Tessa mumbled to herself on the walk over to her apartment.

The group had been walking in silence up to that point, all of them just following Tessa’s lead. Lysander didn’t immediately understand what prompted her sudden comment, but then he followed her gaze to the sheer face of a towering brick building. Graffiti had choked out most of the original rust color of the brick, but someone had covered up the harmless tags of other artists with giant text written in glaring white paint: RISE UP! This message too had been stricken by clumsy black lines and a reply of ‘Dirty Shifted Lovers.’

It wasn’t the first time Lysander had seen the product of the silenced civil war that swept the city, but the reminder still sent pinpricks of chill down his arms.

“The longer Miria Campbell does nothing about her uncle running around murdering dissenters, the worse it’s going to get. People are tired of being afraid,” Lexi replied. They hadn’t stopped at the mural, but the weight of it dogged them regardless.

“That’s not fair. Miria doesn’t even know Anthony is out there doing that,” Lysander added defensively.

Scoffing, Noah said, “If she doesn’t know, then she must be blind.”

Angry now, Lysander turned to the other man, “He’s different with her. She has no reason to suspect him!”

“You mean other than the population shrinking by the day?” Noah bit back. “Nothing is going to change as long as that guy lives.”

Lysander came close to shouting at Noah, wanted badly to rail at him and wonder aloud why he even came with them on this adventure if he didn’t believe any of it would work, but Lysander already knew the answer, could see it in the way that Noah hovered around Lexi. There was no Lexi without Noah, and if Lexi demanded that Noah jump, he would simply ask ‘how high’. So he allowed his frustration to dissipate, feeling the futility of it.

When they arrived at Tessa’s apartment, she slipped inside and reappeared ten minutes later wearing more appropriate clothes for a trek through the countryside.

“So, not to be that guy, but what do we do when you need to sleep?” Ramon asked as they wove through the back streets, the buildings pressing tight against the sidewalk and allowing only two of them to walk side by side comfortably.

“You mean my barrier thing?” Tessa questioned, “No worries! The walk should only take us like a day there and a day back, so I can probably make it without sleep. I’ve gotten pretty good at meditating when I need to rest, though I wouldn’t last much longer than a few days without a proper sleep, so we should probably move with a quickness whenever we can.”

The reply did little to inspire confidence in Lysander, and a quick glance revealed that Ramon almost certainly felt the same. Their lives very literally laid in her hands, and it didn’t sit comfortably in his stomach to have so little agency about it.

“Riiight, well, now that we’re finally moving, I thought we should probably talk about where we’re gonna leave from,” Ramon continued, doing his best to move past Tessa’s flippant answer, “My vote is for Mapleview. I have a guy there that I can bribe to let us through and turn a blind eye to it.”

“I’m inclined to Mapleview too,” Lexi added, “The BP there is a lot thinner than anywhere else on the border because it’s so far from the city. Our usual entrance might be a little too hard for Lysander to manage.”

Learning his hometown had the most lax security did weird things to his insides, but Lysander ignored it in favor of the task at hand. “Well, that makes this easier then. We’ll follow your lead, Ramon.”

They skirted the train station to stay out of view of the cameras, and then broke into three groups to board separately: Lysander and Ramon first, followed by Lexi and Noah, and finally Tessa alone. Once Lysander and Ramon arrived in Mapleview, they stopped briefly at Lysander’s apartment, only to slip out the back and scale the fence with Lexi’s help. Thankfully Lysander was tall enough that he didn’t need to haul himself up too much. His arm muscles were frighteningly tiny, and he doubted strongly that he could even do a whole push-up. The whole process proved graceless, and Lysander fell in a heap on the other side, but he hoped it would help to throw Anthony off his trail at least slightly. Alternately, Ramon climbed the fence with the strength of a professional lifter, making his significant mass look as though it weighed nothing.

The four of them hid in the nearby copse of trees while they waited for Tessa to arrive. Wiping his hands on his pants nervously, Lysander asked, “How long is the walk again?”

“Probably around twelve hours if we go straight there,” Lexi responded, “But, like Tessa said, it’ll end up being about a day’s travel with stops.”

Lysander knew he would be the factor slowing them down. Lexi, Noah, and Tessa all had experience with living a life on the run, and Ramon clearly had the physical fortitude for the journey, but Lysander was soft, both mentally and physically. His hands hardly even had callouses, only a knot on his middle finger from writing.

Before he could spiral any further on that thought, Tessa showed up, grass crunching beneath her brown hiking boots. “Alrighty, let’s move,” she said as she joined them.

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With a tilt of his head, Ramon directed them through the trees, heading south. As Lysander looked around at all of them, he had a sudden vaguely inappropriate thought. “Um, this might not be the most thoughtful question, but what happens to our clothes out there?” The only thing he really understood about the Spread was its callous disregard for anything man made, and clothing certainly fit that criteria. The last thing he needed was to be running around entirely naked in the woods.

At the question, Lexi literally guffawed, an explosion of laughter that startled some birds and squirrels from the branches overhead. “Don’t worry. Your clothes are gonna be fine,” she answered between loud chortles. Her reaction made a blush spread across his cheeks.

Tessa laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s kinda like the pylons. The Spread is more attracted to living things, so your body will protect your clothes from being disintegrated.”

This begged the question of what attracted it to the pylons, but before he could ask, they reached a break in the trees through which he could see the line of the train tracks. On the other side, yet more trees stretched toward the edge of the Barrier, and the pylons rose high above them toward the east and west. They were about halfway between two of them.

“After we cross, we’ll follow a stream to the Barrier. My guy guards that area. When we get close, just let me go up to him alone and work it out, okay? I don’t wanna spook him,” Ramon said lowly. The rest nodded their consent, and after checking for a train, they darted over the tracks. Being so exposed made Lysander’s heart thunder in his throat, and he stumbled over the raised metal. Before he could catch himself, his other foot slid on the loose gravel on the opposite side and he slid down the miniscule slope. Lexi caught his elbow and hauled him up before he could fall completely, and they made it safely into the trees once more.

“Thanks,” he mumbled to her as they tromped through the forest. Because spring had barely begun, the trees had only the barest hints of foliage poking out of their branches–small buds just starting to greet the sun. The ground beneath them had mounds of dead leaves uncovered after a winter full of snow that stuck to the bottoms of their shoes in sticky clumps. It wasn’t long before they met up with a shallow creek, the water moving sluggishly over rocks and stray twigs. Lysander had a sudden flash of being a child and falling into a stream similar to this on a hike in the dead of winter and Joseph carrying him home on his back with his gloves over Lysander’s feet to keep him warm. The memory carved through him with the ferocity of a bullet, but he continued on, focusing on the movement of his legs instead.

Soon after, Ramon halted their progress with a silent hand and motioned for them to stay put. Up ahead, a man stood facing away from them, watching the line of unmoving forest past the Barrier. The only demarcation between safety and the unknown was him. His posture read as relaxed and slightly bored, his shoulders loose and weight largely on his right leg in an improvised lean. Rather than a gun–which Lysander had been expecting him to carry–he held a long wide tube made of some kind of black metal and glass that connected to a box on his hip made of the same material. He wanted to ask Lexi about it, but they were all spread out behind trees, pressed against the bark so as not to be seen before Ramon gave them the okay. He had a decent view of his friend if he kneeled and peaked around his tree, though. Ramon approached more noisily than they had been moving previously, most likely so he didn’t startle the guard. Once Ramon was about 100 feet from him, the man spun around, aiming the tube at Ramon who immediately froze and raised his hands placatingly.

“Jesus, man, I almost blew your head off. I wasn’t expecting you until next week,” he said while lowering the weapon.

“Yeah, sorry for creeping up on ya. I’m actually here for a different reason, though,” Ramon offered, still standing a good distance away from the guard.

This pronouncement caused a furrow to appear between the man’s eyebrows. “A different reason?” he began skeptically, “Look, Skittles, you know I appreciate all your help with my son’s medication, but I really can’t do much more for you without risking my job.”

Sighing, Ramon ran a hand over the top of his head, “I know that, but maybe I can make it worth your while?”

“I don’t need money, if that’s what you mean.”

“Nah, not credits. I’m talking about getting you a better stockpile of inhalers? See, I need to head out of the Barrier for a bit, and I thought maybe you could turn a blind eye if I bring you back a souvenir of sorts.” As little as Lysander understood Ramon’s job, this all seemed fairly straightforward as far as bribery went, but he had no idea where Ramon intended to find such a thing.

“I dunno, Skittles. You’d need me to let you out and back in, and that’s a lot of risk. Even talking to you like this is dangerous, y’know?”

“More dangerous than Rodney’s asthma?” Ramon asked, the question cutting and direct.

Now the guard tensed, anger beginning to creep over his features. “That’s low, man,” he seethed, “Y’know what? Fine. You find me enough inhalers to last the year, and I’ll conveniently forget this exchange ever happened. But if you don’t bring ‘em back with you, then you’re not coming back in, y’hear me?”

Shrugging, Ramon raised his hands again. “Cool, cool, you got it. For such a big haul, I suppose you wouldn’t mind me bringing along a few friends too?” With that, he waved for them to join him.

The group stepped out of hiding and grouped up around Ramon. The guard swept his eyes over the lot of them. “Dude, what is this? Some kind of suicide cult?”

“That’s not important. Do we have a deal, Richie?” Ramon asked.

Tapping the tube of his weapon against his thigh, the guard groaned reluctantly. “Yeah, fine. We have a deal. But I will leave you out there if you don’t bring me my kid’s medicine, Skittles. I like you, but I don’t like you that much.”

“Fair’s fair,” Ramon responded.

Richie stepped aside, waving them on with a hurried gesture. “Well, go on then. Be quick about it.” As he said it, he swept the forest behind them with a quick glance for any eavesdroppers.

Given the go ahead, Tessa ran forward and planted herself between Lysander and Ramon, dragging them both into position close around her. Lexi and Noah merely stepped through the Barrier and continued, trusting them to follow when ready. Before Lysander could even ask how he would know it was okay to go, a shining transparent, vaguely gold bubble appeared around them. He shot Tessa a look and saw her biting her lip in concentration, holding her palms flat and slightly away from her body. Inhaling audibly, she began to walk forward and the two men at her side had no choice but to follow, crowding her to stay in her umbrella of power.

That was how, with zero fanfare and little recognition of the fact, Lysander crossed the Barrier into the outside world for the very first time.