Stop looking for us. Samuel and I are fine. We moved to the Rim. There will be consequences if you keep looking for us. I can guarantee that.

“Thank God!” I yelled, so loud that even Almyra looked puzzled at my display of happiness, and some passersby gossiped about me. “We can trace the text,” I said. “And go find them in the Rim.”

“Return to Earth, Mr. Cavanaugh. That is still a threat,” Almyra said. She then held my wrist, but not like Ashley used to do. “Normally I would not share your optimism, but it is Mildred’s number, and furthermore, someone in the Towers sent the text,” Almyra said. “Or at least in the city. Look at the sent and received times.”

“The same,” I said. “The difference’s less than an attosecond. Only a smartwatch in the city would be that fast.” After Yellowstone erupted, we lost instant communication from the Pacific to the Atlantic. But sometimes I didn’t know if that was for the worse or for the better.

I raced to the elevators. “Come, Almyra,” I said. “Tim can trace that call. I think deep down he’s part machine.”

But Almyra hauled me back, the strength of Samson, or of Saint Joan of Arch more likely. I almost crashed into the floor. Which would have hurt more psychologically than physically. Or maybe both. Because my raw Eugenex wound hadn’t healed completely. Not even a healer could replace proper treatment. “Let us proceed by jet,” she said. “It shall hasten our trip.”

“Your jet?”

“One of them,” she said, as if she was talking about notebooks. “Follow me.”

We sprinted to a different elevator, biolocked, which Almyra activated with her palm and eye scan. And arrived at the Bernharts’ own personal landing strip. And the second we stepped into her hangar, I felt gravity dissipate, and the gravels disintegrate. Ice blades lacerated my heart at the thought that awe would have engulfed me. That covetousness of her material possessions would have drowned me, or flame blades have seared me.

But it didn’t. They didn’t. I felt nothing. If anything, I felt kind of sad for her. That she knew nothing else. That she thought life could only offer that. Transitory things that merely brought temporary happiness, happiness that turned to despair, and want of more. And more. Until you had everything, and ended up with nothing. So poor, that you only had money.

“Ágend Bernhart,” the pilot said. “I take solace in your life.”

“I am in need of your taking us to the surface.”

“The surface?” the pilot glared at Almyra. “Is this out of your own volition, Ágend Bernhart?” He activated his smartwatch, ready to call the Tower’s security forces.

“I did not let the Lieutenant’s will overrule mine,” Almyra shot, a tad enraged. “I would not let a mere Natural think on my behalf.”

She pounded on that last sentence, as if she actually believed it. I hoped she didn’t. She was my hope for the Achroites.

“Is President Bernhart in accord of this?”

“Yes, he is.”

I could not see hint of lying in Almyra’s face, either because she was a good liar, or because I had missed an expression. And I thought it was the former, because I didn’t tend to miss those. How had she become such a good liar? And more importantly, why?

We got on the jet and it blasted off to my district. Almyra glanced at the window, looked as a tourist, in her own city.

“I think I know the answer to this,” I said. “But have you ever been to the surface?”

“Sort of,” she said. “Once, we took one of our helicopters to land on our yatch on the harbor.”

I suppressed a laugh, because she said it like anyone else would say he had taken a bus to the subway station.

“Well then,” I said. “Get ready to head to the real surface. It’s nothing like you’ve read about in textbooks or seen in the news.” I leaned toward her. “And don’t mind your bodyguards. I’ll protect you, Almyra.”

Zielkkenhom had the capital rebuilt to his liking, even changed its name, after he usurped power. Somewhat. Not even he was that rich. It helped that the black acid rain that followed the nuclear disasters had damaged most of the city’s infrastructure, and that Yellowstone’s ash had shrouded all buildings in soot, in dust everyone wanted to forget, or at least pretend it didn’t exist.

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1920s Art Deco style, screaming Nouveau Riche, posers, wannabes. To remind us all of our wallowing decadence with Hoover as he and his folk reigned in the skies with Victoria. So we would always be smaller, vermin ready for them to quash, or wither away into nothingness. So we would not be human in their eyes. But they were Pharisees. Pristine on the outside, putrid in the inside. And I thought on some level they must have known, but it was never comfortable to think about what you were doing wrong, much less if you didn’t want to change, much less if you thought it was right.

Zielkkenhom considered us stupid, but I always thought that it was to remind us we were his pawns, his distracted pawns who played games in VirtuaNet and shot ourselves with Eugenex, not that his folk didn’t do that as well, though, as he became our supreme leader—because I wasn’t going to use the word I was certain he wanted us to use to talk about him, even if he had never said it—just like those in the 20s danced and got drunk while the economy, the country they cherished imploded right in their songs. And they could do nothing about it. Except sit and wait for demise, until the end justified the means, and the country recovered. Materially.

But I wasn’t going to fall for that. I was going to act, before society imploded again, before it was too late to do anything but sit and wait for demise, until the end justified the means, because I wasn’t going to let that happen again, even if I had to wager my life.

We landed on my bridger district, officially the Autonomous City of the Immaculate Conception, carved right in the middle of the capital, Wessex. Which had not escaped Zielkkenhom’s renovations. Except for my house, the only one in a turlough of small, yet spacious enough buildings for everyone to live in dignity. I fought so I could build it how I wanted. And succeeded. Built it just like the one we had in Wexford. One-story, Palladian-style, thatched roof even. A piece of my old world in my new one. A past sometimes I wanted to forget, but that I would not. Because it grounded my present, and guided my future.

But the second we stepped out of the jet, one of the guards, volunteers really, zeroed in on us. I stepped in front of Almyra. Flame blades would have seared my veins, but I could understand him. Ivore had killed his wife because he couldn’t repay his debt. Ivore, the same Fengel whose corpse I had stepped on in the blast. At least God made justice. “It’s okay,” I said. “Put it down.”

“Tim said it was true,” he said. “But I didn’t want to believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.” He stepped toward me, his gun pressed against my forehead. “And now I have, Cael.”

“I’m not betraying you,” I said. “Remember what Jesus says.”

“What of the Bernhart jets in St. Cruithnechán?” he said. “Is that your doing?”

“To protect the Naturals.” I spotted his eyes as glinting flames. And knew what was coming. I thrust his arm away, and the bullet blasted off into a building. And now flames blades did sear me. “You could have killed someone, a child even, you tuathalach.”

“You already did, idiot,” he said. “I wanted to kill—”

And then someone kneed his lower back and thrust him into the ground. And almost as if he were bridging, he snatched the gun. “Teacher, Miss, I hope I wasn’t too late.”

“Tim,” I said. “You’re like a ninja there, dude.”

He chuckled and we shook hands.

The volunteer spit at my shoes. “Don’t betray us, bridger,” he said, probably thinking that I would. I prayed for him.

“Don’t pay attention to him, Ms. Bernhart,” Tim said. “We’re not all like that.”

“I need your help tracing a text I got, from Mildred,” I said.

We headed to my house. Almyra just gazed at everything, until she spotted a picture of my family. And I thought she would cry, or at least tear up, because she longed for what she had lost, but she didn’t. She just placed it back and kept sauntering. I felt she was inspecting my house or something, but she wasn’t. Though if she were, I would have passed. Her eyes glimmered joy at the simplicity of it all. But I guessed not because it was only one-story high, but because it felt like a home. Except I hadn’t built it with the quintessential fireplace. Chimneys voiced the wails in my mind.

I thought Almyra was done, but then she stepped into my room and held a picture of Ashley and I. And then the tears began, though not many, but two. But her eyes did not falter. Her eyes were not melted icicles, but glistening blazes of justice. I placed my arm around her shoulders and I thought she would thrust me aside, as she usually did, but she didn’t. She needed me. And I needed her.

“Does she guide you?” Almyra whispered, her voice kind of broken, but still stern. A combination I had only heard on her.

And I did not know what to answer. I still thought of her, but she did take Eugenex. I just prayed for an answer and said the best thing I could come up with, “She did, but God is my main guide, so is my family.” Her eyes did not glint anymore. Well, they sort of did, not with the same iridescence as before. “I’m sorry if that wasn’t the answer you hoped for, Almyra.” I leaned closer to her. And she did not pull back.

“Mr. Cavanaugh, I—”

“Thankful I made it on time before you two sinned,” Tim guffawed.

“I would never,” Almyra blurted. “Especially not with a man I have met just a few hours ago.”

“Think higher of me, will you, Tim?” I said.

He laughed. “I traced the text. It came from St. Cruithnechán.”

Almyra’s eyes blazed. First time I’d seen her hopeful since the debacle at the news conference. “Is Mildred alive?”

“It wasn’t necessarily Mildred, Ms. Bernhart,” Tim said. “Could’ve been anyone with her smartwatch. But most likely—”

“Okay, thanks Tim,” I hollered on our way out. We just darted off, took Tim’s tracking device, and sprinted to St. Cruithnechán. Mildred was there, with Samuel. And I would find them. And save the district system before it was too late.

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