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“What kind of story?” I reply, determined to keep her from fading into unconsciousness.
“I don’t know.” June tilts her head slightly to face me. After a pause, she says sleepily, “Tell me about your first kiss. How was it?”
Her question confuses me at first—no girl I’ve ever known has liked me talking about other girls in front of her. But then I realize that this is June, and that she might be using jealousy to keep herself from dozing off. I can’t help smiling in the dark. Always so goddy clever, this one. “I was twelve,” I murmur. “The girl was sixteen.”
June’s eyes become more alert. “You must’ve been quite the smooth talker.”
I shrug. “Maybe. I was clumsier back then—almost got myself killed a few times. Anyway, she was working a pier in Lake with her dad, and she caught me trying to smuggle food out of their crates. I talked her out of turning me in, and as part of our deal, she led me off to a back alley near the water.”
June tries to laugh, but it comes out as a coughing fit. “And she kissed you there?”
I grin. “You could say that.”
She manages to raise a curious eyebrow at my short reply, which I take as a good sign. At least she’s awake now. I lean closer to her and put my lips next to her ear. My breath stirs soft wisps of her hair. “The first time I saw you, when you stepped into that Skiz ring against Kaede, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I could’ve watched you forever. The first time I kissed you . . .” That memory overpowers me now, taking me by surprise. I remember every last detail of it, almost enough to push away the lingering images of the Elector pulling June to him. “Well, that might as well have been my first kiss ever.”
Even in the dark, I see hints of a smile creep onto her face. “Yeah. You are a smooth talker.”
I give her a wounded frown. “Sweetheart, would I ever lie to you?”
“Don’t try. I’d see right through it.”
I give her a low laugh. “Fair enough.”
Our words sound light and almost carefree, but we can both feel the strain behind them. The effort of trying to forget, to push down. The consequence of things neither of us can ever take back.
We linger there for a few more minutes. Then I wrap up our belongings, carefully pick her up, and continue down the tunnel. My arms are shaking now, and each breath I take sounds ragged. There are no signs of any shelters ahead. Despite the tunnel’s wetness and the cold, I’m sweating as if it’s the middle of a Los Angeles summer—my breaks become more and more frequent, until I finally stop at another dry stretch of tunnel and collapse against the wall.
“Just taking a quick breather,” I reassure June as I give her some water. “I think we’re almost there.”
Just as she said earlier, she can see right through my lie. “We can’t go any farther,” she says weakly. “Let’s rest. You’ll never last another hour like this.”
I brush off her words. “This tunnel’s got to end somewhere. We must have gone right under the warfront by now, which means we’re already on Colonies land.” I pause—the realization hits me at the same time my words come out, sending a thrill down my spine. Colonies land.
As if on cue, a sound comes from somewhere beyond the tunnel, somewhere far above us. I fall silent. We listen for a while, and soon the sound comes back—a whirring, humming noise muffled through the earth, coming from some massive object.
“Is that an airship out there?” June asks.
The sound fades away, but not before it brings an icy cold breeze into the tunnel. I glance up. I’d been too exhausted to notice earlier, but now I can just make out a tiny, rectangular sliver of light. An exit to the surface. In fact, there are several of them lining the ceiling in sporadic intervals; we’ve probably been passing them for a good while. I force myself back to my feet and reach up to run my finger along the edge of that sliver. Smooth, frozen metal. I give it a tentative push.
It shifts. I push harder on the metal and start sliding it to one side. Even though I can tell that it’s nighttime outside, the light coming into the tunnel is more than we’ve been getting for the past few hours, and I actually find myself squinting. It takes me a second to realize that something cold and light is falling gently onto my face. I swat at it, confused for a second, until I realize that they’re—I think—snowflakes. My heartbeat quickens. When I’ve slid the metal as far as it will go, I shrug off my Republic military jacket. No fun getting shot by soldiers right when we’ve reached the promised land.
When I’ve stripped down to my collar shirt and waistcoat, I jump up and grab the sides of the opening, arms trembling, then pull myself up halfway to see where we are. Some sort of dark corridor. Nobody around. I jump back down and take June’s hands, but she’s starting to fade away into sleep again.
“Stay with me,” I murmur, gathering her in my arms. “See if you can pull yourself up.” June unwinds the blanket. I kneel and help her step up onto my shoulders. She wobbles, breathing heavily, but manages to pull herself to the surface. I follow with her blanket tucked under an arm, then pop up through the ground with one thrust.
We come up into a dark, narrow alley not unlike where we came from, and for a second I wonder if somehow we’ve come all the way back around into the Republic again. Wouldn’t that be something. But after a while, I can tell that this isn’t the Republic at all. The ground is even and nicely paved under a patchy layer of snow, and the wall is completely covered with brightly colored posters of grinning soldiers and smiling children. On the corner of each poster is a symbol that I recognize after a few seconds. A gold, falconlike bird. With a shiver of excitement, I realize how closely it resembles the bird imprinted on my pendant.
