“Two cars?” Riot sounded confused. “Why would we—”
“In case we need to split up. In case things go sideways. In case we need to get someone out fast while the others run interference.” She paused. “Trust me. Two cars.”
Cass turned back to face them. Sage was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read—not the amusement from before, not the impatience. Something closer to recognition. Like she was seeing him for the first time and didn’t like what she saw.
No. That wasn’t right. Like she was seeing him for the first time and was angry about what she saw.
“You good to move?” she asked.
Cass nodded. He didn’t trust his voice, but he could move. He could put one foot in front of the other. That was all he had to do right now—just keep moving.
Riot’s hand found his, fingers intertwining, squeezing once.
“We’ll finish that conversation later,” Riot said quietly. “I promise.”
Cass squeezed back. The words were still there, hovering between them like a precipice they were both standing on but hadn’t quite fallen off.
Later. They’d finish it later.
And somewhere in the wreckage of Cass’s chest, underneath the fear and the shame and the door that wouldn’t stop rattling—
Something that felt like hope flickered to life.
Chapter twenty-eight
The Static Zone
Riot
Theromanceoftheopen road lasted approximately four minutes.
That was how long it took for them to reach the first crater—a hole in the asphalt the size of a swimming pool, its edges softened by two seasons of rain and the tentative optimism of weeds. Riot jerked the wheel left, the car bounced off the road and onto a dirt track that might have been a farm path in anotherlife, and the suspension made a sound like a man receiving very bad news about his retirement fund.
“Hold on,” Riot said, which was unnecessary because Cass was already gripping the door handle with both hands, his bare feet braced against the dashboard.
They should have found him shoes after forgetting his sandals in the Neutral Zone. That was going to be a problem. But Lilac’s emergency wardrobe hadn’t extended to footwear, and Sage hadn’t thought to pack any, and by the time Riot noticed Cass padding barefoot across the gravel toward the car it was three in the morning and they’d been running from a conversation neither of them had finished. Shoes had not been the priority.
The walkie on the center console crackled. “Bridge out at county road twelve.” Sage’s voice was flat and precise, the verbal equivalent of a filed report. “Go south through the soybean field. Rejoin at the grain elevator. Don’t hit the combine.”
“What combine?” Riot asked, but Sage had already clicked off.
They found the combine. It was rusted into the middle of the soybean field like a monument to mechanical determination, its harvesting arm extended in a gesture that looked uncomfortably like it was trying to flag them down. Cass stared at it as they drove past.
“What is that?”
“Farm equipment. For harvesting crops.”
“It’s enormous.” Cass twisted in his seat to watch it recede in the side mirror. “Who left it here?”
“Whoever used to farm this field.”
“Where did they go?”
Riot didn’t answer. He was navigating around a cluster of pre-Adjustment cars that fused together in a tangle of rust and vine near what used to be an intersection. Three sedans and a minivan, their paint long gone, windows dark with grime.One still had a bumper sticker, barely legible: MY KID IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT—
The rest had been eaten by weather.
“There are so many cars everywhere,” Cass said. He’d been staring out the window since they’d left the Collective, watching the landscape with the wide-eyed focus of someone seeing the world for the first time. Which, in a sense, he was. Elysian was a sealed campus. The Neutral Zone was chaotic, but structured, populated, purposeful. The Static Zone was none of those things. “Where were they all going?”
