Sweet. Hot. Unmistakable. The sharp spike of slick production cutting through the baseline caramel like a blade through silk.
Fuck.
Cass recovered in about two seconds, which was genuinely impressive. He smoothed his expression into something approximating normal, unclenched his hand from the seat, and shifted his weight with studied casualness.
“I think my butt fell asleep,” he said. “From sitting. I should probably move around at some point.”
Riot, whose mouth had flooded with saliva so fast he had to swallow twice before he could speak: “Sure. We can stop and stretch whenever you want.”
“I’m fine, though. It’s just the sitting.”
“Of course.”
More silence. The car bounced over potholes. The pirate station had faded to static miles ago.
Cass was gripping his own thighs under the jacket, fingers pressing into muscle. Riot could see the tension in his forearms. Could smell the heat building under his skin—not the full roar of before, not the crisis that had driven them both to floors andstairwells and Lilac’s destroyed living room. But the beginning of it. The ember before the fire.
The heat didn’t break.It napped. Like Cass. And now it’s waking up, and we’re in the middle of the Static Zone with one Null scout and a car that leaks in creek crossings and I have absolutely no plan for this.
Something is wrong with us, Riot thought, for what felt like the hundredth time.Something started that night in the alley and we don’t know what it is and the only people who seemed to understand were back at the Collective doing their best impression of a Greek chorus—ominous, unhelpful, and deeply committed to dramatic timing.
The walkie crackled. “Found a campsite. Abandoned farmstead, two miles ahead. Defensible. Water source nearby. We should stop for the night.”
“Copy,” Riot said. “Two miles.”
He looked at Cass. Cass was staring straight ahead, arms wrapped around his middle, jaw set. The sweat was visible now—a line of it tracing down his temple, his breathing shallow and careful, each inhale measured, like he was trying to take up as little space as possible.
“You don’t have to hide from me,” Riot said quietly.
Cass’s composure cracked, just a fraction, with a tightening around his eyes, a hitch in the careful breathing. “I’m fine.”
“I know you are.”
“I just need to move around. It’s the sitting—”
“Cass.”
Cass closed his eyes. His throat moved as he swallowed. When he opened them again, they were bright with frustration or shame or both.
“It’s not fair,” he said. His voice was small. “I wanted today. I wanted to just be a person in a car. I wanted to ask you questions and listen to music and learn about water towers and benormal.I wanted one day where my body wasn’t this. I just wanted one day.”
“You had it,” Riot said. “You had a whole day. The music and the questions and the mud on your feet and all of it. That happened. That was real.” He nodded at Cass’s clenched hands, his careful breathing, his body fighting its own biology. “This doesn’t cancel that out.”
Cass looked at him with those devastating wide eyes. “You promise?”
“Promise.”
Cass’s hand crept across the center console and found his. Then he started humming a song from the pirate station, off-key, barely audible, and he seemed to hold onto the melody like a lifeline while his body burned and the road stretched out ahead of them, dark and broken and full of things that used to be.
Chapter thirty
Environmental Safety Risks
Riot
Thefarmsteadhadbeendead for at least fifty years, but it was the kind of dead that still had good bones.
The house was gone, collapsed in on itself like something had sucked out its spine, but the stone root cellar underneath had survived. Fieldstone walls three feet thick, a ceiling of oak beams darkened with age, a floor of packed earth that was dry despite the spring rain. Someone had used it since the Adjustment, evidenced by scorch marks from old fires, scratched tallies onthe wall, a faded sleeping bag in the corner that Sage nudged with her boot and deemed acceptable.
