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And then she was awake. Hard.
Her head jerked and she knocked the back of her skull against the concave bricks.
She was confused and stunned. She didn’t remember nodding off, so the jolt awake was a double shock. It took her a moment to figure out where she was and what she was doing there, and another to realize that the world was shaking. A clump of bricks rattled loose and dropped beside her, almost shattering the lantern.
Briar grabbed it and jerked it into her hand before another patch of shaken stone collapsed on it.
Inside the tunnel the echo was deafening, and the sound of crumbling bricks and falling bits of wall sounded like a war being waged inside a jar.
“No, no, no,” she swore and struggled. “Not now. Not now, dear God, not now. ”
Earthquakes were common enough, but bad ones weren’t so frequent; and there, inside that narrow, low space of the old sewage system it was hard to gauge the ferocity of this one.
Briar stumbled out of the tunnel and back into the night, and she was shocked to see how close the tide had crept up to her waiting place. She didn’t have a watch, but she must’ve been asleep for several hours and it must be after midnight.
“Zeke?” she yelled, just in case he was inside and trying to find his way out. “Zeke!” she screamed over the rumbling roar of the shifting sands and the shaking coastline.
Nothing answered but the heavy splashes of shattered waves, jostled out of alignment and dropped onto shore. The tunnel wobbled. Briar wouldn’t have believed that anything so big could wobble as easily and lightly as a child’s toy, but it did, and it crinkled down upon itself—and upon the vintage apparatus that had once held it up and steady.
Together the bulk of it swayed and dropped, folding flat as suddenly as a house of cards.
A plume of dust rose, only to be squashed by the ambient moisture.
Briar stood stunned. Her legs adjusted with the rolling earth and she stayed upright; and she tried to tell herself a thousand and one good things that would keep her from panicking.
She thought, Thank God I’m outside, because she’d been in a bad quake once or twice before and it was far more terrifying when the ceiling threatened to drop, and she whispered frantically, “Zeke wasn’t in there. He didn’t come out yet, or he would’ve seen me. He wasn’t in the tunnel when it fell; he wasn’t in the tunnel when it fell. ”
This meant that he was still inside, somewhere—either dead or safe.
If she didn’t believe he was safe, she would have started crying, and crying wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Zeke was inside the city and now he was stuck there.
Now it was not a matter of waiting.
Now it was a matter of rescue.
And there was no way under anymore, so Briar would have to go over.
The sand was still rumbling, but it was starting to settle, and she didn’t have time to wait for a perfect path. While the rocks clacked faintly together and the low, ugly buildings of the Outskirts rattled in their foundations, she jammed her hat back harder on her head, hoisted her lantern, and began to climb the mudf
lats.
Two ways past the wall, over and under—that’s what Rector had said.
Under wouldn’t work. Over would have to suffice.
Perhaps the wall could be climbed, but it couldn’t be climbed by Briar. Perhaps the wall had a secret ladder or a hidden set of stairs, but if that were the case then Zeke would’ve gone that way instead of ducking underground.
Over could only mean one thing: an airship.
Traders who made their way out to the coast came over the mountains when they could. It was dangerous, yes—the air currents were unpredictable and the altitude made breathing a dreadful chore; but scaling the passes on foot was deadly and time-consuming, and it required wagons or pack animals that must be maintained and protected. Airships were not a perfect solution, but to certain entrepreneurs, they looked much, much better than the alternative. But not at this time of year.
February meant frigid rain on the coast. Over the mountains there would be snow, and storms, and astounding gusts of air that could bat a zeppelin like a kitten with a leaf.
The only airships flying in February were run by smugglers. And as soon as Briar realized this, something else became clear: No legitimate businesspeople would ever bring a valuable airship over the Seattle wall—not so close to the acidic, corrosive Blight that pooled within it.
But now she knew something else about the toxic gas. It was valuable.
Chemists needed the gas to make lemon sap. The gas came from inside the city. Airships went over—or past—the wall on a regular basis, even during the worst parts of the year. And just like that, two obvious thoughts collided in her head, leading to an equally obvious conclusion and, finally, to a logical course of action.
