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Walking together became trickier once they were in the woods. While Wells had to slow down to navigate exposed roots and moss-covered rocks, Sasha sped up, springing lightly over the same obstacles. Wells couldn’t take a step without making a noise, but Sasha moved as gracefully and silently as a deer. This was clearly land she had crossed many times. He wondered what it was like to know a section of forest as intimately as you knew another person, lifting your foot over a fallen log as naturally as you might take someone’s hand.
Soon, she was leading Wells down a hill he’d never seen before, where the trees were thinner and the grass grew higher, almost up to their knees. Her long braid had come loose, and her dark hair rippled down her back.
“Do you think they’re worried about you?” he said finally.
At first, he wasn’t sure Sasha had heard him, because she didn’t turn around or break stride. But the chain connecting them trembled slightly. “Worried… and furious,” she said. “We were ordered to stay away from you, but I had to see for myself.” Wells lengthened his step so they were walking side by side for the first time. “I’ve spent my whole life imagining what it was like in space, what you were all like. I didn’t really get to know the people in the first group. I barely got to talk to any of them. So then when you all came down, I wasn’t going to miss my chance.”
Wells laughed, then winced as the chain went taut. Sasha had stopped in her tracks and was glowering at him. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s just crazy to think about you imagining us when I’ve spent my whole life wondering about Earth.”
Sasha gave him a strange look but started walking again. “Really? So what do you want to know?”
Wells barely missed a beat. “How many people survived the Cataclysm? Are there still cities standing? What kinds of animals are there? Have you ever seen the ocean? What happens when…” He trailed off when he saw Sasha grinning at him. “What?”
“Why don’t we do one at time?”
“Okay,” Wells said with a smile. “The first one, then. Who survived? What happened after the bombs fell?”
“We’re not sure,” Sasha admitted. “Our ancestors made it to a self-sustaining bomb shelter deep underground, where the limestone kept them safe from radiation. It was only about fifty years ago that they emerged to the surface again. There’s been no other sign of human life—to the best of our knowledge, we’re the only ones who survived. But who knows? There may be others around the world.”
“And where are we exactly?” Wells asked.
“Really?” She furrowed her brows as though wondering if he were joking. “We’re in North America, in what used to be called Virginia. Did they really not tell you where they were sending you? Why all the secrecy?”
Wells hesitated, unsure how much to reveal about the mission. Admitting that they’d all committed crimes and been sentenced to die on their eighteenth birthdays probably wasn’t the best way to seem trustworthy. “The dropships don’t have the most sophisticated navigation systems. We weren’t entirely sure where we were going to end up.”
Sasha looked skeptical. “Yet you landed within ten miles of the other dropship. You must have been sent to this area for a reason. You were probably meant to find us, right?”
The thought gave Wells chills. No one on the Colony could have known about the existence of Sasha’s people—could they? “If we’re in Virginia, are we near Washington, D.C.?” he asked, eager to change the subject. “Did any of the buildings survive?” His heart sped up as he thought about exploring the remains of the White House, or better yet, a museum. There had been famous ones in Washington, he recalled.
Disappointment swept through him as Sasha shook her head. “No, the city was razed. Just a few buildings are still standing, and only parts of them. Here, watch your head,” she said, ducking under a branch.
She led him over a small stream and then into a grove where the trees grew so close together, the branches almost knit into a roof overhead. Wells suddenly felt foolish, letting her take him in a direction the hundred hadn’t really gone before. What if it was a trap?
Something sticky and soft brushed against the back of his neck, and he let out a shout, swatting at it. Strands of a gossamer-like material broke apart in his fingers. “What is this?” he said, trying to wipe it away.
“Relax.” Sasha laughed, and Wells couldn’t help smiling, realizing how foolish he probably looked. “It’s just a spiderweb. See?”
She pointed, and Wells looked up to see that one of the trees was draped in finely woven, glistening threads that stretched across the branches, creating a sort of net.
Sasha started to tug him forward, but Wells couldn’t pull his eyes away. The web was unexpectedly captivating, its geometric shapes oddly beautiful against the wild tangle of branches and leaves. “I thought spiders were tiny.”
“Sometimes. But the ones that live in the woods are bigger.” She held up her arm. “Their legs can be this long.”
Wells suppressed a shudder and sped up to walk next to Sasha. They were quiet as they continued through the grove, the leaves on the ground absorbing the sound of their footsteps. Something about the silence and shadows made Wells hesitant to disrupt the stillness. It had been the same back on the ship: People lowered their voices whenever they set foot in Eden Hall, a gathering space on Phoenix dominated by what they’d all believed to be the only tree left in the universe, brought onto Phoenix as Earth burned. That is, until Wells set fire to it, seeking arrest in order to be sent to Earth with Clarke.
After another ten minutes, the forest thinned out again, and Sasha led him up a steep slope. When they reached the crest of the hill, she stopped and raised her hand. “Here we go,” she said, pointing to a group of trees up ahead.
At first, Wells didn’t notice anything remarkable about them. But then he squinted and realized that there was something solid hanging from the branches.
Sasha led him toward the closest tree. The boughs were sagging under the weight of dozens of long, green, oblong pods. She rose onto the balls of her feet and stretched her arm above her head, but her fingers only barely grazed the lowest pod.
“Allow me.” Wells extended his own arm and just managed to grab the one she’d been reaching for. He snapped it off the branch and handed it to Sasha, marveling at the bumpy texture.
With expert movements, she began peeling away the outer layer, revealing bright pink seeds. “What is that?” Wells asked.
“You don’t have corn up in space?”
“We grow some vegetables in the solar fields, but nothing like that.” He paused. “Doesn’t corn grow out of the ground?”
Sasha shrugged. “Maybe it used to, but it grows on trees now. Just watch out for the blue ones. They’re really spicy.” She raised her cuffed hand. “If you undo these, we can climb up and pick as much as we can carry.”
Wells paused. He wanted to trust her, and somehow felt he could trust her, but it could also be a monumentally stupid risk.
Finally, he reached into his pocket and removed the key. “Okay. I’ll undo the cuffs, but if you run off, you know we’ll all come after you.”
Sasha was quiet for a moment, then raised her shackled wrist. Wordlessly, Wells inserted the key into the lock and turned it until her cuff sprang open. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, then shook her hand and smiled. “Thanks.”
In a flash, she’d scrambled up the trunk and was pulling herself onto a branch. She made it look easy, but when Wells tried to follow, he found it difficult to get a good hold. The bark was rough, but the moss covering it was slippery, and it took him a few tries before he got enough leverage to get off the ground.
He was out of breath by the time he pulled himself onto the third-lowest branch, where the corn grew the thickest. Sasha had climbed nearly to the end of the branch, straddling it like a bench, and was using both hands to snap off ears of corn and toss them to the ground, which suddenly looked very far away.
Wells took a deep breath and forced himself to look up. The view was breathtaking. Wells had seen innumerable photos of picturesque spots on Earth, but none of them captured the beauty of the orchard before them. The meadow stretched out below, and provided a stunning contrast to the hazy purple outlines of the mountains in the distance. He felt his skin tingle when his eyes settled on their jagged white tops. Snow.
