“You’ll see,” Riley said, steering me away from the main entrance. Most of the museum was below sea level, but visitors entered through a shallow glass dome surrounded by seven glowing crystalline spires. One spire for every ten thousand deaths. A wide plaza stretched around the perimeter, dotted with memorial statues and plaques, wilted flowers and soggy notes cluttering their feet.
The plaza was on a hill overlooking the sea, and a tall barbed-wire fence discouraged anyone who might have ideas about testing the water. We walked along the fence until the museum shrank to doll size and the laughter of the tourists faded into the tide. After nearly a mile, the fence turned at an abrupt right angle. But instead of following it around, Riley took a flying leap and landed midway up the fence, dangling by his hands. His feet scrabbled for purchase, and a moment later, he found toeholds in the chain link. He grinned down at me. “Coming?”
I looked up dubiously at the coils of jagged wire running along the top, wondering if it was electrified.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“You’re joking, right?” I said, then began to climb. I scrambled to the top in seconds—and not that we were racing, but I made it there first. I closed my hand over the tangle of wire lining the edge, letting the barbs dig into my palm. “No pain, no gain,” I said, grinning, and vaulted over the top, letting myself drop the fifteen feet to the ground. My feet slammed into the grass. I let momentum carry me forward into an awkward somersault, feet over head and back to feet again, then stumbled forward and did a full face-plant, arms splayed, mouth in the dirt.
“Graceful,” Riley said, climbing safely down the other side and offering me a hand.
I spat out a mouthful of grass and climbed to my feet.
“You’ve got a little…” Riley gestured at my pants, the front of which were covered in a thick layer of reddish brown dirt.
“So?”
Riley raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t think you were the type, Lia Kahn.”
“What type?”
He shook his head. “Just come on.”
We skidded down the shallow grassy hill and found ourselves at the edge of the ocean. It was strange—in all the times I’d been to the Windows of Memory, I’d never actually been anywhere near the water. It had always looked pretty from atop the hill, the floating scum shimmering in the sunlight. But up close, it just looked like sludge.
Still, there was something about this place. The sky seemed bigger here—staring out at the horizon, it was easy to picture a time before the world was round, when the glassy sea stretched infinitely far and flat. The shore curved around, forming a narrow bay, and soon we were standing almost directly across from the Windows, too far to see anything but the glow of the crystal spires.
“Weird to think there’s a whole city under there,” I said, nodding at the water.
“Yeah.”
“Especially since it feels like—I don’t know. Like we’re at the edge of the world. Like there’s nothing left but us. You know?”
There was a long pause, and I suddenly felt like an idiot for saying anything at all. But then: “Yeah.”
It was something.
We fell into step together, our arms swinging in sync, our faces turned to the ocean, eyes slitted against the wind. It was peaceful, and not the kind of empty quiet that forced unwanted thoughts into my head. This quiet was full—of rustling grass, of wildflowers, their bright blues and purples suggesting fragrant perfumes I could no longer smell. Full of Riley, forging the way, his head bent, his gait rangy and loose, his facial muscles losing a little of their tightness with every step, something relaxed and almost happy creeping across his face.
But then he stopped. “Here’s good.”
“Good for what?”
“I borrowed a bathing suit from one of the other girls,” Riley said. “I hope that’s not weird—I didn’t want to ruin the surprise by—”
“The surprise is we’re swimming?” I asked.
He hesitated, noticing the anger in my voice.
“I don’t swim,” I said.
Everybody knew that.
“But you can,” Riley said.
“Yes.”
“So what’s the problem?” He tossed me a ball of material, a garish red suit that looked like something my grandmother would have worn back before they fixed the ozone. Rolled up in it was a small, slim lightstrip with a square of adhesive on the back. “Stick it on your forehead,” he advised. “It’s good for about an hour of light. We won’t be down longer than that.”
I hadn’t been in the water since that day Auden and I had raced back and forth in the frigid stream, shouting over the thunder of the waterfall. The day I’d been so oblivious that I hadn’t noticed how cold it was, how cold he was, hadn’t noticed anything until he’d drifted away from me… over the edge.
“I don’t swim,” I said again.
“This isn’t the same,” Riley said.
“Same as what?”
“Same as the waterfall.”
“I can see that,” I snapped. “This is sludge.” The waterfall, and the river feeding into it, were man-made, one of the nature preserves erected a couple decades ago to restore and replace the natural habitats killed off by water shortages, temperature change, and smoggy sky as viscous as soup. But there was nothing to be done about the oceans, especially the coastal regions clogged with remnants of drowned cities. The acidic water had killed off most of the fish, leaving behind only roving schools of jellyfish and a thick layer of blue and red algae, stretching toward the horizon. They called it the rise of the slime.
“This isn’t about the water,” Riley said. “It’s about what happened. Isn’t it.”
So that was the game. Find my weakness and bear down, watch how long it would take until I broke. No wonder he and Jude got along so well.
“It doesn’t matter what it’s about,” I said. “I’m not going in.”
“Scared?”
“You think you can trick me?” I had a weird, childish urge to shove him in the water and run away. “What, I’m going to say, ‘Who, me? I’m not scared. I’ll prove it to you!’ Like I’m some idiot ten-year-old?”
Jude would have struck back. Riley looked like I’d punched him. He sat down with his back to me, cross-legged in front of the still, dark water, playing his palms across the surface of the slime. It shimmered in the light, iridescent like the Brotherhood robes, colors shifting in the dim sun. “That’s not what I meant,” he said quietly. “I asked because I wanted to know.”
“Oh.”
I sat down next to him, not mad anymore. Still confused. “That’s none of your business.” But I didn’t say it meanly.
“I know.”
I cupped my hand and plunged it through the layer of algae, into the water. It was the same temperature as my body—or close enough that I couldn’t tell the difference. “I used to love to swim,” I admitted.
“It was an accident, you know,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You only know the story he tells on the vids—”
“Jude told me what happened,” Riley said. I swore under my breath. So much for keeping my secrets. “And he told me it wasn’t your fault.”
“That’s not what he told me.”
Riley pounded a fist softly against the water. “That’s just Jude.”
Whatever that meant. “Why’d you bring me here?”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“But so what?” I asked. “Why try to cheer me up or whatever this is?”