one I’d never had before. And after being alone for as long as I had, it felt like being warmed by a hot bath, cleaned, made new. I kept waiting for them to turn on me, to find out something terrible about me that I didn’t know myself and throw me back out into the desert. But as the weeks went by it became obvious that it wasn’t going to happen. They liked me. And, I discovered, I liked them too.
And I wasn’t the only one feeling fortunate. Asa was getting on particularly well in the group, despite being male and, well, a daemon. He worked on the horses with Susanah and Mowse, did heavy lifting with Judith, and did elaborate circus-style performances with Cassandra as though he was an old pro (“Pick a card, any card! Oop, not that one! That’s… an entire sewing machine and six cups of coffee! And now it’s going to… disappear!”). He halfheartedly kept his distance from Olivia when he could, but more than often, he couldn’t. Especially since she seemed to want to be near him whenever possible. They sat together in the evenings, talking about this or that, her laughing at his stupid puns, him looking at her as though she were the only girl in the world. Her dark, wry sense of humor seemed to balance perfectly with his earnest gullibility, and they just didn’t seem to grow tired of each other. I never thought I’d say it, but as strange as they were individually, they were… cute together, if they’d ever actually get together.
Yes, Asa and I were doing well. But when we looked at each other and remembered our mission, all our comfort turned sour in our bellies. We had been led to this group, I knew that. Something about them had the potential to fix things. But try as we might, we couldn’t. The time was almost over. In only a little over a week, the Dust Soldiers would return to Elysium and find the mess that Asa and I had left. I tried my best to distract myself, to think of what Olivia had said, that Elysium could deal with its own problems. But the very air seemed to be thinning, and sometimes panic set my heart pounding even when I was sitting still.
And there were other, stranger indicators of the Game drawing to a close. Earthquakes had begun, subtle ones that rumbled underfoot. Rock formations began changing positions. Fire coyotes swarmed at night, howling and burning along the horizon. The sunsets began to grow more red than orange, as though preparing for the bloodbath to come. Asa, too, was having problems. He was beginning to have trouble holding himself together. More and more frequently, parts of him would go daemon and he’d have to slap himself back in place. The time was weighing on him, and though he never mentioned the golden cricket, he wore its loss like an albatross around his neck, dragging him down when he was caught unawares.
Asa and I didn’t talk about the Game. Maybe because we knew that we had failed, hadn’t found the thing that could save Elysium. Maybe because we were afraid of what the others would think of us. Maybe because we were ashamed. There was one exception, an anxious conversation that left me feeling unsteady.
“I don’t have long,” Asa said once when we were alone in the machine room, unable to sleep. “I can feel it growing on me every day. Like… like moss or something.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, I, personally, am living on borrowed time in this body. There’s no way the Goddesses have forgotten about me. It doesn’t make sense. So what lies in store for me? I’ll tell you. Either I’ll fall apart completely or die like a human or…” He shuddered.
“Or what?”
“Nothing,” he sighed heavily. “Forget I said anything.”
We never spoke of that conversation again, but after that, it seemed that his eyes were always flickering to the horizon as though he were waiting for something to happen. And whenever I asked my penny what to do, what could be done, it refused to give an answer of any kind other than “Wait.”
But, like Asa, I too felt time creeping ever onward toward the end. Toward Elysium’s judgment. And if I sat still, I could feel the panic eating at me like ants just beneath my skin.
“You still having that dream?” Olivia asked as we drank from our canteens on