of it had been her fault. But then she saw the mechanical monstrosity that Sal rode in on. She saw others with her, these outlaw girls covered in sweat and grit and blood, and Lucy stopped in her tracks.
Sal was riding next to Olivia Rosales.
Though Olivia was plainly the leader, there was something different about Sal now. A hardness, a toughness that hadn’t been there before. Where Sal had once seemed out of place no matter where she was, she seemed at ease, confident… accepted completely. No, valued. She was as much a member of the group she rode with as any of them were.
Sal, the outsider who had nothing. Sal, whom Lucy had pitied and protected, had grown up in the short time she’d been away. Grown into someone who didn’t need protection anymore. Strength shone in the strands of her hair and the freckles of her skin. This new strength looked good on Sal, Lucy realized. Beautiful, in fact.
A fit of coughing seized Lucy, and she doubled over, hacking mud into her stained handkerchief. She gasped for air, pain blooming out through her chest before she could finally breathe again. How different she was now, the opposite of Sal. Before, Lucy had been beautiful, feminine, fashionable, with her underground makeup empire and coordinated outfits. But things were different now. Lucy looked down at her drab clothes, felt her rough kerchief, touched her sunken, Dust Sick, makeupless face. Sick, like Sal’s mother had been before.…
Lucy shook herself mentally.
Sal was looking into the crowd, scanning for familiar faces. Before Lucy could help herself, she ducked behind a nearby house. And troubled by this new, unrecognizable feeling growing in her chest alongside the pain, Lucy glanced one more time over her shoulder at Sal and the girls with her.
She can’t see me like this, she decided finally. She should remember me as I was. Then Lucy stuffed her muddy handkerchief back into her pocket, took a swig of her water ration, and disappeared into the dust and grit of Elysium.
CHAPTER 21
1 WEEK
REMAINS.
The guards came and gathered around us, and after they took our weapons and led us through the streets of Elysium, toward wherever we’d be lodging, the changes that had taken place in my absence became starker, more ominous. This was not the Elysium I remembered.
Entire houses that had once glowed with life were empty, boarded up. Everyone was thinner now, and sadder, their clothes more threadbare, their shoes more worn. Even the church seemed to have grown dingy, black around the edges and between the planks of the siding. Decrees from Mother Morevna hung on houses and on windmills: WE MUST ALL DO WITH LESS SO THAT WE MAY LIVE, they said, or NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR SELFISHNESS, or KEEP CALM. PANIC ONLY KILLS FASTER. And of course, the walls were higher, the worst sign of all.
But it didn’t seem that these signs and precautions had done anything. The panic was there, a tic like a pulse beneath the very earth of Elysium. The sense of doom in the air was so thick it was almost palpable. It hung like fog over the whole city, a silent, mortal panic that seemed to swarm beneath the skin of every man, woman, child, and even animal within the walls. You could feel it in the dripping of water into waiting buckets and dippers, in the hammering of workmen nailing the shutters of the emptied houses closed, in the footsteps of people passing, trying to live out their final days with some modicum of dignity. And as we passed with our mechanical horses, the whisperers fell silent.
I heard a familiar set of footsteps fall in next to mine and Asa’s horse. “It’s good to have you back, kid,” Mr. Jameson said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I was worried about you out there.”
Among all the stares, all the hostility and confusion, Mr. Jameson’s gravelly voice felt like an anchor in an unsteady sea.
“I’m just glad we’re back on the same side again,” I said.
“We are,” he said, giving me that hangdog look. “I promise.”
“Ah, Mr. Jameson,” Olivia said, riding up to him. “Didn’t think you’d see me again, huh?”
He touched the brim of his hat. “It’s good to have you back too, Olivia.”
“Well, we’ll see how the rest of Elysium feels about that,” said Olivia, looking out at the sunken eyes and sunken cheeks of the onlookers. “Now, where is my sister?”