am sure he is counting down the minutes until he locks us all in. I peer through the fence at the citizens, awaiting the right group for my purposes. A shiver passes through me as the guard checks his pocket watch once more. But then I see my opportunity—a group of girls about my age, all wearing overcoats with hoods and giggling as they head toward the Hill, where the middle-class families live. They look finer than I do. The hems of their dresses aren’t frayed, and their coats are not threadbare like mine. I edge toward the gateway, feverishly hoping the guard won’t notice such details.
Right as the girls pass, I take a sudden side step and tuck myself in behind them. The guard senses movement and turns to look, but I am wearing my hood and am indistinguishable from the others as we pass him. Nearly faint with relief, I break free of Gochan Two. I am on my way.
No one pays me any mind as I walk past the quiet hulk of Gochan Three, the textile mill and clothing factory. I turn right when I reach the corner, leaving the Ring behind and heading for the train station. I am not the only one. To my surprise, the platform is crowded: men in bulky gray overcoats with their hats pulled low over their ears and their breaths puffing out like smoke from between their lips, a few grandmas in heavy shawls, a few families with small children in tow, and a few young women looking chilled and pinched in the night air. I find it oddly comforting. I look just like them in my brown work dress and plain wool overcoat.
The old man in the ticket booth frowns at me when I ask for passage to Kegu. “Why you going all the way there?” he barks. “Don’t you know it’s overrun with rebel dogs? No one’s going that far, my girl. Farthest anyone else is going is Vuda, before the crossover into Yilat.”
My fingers clamp hard over the straps of my satchel. “Yes, sir, but my family needs me.”
He squints at me through smudged glasses. “You should stay in the Ring. Dangerous time, this is.”
I pluck my coins from my bag and slide them beneath the glass partition, including an extra bronze penny to grease the gears in this transaction. “My mother is ill,” I say. “She has a cancer, and I’m afraid she doesn’t have much longer on this earth.”
“Oh.” He blinks down at the extra coin, then slides it back over to me. “All the best to you, then,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Family’s important.”
I mumble my thanks and take back the tiny bribe that he rejected, embarrassed that I insulted him by offering it in the first place. Ticket in hand, I join the people on the platform, standing near a clump of old ladies and tucking my hands into the pockets of my overcoat, wishing I owned gloves.
The platform is abuzz with gossip, mostly about the barbaric Noor and their intentions to come to the east and kill us all. The young women discuss it in low tones, the old women more loudly. I am relieved when the steam engine finally shrieks and roars into the station, drowning out their voices. The conductor catches my arm as I head for the rear of the train. “Up front,” he says gruffly. “Women up front.”
I obey him, following the factory girls up the steel steps and into the car. I find myself a seat, a hard wooden bench, really, and stare out the window at the Ring, still within reach. I could change my mind now. I could jump off and scamper down the steps. I could sneak back into the factory and the clinic and no one would be the wiser.
But as the train jolts into motion, I realize it is too late. I have made my choice. It feels like my chest is caught in a metal press, squeezed flat under the overwhelming pressure of my sorrow and fear. I’ve left my father and Bo behind. I left no note, no hint of where I’ve run to.
They cannot reach me. They cannot help me or save me or stop me. I have done it.
I am on my own, and I need to make a plan. I have to tell someone who matters, someone who can do something with the information I possess, so my first idea is to go straight to