Dusk

Chapter One

People are cheering. Waning sunlight streams in through a window. I catch a glimpse of golden eyes in my periphery before they blink out of existence, and a head of copper curls flits in and out of my vision. There's a voice, female, calling a name I can't understand. Won't understand. And beneath it all, I realize I have never felt so fragmented, so incomplete. So lost.

A voice plucks me out of my reverie.

"The hallucinations again?"

I blink quickly. My surroundings come into focus- squat, dirty buildings, people with browned skin and sand, sand everywhere. The smell of roasting meat lingers in the air, a rarity. Almost nobody can afford meat here.

"Yeah, sorry." I rest a hand on the sand, cool to the touch now that the sun is sinking below Adia's boundary wall, the only thing separating us from the rest of the world.

"Was it about the same thing as usual?"

I look into Blake's eyes, dark and impassive and bottomless. On a normal day, I wouldn't be able to read him, but today he's tired, and his feelings show. There's caution in his expression, a hesitance there that I don't fully understand the presence of. If anything, I should be the hesitant one when replying to his question.

"No," I lie. Last time I told the truth, he probed me for answers, made me tell him every detail of what I'd seen. He'd grabbed my shoulders, shook me like I'd done something wrong. "Not this time."

He seems to relax a bit. "Oh? What was it about, then?"

"Meat. Lots of meat."

He smiles. It makes my heart beat a little faster, seeing my brother smile. He doesn't do it often.

"Should we eat? I know we came here to escape the heat, but if you're hungry, I'll take you to any stall you want. I got paid today."

"Really? Any stall?"

He nods and stands. We'd been sitting in the shade of Adia's boundary wall, and because it's taller than even the towering skyscrapers in the Middle Ring, it casts an impressive shadow. It takes us a few minutes to walk out of it, weaving through narrow alleys that smell of unpleasant things.

"Hey, Blake," I say, stepping over a puddle. "Did you ever think about what's beyond the wall?"

We cross out of a particularly dark alley onto a wider, sandier street. There are people everywhere, lingering on the steps of their squalid units, sitting in the street and playing cards, smoking up with what's most likely fake tobacco. Blake, a few steps in front of me, looks back.

"You ask that question a lot." His voice is chastising.

I wait for his answer anyway. He sighs.

"Chaos," he tells me, a mundane sort of tone accompanying his words. "That's what's beyond the wall."

I don't know if he believes it or not, but it would be pointless to ask. Blake lives in the here and now. He's never been curious.

I feel a tug at my pant leg. I look down. There's an old man on the ground, sitting cross legged, a ragged hat in his lap with some crumpled up polymer bills inside.

"Spare some cash, pretty girl?"

I frown and shake my head. "I haven't really got any money. I'm sorry."

When I try to walk away, he tugs at my pant leg again, making me stumble. I turn around, trying not to glare at him. "What?"

"It sure looks like you have money. These pants are expensive." He begins to rise, yanking at the fabric of my pants to force me down. Thankfully, I'm stronger than him, so I don't move an inch. The deep lines in his face grow even deeper with frustration.