I nodded. She didn’t have to explain more—I understood. It didn’t matter that the stories were piecemeal or even sometimes contradicted one another. What mattered was that there were rumors at all. It meant something must be happening there. Something big. Good or bad, we couldn’t know—but it was worth finding out, rather than giving up. I looked at her. I wanted to find out too, not just sit and wait for the end. Or die trying. “We’ll know soon enough. We’ll make it.”
“Mm,” Ursula agreed.
I settled back into my seat, but my heart was racing. “Maybe the last shadowed survivors are going there,” I said instead of what I was really thinking, to hide how excited I’d suddenly become.
She shrugged. “Or maybe all the shadowless. Perhaps they’ve made it into a new city, just for us.”
“Or maybe just all of our shadows.”
That made her chuckle for a moment. We both knew that was silly. Shadows didn’t go somewhere. They disappeared. But the joke served its purpose—it broke the tension, stopped her from saying the actual reason we were heading for this city of fragmented rumors. From saying what she really hoped, because the possibility it could be true was so tenuous that just the words might undo it. I knew because now that I’d heard her story, it was what I hoped, too. That maybe there’s a cure in New Orleans, Ory. A way to stop us from forgetting. That maybe instead of running, trying to stop myself from disappearing you and then eventually just dying, I can save us both—and find you again.
Orlando Zhang
IN THE MORNING, ORY WOKE TO THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS, scrambling on crumbling asphalt.
“Max?” he called hoarsely. He crawled out from the rubble in the building across from their old home, where he’d hidden himself overnight. “Max?”
It wasn’t Max. He caught sight of a foot as its owner rounded the corner away from him at a sprint. There had been no shadow attached, but it had been a man’s foot, not a woman’s. Then another shadowless ran past, at such speed he again caught almost no details—just whipping legs, a low crouch, and fading echoes.
Ory waited until it was quiet again and then crept into the street. What was that about? he wondered. Busy areas never meant anything good anymore. But the question was whether they were running to something—or from it. He edged around the corner and into the wreckage of the intersection to see if he could find where they’d gone.
“Don’t move!” someone shouted. Ory scrambled, grabbing for a gun he no longer had. A dark man in army fatigues and a bike helmet jerked into a dodge, as if expecting him to throw a blade, and then aimed a shotgun of his own at Ory.
They both stared at each other in shock for a few seconds, then stared at each other’s feet, at what trailed beneath. He has a shadow, Ory thought, at the same moment that the stranger realized the same about him as well.
“Brother,” the man finally said. The gun dropped—a relieved smile broke out across his face. “What the hell are you doing with that?”
Ory looked down at his chest and touched his shirt, where the man was pointing. The last tatters of his maroon windbreaker hung there, wet and sooty. Only half the red letters from the giant STAFF word above the Elk Cliffs Resort logo remained. “I don’t understand,” Ory said, but the man wasn’t listening anymore. His expression changed.
“Get down!” he cried.
They both threw themselves against the row of sand-filled garbage bins in front of them as a rock ricocheted off the top and spun into little sharp flakes. Another hit, spraying stone chips past their faces as it exploded. “What’s happening?” Ory shouted.
“Deal went bad today,” the dark man yelled over the pounding stones. “The Red King tried to pass off four copies of the same thing. Impossible to explain it to them—four of the same book doesn’t equal four books. Now we’re skirmishing again. The red . . .”—he touched the front of Ory’s windbreaker—“that’s what I mean. Enemy colors!” Another barrage scattered across the top of the garbage cans. It’s a barricade line, Ory realized. Someone had built upright trenches along the length of his old street. “Last time this happened, they burned a whole pile in protest—that was bloody. Let’s hope they’re too desperate for food or medicine to try that again.”
“What are you talking about?” Ory cried.
“The war!” he shouted back.
“What war?”
“The—” The man paused. “What do you mean, ‘What war?’ Where are you from?”
“Arlington,” Ory answered.
“Arlington!” the man cried. Ory could tell by his expression he was expecting Ory to have named a neighborhood within walking distance, maybe an outer suburb. The Forgetting had changed the meaning of the word far. “You crossed the river?” he asked. They both ducked as a rock went sailing overhead. “You’ve got balls, brother.”
“Li,” Ory gave his middle name, just in case.
“Li,” he confirmed. “Malik—James Malik.” He took his bike helmet off his head. Sweat gleamed across the shaved, deep brown skin. He handed it to Ory. “You wear that. I’ll get another one; we have more back in the armory. That’s where the new recruits go to get kitted up.”