They deboarded the private copter and stepped out on the lawn of an abandoned-looking house in West Hampton. “What is this?” Rylin asked, her voice hushed, as Cord unlocked the front door. The copter’s blades began to whirl, stirring up the grass in slow concentric circles before it took off again. Rylin inhaled deeply, relishing all the scents of the world outside the Tower, soil and smoke and ocean. It was nice to leave sometimes.
“My dad owned this place,” Cord explained. “I didn’t even know about it until after they died. He left it to me in the will.”
He said it calmly, but Rylin’s heart went out to him. “Just you? Not Brice?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Yeah. I have no idea why. Maybe he thought I would appreciate it. Or that I needed it more, for some reason.” He paused, the door open, and gave Rylin a searching look. “You’re the first person I’ve ever brought here.”
“Thank you for sharing it with me,” she said quietly.
He led her into the house’s entry hall, where automatic lights flickered on, revealing a small, cozy living room and stairs leading up to a second floor. For a moment Rylin wondered if they were here on some kind of romantic getaway, but Cord was already walking through the kitchen and opening another door.
“Here it is,” he said in the most reverent tone she’d ever heard him use. High-beam lights flared overhead, illuminating a massive garage filled with at least a dozen cars.
Rylin walked inside, confused. Cars couldn’t be driven within the Tower itself, only hovers, which were owned by Building Services and operated through a central algorithm. Almost no one in the Tower owned an actual auto, except a few upper-floor families who kept them suspended in hydraulic garages. Even in the suburbs, Rylin knew, people rarely owned individual cars anymore; it was so much easier to pool money and go in on a shared ownership, or just pay a subscription ride service.
One car, out here in the Hamptons, Rylin might understand. But why did Cord have so many cars?
Cord grinned, seeing her uncertainty. “Go look closer,” he urged.
She ran her hands over the surface of the nearest one, sleek and red. Dust motes rose into the air. She realized that the car had a wheel, and a brake pedal—and was that an accelerator?
“Wait a minute,” Rylin said, as understanding dawned on her. These weren’t autocars. “Are they …?”
“Yeah,” Cord said proudly. “They’re old, really old. Driver-run, pre-autocar models. My dad left them all to me.” He looked fondly at the convertible Rylin was circling. “That one is almost eighty years old.”
“But where did they all come from?” Wasn’t this against the law?
“My dad collected them over the years. They’re hard to find, mainly because they’re illegal to drive, and insanely hard to get running again,” Cord said easily. “Plus they drive on fossil fuels, not electricity, and petroleum is expensive.”
“Why, though?” Rylin said bluntly.
Cord looked excited. “You’ve been in an autocar before, right?”
“Yeah, when we visited my grandparents in New Jersey, when I was little.” Rylin remembered how her mom had called the car on the tablet and it appeared moments later, another family crammed inside since they could only afford the “share ride” option. They’d typed the address into the screen on the car’s interior and off they went, driven by the highway system’s automated central computer.
“Well, this is nothing like those cars, with their built-in speed limits. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Rylin stayed where she was. “You’re telling me that you know how to operate that thing?” she asked, dubious. She wasn’t sure she wanted to climb into a huge, dangerous piece of machinery with Cord at the controls.
“It has safety belts. And yes, I do.”
But safety belts hadn’t saved the millions of people who died in car accidents every year, before driver-run cars were made illegal. She remembered that much from health class. “How did you learn to drive?” she asked, stalling.
“I had help. And I practiced. Now come on,” he teased, “where’s your sense of adventure?” He held the passenger door gallantly open for her. Rylin sighed, mutinous, and took the proffered seat. The Spokes dug sharply into her rear, reminding her what she’d done earlier. She fought aside the fresh wave of guilt that rose up at the thought.
Cord reached for the handle of the garage door and manually lifted it up, letting the cool afternoon light stream in. Rylin brought her hand over her eyes to shade them. She watched as Cord reviewed the car, checking the tires, lifting the hood and studying the silver tangle of the engine beneath. His movements were clean and focused, his brows drawn together in concentration. Finally he slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred to life.
They started down the leaf-strewn residential road—lined with houses that peered out at them with empty eyes, abandoned in the off-season—toward the turnoff to the Long Island Expressway. Rylin marveled at the way Cord’s hands moved on the wheel. “Want me to teach you to drive later?” he offered with a wink, following her gaze. She shook her head mutely.
The highway extended silent in both directions, on the left to Amagansett and the ferry to Montauk; and on the right, back to the city. Rylin could see the Tower far off, nothing but a dark haze in the distance. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was a storm cloud.
“Here goes,” Cord said, and slammed his foot on the accelerator.
The car lurched forward like a living thing, the needle on the speedometer spiking up to fifty, then eighty, then ninety. The entire world seemed to shrink to a silent pinpoint. Rylin lost all sense of time or place. There was nothing but this, the car beneath them and the curve of the road before them and the rush of her blood pumping hot and fast through her veins. The landscape flashed past, a blur of sky and dark forest punctuated only by the yellow line glowing on the road.
The highway curved ahead. Rylin watched as Cord just barely moved the wheel, letting the car turn smoothly along with it. Her whole body thrummed with the energy of the vehicle beneath them. She understood why Cord loved this so much.
The wind pulled her hair in a loose tangle around her shoulders. She could feel Cord looking at her and she wanted to remind him to keep his eyes on the road but something told her she didn’t need to. He let his right hand fall over the middle console, driving only with his left, and Rylin reached for it. Neither of them spoke.
Finally Cord turned onto a small country lane. Rylin was still trembling from the shock and exhilaration of the highway. She saw a sign that said NO PARKING and wanted to make a joke, something about how even though she’d only been in a car once, she knew what parking implied—until she saw the white ribbon of the beach, and everything else fell from her mind. “Oh!” she exclaimed, kicking off her shoes to run toward the water. The wind had carved the sand into small scallops, sloping down to the angry gray surf that mirrored the skies overhead.
“I love this,” she said eagerly as Cord stepped up behind her. She and Lux had only ever been to a beach once, at Coney Island, and it was miserable and crowded. Here she could only see the sky and the sand and Cord, not even the houses that she knew were right there behind the dunes. It felt like they could be anywhere in the world.
Thunder broke, and a sudden downpour rained over them.