“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just on edge,” she said quickly, and reached across the space between them for his hand.
Atlas gave her hand a little tug, prompting Avery to cross to his chair and sit in his lap. She circled her arms around his neck and leaned her face into his chest, closing her eyes. The steady beat of his heart reassured her, made her breath come a little easier.
“It’s okay. Seeing Miles put me on edge too,” Atlas said, tracing a small circle on her back.
Avery nodded. She wanted so desperately to tell Atlas the truth—about that terrible night on the roof, what really happened to Eris, and the lie she’d told. The real reason that they couldn’t run away.
But Atlas would look at her differently once he knew what she’d done. Avery wasn’t sure she could bear that.
He sighed. “It’s Mom and Dad, isn’t it? They’ll be all right without us. Certainly better than if we stay and get found out.” His arms tightened a little around her. “Although … as much as I want to go now, maybe we shouldn’t leave right away. It might be better if I go work for Dad in Dubai for a year, and then we head out after you graduate. We wouldn’t even have to go at the same time. There would be fewer questions that way.” He smiled. “Plus, you deserve to finish high school with your friends.”
“Dubai is so far,” Avery said instinctively, hating the idea of their living separate lives, half a planet away from each other.
“I know, but, Aves, we can’t live like this either—both of us in New York, in constant terror of being caught.”
Avery didn’t have an answer. Dubai felt like a terrible option, but she knew Atlas was right; they couldn’t go on this way. “I’m sorry. I just need more time,” she whispered helplessly, because she had no idea what she was going to do.
“I get it. I’m being as patient as I can.” The trust in Atlas’s smile nearly broke her. “And of course you’re worth the wait. I would wait a lifetime for you.”
Avery couldn’t listen anymore, so she silenced his words with her lips.
Later, when Atlas had fallen asleep under the pile of bearskin blankets, Avery glanced around the beautiful ice bedroom, its walls smooth and unyielding. She kept thinking of Miles and Clemmon, of her parents, of Eris and Leda and everything else digging little tears into the fabric of her relationship with Atlas.
Even here, far outside New York, she and Atlas couldn’t escape the cold hard truth of who they were. There was nowhere for them to hide. Her heart constricted in panic. What if it was like this forever? The world was so small now—how could she and Atlas ever be free?
She tried to push that thought aside, but it felt like the ice-cold walls were slowly closing in on her, crushing the air from her lungs, and she couldn’t escape.
RYLIN
RYLIN LEANED FORWARD on the counter of the holography edit lab, so deeply absorbed by the work that she’d almost forgotten where she was.
She’d met up with Leda after school to edit their fencing footage, which Rylin had to admit had turned out pretty awesome. But Leda had left a while ago. On a whim, Rylin had loaded the rest of the footage from her vid-cam—and was now submerged in something else entirely.
She kept rewatching what she’d filmed at the pool party last weekend, scrolling back and forth through it, her eyes glittering with excitement. Because even as she sat in this room, on a black velvet chair, Rylin felt transported back in time.
The party ebbed and flowed around her, light dancing on the walls like candlelight flickering on a primordial cave. The blue-green pool seemed to ripple up to Rylin’s waist. Next to her, Lux surfaced from underwater and gave her head a shake—Rylin instinctively threw up an arm, recoiling from the droplets that flung from Lux’s close-cropped blond hair, before lowering it self-consciously, because of course Lux wasn’t there.
This was even more intense than halluci-lighters, she thought, searching eagerly for a clip to show her friends.
“Rylin? What are you doing in here?” Xiayne stepped inside, and the door shut automatically behind him to block the light. He was wearing a white T-shirt again, the inktats on his chest almost visible through the thin material.
She slammed her console’s central button, and the holo went dark. “Just working on something.”
“Wait—pull that back up, will you?” Xiayne’s voice was eager, curious.
Rylin crossed her arms. For some reason she felt defensive. “Do you need me to leave? Last I checked, this room wasn’t reserved.”
“No, by all means, stay. I’m not here to kick you out.” Xiayne sounded amused by her reaction. “I’m glad that someone is finally using this space. God knows the school spent enough money on it, and it’s always empty.”
“Professor—” Rylin began, but he interrupted her.
“Xiayne,” he corrected.
“Xiayne,” she forged on, a little exasperated. “What was wrong with my video of the sunset?”
“Nothing. It was a beautiful video,” he said evenly.
“Then why did you give it a bad grade?”
Xiayne gestured to the chair next to her as if to say, May I? When Rylin didn’t shake her head, he sat down. “I marked your video down because I know you can do better.”
You don’t even know me, Rylin wanted to protest, but it sounded petulant, and she didn’t feel as angry anymore.
“I’m sorry if I was hard on you,” Xiayne went on, studying her. “I know firsthand that it isn’t an easy transition, coming to a place like this from downTower.”
Rylin let out a sigh. “I just don’t think I fit in up here.” It was nice to say this out loud.
“Of course you don’t,” Xiayne agreed, which shocked her into momentary silence. He grinned. “But I don’t think you really want to fit in, do you?”
“I guess not,” Rylin admitted.
“Now, can I please see what you were working on?”
She hesitated before pushing PLAY.
The pool flared to life around them, glimmering with a wild, almost frantic energy. The neon lights of the glow-lamps danced against the darkness. Music and gossip echoed sharply over the water, mingled with the sounds of laughter and drunken splashing. A couple was pressed up against the corner, another curled beneath the diving board. Rylin could see it all in perfect detail, as if she were diving into her own memory except better, everything brighter and more starkly drawn than her flawed human recollections. She could practically taste the chilled shots of atomic, could smell the chlorine and sweat.
She risked a glance at Xiayne. He was watching, his eyes wide open, as if he didn’t even want to blink for fear of missing something.
When V grabbed the camera and dunked it beneath the surface of the pool, the room seemed to spin wildly, the entire world turning to water. Rylin let out a gasp of panic and shut off the holo.
“No! Don’t stop!” Xiayne cried out.