“Nothing is inevitable,” I say. Nik Nik is the tide I’ve been kicking against for the better part of a decade, and I have to keep kicking because I’ll drown in him as surely as a tar pit.

“Besides, I don’t want him.”

“Who do you want?”

I hesitate. Only the most hardcore Ruralites have issues with the way the rest of Ashtown looks at gender and sexuality as a casual gradient. But Esther is a leader’s daughter.

I say it quick, because I don’t want to pretend to be something I’m not with her.

“Dell.”

She goes stiff, then tilts her head more in disbelief than disgust.

“You’re really nothing like her, are you?”

“Dell?”

“Cara.” She starts picking at the edge of the comforter. “I saw her once helping a congregant, a sweet girl, Sarah, who had an obvious crush on her. I told her I thought they looked nice together and she got mad. It didn’t make sense, because no one cares, maybe some of the ancients but no one really. But she was so angry…she started being really cruel to Sarah after that. Which I guess means I was wrong.”

“No,” I say, “it means you were right.”

    I’m starting to understand Caramenta now, a girl who started out just like me, but had been given the kind of stability and care I only dreamt about. She’d want to be perfect to make sure she could never get thrown away again, even if that meant hating anything in herself that strayed the slightest bit.

“And Caramenta really didn’t like Dell. I think she even filed a complaint against her once during training.”

“Seriously? No wonder she hates me.”

Esther’s lips quirk. “You still think she hates you? That she attended a funeral in the Ash and dropped that kind of money to get you to the bogs because she hates you?”

“Money means nothing to her. It was probably less than she spends on a good dress.”

But the argument is weak and my little sister—who looks all of fourteen in the T-shirt and pajamas I just bought her—is right. Dell is being kind.

When Esther hugs me goodbye in the morning, carrying a bag full of the lotions and cosmetics I’d been saving for my next visit, I ask her to come back. The next raid of her explosives stockpile is less than a week off, and I want her to spend that night with me, if just to keep her from standing in front of the pantry doors armed with only a rolling pin. She shakes her head, but promises not to do anything stupid. Before she leaves, she calls me by my real name.

I watch to make sure she meets Michael on the other side of the wall, and the whole time I’m thinking that now, if I died here, Esther could bury me properly. Before, it would have been under the wrong name. I never would have made it through to where I belonged. It’s a morbid comfort, but still a comfort, to know that even on the wrong Earth someone carries your name.

* * *

“WHERE DID YOU get this?” Jean asks.

Since Jean went to meet Adam right after my debriefing, I’ve had to wait until my first day back to bring him the note. I’ve been watching him read it carefully. At first, the shock on his face was total. But then it gave way to anger. I made the right choice. He didn’t send it.

    “Someone left it on my door.”

“Did you see them on your cam?”

I shake my head. “They were careful. I’m guessing they went with paper because digital messages can be traced.”

“Or they just know how you like paper.”

“I doubt they’re trying to get on my good side. It sounds like a threat.”

“You think so?” he says, in a way that tells me he doesn’t. “Are you going to go?”

“I have to.”

“You don’t. Leave the note with me. I’ll get it sorted.”

“I didn’t tell you so you could fix it,” I say, then trail off because I don’t know why I did tell him.

I shove the note back in my pocket, and Jean takes the hint that I’m done talking about it. For the rest of our meeting we go over results from my practice test with the updated information, and I’m unsurprised by the light in his eyes.

“This is really good stuff, Cara. Excellent work. I was only concerned about the memorization, but your reports have gotten cleaner too. You’ve really used your time off to your advantage.”

He’s so proud that it hurts me not to smile back. When I try, his face drops.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing, it’s just…don’t you think I’m going to miss it? I’m giving up world walking for a desk.”

He leans back in his chair like I’m a virus he doesn’t want to catch. “A desk on the sixtieth floor. With opportunities to climb up.”

“How many stories up am I when I traverse?”

He shakes his head, but a slow smile spreads across his face. “It’s been a long time. I’d almost forgotten…there’s nothing else like it, and I won’t pretend there is.”

    “So, maybe I don’t go for analyst. Maybe I go for a Maintenance position, something that will still get me sent—”

“No.” He says it more harshly than he’s ever said anything to me. “Maintenance is phased out too. This equipment is self-repairing. If you don’t go for the analyst job the only place for you to go is home.”

His snapping surprises me, and I want to remind him that I’m not actually one of his grandchildren. Instead, I nod.

“Okay, okay. I’ll do the test. Analyst is better than nothing. I was just…I don’t know, dreaming.”

His smile is back. “I just don’t want to see any of us fail.”

I don’t know if he means traversers or black people or people from outside in general, but I accept the explanation.

He looks down at his hands, and I know what he’s going to say before he says it.

“Cara, about the note.”

“I’m not leaving it with you.”

“Please…don’t go to this meeting.”

“I’ll be fine. I know what happened on 175. It’s not even a proper threat. They’re probably just trying to blackmail me. I’ll show them my bank account and then we’ll both walk away weeping.”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything else.

Only after I’m out and on my way to my first pull do I realize I missed something: Jean never asked what happened on 175.

* * *

I DON’T REALIZE I’ve developed a fear of traversing until it’s too late.

I hadn’t been afraid as I made my way to the elevator to meet Dell. Sure, I’d hesitated to get in until a co-worker behind me—Maintenance, I’m guessing, given the black jumpsuit—cleared his throat and growled It’s open at me. But that hadn’t been fear, that had been my profound desire to go home. That had been the certainty that I didn’t belong—not in this office, not in this city, not even in this world. What does it mean to miss the taste of ash on your lips? What does it mean to crave something toxic?

    No, only after I’m dressed and veiled and Dell slides the Misery Syringe into my pocket does terror come for me. Seeing the syringe, a reminder of what can and has gone wrong, puts the taste of iron back in my mouth. When I climb the ladder to the hatch, my hands are shaking.

I’ve just landed inside when I start to panic. It’s dark, true dark, and even though there hasn’t been enough time, I’m sure I’ve already left. I’m hurtling toward a place I don’t belong, but I’m not going to make it. She’ll never let me. Nyame will bite through me, then rip along the perforations her teeth create. And I’ll deserve it, because I used her to kill. Seeing Adra’s death in the dark was as much a prophecy for me as it was for Nelline. It just took longer for the universe to catch me. Such a stupid mouse, to run back into the trap.

I feel her claws around my torso. I pound at the hatch door, but it’s too late. It was always too late. Words from Nelline’s funeral come back at me. This was always going to happen. I, maybe more than anyone else, have only existed to die.

Suddenly there is light, a starburst that feels like the end of the world even after I recognize Eldridge’s traversing room.

Dell has lifted me half out of the hatch and into her lap on the platform above, her hand on the back of my neck. Even in this she’s not sweet, not gushing. She is squeezing my neck with a firm and clinical distance.

“Breathe, Cara,” she says. “Breathe now.”

And I do. At first it’s just short, panicked gasps, but slowly I take in more air and hold it longer. My panic is gone but I’m still wrapped up in her.

“I used to be stronger than you,” I say, the space under my arms already sore from her sure, hard yank.

“You’ve spent too long avoiding physical training. You’re light as a bird.”

“I’m okay now,” I say.

    She takes her hand from the back of my neck. “Would you like me to call Sasha? Or…do you have someone else in the city I should contact?”

“I’ve never had anyone else.”

“You used to. What was his name? The one with the”—she waves a hand around her head—“the hair.”

She’s just trying to get me talking, but it works. Impossibly, I laugh.

“Marius? From four years ago? After his mother threatened to have a breakdown, the novelty of a kept Ashtown creature wore off.”

“He called you that?”

“No…she told him we can’t love. That people from Ashtown can’t. That we don’t even really feel, we just survive.”