Processing.”
The Eagle shifted uncomfortably. “His mother won’t give him up.”
The man in the coat gave a long-suffering sigh. “So shoot her,” he retorted with exasperation. “You’ve got talons, use them.” But before either Eagle could act, he crouched down at the woman’s side.
“Ma’am,” he said gently. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to let them take your son in.”
“He’s not a Renewable,” she whimpered. It was as if being a Renewable was the worst possible crime. The way they spoke the word, they might as well have been saying “murderer.”
“If he’s not, then he’ll be back before the end of the day.” The man in the coat reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “You have my word.”
As he continued to murmur to her, I scanned the faces of the onlookers. They were silent now, pale. Afraid. When the woman straightened a little, I could see that the boy in question was no more than eleven or twelve. But when he lifted his head, at least half the spectators drew back, a murmur running through the crowd.
These people were terrified by the mere thought that he could be a Renewable.
I felt a dull anger flicker through me. I’d been that kid before. The dud, the strange one. Any excuse to make someone different, to keep them from fitting in. Even here, a hundred miles away from the city where I was born. Even if they let him go, he’d never be the same again.
The man in the coat was slowly easing the woman away from her child. “We can’t take the chance that it’s true, Marsa—you did say Marsa, right? Marsa, it was Renewables that caused the cataclysm, forced us to live down here like this. We can’t let that happen again—where would we run to now?”
The woman choked back another sob, but before she could speak, the boy interrupted. “I’ll go,” he said, his voice shaking. “Leave my mother alone. I’ll go.”
“No!” The mother jerked away from the man in the coat.
“Mom, it’s fine.” The kid’s face was white, but he nodded reassuringly at her. His voice hadn’t changed yet, and it sounded high and scared. “I’ll be fine.”
The man in the coat gave the woman’s arm a dismissive pat, then straightened to usher the boy into the Eagles’ custody. “Good lad,” he said with false cheer. They all turned, passing close to me as the crowd parted to let them through.
“Throw him with the others,” said the man in the coat in a low voice to the Eagles. “And put together a compensation package for the mother. If he’s a Renewable, we’ll have to act quickly.”
The Eagles led the kid away, after he shot one last look over his shoulder at his mother, still huddled on the walkway. The man in the coat watched them go, then turned to the crowd. “Well?” he boomed, voice projecting easily over the stunned silence. “We’re done here.”
As the crowd dispersed, the man’s eyes fell on me again— and stayed there. My throat constricted, and I whirled to push back through the crowd. Oren was waiting for me, agitated, asking questions—but I wanted to put as much distance as I could between myself and the man in the blue-and-green coat.
Eventually I spotted an opening and darted out of the flow of traffic into an alcove, evidently disused due to the way the constant drizzle from the rainbow ceiling pooled and collected there.
“What was that?” Oren hissed. “I couldn’t see.”
“They arrested a kid for being a suspected Renewable,” I replied, my breathing harsh and unsteady from our headlong dash.
“So?”
“They were afraid of him—like he was some kind of monster.”
Oren gave a small, bitter laugh. “Better him than us.”
I shook my head, replaying the scene, trying to understand. “I don’t know. It doesn’t match up with what we were always taught.”
“Taught where?”
I swallowed, trying to catch my breath while keeping an eye on the mouth of the alley. I halfway expected the man in the coat to appear, but all I could see was the ebb and flow of foot traffic returning to normal.
“In my city, the Institute taught us that a huge war destroyed the land beyond the Wall. Here, they mentioned a cataclysm, some event caused by the Renewables.”
“You’ve seen the ruins, what the world was like before. Something had to happen to change all of that.”
“But the stories don’t line up.” I could tell that Oren didn’t understand my fixation. The Institute had lied to me about so many things, but for some reason I’d never questioned what little they told us of history. That was fact, something inviolate, as permanent and unchanging as the Wall itself.
“We can’t stay here,” Oren said finally. “We still don’t know where to look for your friend.” He kept his eyes on the traffic, both man and machine, bustling by in both directions. His expression still had that pinched, tense look to it—he wasn’t finding the crowds any easier to adjust to than I had found the sky.
“They mentioned something called Central Processing, where they were taking that boy. Maybe that’s a place to start.”
“You think it’s some sort of prison?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but I know the tone of voice they used. That’s exactly the way people spoke about the Institute in my city. Whatever Central Processing is, it’s important, and there’ll be someone there who knows where Tansy is. Maybe even this Prometheus himself.”
Oren’s jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing as one passerby came alarmingly close to us in order to give way to a large, spiderlike machine skittering urgently down the walkway. “I’ll never understand the need you people have to be governed. You all flock to these cities, to places like the Iron Wood, just so someone can tell you what to do.”
I looked past him toward the great expanse of hodgepodge buildings, at the streets lined with people, young and old alike. “When people come together like this, they become stronger. They don’t have to live in fear the way you do outside. We allow ourselves to be governed because it keeps us safe.”
Oren’s lip curled a little. Then he ducked his head, hiding his expression until he had it under control again. “If the shadows breached these defenses, if the government fell—if anything at all went wrong, most of these people would be helpless. They’ve all forgotten how to survive.”
For a long moment, I didn’t have an answer for him. He was right. I’d been helpless when I left my city. The image of the red-coated architects in the Institute fending for themselves in the woods was ludicrous.
“I guess,” I said slowly, “that surviving isn’t the same thing as living.”
A group of guys about my age came running up the pathway, laughing and shouting, and Oren jumped back, his nerve breaking. His hand flew to his boot, but he no longer had his knife there. So his fist curled around nothing as the boys continued past. He closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he tried to take a deep breath.
I wondered when he had last truly slept, aside from dozing in the corner of our cell. Did the shadows sleep? Did he ever close those white eyes when the monster inside him came out? He looked so weary, so close to the ragged edge.
But then, so was I. I hadn’t slept well since Tansy joined me—and we hadn’t slept last night at all.
I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for him. All I had to do was keep him moving. I reached out and laid a hand on Oren’s arm, ignoring the way he flinched at my touch. Energy buzzed between us, and the hunger coiling in the pit of my being reared up, protesting the slow drain on my reserves.
“It’s okay.” I carefully kept my voice soft. “It’s like me and the sky. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and it’ll slowly get easier.”
“It’d be easier if we had any idea of where we were going,” Oren replied, his words clipped. “This Central Processing place could be in any of these buildings. Even if I can put one foot in front of the other, we’re certainly going to be caught before you can search them all.”
I let my hand fall away from his arm and stepped back out into the traffic. “That part’s easy.” I waited until Oren had steeled himself, then led the way to the edge of the walkway that overlooked the lower city.
“This whole city is pointed down. All the paths spiral inward. There.” I pointed.
Oren leaned close to follow the line of sight along my outstretched hand, and I was reminded eerily of a similar moment when he’d pointed out the Iron Wood in the distance. Before I knew that my city had meant for me to find it—before I knew what Oren really was.
