Another row stands twenty feet away, creating a gap within the wall wide enough to accommodate two jeeps. Metal joists linking the rows at the top form a walkway and the foundation for the next level of posts.
I lean against the window and cast my gaze along its width. Every hundred or so feet, there are watchtowers of varying sizes. This must be where the marksmen shoot down raptors that try to enter Phangloria.
The jeep stops, and I open the door. Hot, dusty air blasts into my face, making me wince. Ingrid screams at me to pull the door shut, but I step out and sink my feet into the sand. My eyes strain against the sunlight, and heat seeps through the leather of my boots.
Colonel Victorine steps out of his jeep and leads us along the wall. The desert on our side of Phangloria is no different from the landscape beyond the barrier. He stops at one of the larger towers with an elevator that reminds me of a cage.
“Half of you come with me to the viewing station.” He points further down the wall. “The other half get to see the disturbance from the next tower.”
I follow the colonel into the elevator with Ingrid, Constance, Emmera, Sabre, Tizona, and a black-haired Amstraadi girl called Katana. Just before the elevator doors close, Cassiope jumps in with another production assistant, and they exchange grins. The other contestants huff their annoyance and trudge away in the sun with the production assistants.
The viewing station is halfway up the tower in a climate-controlled room of white walls and panoramic windows. Four telescopes point out into the desert, each manned by guards, but I can’t see anything from the window except the desert and a distant formation of orange rocks.
A border guard in khaki uniform sits before five monitors arranged hexagonally around his wide desk.
We line against the back wall, while Cassiope and her colleague set up cameras around the room. As soon as they’re done, the other production assistant raises her thumb.
Constance strides forward with her hands on her hips. “Where’s this emergency?”
The guard sitting at the monitors rises and beckons at one of the guards at the telescope to bring another chair. “Mistress, would you like to see?”
Constance sticks her nose in the air and joins Ingrid at the seats. As the rest of us gather around them, the guards bring us bottles of Smoky Water and ask the Noble girls if they would prefer something more refreshing. They ask for a beverage called Oasis Palmtree.
Once the drinks arrive, the guard taps on the middle screen and pulls up the image of a vehicle appearing in the middle monitor. The Amstraadi girls and I lean forward, and I resist the urge to place my hands on the back of Constance’s chair.
The only way I can tell it’s a vehicle is because it’s moving so fast and creating clouds of dust. It’s hard to tell the size, but it’s brown and looks larger than a jeep and smaller than a bus.
My mouth drops open, but it’s Constance who speaks first. “Have the wild men evolved?”
“They’re Foundlings, you idiot,” Ingrid snaps.
“That’s correct, Mistress Strab,” says the guard. “Most Foundlings arrive on foot, but some reach us on the back of animals, and a few manage to cobble together vehicles.”
Our Modern History teacher told us that no technology survived from the spate of disasters that destroyed the earth. I imagined Foundlings as nomads lucky enough to stumble across Phangloria. Where on earth would they get cars after all this time, and what would they use as fuel?
“How?” The question slips from my mouth.
Ingrid huffs, but the guard glances at Colonel Victorine, who nods.
The guard answers, “As the Great Wall stretches across the continent, it becomes more visible to survivors hiding in mountains and other geographical enclaves.”
I turn my gaze back to the screen. A moving mass appears behind the vehicle.
Sabre leans forward. “Could you magnify the screen?”
Ingrid twists around in her seat and smirks. “Don’t your eyes have a zoom function?”
“Isn’t that the girl who faked her disappearance?” Sabre tilts her head to the side.
Katana shakes her head. “You’re mixing her up with the girl with visible stitch marks around her new nose.”
“You’re both wrong.” Tizona taps her chin. “That’s the girl who ducked out from the Princess Trials to fix her nose so it would be more to Prince Kevon’s liking.”
A laugh catches in the back of my throat, and I clap a hand over my mouth. My gaze darts to the side of the room, where Cassiope nods. Prince Kevon once implied that I was unadorned, but I thought it was a comment aimed at the Nobles in general. He was probably talking about Ingrid’s surgical enhancements.
Red blotches appear on Ingrid’s cheeks, and her hand rises to her nose, but she forces it down.
The guard clears his throat, taps a few commands on the screen, and brings up a group of people riding camels.
I swallow a mouthful of strawberry-flavored water to soothe my dry throat. “What happens when people approach the Great Wall?”
“That depends on if they’re homo sapiens or homo ferox,” the guard replies.
“Homo what?” I whisper
“Ferox means wild,” Ingrid snaps. “Don’t they teach you anything apart from how to pick corn?”
“Apparently not,” I mutter.
Colonel Victorine interrupts with a speech about the Foundling welcoming process, starting with a definition of wild men that’s similar to the one Prunella Broadleaf offered the night before.
While he tells us that some Foundlings arrive at the Great Wall incapable of speech, they have ways of testing if a new arrival requires education or extermination.
I drop my gaze to the screens, which display the approaching groups. The vehicle continues at its steady pace, but it’s hard
