The others joined her outside. Dom stood beside her and rubbed her back. It soothed the edges of her temper as she eyed the accommodation block a short distance away they had yet to check.
‘Are you okay?’
She didn’t answer him, pointing. ‘We should try the block next.’
‘Look, he’s an asshole. He likes to stir the shit. Don’t listen to him.’
She looked up at him. ‘Listen to who?’
She marched on ahead to the block, bristling with irritation. What if the Copy guard was right and the Beyond didn’t exist? If the Collective was clever enough to create Copies, surely it would have found it already?
Anya arrived at the accommodation block first. The concrete structure was set out on three levels with no plants or life of any kind. The doors to each unit she could see faced out. The block carried on farther back, creating side corridors with possible doors there.
She hesitated, not familiar with this place and not sure where to begin.
Jacob arrived at her side. ‘I’ll take the lead from here.’ He walked on. ‘This place I know.’
They organised themselves into groups of five to search the rooms on each block, leaving the soldiers to watch the prisoner. Some of the apartments were unlocked, others locked. They used the Copy to open the locked rooms. Anya searched one room, a studio-type apartment with a bed in one corner, a living room space in the other and a kitchenette. A bathroom was separate to the living space. It wasn’t much bigger than her and Alex’s room in the medical facility.
She walked around the space, checking under the bed, behind it, beneath unmade duvets and under creased pillows. She checked the seams of the mattress for signs of tears. Then she walked the room slowly, listening out for loose floorboards. The kitchenette consisted of a small counter and a kettle. The cupboards were bare.
This room was depressing. Even her and Alex’s room had had more character than this. Who had lived here—or, rather, been forced to live here?
She left the apartment and searched the unit next door. That one had a bed stripped of linen. It looked like it hadn’t been lived in recently.
She exited that apartment—if she could call it that—and met Dom outside. ‘Where are all the people who lived here?’
Dom shrugged. ‘They may have fled to the towns. The barrier has been down for a while.’
She supposed that made sense. ‘Anything?’
He shook his head. ‘The rooms are empty. Any idea which room Janet may have used?’
‘I don’t. We’ll have to search them all.’
The next hour blurred into grey linens and bare cupboards. The rooms all started to look the same, but the checks happened faster. Loose floorboards, ripped mattresses. Hollow panels.
She was exiting the last room in her block when Dom came out holding what looked like a book. He frowned at it, then his eyes flicked up to Anya’s.
Her heart pounded in her ears. ‘Where did you find that?’
‘Beneath the floor in one of the rooms.’
He opened the book. Anya stood by his shoulder, clenching her fists. Dom flicked through it. It appeared to be less like a diary and more like a stock book with ledger entries.
‘Is it hers?’ she asked breathless.
‘I don’t know.’
Dom flicked through more pages, containing lists of numbers. ‘Are these the coordinates?’
Anya leaned in closer. ‘They could represent longitude and latitude.’
Dom flicked on. ‘There’s too many, and no clue as to which ones might be the correct coordinates...’ He stopped on the last page, which had a hand-drawn map on it. ‘This looks more recent.’
Anya narrowed her eyes. There were no discerning markers. It was just a quick sketch, as though the route had been pencilled in a hurry. ‘How can you tell?’
‘See, the pencil lines are hastily drawn. Someone took their time with the numbers.’ Dom looked around. ‘You said you saw your parents gave this to Janet. Why is this book here and not outside the city, like before?’
Anya took a guess. ‘Because when Janet was taken to the city she had the book on her?’
‘Would the sketch have been in this before or after she arrived? Surely the Copies would have searched her belongings.’
It didn’t make sense to Anya either. ‘She must have sketched it while she was here.’
She studied it. A sweep of a horizontal line, then a vertical one, a short zig without the zag, then straight. It would be impossible to know where this was without more context.
Dom rubbed his chin. ‘If she sketched it after she arrived, it was either from memory or a map of somewhere inside the city.’ He became more alert. ‘We should check Thomas’ sketches of the buildings. One of them might match up to this.’
Anya’s heart pounded too fast. ‘You think the way to the Beyond is in the city?’
He shook the book in the air. ‘I don’t know, but something compelled her to sketch this after she arrived.’
A new thought occurred to Anya. ‘What if Janet wanted to be taken to the city?’
His eyes widened. ‘Because this was the last place the rebels had yet to search. Those who still looked only presumed they knew where it was. If she found it, she was letting the next rebel know.’
‘We could have the coordinates, Dom. I’ll tell the others.’
Dom stopped her with his hand. ‘Don’t
