The Towering Sky

“Trouble in paradise for you and Anderton?”

This was really weird, talking about Cord with Hiral. “How did you know?”

“Because I know you, Ry. I saw it in the mall that afternoon, when we were working on your ridiculous project; I wanted to ignore it, but it was there. The way your whole face lit up when you made eye contact with him. I know that look.” Hiral’s voice was very faint in her eartennas, and it suddenly struck Rylin how utterly distant he was, on the other side of the world. “I know because once upon a time, you looked at me that way.”

Rylin lifted a hand to her eyes, disconcerted. The sunlight was getting brighter.

Hiral didn’t say anything, just let the moments of silence tick away, though god knows how much those minutes were costing him.

“Cord told me that he helped you leave town,” Rylin said at last.

“You know about that?” Hiral asked, and she recognized the guilty note creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry. Please don’t judge me too harshly, okay? I didn’t have a lot of options.”

It took a moment for Rylin to process his words. “Judge you too harshly?”

“For going behind your back, asking your ex-boyfriend to help me flee the country. That’s what you’re upset about, right?”

“Wait—you’re the one who approached Cord?”

“Yeah, obviously. What did you think, that Cord bribed me to leave or something?” When Rylin didn’t answer, Hiral sucked in a breath. “Rylin, you have to stop assuming the worst of people.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s from all your years of living alone, from being the adult and taking care of Chrissa. Trust me, I get it,” Hiral said gently. “But you can’t keep living like that. Always holding people at arm’s length, hiding behind the lens of your camera. Sometimes it’s okay to let people in.”

Rylin felt a flush of defensiveness—but she also knew that there was an element of truth to his words.

“Look,” Hiral went on, “the whole thing was my idea. I went to Cord, asking if he could get me a job and a plane ticket away. He kept saying that he didn’t want to get involved, but I talked him into it.”

“Why? Surely there were other places you could have gone for help,” Rylin began, but Hiral cut her off.

“Not really, Ry. Getting a job, let alone a job on another continent, is pretty hard to do when you have a record. I needed someone with money and connections. Turns out Cord is the only fancy rich person I knew.” He said it surprisingly without bitterness. “Also,” he added, “I knew that he cared about you so damned much that he would even help me.”

The children’s hovercrafts were darting eagerly across the water, like dragonflies dancing over the surface, barely even leaving a ripple.

“But . . .” She trailed off, helpless. It was still wrong, wasn’t it, that Cord would help Hiral get out of the country, then immediately go after Rylin? And not even tell her that he had played a part in getting rid of her ex?

She heard a rustling on the other end of the line, and a series of muffled voices as Hiral talked to someone else, probably explaining that he was on a ping with an old friend. Rylin wondered if he was talking to a girl. She tried to imagine him stretched out on a deck on that floating city, soaking up the sun’s rays.

And then, because she wasn’t quite ready to lose Hiral’s voice in her ears, she asked him to tell her more about Undina. She could practically hear him smile on the other end of the line.

“The first thing you notice when you get here is the sky. It feels so much closer than in New York, which is strange, since of course we’re way higher up in the Tower. . . .”

Hiral went on for a while, telling her about his routine, out there on the world’s largest floating city. How he was on night shift, because all the new hires started on night shift until they were promoted. How he worked by touch alone, hauling in nets of algae and scraping off the soft plant growth, all in the pitch darkness so the algae wouldn’t be sensitized by light.

Rylin sat there listening, watching the flow of people past her, the calm waters on the surface of the pond.

“Ry,” Hiral said, and she realized she’d been silent for a while. “Are you still upset with me?”

“I’m not upset with you,” she assured him. Hiral was so obviously happy in his new life; she would have to be a pretty terrible friend not to feel happy for him. He belonged where he was, and Rylin belonged here, in New York.

She just wasn’t sure who she belonged with. Part of her still loved Cord—but she wasn’t ready to forgive him for everything he had done, and said.

“I have to go. Bye, Rylin,” Hiral said softly.

She started to say see you later, then realized she wasn’t sure when, if ever, she would see Hiral again. “Take care of yourself, okay?” she told him instead.

Rylin sat there for a long time, staring thoughtfully at the water, the lines of her face strong and unreadable.



AVERY



AVERY FELT HERSELF drifting slowly toward consciousness.

Some instinct tried to pull her back. She didn’t want to wake up; she should stay here instead, safe in the cool, forgiving darkness.

But another instinct urged her to pry open her eyelids and sit up, blinking and disoriented. And then she remembered.