Page 28 of The Sin

“Who does, then?”

“The Guard would have handed her over to a Protector on the supply train. That’s how the exiled are brought here.”

“Jennaishere, then?”

“So far as I know, that’s how the system works.”

“And you can find out what happened to her, can’t you? I mean, like an address or something. Anything?”

“The Protectorate doesn’t keep us in the loop, and they don’t share information.” He hesitated, considering his next words before he spoke. “You could try hostel city. If she’s still being processed, that’s where she’ll be.”

Processed? That sounded like something off a factory line. “How do I get to hostel city?”

“Can you find your way back to the entrance we came through last night?”

I thought about it, and nodded. We hadn’t walked far.

“The Processing Center is attached to one of those parking lots. It’s a sprawling brick building.” He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “Hostel city is just up the road from there. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Georga.” He scrubbed his jaw, studying me. “Is that a good idea? How well do you know this Jenna?”

“We went to school together.” After everything he’d told me, I was desperate to know that she was okay.

“You’d trust her with your life?” When I didn’t immediately respond, he went on, “Because that’s what you’ll be doing. She knows you don’t belong here. What will she do with that?”

I wasn’t entirely sure.

Jenna had always been an anomaly. She’d defied everything we’d been brought up to be and taken charge of her own fate. She was fiercely brave, or brutally stupid—I’d yet to decide—but I wanted her to be okay.

I needed her to be okay, selfishly, because some days it felt like I was hurtling down a similar path. Roman called me reckless, but I preferred defiant, brave…and hopefully not brutally stupid.

11

Once Roman had left, I took a leisurely shower and brewed myself another coffee before setting off to explore. I switched off the portable heater, but kept it plugged into the socket so it could recharge as per his parting instructions. He’d given me the apartment keys to lock the door behind me, and I had the strange black, plastic card in my coat pocket.

I twisted the ring on my finger as I clomped down the stairs, the feel of the cold metal as foreign—but not unwelcome—as the unknown that I was about to step into. The old world symbolism wasn’t lost on me. We’d replaced wedding rings with tattoos. Roman’s citizen number was branded on my skin. It was for life. This ring on my finger rubbed loosely as I played with it.

I slipped the ring off, and on again.

It was a promise of commitment that could be broken on a whim, and yet it carried a weight that was difficult to define. Knowing I had the ability to remove it gave me the power to keep wearing it. If this was marriage back then, before the fertility plague and the Eastern Coalition, then it wasn’tless,as the Puritans preached. It felt a lot heavier, a whole lot more, even if it could be messy and end broken in hate.

I stepped outside the building onto a busy street. The ghostly quietness of last night had been replaced with a flurry of people moving in all directions.

Pressed with my back to the wall, I stood there a long minute, watching, waiting…? But no one stopped and stared. No one pointed me out with a finger or shouted imposter.

Some hurried with purpose, others strolled, some wore tailored coats over their suits or dresses, others were more casual in jeans and puffy jackets and woolen caps pulled down over their ears. Some walked together, others marched with their heads down.

Some should never have existed, not here in The Smoke.

My jaw tightened as my gaze skimmed the crowds, searching, hunting down each child attached to a mother’s hand, each baby pushed in a pram, each child in their pre or early teens walking alone or in small packs.

I don’t know why I was surprised. If the Eastern Coalition traded eggs to the Outerlanders, why not offer them to the people here?

Maybe it wasn’t surprise that tensed my jaw and racked my shoulders until an ache pulled at my neck. Maybe it was just anger dulled with confusion and acceptance.

Another myth busted.

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