Page 78 of Poster Girl

“I’m on the run,” Sonya says. “With a friend. We want to get away from the city. If I tell him to come here, will you hurt him with that... thing?”

“Not unless he gives me a reason.”

Sonya looks over her shoulder. She can’t see Alexander from here, but she knows where she left him. She calls out, “Sasha!” and hears his footsteps on the fallen leaves. He carries her backpack with him,and his eyes flick between Sonya and the woman and the gun in the woman’s hand, as long as her arm.

“I see,” the woman says, raising an eyebrow. “Star-crossed lovers on the run?”

“Something like that,” Sonya says, because if this woman is keeping Grace Ward captive somewhere in her house, it’s better for her to have romantic notions than to suspect the truth. “We had to leave in a hurry, and we didn’t pack enough supplies. We saw the smoke from the house from a ways off.”

“So the question is,” the woman says, “am I feeling generous?”

Sonya tips her head up and waits. The woman rolls her eyes and beckons for them to follow her inside.

The house smells like wood smoke and baking bread. There’s no entryway to speak of, just a narrow, wood-paneled hallway that reminds Sonya of a coffin. To the right is a living room piled with cushions and sofas with no backs. The walls are lined with bookshelves, but only a few of them are full of books. On the others are bits of old tech. It’s a combination, Sonya thinks, of Knox’s apartment and the Analog Army building full of hair dryers and record players. Old tossed together with even older like a salad. Wires spill over the shelves like vines. This woman would know how to fix her radio.

She leads them straight back to the kitchen. The ceiling is high, with unfinished wood beams stretching across it. The cabinets, too, are wood, unvarnished and rough. But the counters are pristine white, like in a laboratory. Windows make up the wall opposite, displaying the forest, the edge of a lake, and in the distance, the rise of the mountain that was Sonya and Alexander’s North Star.

“Can I wash up somewhere?” Alexander says.

“Not until you give me your names,” she says.

Sonya hesitates. She doesn’t know whether to give her real name or a fake one, doesn’t know anything about this woman’s allegiances.

“I’m not an enemy of those in the Aperture,” the woman says. “Not an enemy of the Triumvirate, either, I suppose.”

She adjusts something on the gun and sets it down, leaning it up against the wall. Sonya’s jaw unclenches by a fraction.

“Then my name is Sonya Kantor,” she says. “And this is Alexander Price.”

The woman—now putting on green oven mitts—lets out a low whistle.

“Kantor. Now, that’s a familiar name,” she says. “I knew your father, Sonya. Did you leave him behind in the Aperture?”

“No,” Sonya says. “He’s dead.”

“Sorry to hear that,” she says. She opens the oven and takes out a loaf of bread with both hands. The smell makes Sonya’s mouth water. The woman sets it on the stovetop and takes off her oven mitts, then leans a hip into the counter. “Well, I guess fair’s fair. My name is Naomi.” She tilts her head. “I invented that thing in your brain.”

Sixteen

“Youare Naomi Proctor?” Alexander says.

“You don’t need to sound so surprised,” she says. “A gal could take offense.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just—you’redead.”

Naomi glances at Sonya. “I take it you keep him around for his looks, not his brains.”

Sonya tries to remember the image of Naomi Proctor from the unit on the history of the Insight. The memories are hazy. Only the vague impression of a severe-looking woman with blond hair comes to mind. This Naomi, her gray hair so fair it’s almost white, her nose straight and narrow, fits that memory well enough. The day of her death, too, surfaces in memory—not just the procession of the coffin through the street, but the service playing on their homescreens all day. Sitting in the living room together, listening to a somber speech given by the head of Insight Regulation, whose name has slipped from her mind. Every gesture of respect for the dead earned DesCoin, so the Kantors performed them all, even the ancillary ones. The day after, with her unfocused eyes scanning all the DesCoin they’d reaped, Julia told Sonya to buy herself a treat.

“They pretended you were dead,” Sonya says, “and exiled you?”

“Not quite,” Naomi says. “Sit down, I’ll get you something to eat.”

They sit on the far end of the sturdy table that stands before the windows. Alexander clenches his hands around the edge of it. It’s a reminder: don’t trust a woman who threatens you with a gun. Don’ttrust a woman who came back from the dead. Don’t trust a woman whose house is the source of Grace Ward’s UIA signal.

Naomi assembles food like someone accustomed to hosting, putting on the water for coffee; slicing bread and apples; pouring nuts into tiny bowls; arranging strips of dried meat. A few minutes later, she sits across from them with a mug of coffee gripped in both hands, the spread of food between them. Alexander is already busy with it; Sonya is more hesitant, breathing in the coffee smell and considering her next move.

“So,” she says.

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