I smile into my own travel mug. It’s a perfect winter day and we’re heading to our favorite breakfast spot, so all things considered, I’m pretty happy. Here, a few miles inland from the ocean, the sun doesn’t disappear in the winter. It just cools off. I take a breath and savor it. I love the soft light, the crisp breeze. We used to live in a part of the continent where winter meant months and months of oppressively gray skies and dirty snow, and I hated it. I was made to live near water. Mountains. Open land. When I was kid, I used to pretend to be a kite. I’d jump off chairs and tables and eventually dumpsters and squat buildings, hoping to catch the wind.
It usually ended with a scream.
Anyway, I already know I won’t be getting outside as much these next few weeks, so I’m trying to appreciate the time I’ve got with the sky.
We move down the sidewalk, nodding to familiar faces as we pass, Winston and Kenji exchanging barbs. Our neighborhood is located directly above the underground HQ, so, with the exception of the rehab facility—which is a couple miles out—our daily commutes are easy. The elevator in my living room goes straight down, twenty floors. I love it. I love that our headquarters are sleek, state-of-the art facilities but our houses are old. We live in pre-Reestablishment-era residential builds with patched roofs and groaning floorboards. We have spotty yards. Rusting mailboxes. Occasionally, termites. We’ve been renovating slowly over the years, but what matters most is that we all live right next to each other. The first homes we lived in post-revolution were small, refurbished houses, and we liked the style so much we kept the tradition alive even after we moved.
We had no choice but to move.
Things had gotten bad. We were living off the kindness of Castle’s daughter, Nouria, who’d built a sanctuary for her own minor resistance group. She and her wife, Sam, allowed us to shelter there for a while, but our presence was causing them problems, exposing them to danger—and after the fifth terrifying attempt on Juliette’s life, Warner was done. He decided it was time to finally fulfill one of his wife’s biggest dreams: to design a dedicated,fortified mini city purpose-built for our needs; a place where we’d be able to live with the pretense of freedom. After a rough winter, we decided collectively to plant our flag in a more temperate area.
It started out as a single street, then two, and now our humble neighborhood has since expanded into a sprawling campus that includes hospitals and parks and small businesses. The residential zone exists on a more heavily fortified plane of security and access, but everyone who steps foot in this city-within-a-city has to go through a screening process. From the janitors to the baristas to the scientists and engineers. No one comes here unless they work here, and no oneliveshere but us.
It’s informally called The Waffle.
We call it The Waffle because that’s what Roman called it the first time he saw the grid map. He then asked for waffles with extra syrup and said,Uncle James, I have a booger.
“Look,” Kenji is saying to Winston. “It could be worse, right? Take James, for example.”
“What?” My head snaps up in alarm. “What about me?”
Winston looks over at me, cataracts of gloom clearing from his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Okay.”
“Right?” Kenji is nodding, too. “Young, handsome, well-connected. Girls literally throw themselves at him—”
“That happened once,” I protest.
“At least ten times,” Winston says with disgust.
“Literallythrow themselves at him, camp out in the streets waiting for him to walk by—”
“Wait, how is that my fault? People think I’m Warner. That’s why I don’t like leaving The Waffle—”
“—and look at him. Just look at him.”
Winston does as he’s told, and looks at me.
“This ungrateful son of a bitch has been single for years,” Kenji is saying. “At least we’ve been in relationships, right? At least we know how to love.”
“Hey, I know how to love—”
“Yeah,” Winston says again, this time with more conviction. His shoulders straighten. He considers the horizon. “Yeah, okay, that’s true. What else?”
We’ve come to a stop, hovering on the sidewalk just steps from The Waffle’s Waffles.I can already smell the syrup. Powdered sugar. Over-brewed coffee.
“Can we go inside?” I ask, looking around. “I’m hungry, and this conversation isn’t even supposed to be about me—”
Kenji counts off on his fingers. “He still lives at home; he still has night terrors; he still sucks at his job—”
“I don’t suck at my job,” I protest.
“Are you joking?” Winston says, his mood visibly improved. “Your track record is shit lately.”
“The audacity,” says Kenji.
“The stupidity—”
“The girl literallymurdereda man on your watch.”
