It was easy to slip into a routine. Almost too easy.

Wake up. Lace up my boots. Stare into space for a minute to try to get my head around this new reality. Head for a two-minute shower because water wasn't to be wasted. Wish I could head straight for breakfast, but force my feet instead in the direction of the church, on Nova's orders.

For the first few days, Jace and I were granted the luxury of skipping out. It didn't last long. I'd since lost track of the days of the week, unable to tell whether it was Tuesday or Friday anymore, but somewhere about four days in, Nova dropped it into our schedules.

"Prayer?" I'd said when she first told me, unable to resist wrinkling my nose. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Look, Nova," I said, "no offence, but you know I've never been into that kind of thing. In fact, you're the only person I know that is. I'm going to have to politely say no."

"Politely or otherwise, you don't get to say no." She'd folded her arms defensively, and that was when I knew the matter was serious. "It's my thing, every morning. You'll get used to it – just like everyone else did. And, you never know, you might actually grow to appreciate the time to think."

I doubted it, but with everyone else roped in too, I couldn't really say no. It soon became obvious that Art was the only one who managed to get out of it and stay alive. I was dying to know how. If I decided to skip out, my absence would definitely be noticed, and the extra twenty minutes to myself wouldn't be worth getting hunted down by my sister.

It wasn't torture – just tedious. Perched on the pews at the front of the church, I tried to focus on Nova, but her words simply blended into one another. The verses, taken from the battered copy of the Bible she'd recovered from here months ago, were clearly supposed to be inspiring, but I only caught words here and there. Something about redemption, something about our souls being saved, something about God's almighty power.

The sentiment was nice, I supposed. But at the same time, I found myself wondering whether Nova actually believed this stuff, or whether it was more of a fairy tale comfort.

Jace, at least, seemed equally disenchanted. Each time I'd sneaked a sideways glance at him, there'd been no trace of emotion on his face. In fact, he looked miles away – which was something I'd noticed a lot about him lately.

I wanted to talk to him. It hadn't gone well before, but that didn't stop me wanting to check he was okay. He clearly wasn't. The pain in his eyes hadn't been there before, and though I didn't know how to make it go away, I at least wanted to try.

But when the session ended, and Nova stopped talking, he was up and out of his seat before I could get the chance.

And when I saw where he was headed, my heart sunk.

When he reached Nova, her head ducked, and she leaned in to listen to something he was saying. I was too far away to hear, and the gentle buzz of the room obscured everything else. My insides lurched. The sight of them, stood so closely together, sharing a moment not to be intruded upon in such a public space, made me feel sick to my stomach. I could hardly stand to watch.

The right thing to do would've been to tear my eyes away, but the masochistic side to me kept them glued there.

The way he looked at her was different. Different to how he looked at me – which of course made sense, but in reality was a whole lot harder to handle. It felt like a stab in the gut, a physical impact that had me doubling over. The sadness in his eyes I'd so desperately wanted to erase looked like it had started disappearing – but it was my sister's doing rather than mine.

"What's on your mind?"

The voice in my ear sounded unexpectedly, and I jumped. I moved my head to see Art standing there. He hadn't been in the church for the prayer, but had somehow appeared at the right time. His blond hair was slicked back, and once again I found my gaze catching on his eyes: one brown, one green.

"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to scare you. You looked deep in thought, and I wondered if one of Nova's Bible verses had actually got through to you."

Managing to tear my gaze away from Jace and Nova, I rolled my eyes. "It's going to take more than that to convert me."

"Likewise."

"How do you get out of it, anyway?" I asked. "I tried, but she wasn't having it. What kind of special deal have you two got going on?"

"That, you'll never know." He tapped his nose. "Hey, what are you scheduled for today? If it's something you can slip away from, you should come with me. You've yet to discover the excitement of scavenging."

"Scavenging?" I frowned. "For what?"

He shrugged. "Anything I can find. I know it's been a long time since this place was properly lived in, but things stick around for longer than you think. Some of the stuff we've stumbled upon has been pretty useful. It's always worth a look."

I couldn't remember what – if anything – I was scheduled for that day, but overall it sounded like a better option than sticking around. So I nodded.

"Great," he said, sounding genuinely pleased. "Catch you after breakfast?"

***

Art found me again once my stomach was full and, for the most part, I'd pushed the thought of Jace and Nova from my mind.

"Enjoy the eggs? Again?" he asked from behind me as I shelved my tray.

"There have been a lot of them lately," I said. "I don't know what it is, either, but they taste kind of weird."

He looked at me. "Nobody's told you where they come from, have they?"

If there was a way to make me wary of food with a single sentence, that was definitely it. "No," I said. "Why? Is it something weird?"

"Depends on your definition of weird." He shrugged. "I mean, New Londoners eat genetically modified food like their life depends on it, so maybe in the grand scheme of things it's no different. But think about it: have you seen any chickens around this place? If there are any, they're certainly being hidden well. Where do you think the eggs come from?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What, you guys are creating them from scratch, or something?"

"The lab's part of the old university," he said. "The place was full of genetic information. It was a hot research topic back then. Thomas just managed to find the right sequence. Play around with it a little, make a few tweaks here and there, and voila... lab-grown, chicken-free egg."

"Huh." Honestly, it didn't freak me out as much as I thought it would. "Well, you could've fooled me."

As we headed out of the dining hall, the cold breeze hit us square in the face. The plants sprouting between concrete slabs were sprinkled with dew, several flowers beginning to appear, and even in the cold I could tell spring was on its way. It was comforting to see. The seasons had been out of whack for as long as I could remember; though the world had been carbon-neutral for years now, it took considerably longer to offset the decades spent pumping it out. We still felt the effects every now and again, but we'd learnt to deal with the unpredictable and sometimes extreme spells of weather. To see a normal change, at the right time of the year, always felt like a good sign.

"So where do you go?" I asked, once the hubbub of the dining hall was behind us. I found it easier to breathe out here, and the fresh air seemed to fill my entire body. "To scavenge, I mean. How far out before you start stumbling across the stuff no one else can find?"

He considered it for a moment. "I'm not sure. I don't usually have a plan – I just end up where I end up."

"That sounds... incredibly vague," I told him. "Should I really be following you?"

An amused smile crept onto his face; I could see it out of the corner of my eye. "That's a decision I cannot be held responsible for," he said. "You just have to have a sense of adventure. A desire to explore unknown territory. Everything else is pure luck."

I wasn't going to lie – it sounded kind of daunting. Even the small section of the deserted city that Nova and everybody else had sectioned off as their base seemed unknown, let alone anything beyond it. All I'd done so far was move from one place to another. The old apartment block where we slept. The church I would never set foot in if it wasn't for Nova. The dining hall. The makeshift lab. And yet en route to each of these places, I passed so many others. Buildings upon buildings, abandoned and slowly being reclaimed by nature, that seemed to hold their own countless secrets. I wasn't sure how much Nova and the other guys had mapped out, but it didn't seem like a job that could ever be truly completed.

At the same time, though, I felt stifled. Even in such a vast expanse of emptiness, I longed to get out, to see beyond what had quickly become my life. There had to be more out there – and Art was inviting me to find it.

We trekked for a long time, much longer than I expected. After about an hour, less concrete surrounded us, and the road took us out of the dense city centre. The buildings became sparser, and where concrete disappeared it was replaced by green. After a while, we abandoned the path completely, wading into overgrown grass where the dew soaked our boots. And when I looked over my shoulder, no longer able to find the church steeple or anywhere else I recognised, I was overcome with a strange comfort that kept my feet moving forward.

Between me and Art, there was quiet, but it was more of a welcome opportunity to think than the awkward absence of conversation. Even so, I did pay attention to his steps beside me, and they got me thinking. Something about him intrigued me – maybe just what I didn't know, but potentially more. His mismatching eyes were just the beginning.

"Can I ask you something?" I said after a while, gaining the courage to break the silence.

He looked over. I couldn't tell whether he was surprised or not. "Sure."

"How did you end up here?" I asked. "You and Nova."

Once the words sunk in, his brow creased. "She didn't tell you?"

"She doesn't tell me a lot," I told him, which felt strange to say aloud. It was the type of thought that had been confined to my head since I'd arrived here, never daring to make its way out for fear of the consequences. I wasn't scared of Nova as such, but there were things she could do to make my time here less bearable. "It seems like I'm on a need-to-know basis. A very strict one."

"I know how you feel," he said. "That's just Nova. Honestly, I've lost count of how many times I've felt that way since being here."

"I don't understand. We used to tell each other everything. Well – for the most part."

"So she's changed?"

"It's more than that," I said. I wasn't sure why I was saying so much, to someone I barely knew, but the words had been dying to escape for some time now. It didn't matter who was on the receiving end. "I don't know. Sometimes... it seems like she's a completely different person."

For a moment, Art was quiet, thinking on it. Then, "I know I didn't know her before," he said. "But this place, compared to back home... it can change people. It does change people. It's a completely new environment. And Nova, you know... she's at the top of it all, trying to hold everything together. The pressure of that is intense. I know that, and I offer to help – to give her the support she needs. But she hates depending on somebody else. I don't know why, but it's how she works."

"I'm her sister, though," I said. "I thought that would count for something."

"It does count for something." He sounded convincing enough, and maybe I would've believed him, if reality didn't keep telling me otherwise. "You've got to give it time. Give her time."

"There are some things I don't want to wait for," I said. "I want to know what happened."

He let out a long exhale, his breath forming a white cloud in front of his face that disappeared after a few seconds. It was strikingly temporary, which seemed to apply to a lot of things. "It's kind of a long story," he said. "Have you got the attention span for it?"

"A story about my sister breaking out of prison." I couldn't stop the sarcasm leaking into my tone. "I think I'll manage to stay awake."

Of course, the prison thing was only an assumption. I didn't know for certain that was where she'd ended up; it just seemed like the most likely explanation, given the circumstances. Like my parents, the government had been scared stiff by the idea of side effects – the notion that these individuals could lose control at any moment was a threat to society as a whole. In some sense, I understood their position. In their eyes, the safest option was to keep these people away and well-hidden, ensuring the city was safe and fair for all law-abiding citizens.

But, as it turned out, it wasn't so easy to tell the difference.

"Prison." Art repeated the word that seemed to have stood out. "Funny you call it that, actually, because it was never referred to that way. We weren't officially criminals, not at that point... but it's certainly what it seemed like from inside."

"Where were you?"

"Uh... difficult to say, really, because it wasn't like they gave us a map. We were underground somewhere. The whole place was a maze – more dark tunnels than anybody could keep track of, which was probably the point. It was a miracle we found our way out at all."

"I was there," I said quickly. The memory had returned all of a sudden, triggered by the mention of the underground. Whatever part of my brain had been pushing it back had come loose, and now all I could think about was those hours spent trapped down there with Henry, Orla and Verity. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but that didn't make the sense of panic feel any less real. "They took me down there, when I got myself into a bit of trouble."

"Then you can probably imagine how soul-destroying it was, being stuck there for months on end," Art said. "Honestly, if I hadn't met Nova, I probably would've given up long before."

I waited. He seemed deep in thought, perhaps reliving the experience, and it felt wrong to interrupt.

"It was both luck and circumstance," he said. "We were thrown in a cell together – I don't know whether they were trying to save space, or whether they were hoping we'd lose control at the same time and finish each other off. That would've been nice and convenient, I suppose. From the moment we were put together, we pretty much talked of nothing except ways to escape. But there weren't any – that much was obvious. We weren't going anywhere without outside help."

I chewed on my lip. A strange sense of guilt was creeping in: one I couldn't hold back. For the last two years, this had been what Nova was going through. Being locked underground, making desperate plans with a stranger about how to break out, risking life and limb just for another chance. I thought I'd been doing something – at least trying to look for her. I'd tried to get answers from my parents, linked up with Jace, taken risks where they might've led to new information.

And yet, at the same time, I hadn't really tried. In some sense, I'd been no different to Mum and Dad, who carried on with their daily lives as if nothing had changed. I'd carried on attending school each day, seeing my friends, caring more than anything about being admitted to UNL. And while I'd claimed to care about my sister at the same time, the truth was... my vision of university life never included her being back.

In my mind, she was already gone.

"How did you get out?" I asked, my voice weak and timid, shrunk by this newfound sense of shame. "Eventually?"

I watched as the smallest of smiles crept onto Art's face, totally unreadable. "Thomas."

Wait, what?

"The government wouldn't let BioPlus near the place, for obvious reasons. They thought they'd find some legal loophole and empty their cells of prisoners in an instant – which of course would ruin all their efforts to keep them out of the city. So BioPlus started sending them in undercover. Couldn't use senior staff, of course – they'd be recognised too easily. But who else happened to be there? Fresh-faced Thomas, right out of university, the most eager candidate on their new graduate scheme. With enthusiasm and a face nobody would recognise, he was the perfect guy for the job."

"Thomas," I repeated, because my brain was having trouble processing it. "Thomas broke you out of prison."

"I mean, in an ideal world, I'd have been the hero who managed it all by myself," he said, with a small chuckle. "But that'd be depriving Thomas of the credit he deserves."

"Huh." I mulled it over in my head. "That's not what I expected."

It wasn't an insult – just an observation. Twenty-something-year-old Thomas wasn't the guy you'd envision being a high-profile criminal, not with the long hair, thick glasses, and the way he looked so at home behind a lab bench. Perhaps the quiet ones were those to watch.

"I don't think corporate life at BioPlus was quite as exciting as he imagined," Art said. "Still, can't say we didn't change things for him. He kind of ended up giving himself a promotion, since he's now their main contact outside New London."

"That's impressive."

"Everyone here's impressive," he said, with unexpected sincerity. I looked over, studying him, trying to read what lay behind those mismatching eyes. "That's why we're not in the capital anymore."

It got me thinking, and part of me wanted to ask him to elaborate. Most of the people here remained mysteries to me, and I had no idea about their stories, what sequence of events had brought them here. However, I didn't get the opportunity to ask anything else. This was the moment our footsteps started to slow, sinking slightly into the wet, untouched ground, and we looked to the denser patch of woodland ahead. Just over an hour's walk, and we were well and truly out of the concrete city ruins.

Ahead was to be explored.

Art tore his gaze away from the sight before us and looked at me. "This is the kind of thing I was looking for," he said. "Let's go."

-----------------

Hi, guys! Merry Christmas Eve! The general consensus on the last chapter was that you guys wanted the chapter a day early, so here I am with my Christmas present to you.

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- Leigh