Teegan was crouched by the trangia, bug-eyed behind an oversized pair of lab goggles, the smell of charr wafting from the ends of her hair. Hearing Dec's approach, she set down her tongs and lifted her goggles to her forehead. "No luck?" she said.

Realising his face must've been a mirror to his swirling emotions, Dec did his best to rearrange it into nonchalance. "We have a location." He pointed to the trangia. "Have you got an explosive?"

Teegan smirked. "Yeah. About four different types. Everything we need is in that duffel bag over that there." Her smirk faded. "Where's Rain?"

Dec cringed as a flash of lightning laid bare the grimy, water-slick walls around them. "She's not coming," he said, raising his voice above a rumble of thunder.

"What do you mean she's not coming?" Teegan said, leaning to the side as though to check the space behind him for the Northerner.

"She's gone home," he said. "She had unfinished business that couldn't wait."

Teegan thumbed the ties of her lab coat, worry written into the sleep deprived cavities under her eyes. "She was never going to come with us, was she?" she said.

Dec didn't answer. He was too busy fighting down the storm of his conscious that was threatening to take hold—the storm that was thickening with thoughts of his mother, his sister and the question of how extensive his shadow walking abilities truly were. Was his mother really in hospital in a coma? Had Tommy really secured enough ammunition for the NYR to start their revolution? Was his sister speaking to the police about his disappearance? Had he really been able to enter Stanley's mind and recover memories of the gantt chart? It had been about as difficult as climbing a fence and walking through a neighbours back yard. And Rain's strange, imploring gaze told him he shouldn't have been able to trespass so easily.

Perhaps he'd imagined the whole thing. Perhaps they'd get back to the city to find the packages hadn't been stored at the Post Office. That Adele wasn't in a critical condition at the hospital.

There was only one way to find out.

He crossed the room, pumping his arms as though to physically push aside his thoughts. With a grunt, he shouldered the duffel bag, ignoring the pain in his shoulder.

"Let's go," he said.

"Shouldn't we wait until it's dark? Just in case another convoy comes along?" Teegan shouted after him.

Head bowed against the fine, particle mist, feet squelching the mud in the direction of the city, he shouted, "You can."

It wasn't long until Teegan's footsteps drew close behind, squelching in counter rhythm to his own. She had no luggage and easily overtook him on the downhill while he slowed to find traction in the mud. She waited for him at the fence edge of the next field, eyes cast upwards at the darkening sky. Once he'd caught up, they walked on in the silence of their own thoughts, pausing every now and then to step over the barbed wire tangle of an old fence, or duck through a rusted gate.

They took turns carrying the duffel bag, not speaking as though in fear their voices might break the impending clouds and release the inundation held within. The closer they got to Atunda, the more fickle it seemed to be—like the work of three children conspiring over toy soldiers and plastic guns. What if he found himself stuck in an alleyway surrounded by police with firearms again? What if his shadow walking abilities failed him as they'd done with the dune bugs? What if he'd been wrong about the location of the packages? In reality, they had very little idea of what awaited them in the city and they had no back up plan.

He should've tried to convince Rain stay. Or thought up an ultimatum to make her stay as he'd done on the train. He'd lied when he'd said he could do this without her. And besides, he didn't know if he wanted to. Like an invisible hand, she'd been reaching out to him whenever he seemed about to fall. And now her absence made him feel as though he was standing on the edge of the same precipice as before, but this time, without a parachute.

As the mist thickened and dropped, blanketing the city in darkness, all Dec could think about was how far away the city lights appeared when snuffed by the mist and how bleak the world seemed in the absence of starlight. As the clouds broke and released the storm held within, Dec's mind flooded with another regret he'd been fighting ever since he'd watched Rain walk away after his memory recall. It was a thought he hadn't allowed himself up until then. But now, it inundated and left him gasping for air.

The slick sheen of Rain's raven hair flashed in his mind, the smell of soap on her skin, the way her hands had smoothed her mother's forehead while her voice had kept the gnarled tentacles of his claustrophobia at bay. He realised he no longer found the tea stain of her skin repulsive, but finger-warming like a porcelain cup in steep. He'd grown accustomed to the depth of her dark brown eyes, like the bottomless depths of a wine barrel lined with secrets he wanted nothing more than to draw out and inspect in the light.

Goodbye, Dec. Her last words to him, so final, and yet said with so little emotion that they'd just been words at the time. But now—

He stumbled on a pothole and almost dropped the duffel bag. What if he never saw her again? They were from two different worlds and yet their paths had become so intertwined, it was hard to believe she could be gone just like that.

An ache began in his chest, like a torn ligament that extended into the pit of his stomach. He'd had such a feeling before—when his mum had first been diagnosed with the desert sickness, when his sister had told him she wanted to drop out of school, when Tommy had gone missing after the March Massacres and he'd thought he was dead. It was a feeling that was reserved for his closest family and friends. And the Northerner shouldn't have a place in his chest like that.

He increased his speed, each step an attempt to grind down all thoughts of the Northerner and replace her with thoughts of the city and what they were going to do if things didn't go to plan. But with each step, the gleam of water and the shifting shadows of the downfall in the dusk light drew his mind back to her.

As evening passed into twilight, he kept his head and his eyes averted from the sky, hating the way the soft, trickling runoff soothed his mind and the mist wrapped his muscles in cool relief. Again, he told himself that the ache in his chest was only because he worried they weren't going to be able to destroy the desert dust on their own. Not because he cared what happened to the Northerner, or wanted to see her again.

The claggy clay field had narrowed into a compact, beaten down track before Dec realised just how far they'd come. He'd been walking with his eyes on the ground and his thoughts buried so deep beneath the rhythmic squelching of their footsteps that when Teegan tapped his arm and pointed to the first of the cast iron statues looming over the outskirts of the freeway, he had to rub the daze from his eyes to see them.

He inhaled sharply. They must've been walking for a hand spread of hours to have come to the outskirts of the city on the cusp of midnight. Another few hours and they'd be close enough to touch the stone buildings of the old town and look up at the time on the railway station clock right next to the central post office.

He glanced back up at the enlarged mosquito coil eyes of the desert fly he and Teegan had likened to the city's Minister Bloomfriar. They gleamed in the moonlight, sneering down at him for the way he'd laughed so frivolously on the road back from Smackdown. The comparison seemed less funny now, and more like a terrifying omen of what was to come, a foreshadowing of the shit in which they were soon going to find themselves.

"Do you think things can ever go back to how they were?" Teegan said. It was the first thing either of them had said for hours and her voice pierced the silence like shockwaves from a skimmed rock.

Dec tore his gaze from the bulging bug eyes and said, "Do you want it to go back to how it was?"

Teegan thought for a moment. "I guess not."

Dec agreed. Things had been shit for a long time—for most of what he could remember, bar a few scattered recollections of Quarry Cove. And even those were tainted now in the light of everything that had happened. He didn't think he could ever narrow his mind to a single farm in a small town, its Sunday markets and community meetings. There was a whole world beyond the Northern waters of the Isles, and he was just as responsible for it as he'd been for the pine forest Tommy and he had destroyed many years ago.

"Not far now," he said, trying to keep the tone conversational and to force his wandering mind into a straight line. Up ahead, the city lights grew larger, glimmered under a low hanging fog. "At least nothing's burned to the ground," he muttered, regretting his words as soon as they left his mouth. He knew they were in bad taste – but he didn't expect them to have the effect that they did.

To punish him for the tasteless remark, the city did not burst into flames. Quite the opposite. Right before their eyes, every light flashed in unison before fading to darkness as though an invisible giant had blown out the candles on a birthday cake, then used his thumb to snuff out the smoke.

Dec stammered and turned to Teegan, seeking consolation. But Teegan kept walking, expression devoid of all emotion.

"What happened?" he said, looking down at himself, wondering if his words had somehow caused the citywide blackout.

Teegan's answer was thick with sarcasm. "Don't worry, Declan. It would take more than a senseless comment from you to make the whole city go black."

"But the SolStore lamps... They should be self-sufficient because of the –"

"Looks like the Atundan government has more to answer for than their possession of the desert dust."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I've long suspected their ten year Life Light plan to be a complete scam. Why do you think I powered my apartment with luminite so long? If the solar storage technology existed, the kind they promised would save our city, don't you think I would have found a way to harness that? That's why they were bringing out the solar optics. In the hopes it would lessen our dependence on traditional light forms and stall the revolution."

"So... you saying that the SolStore lights... might not store solar?"

Teegan rolled her eyes. "Well done." She picked up her pace. "Keep walking."