On my first full day of freedom, I woke up beside Kyer on the beach, deafened by the roar of the ceaseless surf.
Every muscle in my body ached, and sleeping had only stiffened my bones. The night before, when we had made our escape from the Colony, we were optimistic about what lie ahead. Hand in hand, we ran up the ramp onto the bridge, our shoes clinking faintly on the metal. As the clouds faded behind us, I had laughed into the sky above, and the twinkling stars seemed to laugh back.
We were free.
But the bridge seemed to stretch into eternity. Our steps slowed from a brisk run to a trot, then to a jog, and finally to a winded walk. A stitch in my side ached each time I moved my leg, and I pressed a hand under my ribs to try to make it stop hurting. Beside me, Kyer took deep breaths in through his nostrils and out through pursed lips. Our walk lost its vigor, and became a sort of shambling forward motion.
Finally Kyer held up a hand. “I can’t…”
“We have to keep moving,” I told him. I grabbed his arm and slung it over my shoulders, hoping to help him along, but he was sweaty and hot, and his weight bore me down.
“Just a few minutes, Aine,” he gasped. Before I could protest, he sank to the concrete beneath our feet and crossed his legs in front of him, then leaned his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. His voice was muffled when he spoke again. “Give me five minutes, please. That’s all I ask.”
I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t tired, too. I was still afraid the Overseer would send Officers after us, but when I looked back the way we had come, the bridge was empty. In the darkness, the clouds covering the Colony seemed to glow with an inner light, creating a grayish bubble at the end of the bridge, but it looked so far away. We’d come quite some distance, and if anyone followed us, we would be able to see them in plenty of time to run.
That was, if we couldrun. We had to get our strength back first.
We had to rest.
I sank to the ground beside Kyer. His tunic clung to his sweaty back, and when I rested my cheek on his shoulder, I felt his body heat sear my skin. My lungs burned as I gulped in breath, trying to calm down my rapid heart. “Just a few minutes,” I agreed, rubbing my face against his arm, partly for comfort and partly to wipe away the sweat trickling from my brow.
Kyer dropped his arm onto my leg and pulled it closer to his in a lazy hug. “We should’ve walked with the girls each week,” he said with a sigh.
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“At rec time,” he explained. “The past few years you and I fell out of actually doing anything physical. Maybe a game here and there, but nothing to build up our endurance. We’re out of shape.”
“We didn’t need endurance in the Colony,” I pointed out.
Kyer sighed again. “I think we’re going to need a lot of it for whatever lies ahead.”
What didlie ahead? We had no clue. Below us, I could hear the waves lap against the pilings, but it was too dark to see the sides of the bridge from where we sat, so it felt as if we were in the middle of nowhere. The sky seemed to wrap around us completely—only the stars and a faint sliver of moon gave any sense of up or down. The clouds behind us gave us a sense of direction, if only something to run away from.
If we could run.
Ahead, there was nothing but darkness. For all I knew, the bridge could stretch around the entire world and deposit us on the southern tip of the Colony, putting us right back where we had started. Or it could end halfway out into the ocean, leaving us with nowhere left to go.
When I mentioned this to Kyer, though, he gave a sort of breathy chuckle. “Who builds a bridge that goes nowhere?” he wanted to know.
“Maybe it really isdestroyed,” I said. “Maybe just not right where we could see it from the Colony. Maybe it’ll get us within sight of an opposite shore and then just end. Then what?”
“Then we swim.” Kyer slapped my knee, then leveraged himself on my leg to help him stand. “Come on. Let’s see where this leads. But no more running, or I’ll fall over right here and you’ll have to drag me the rest of the way.”
I laughed. “Like I have the energy for that.”
Putting our backs to the clouds and all they hid, we continued across the bridge. Our pace was slower than what we had started with, but it would be easier to maintain in the long run.
