Unravel Me: The Juliette Chronicles Book 2

wasteland. The air is icy and sharp, dead leaves dancing around us. The few trees still standing are waving in the wind, their broken, lonely branches begging for companionship. I look left. I look right. I look straight ahead.
    There is nothing.
    Castle told us this area used to be covered in lush, dense vegetation. He said when he first sought out a hiding place for Omega Point, this particular stretch of ground was ideal. But that was so long ago—decades ago—that now everything has changed. Nature itself has changed. And it’s too late to move this hideout.
    So we do what we can.
    This part, he said, is the hardest. Out here, we’re vulnerable. Easy to spot even as civilians because we’re out of place. Civilians have no business being anywhere outside of the compounds; they do not leave the regulated grounds deemed safe by The Reestablishment. Being caught anywhere on unregulated turf is considered a breach of the laws set in place by our new pseudogovernment, and the consequences are severe.
    So we have to get ourselves to the compounds as quickly as possible.
    The plan is for Kenji—whose gift enables him to blend into any background—to travel ahead of the pack, making himself invisible as he checks to make sure our paths are clear. The rest of us hang back, careful, completely silent. We keep a few feet of distance between ourselves, ready to run, to save ourselves if necessary. It’s strange, considering the tight-knit nature of the community at Omega Point, that Castle wouldn’t encourage us to stay together. But this, he explained, is for the good of the majority. It’s a sacrifice. One of us has to be willing to get caught in order for the others to escape.
    Take one for the team.
    Our path is clear.
    We’ve been walking for at least half an hour and no one seems to be guarding this deserted piece of land. Soon, the compounds come into view. Blocks and blocks and blocks of metal boxes, cubes clustered in heaps across the ancient, wheezing ground. I clutch my coat closer to my body as the wind flips on its side just to fillet our human flesh.
    It’s too cold to be alive today.
    I’m wearing my suit—which regulates my body heat— under this outfit and I’m still freezing. I can’t imagine what everyone else must be going through right now. I glance at Brendan only to find him already doing the same. Our eyes meet for less than a second but I could swear he smiled at me, his cheeks slapped into pinks and reds by a wind jealous of his wandering eyes.
    Blue. So blue.
    Such a different, lighter, almost transparent shade of blue but still, so very, very blue. Blue eyes will always remind me of Adam, I think. And it hits me again. Hits me so hard, right in the core of my very being.
    The ache.
    “Hurry!” Kenji’s voice reaches us through the wind, but his body is nowhere in sight. We’re not 5 feet from setting foot in the first cluster of compounds, but I’m somehow frozen in place, blood and ice and broken forks running down my back.
    “MOVE!” Kenji’s voice booms again. “Get close to the compounds and keep your faces covered! Soldiers at three o’clock!”
    We all jump up at once, rushing forward while trying to remain inconspicuous and soon we’ve ducked behind the side of a metal housing unit; we get low, each pretending to be one of the many people picking scraps of steel and iron out from the heaps of trash stacked in piles all over the ground.
    The compounds are set in one big field of waste. Garbage and plastic and mangled bits of metal sprinkled like craft confetti all over a child’s floor. There’s a fine layer of snow powdered over everything, as if the Earth was making a weak attempt to cover up its ugly bits just before we arrived.
    I look up.
    Look over my shoulder.
    Look around in ways I’m not supposed to but I can’t help it. I’m supposed to keep my eyes on the ground like I live here, like there’s nothing new to see, like I can’t stand to lift my face only to have it stung by the cold. I should be huddled into myself like all the other strangers trying to stay warm. But there’s so much to see. So much to observe. So much I’ve never been exposed to before.
    So I dare to lift my head.
    And the wind grabs me by the throat.

TWENTY
    Warner is standing not 20 feet away from me.
    His suit is tailor-made and closely fitted to his form in a shade of black so rich it’s almost blinding. His shoulders are draped in an open peacoat the color of mossy