Chapter 23 · Mom's Key

The girl's still dripping tank fluid when she says it again.

"Mom's alive."

I can't move. Can't breathe. The words hit like sand in the lungs and I'm choking on them because they don't make sense. Mom died when the shelter collapsed. I know that. I think I know that. Except there's this gap in my head where her face should be and now this girl—whoever the hell she is—is standing in Ashmark's safehouse saying the one thing that could crack me open.

"Kai." Ashmark's hand on my shoulder. "Kid, you hearing this?"

I shake him off. My fingers are still humming from the sand I used to pry open the tank, and I can feel it—another piece gone. Something small. Maybe the name of a street in Shelter 9. Maybe the taste of the protein bars we used to trade. It's always small things first, then the big ones start crumbling.

"Who are you?" I ask the girl.

She wipes fluid from her face with the back of her hand. She's maybe fourteen, fifteen. Dark hair plastered to her skull. Her eyes are the color of storm glass—gray with flecks of something bright and wrong.