The horizon bled a bruised purple as Sarah walked away from the power station. Every step on the cracked pavement felt like a betrayal of the stillness Elian had purchased with his life. Around her, the city was waking up, but it was not the orderly, synchronized waking Monarch had forced upon them. It was a chaotic, shivering emergence of millions.
She passed a marketplace where the stalls were overturned and empty. A group of survivors sat in the center of the road, staring at their own hands as if they were alien artifacts. They didn't move toward her. They didn't even notice her. They were listening to the wind, to the settling of the buildings, and to the terrifying, newfound texture of their own thoughts.
Sarah reached a fountain that had long since run dry. She sat on the rim, her
