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numb. I splashed some on my face and slipped the bag back in my pocket.
    When I stepped outside my father was standing right beside the door, just inches away. His arms were folded. “Feeling better?” he asked, his eyes lingering for a moment on my hands, which were still wet.
    I brought them to my cheeks, willing the soft, red skin back to normal. “I have to lie down,” I said. “I won’t be able to make it to the Outlands. Not like this.”
    My father tilted his head to one side, studying me. “I can’t go see Charles alone,” he said. “Come now, it will be a quick visit. You’ll be back within the half hour.” His features hardened, and I knew then it wasn’t up for discussion. His hand came down around my arm, guiding me toward the door.
    THE RIDE WAS ENDLESS. THE CAR LURCHED AT EVERY CORNER , the cabin thick with the smells of leather and cologne. I opened the window, trying to get some air, but the Outlands held the dry stench of dust and ash. My hand was at my waist, feeling the soft flesh of my belly for the mound that had not yet appeared. I knew I’d missed my period and had wondered if it was possible I was pregnant, but everything in the past months had gone by quickly, somewhere outside me.
    Moss had stolen a tattered T-shirt from the box of items recovered from the airplane hangar. There was a C on the tag, the fabric thin from so many wears. Alone in the suite, Caleb’s shirt balled in my hands, I was certain that when he died a part of me had died with him. I couldn’t feel anymore, not the way I had when he was here, inside the City. The days in the Palace seemed endless, filled with stilted conversation and people who saw me only as my father’s daughter, nothing more.
    I picked at the thin skin around my fingernails, watching as the car sped closer to the construction site. The list of slights against Charles took on significance now. Things I’d done or hadn’t done felt like more reasons he’d tell my father the truth. I’d been the one to insist he leave the bed that first night. I couldn’t stand it when he looked at me too much, when he talked to me too much, when he talked to my father too much, when he said anything positive about the regime. Though there were moments when things were bearable, most of the time we spent together in the suite was marked with his questions, his effort, and my silence or criticism.
    “Genevieve, I’m speaking to you,” my father said. I flinched when he touched my arm. “We’re here.”
    The car had stopped outside a demolition site. They’d torn down an old hotel that was used as a morgue during the plague. It had been boarded up for more than a decade, the bones of victims still inside. A few bundles of flowers sat on the ground—wilting roses, daisies that were now shriveled and stiff.
    The site was blocked off with plywood fencing, but there were openings leading down to the massive crater in the earth. I got out, walking toward a break in the wall. “Genevieve,” I heard him call behind me. “That’s not for you to see.”
    About thirty feet below the earth was a giant pile of rubble. A bulldozer pushed concrete back, against the edge of the foundation. Another crane sat motionless, its giant yellow fist lowered to the ground. Throughout the site, boys from the labor camps were clearing brick and ash using shovels and wheelbarrows. They were thinner than the boys I’d seen inside the City previously. There’d been rumors that with the liberation of the camps, the boys who’d been here at the time were now trapped and worked doubly as hard to make up for the others.
    One of the older boys pointed at us from below. Charles turned and started up the incline, pausing for a moment by a tangled heap of steel rods and concrete. He yelled something at two younger boys who had their shirts off. They were darting around the far end of the site, kicking something. I squinted against the sun, slowly making out the dark hollows in its side.