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Three gates were punched out of the Seam to let people through, but they were monitored by armed men and the ever-watchful red eyes of the moving cameras, and everyone who passed through had to show identification while the scanning cameras verified them as human.
    Which was a problem.
    August turned down a narrow half-ruined street that ran parallel to the Seam until he reached an office building, its windows replaced by sheets of steel, a pair of FTF flanking the door. The woman at the front desk offered him a short nod as he passed through security and down a separate elevator to the basement. Small dots of neon paint on the wall marked the path and he followed them through a web of dank hallways to a wall. Or what looked like a wall. Metal sheeting pushed aside to reveal a tunnel, and August made his way along until he reached a matching false wall on the other end. He slid it open, and stepped out into the cellar of a ground floor apartment.
    It was quiet here, and he paused, hating how relieved he felt to be alone again so soon. He gave himself ten seconds, waiting for his heart to slow and his nerves to settle, before he dusted himself off, and climbed the stairs.
    Paris was chain-smoking and cooking breakfast.
    She didn’t even startle when August appeared in the kitchen behind her.
    â€œMorning, doll,” she called, her iron medallion dangling dangerously close to her omelet. Allies on the North side were rare, and extremely expensive, and even then they were risky, but Henry and Paris were old friends, and she’d passed Leo’s inspection. August looked around. Her apartment was . . . cozy, like pictures he’d seen in magazines from before the Phenomenon. Tile and wood and window glass. “Subway pass is on the table.”
    â€œThanks, Paris,” he said, unzipping his FTF jacket and hanging it on a hook by the door. His shirtsleeves had ridden up again, and two rows of black tallies were now showing. He pulled the material down, even though Paris couldn’t see the marks. Couldn’t see anything, for that matter.
    Paris might be blind, but her other senses were sharp. Sharp enough to notice the absence of his violin, the barely audible vibration of its strings within the case. She blew a thoughtful puff of smoke.
    â€œNo concert today?” she asked, dripping ash into her eggs.
    August’s fingers curled the way they always did around the case’s handle but found only air. “No,” he said, digging the Colton Academy blazer from his bagand shrugging it on before the hall mirror. He was surprised to see his features crinkle, almost automatically, into a frown.
    â€œFlynn told me about your music,” mumbled Paris, to herself, and he knew by her tone that when she said your , she meant all three of them. “Always wondered what it sounds like . . . .”
    August buttoned the blazer. “I hope you never know,” he said, heading for the door. “I’ll be back before dark.”
    â€œHave a good day at school,” she called as it closed behind him, and unlike Leo, she actually sounded like she meant it.
    August stepped onto the street and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the Seam safely at his back. And then he turned north, and his eyes widened. He’d braced himself, but the difference between the two sides of V-City still caught him in the chest. North City wasn’t a bombed-out shell. Whatever scars it had, they’d all been covered up, painted over. Here the buildings glittered, all metal, stone, and glass, the streets dotted with slick cars and people in nice clothes—if Harker had enforcers on the street, they blended in. A shop window was filled with fruit so colorful it made August want to try it, even though he knew it would taste like ash.
    Anger flared through him at the sight—the illusion —of this safe, clean city, and the tallies across his skinprickled in warning, their warmth countered by the