The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Thirty-Five

Taffy takes a long time to fall asleep that night, crying so hard over Boots.

When I look at the little spot he used to occupy on my bed, where strands of his fur still remain, my chest aches with tears that I still need to shed, but I have to put my grief on hold. Too many lives are depending on me.

I soothe Taffy as best as I can, and I'm unspeakably relieved when she finally cries herself to sleep. She can't be awake when I sneak out to pull the fire alarm.

My heart is thundering in my throat, fear and excitement warring inside me.

There are so many ways that this could go wrong, but I refuse to think about any of them. Instead I think about the future.

I think about walking out of here, hand in hand with Roan.

I think about the world that is waiting for me to come and explore it.

I think about my everywhere sky.

The hands on the clock tick into position and there's no more time to think about anything.

I glance out of the window, but I can't see anything outside, just black smears of trees beneath the stars. Roan and Rosie are out there somewhere.

Rosie will have set off her pulse by now.

I didn't feel a thing, but it's midnight, so I have to trust that she's done it.

Climbing out of bed, I reach for my shoes. My heart pangs again as I look at the spot that Boots used to sleep in, then I take all the sadness, all the fear, all the uncertainty, and I lock it away, deep inside, where it can't distract me.

Even so, as I creep across the floor and open the bedroom door, my heart climbs into my throat. I have never sneaked out of my room at night before, and a shadow of the old Caia still lurks inside me, afraid of breaking the CC's rules.

I peek out into the corridor.

There are no lights on at night, except the tiny red dots of light on the cameras, which are barely noticeable during the day. There are no red lights on now. The corridor is almost solid with shadows.

I give myself a few seconds to let my eyes adjust, and then I run, as quietly as I can, towards one of the two staircases that separates the girls' half of this floor from the boys'. My heart is throbbing on my tongue.

There's no security in the CC because the place is always monitored by the cameras, but as I clear each floor, I still half-expect to see Handlers emerge from the shadows, batons in hand.

But no one comes, and then I'm on the ground floor and the double doors leading in and out of the place are right there, at the end of the long hallway.

I run, past the gleam of the defunct lifts, past the yawning black mouths that lead to the rec rooms on my left and the mess hall on my right, and then put both hands on the doors and push.

Without Rosie, those doors would have been locked.

Now they silently swing open.

I know that time is absolutely of the essence but as I start moving down the sloping spread of land that leads away from the building, I stop suddenly, overwhelmed by this new world.

During winter, our second exercise drill is carried out in the dark because of how early the sun sets, but I've never been outside this late before.

The world is made of shadows, hugging the sharp edges of the CC, wrapping themselves around the perimeter fence, flowing into the woods beyond. The stars overhead look like crushed glass, glittering brightly in a swathe of dark sky.