Reached

Society, by the next generation the Outer Provinces might not show on the maps at all. It makes me wonder what’s out there that I know nothing about and how else the Society might have altered maps over the years. There must be a world past the Enemy territory. How much has been erased and taken away?
    I wouldn’t care how small the world became as long as I had Cassia at the center of mine. I joined the Rising so we could be together. But they sent her back to Central and now I keep flying because that’s the best way I can think of to get to her, as long as the Society doesn’t shoot me down.
    There’s always that risk. But I’m careful. I don’t take unncecessary chances like some of the others who want to impress the Chief Pilot. If I die, I’m no good to Cassia. And I want to find Patrick and Aida. I don’t want them to think that they’ve lost another son. One is enough.
    They think of me as their own, but they always saw me as who I was. Ky. Not Matthew, their son who died before I came to live with them.
    I don’t know much about Matthew. We never met. But I know that his parents loved him very much, and that his father thought Matthew would be a sorter someday. I know that he was visiting Patrick at work when an Anomaly attacked them.
    Patrick survived. Matthew did not. He was just a kid. Not old enough to be Matched. Not old enough to have his final work assignment yet. And certainly not old enough to die.
    I don’t know what happens after we die. It doesn’t seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us. Maybe in a different place, on another plane.
    So. Maybe I’d like to take us somewhere higher, above the world entirely. It’s colder the farther up you climb. It could be that if I flew us high enough, all the things my mother painted would be waiting, frozen.
    Dead man breathing
    I remember the last time I saw Cassia, on the bank of a river. The rain had turned to snow and she told me that she loved me.
    Dead man living
    I bring the ship in fast and smooth. The ground comes up to meet me, and the sky shrinks down from being all that I can see to a line on the horizon. It’s almost completely dark.
    I’m not dead at all. I’ve never been more alive.

    The camp feels busy tonight. “Ky,” someone says as they pass by me. I nod in return but keep my eyes on the mountains. I haven’t made the mistake of getting too comfortable with people out here. I’ve learned my lesson, again. The two friends I had in the decoy camps are both gone. Vick’s dead and Eli’s in those mountains somewhere. I don’t know what happened to him.
    There’s only one person here who I’d call a friend, and I knew her from the Carving.
    I see her when I push open the door to the meal hall. As always, even though she stands near some of the others, there’s a little circle of isolation around her, and people look at her with admiring, perplexed expressions. She’s widely regarded as one of the best pilots in our camp. But there’s still space between her and everyone else. I’ve never been able to tell if she notices or cares.
    “Indie,” I say, walking up to her. I’m always relieved to see her alive. Even though she’s an errand pilot like me, not a fighter pilot, I always think she might not make it back. The Society’s still out there. And Indie’s as unpredictable as ever.
    “Ky,” she says without preamble. “We’ve been talking. How do
you
think the Pilot’s going to come?” Her voice carries, and people turn to look at us. “I used to believe that the Pilot would come on the water,” Indie says. “That’s what my mother always told me. But I don’t think that anymore. It’s got to be the sky. Don’t you think? Water isn’t everywhere. Sky is.”
    “I don’t know,” I say. This how it always feels to be with her—a mixture of amusement and admiration and exasperation. The few trainees remaining around her mutter excuses and start across the room, leaving us alone.
    “Do you have an errand tonight?” I ask her.
    “Not tonight,” she says. “Are you off, too? Want to walk to the river?”
    “I’m on duty,” I say.
    “Where are you going?”
    We’re not supposed to tell each other where our assignments are, but I lean closer, so close that I can see the dark blue flecks in the light pools of Indie’s eyes. “Central,” I say. I waited until now to break the rules and tell her because I