“No,” Poire said. “That’s not possible.”

His words came out slurred. The cold still clung to his thoughts, fogging his mind. Making it hard to understand. He knew the bird-thing was wrong, but he couldn’t say how.

And when the bird-thing opened its beak to answer, Poire could only hear a muffled, distant speech. The whole world felt like it was pulling away from him.

He touched the marks on his neck. The eels, or leeches, or whatever they were, had sawed through the fabric of his cold suit with tiny razor teeth. And when those teeth sank into his skin . . . Was that me, screaming? But now the skin on his neck was scabbed over. The nanite had done a poor job of sealing his wounds. Odd.

That bird-thing was looking down at him, its beak opening and closing rhythmically. He’s talking to me. But he couldn’t hear a word.

Even his hand, his fingers were numb. It felt like he was floating, like the air was made of water. He stared at his fingers, holding them in front of his face. Spread them apart to look at them. He couldn’t feel them. As if these were someone else’s hands, made to look exactly like his.

Is this real? Is any of this real?

“Are you there?” the bird-thing said, but his voice came out muffled. He made a clicking, croaking sound in the back of his feathered throat. Raven-black feathers tipped with gray covered every inch of his body. And when the corvani tilted his head, all the feathers around his neck flattened and moved independently of each other.

No. Not a simulation. Usually, they aimed for perfection. And this being standing over him was ruffled and ragged and muddy, and the creases and wrinkles in his bird-like face belied an old exhaustion.

Then what?

“Ooh,” Poire gasped as realization crashed over him followed by a wave of flushing relief. Everything was so clear. “This is a test. They put me in another one of their stupid tests. But I thought . . .” He looked back at his hands. “I told them I was done. I quit.”

Poire had quit a hundred times over. Each time, they pushed him harder. Threatening him, making promises to him, ignoring him. When he starved himself, they fed him with tubes. When he hurt himself, they dripped nanite into him. He never stopped fighting. Doing everything they didn’t want him to do. That’s when Director Yovan declared him reckless. Violent. Unfit for their program.

The most important thing we’ve ever done, and you’re throwing it all away? And then what?

I don’t care, Poire had said. I don’t care.

Until all his cultivars moved on to new children. All except one. Xiaoyun . . .

It was like watching someone else’s memories crowd into his own. He felt the ground, shuddering beneath his feet, even as the ceiling caved in. Felt Xiaoyun’s fingers digging into his wrist as she dragged Poire. Shoved him into a cold chamber. And . . . somehow, he’d ended up here. In an abandoned metro tunnel, in the dark. Poire’s suit was wet and tight and choking him.

“Xiaoyun,” he said. He tried to pull his collar away from his neck, but still he couldn’t breathe. “I said I quit. I quit!”

The bird-thing—the corvani—held his hands out. Urging Poire to calm down. Urging him with those huge black eyes and feathers and muscles that looked too real.

“Look at me,” the corvani was saying. “Just look at me. That’s all you have to do.”

So Poire looked. He was humanoid enough. Small, tough shoulders with arms that ended in wings, legs bent the wrong way with powerful black talons instead of feet. Despite the massive, leathery beak planted where his mouth and nose should’ve been, the corvani’s face was strikingly expressive. A touch of sadness in the eyes, a twist of long-held grief. It was a hard face, the kind that had grown bitter with age.

Not a costume. And not a sim either.

“Where are we?” Poire heard himself ask.

“Underground,” the corvani croaked. “Maybe a few miles below the Cauldron.”

His voice was raspy and not quite human. But neither did he sound like a bird trying to mimic human speech.

When Poire was younger, when he had been as bright and cooperative as any of the others, the cultivars used to take his whole cohort to visit the labs. They had all kinds of animals there in their glass and metal terrariums. Birds and insects and reptiles, and sometimes fish or other water creatures. Not to mention the plants and protists and fungi.

Now, looking at this corvani, he couldn’t stop thinking of the clutch of black birds they had in those huge, walk-through cages. A dark, knowing feeling sank in his gut.

“Keep breathing. That’s it. Just stay calm. OK?”

“OK,” Poire said. Hundreds of questions poured through his mind. He reached out and caught one. “How come you speak my language?”

“What other language would I speak? No one speaks the old tongue anymore. They outlawed that.”

“I mean, who taught you? Someone had to teach you.”

Eolh pulled his head back at that, confused. “Other avians, I guess. Mother Angsa, maybe.”

“There are others like you?”

Eolh let out a long, low caw. It almost sounded like a sigh. “I can see this is going to take some time. Listen to me, human. You were asleep. That’s how we found you. They had you in, I don’t know, a barrel made of metal.”

“The cold chamber,” Poire said. His body remembered the icy fluids sliding into his veins, putting him under. “How long did I sleep?”

“Yeah.” The corvani scratched the back of his head, where his crest feathers ended. “About that. I don’t really know.”

“What month is it?”

“Month? What season is it? Harvest is about to start. Or maybe it already has. We’ve been down here for a few days.”

Days. That wasn’t so bad. But that didn’t explain why the metro tunnel was flooded, why the labs were rusting, and why the trains were in ruins . . .

And . . .

“How long was I asleep?” Poire asked again. “What year is it?”

“Hmm,” the corvani grumbled. “Depends on who you ask. According to the imperials, the year is ten fifty-five. But that’s the Emperor’s calendar.”

Imperials? Emperor? Every question only sprouted more, like grass in the dirt, threatening to choke out his path. No. He would untangle it all later. Right now, only one answer mattered.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Poire shook his head. “If you can speak my language, then there must be others.”

“Don’t think so.”

“How can you be so sure? When was the last time you saw one of my people?” My people. It felt so strange to say that, as if he were the alien, and this corvani had any right to be standing there. Acting like the world wasn’t all wrong.

“That’s the thing,” the corvani answered. “You’re the first.”

“You’ve never met a human before?”

“No one has.”

Waves of emotion crashed upon the shores of his mind. But they did not wash back out; instead, they kept coming. Disbelief. Confusion. Doubt. Fear. All layering on top of each other. Threatening to pull him under. His suit was too tight and too cold. He couldn’t pull it away, couldn’t get enough air to breathe. Everything was too tight.

His wrist implant should’ve been buzzing at him, sending him messages about his oxygen, his heart rate. Should’ve been warning him and trying to calm him down. But it was dead.

Why is it so hard to breathe in here?

“Hey.” The corvani reached out again. “Focus on me. Tell me your name. You have a name, don’t you?”

He nodded. “I’m Poire. My name is Poire. I haven’t changed it yet.”

“You don’t like your name?”

Poire looked up at the corvani. What kind of question is that?

“No, it’s just my birth name. Everyone gets one. You’re supposed to change it when you start your first life. Though, with the way things were going, I’m not sure I ever would’ve made it.”

“First life?” The corvani cocked his head, blinking twice. “So you are immortal?”

“What? No. No one lives forever,” Poire said. He was about to explain longevity treatments, rejuvenation therapy, cellular replacement—but the corvani seemed less than interested after Poire’s answer.

“Ah,” he cawed, groaning as he sat beside Poire, his talons scraping across the cold concrete. “So is any of it true, then?”

“Is any of what true?”

“You know.” The corvani gestured vaguely. “What they say about you.”

“What do they say about me?”

There was something in the corvani’s eye. The way he looked at him, like he needed something from Poire. Like he was hoping to hear something specific.

“They say you were powerful. All the humans. That you could create worlds . . . or destroy them. They say the humans were gods.”

Were. The way the corvani spoke of humanity as if all humanity was in the past.

Absurd. Poire shook his head. All of this, absolutely absurd.

“I’m not a god,” Poire said. His voice cracked, and he tried again. “None of us are. We’re just people.”

“Oh.” The corvani seemed to deflate at his response. “Then what was that lightning I saw? Out in the lake?”

“I didn’t do that,” Poire said. “At least, I don’t think I did. It was probably a short in the train’s system.”

“Oh . . .”

It was the heaviest ‘oh’ that Poire had ever heard. As if, somehow, this creature was just as lost as Poire.

“So,” Poire said, “what’s your name?”

The corvani made a sound with his beak. Poire couldn’t tell if it was a name or a word that meant ‘leave me alone.’

“Eolh? What kind of name is Eolh?”

“What kind of name is Poire?”

“Fair enough,” Poire said. He wrapped his arms around himself. The cold suit was drying out, but the air in the metro was chiller than it should’ve been. He couldn’t hear any air conditioning, neither the hum of the pumps nor the steadily blasting air of the vents. Just a quiet dripping echoing in the distance.

Xiaoyun’s voice floated into his mind. It’s all up to you now. Something had happened to her. To the Conclave.

Impossible. They were miles underground. And the shield. And Marsim was there, always watching. A true soldier. No. Something very wrong was going on here. The tests were painful. Agonizing in a way that made time seem to stand still.

But if this was a test, it was like no test he had ever taken.

He tried his wrist implant again. It should’ve been charged, since he’d been moving, but the device wouldn’t register even the simplest command.

Dead? Or did I break it? Despite the emergency glow of the lights, it was too dark to see.

“Here,” Eolh said, pulling something out of his pocket. A bright orb that he used as a flashlight.

“What is that?”

“The android gave me her eye.”

“What android? We don’t use androids.”

“Yeah, well, she seemed to know you damn well.” Eolh sighed, and once more, Poire was struck by how real he sounded. “She was the one who pulled you out. You were asleep. I don’t know what I was doing with her. She was protecting you, and I guess . . . I just wanted the money. She died to save me. Stupid. It’s always like this, isn’t it?”

Eolh clenched his fist tight around the eye, separating the light with the shadows of his fingers.

“She died?” That was a strange way to talk about a machine—as if it had a life to give.

But the corvani only nodded. “She was one of those. You know. A believer. She claimed to have read the Unfinished Book. Look, it’s too much to explain. All I know is I’m supposed to take you to the Sahaat because someone is—”

“Stop.”

He said it so suddenly the corvani’s head jerked. His feathers were ruffled up.

“Just stop, OK?” Poire said. “Every time you talk, I only have more questions. None of this matters. I have to go back home.”

“Home?”

“Yes, home.”

The corvani cawed his frustration. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing there. There is no home for you to go to.”

“Stop!” Poire shouted.

“Poire. Listen, I’m not trying to hurt you. But this is the truth.”

“No, it’s not.” Poire stood up, both hands clenched at his sides. “I don’t care what some half bird says.”

“I am not a bird,” Eolh said sharply. “Listen to me, and listen well. She died for you. For no gods-damned reason, she gave her life so that you—whatever the hells you are—could do whatever the hells you’re supposed to do.”

“No,” Poire said again.

It was as if he were back in the Conclave. Screaming and pounding his fists on the door. Refusing to work with them. Cultivar Heller or Bui or any of them shouting back, telling him to go back and do as he was told.

“I am going home,” Poire said slowly.

The corvani reached into his back pocket and pulled out a strip of moldy, cracked leather. He unfurled it and held it in front of Poire’s face. A design like eight petals of a flower, with two of them broken.

“Well, unless your home is right here, I’m not taking you home. Because this is where we’re going.” Eolh jabbed a feathered finger at the center of the design.

“It is.”

Eolh blinked at him. Cocked his head. “It is what?”

“That’s the Conclave. That’s where I live.” Again, Poire felt that surge of relief riding through his body. But this time, it prickled at the back of his neck too.

“Why do you have a map of my home?”