Burning Day

Chapter 29

Osipyan was divided into Sectors: the North, East, and West. I got the feeling there was a South, but Aaliyah seemed to be ignoring its existence. I didn't mind, though; the rest of the city was more than enough to keep me occupied.

Our tour began with the North sector, which was basically one giant neighbourhood; rings of homes within each other connected by a spiralling road and side streets branching from the centre out. The homes looked...extravagant, to say the least, standing at three storeys tall with double-door garages in every neutral colour imaginable.

It was everything I'd ever fantasized being mine one day; a stunning home, a loving family, a lavish garden of my own with gorgeous flowers.

"Mostly Gifted Osipyanians live here," Aaliyah said, taking us left down one of the side streets towards the centre of the Sector. Now that she'd gotten time to cool off, her irritability had disappeared, but since we'd entered this sector, what replaced it was an almost contagious melancholy. "Of course, I'm government, so I live downtown near the Tower."

As we approached the innermost ring of homes, Aaliyah stared hauntedly at the circular grassy patch at its core, where a thick, curved white willow tree rose out of the grass. It swayed in the summer breeze, as if waving hello to an old friend. "Don't matter much anyway; it's a pretty sector and all, but I could never bring myself to live here."

"How come?" Gwen asked, brow raised. "This place is great."

"It is, isn't it?" Aaliyah looked over her shoulder at us and smiled sadly, her lips beginning to tremble, which she tried pressing together. "I made sure of it when we built this Sector. This was where my tactical team fought off the last of the United States Army; the place was pretty much destroyed by the time we won. We buried Subject 0003—my old partner—here." Wistfully, Aaliyah's left fingers brushed against the tree, and she pointed off in the distance with her other hand. "The rest are in the graveyard a mile from here. I wanted them to always be surrounded by us, but I won't visit if I can avoid it. I can't."

I stepped up to her side and put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing as though I could force all my sorrow and sympathy through it. "I'm sorry."

At my touch, Aaliyah snapped to her senses, forcing the most strained smile I'd ever seen and wrapping her arms around Gwen and I. "Like I said, it don't matter much. We won't let those terrorists get the best of us again."

As Aaliyah led the two of us away from the heart of the North, Gwen said quietly, "None of those Subjects will ever be alone; If I live here one day, I'll always remember them."

Aaliyah shot her a grateful smile. "Well you're Gifted, aren't you? If you wanted to live here, I don't see why you couldn't."

I frowned. Something about this conversation felt very exclusionary. "And what about me?"

Aaliyah blinked and turned around. "Oh, well...like I said, mostly Gifteds live here. I'm sure you could too."

The uncertainty in her tone with me compared to Gwen bothered me, but I didn't want to make it seem like I was complaining, so I stayed silent until we moved on.

The Eastern sector consisted of tall office buildings, hospitals, and schools, and between them I could see glittering flashes of a lake—Lake Aeternus, Aaliyah said it was called. But that was as close to it as she was willing to go, and promptly turned to lead us through the skyscrapers at the heart of the sector. Their clean concrete and glass told me they were new—I'd guess at most fifteen years old. The only building looking left out was the University of Osipyan. With every mile we travelled away from the North, another pound lifted off Aaliyah's shoulders, her usual grin back. It bewildered me how rapidly her emotions flipped.