THE DRIFT

Motion is the only law Una understands.

Since walking out of the Stadium she has kept going west, across a Montreal that survives by staying still. Villages that have taught themselves to make no sound at all. A weather station still tracking storms that stopped being storms. A toll gate on the old highway where the wind is wired to report you.

They call the thing they are hiding from the Pressure. It reaches into minds, into machines, into the air, and corrects whatever drifts out of order. Everyone learns its cadence. Everyone matches it.

Una can't. Wherever she walks, it falters.

That should make her safe. Instead it makes her worth owning.

A settlement will take her in, give her walls and food and a place to stop, if she stands where they put her and keeps the Pressure off their roofs. Refusing means the road again, and the road is closing. The Stadium's soldiers have taken Francon, which Una still calls her neighbourhood, and they are working west across the island.

Una has refused every system that ever offered her safety. Refusing kept her alive. It will not take the island back.

That needs a spark.