HAVEN ✓

One

The Wall soars over my head. All sixty feet of it are pock-marked with moss tunneling along the mortar and I have to lean back to see the iron spikes that crown the thick gray stones. Glossy, broad-leafed ivy has a toehold in the fissures of the rocks, but it only solidifies the permanence of the Wall. It is simultaneously impressive and terrifying. Immemorial. A frisson of apprehension raises the hair at my nape.

My grandmother used to lull me to sleep with stories about how the world was before the Wall was erected. Tucking my eight-year-old self into bed, she would recall her own grandfather's stories of the war on technology, and how they adapted in the aftermath. Her blue-violet eyes, so much like mine, shone in the late lamplight, lost in the past as she smoothed wisps of hair from my forehead, whispering in the dim lamplight.

"Remember this, Sophie. The Wall is a necessary evil, cutting us off from the rest of this savage world. It allowed our ancestors to rebuild a civilized community, rich in newfound industrial science." I feel her lips on my temple as I recall her words. We have survived when the rest of the world fell apart, only because our authorities have punished those who have Breached the Wall.

I shudder at the thought of the wild, untamed Outlanders circulating the Wall, striving for a Breach to destroy us. Once in a blue moon, one of the rugged barbarians will make its way past the Wall, through the woods, and over the levee into Herald. The most recent invader made it all the way to Market Circle before the military caught him, skinny and snarling and half-starved. The Council preaches that they are barely human, and from my experience with them, I couldn't agree more.

"It's so old," Markee exclaims. My best friend all but skips to the base of the Wall, her red waves bouncing behind her. She moves her hands over the rough stones, admiring the ancient strongholds. "Imagine how long it took to build this thing!"

It's the first words she's spoken in half an hour, and her silence was beginning to worry me. Markee is the talker and I am the listener—that's just the dynamic we've always had. She has been my best friend since we started at the same school, grew up in the same neighborhood, and now we are two teenagers spending the last summer before Job Placement sneaking around unpopulated, historic no-man's land that has every cell in my body on edge.

"We shouldn't even be here," I mumble, shaking my head in acceptance. Venturing past the levee isn't a crime, but it is highly dangerous. The soldiers don't patrol this far into the woods. There is only one reason I agreed to step foot past the levee: there is no stopping Markee from going, and heaven knows what trouble she would get in if she went alone. Shaking off my unease, I warily approach where Markee is motioning me over.

"Sophie, come look at this," Markee says. She's crouched low to the ground inspecting the base of the Wall. My feet drag as I draw near. To think that only a few feet of stone separates Herald from the vicious Outlands ties my stomach in knots.

My blood freezes in my veins when I realize what Markee is inspecting. A few feet below the base of the Wall, there is a hole big enough for a human to squeeze through. I'm not sure if it's the fact that we just stumbled upon an Outlander crossing or the excitement in Markee's eyes that makes me more nauseous. It is uncanny to me how she could possibly find joy in this.

Markee lies flat on her stomach and peers through the hole in the Wall, trying to glimpse the Outlands. "I don't believe it."

"What do you see?" A drop of curiosity seeps through my fear. Scrambling to join Markee, I lie on the ground next to her and peer in the shoulder-wide space. All I see is blackness, for the hole is sealed shut with concrete. The knot in my belly unfurls as Markee hops up from the ground and exhales sharply, kicking up a layer of fallen leaves in her typical over-dramatic way, but I grimace. The Outlanders are like dogs tunneling under a fence.