Chapter 20

After several miles of walking into the gray dust and constantly receding horizons that were Terminus, Thane stopped. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the Terminal had nearly vanished; it looked like a speck on the interminable horizon. When I turned back to Thane, he ushered me forward and pointed over a cliff that lay just a few feet ahead of us.

"What?" I asked.

"There." He stepped forward and knelt down at the edge. Too close to the edge, in fact - had I given him the slightest shove, he might have fallen. "Look."

I didn't move. He turned back and reached for my hand again, pulling me down to where he sat. "Do you see that?" he asked, pointing down into the bottom of the canyon again.

I squinted. If I looked closely, I thought I could glimpse buildings, could see people moving back and forth between them.

It had to be an illusion. There was no way people could inhabit Terminus, breathable air or not. There was no potable water, no plants or animals for food, and barely any light. Besides, if the Incipio Council knew about it, they would punish everyone involved. Living on Terminus after its decimation . . . it would diminish the power of the legends. Who would believe that Terminus was dangerous and deserted if people were living on it?

"What is it?" I asked Thane, turning my eyes to him.

"It's exactly what it looks like," he said. "It's a settlement."

"People can't live on Terminus."

Thane shook his head. "That's what they want you to think. This, Miranda, this is the truth. This is what they don't want you to know, why they don't want you to go too far. There are people living on Terminus. There are people opposing the Incipio Council. Do you understand what I'm saying?" he asked, leaning closer to me.

"No."

"Then come on." He stood up, turning away from the cliff, and continued walking along the edge.

"Where are we going?" I asked. He didn't respond.

A sloped path led down into the ravine below the cliff. Thane walked ahead of me, and slowly we made our way across it. The path was wide and well-worn, and it looked like it had been built by people. There was much less risk of falling than I had imagined.

When we reached the bottom, we found ourselves in the shadow of the cliff. The cliff didn't cast much of a shadow due to the cloud cover over Terminus today, but the darkness made the shapes in the ravine move like they were alive. Here, the view of the settlement was easier to see. Ruins and makeshift buildings littered the floor of the canyon, and we could see people. They wore colorful clothes, nothing like the homogenous dark blue uniforms of the citizens on Incipio. Some of them had long, tangled hair that reached to their lower backs. Others had dyed hair in hues of blue, pink, and green. And many of them carried the red weapons that Kalle and I had argued about so many weeks ago.

"This is Tumultus," Thane said, gesturing to the settlement. "They opposed the Council, so now they live here."

"The Council sent them here?" I asked. "Or they chose it?"

"Oh, they chose it," Thane said. "They took the ports down to Terminus, shredded their IDs, and never went back up. The Council didn't know where they'd gone, so they wrote them off as missing, erased them from the records, and went about their business."

"Wait - what?"

Thane nodded. "That's what the Council does. They don't want these people anywhere near Incipio anyway." He gestured to the settlement.

"Are there more of them?" I asked.

"Probably. This is the most prominent and most important one," Thane said. "Even I don't know where the others might be."

I shivered. I'd always thought Terminus was a wasteland, devoid of all life. The fact that people had been living in settlements beneath my feet made me feel ignorant, like I'd been standing on them this whole time.

"There are other ruins, too," he said, lowering his voice. "You can still see how they used the buildings when Terminus was Earth."

I stared at him.

"Do you want to see them?"

After a second of hesitation, I shook my head. "No. I have to go home."

"You don't even have time for one?" he asked, and beneath the mischievous look in his eyes, I could see an undertone of desperation.

I swallowed, thought about it.

"Maybe one," I said finally.