The massive iron door clanged shut behind her, and its echo reverberated down the flagstone hall. Lulu’s ears hurt, but such a small price to pay for the chance to get inside the prison. She’d paid off prison guards, wardens, matrons, waylaying them on their way home from the prison. A couple of her friend Idra’s sapphires had served her purpose, and she’d sold them for a fistful of bills. That was the easy part.

A beetle-browed guard—one she didn’t know—demanded her papers. She handed them over, keeping a placid, amiable, but confident look on her face. She hoped she achieved that; over the years, she’d trained herself on maximizing the use of facial expressions, raising one’s eyebrows when meeting someone (she’d done that just now, signifying openness and a willingness to greet the other), blinking a bit more often than usual, displaying likely acquiescence to what the other had to offer. Simple things. Hopefully effective. Especially here.

He held on to her papers when he’d finishing reading them, and she looked him in the eye. She waited for his pupils to dilate—meaning he was willing to hear what she had to say—and when they did, she said she hoped her papers were in order.

“They’re correct,” he said. “As far as I can see. But I haven’t been informed why you’re here.” Lulu said she was incredibly sorry; she had an appointment to take the prisoner Blaise Reiss home to her family. She’d been informed by the Government that Blaise was to be released today, and the bottom paper was the officially granted release application. He stiffened his chin. A befuddled look came into his eyes.

“The pages are jumbled—the release paper should have been on top,” he scowled. “You’ll have to talk to the Administrator. Take a seat on the chair down the hall.” It could have been worse; he could have thrown her out altogether. After all, most of the documents she’d given him had been forged and doctored. She hadn’t expected to be let in on the first try. She sat on the none-too-clean chair, trying not to put her hands on the armrests. She didn’t want to feel the dried sweat of anxious souls who knew their fate would be determined within these walls. This administrative part of the prison was square and squat, with low ceilings and dim lighting. Utilitarian, unadorned, no bronze busts of former wardens or statues of the goddess of justice. Leaden, deadened. She sat back, intending to look blameless. Just visiting a prison made you feel guilty. Of course she was guilty—under the eyes of the law. All kinds of fake identities, hers and the people she was charged to help, thefts, small and larger, anything that could be sold or bartered.

She sat there for a long time. She knew the longer she waited the more imperious the Administrator would be. She’d been working underground for years, since she’d carried messages in her school backpack. She was recruited because of her face, not for especially good looks, unfortunately, since beauty would have served her well. Her face was mobile, they told her, with emotions flitting across it at will. You wanted angry, she’d give you angry. Shyness, with the slight duck of her head, fine by her.

Her mother had been an actress who’d bequeathed her the ability to call down all the emotions befitting a stage actress, with the addition of wide spaced green eyes, flaming auburn hair, a lissome figure. Her mother had played mostly on community stages. She’d lacked something, a sharp intelligence that would tell her who was coming up and who was going down, which director to play up to, which to glide away from. Thinking only of the part, an Ophelia, a Cordelia, all arts no smarts. From her father she’d gotten her shrewdness, his lackluster hazel eyes, his foolish hair like grizzled corn cobs, his long, thin-lipped face.

She’d realized that street smarts could take the place of beauty. Her mother taught her to smooth, tone, highlight, dab on, cover, reveal so that she too could appear beautiful—or withered as the case might require.

“You’ll be a wonderful actress,” her mother had said. “You have physical beauty—no, it’s not only because I’m your mother—but you have a spirit flaming up, making your eyes glow with passion or despair. A life force, swirling up from the earth ...”

“And popping out of my eyeballs like a cartoon character,” Lulu finished for her. “But all right, I’ll apply to acting school.” Her mother looked so radiant when she was pleased. And it was so easy to make her mother believe her.

Her father was not so malleable. “Ridiculous,” he said. “You’re going to take direction? Please. You’d only be happy if you were the head of a battalion.” Lulu had no choice in the end, which infuriated her. It took her a while to realize that nobody but her parents cared for what she thought. The Government shut down the theaters, citing moral and political degradation. Plus a drain on the Government’s pockets at a time of possible war. They had funded the theaters, although the people were still aware enough to know the cash came from their taxes. Now that money was going to be used for other things, to protect the nation, for munitions and fortified prisons. Later the Government realized it didn’t have to give reasons for anything.

Without school Lulu rode aimlessly around on her bike with her girlfriends, commiserating with each other for not being able to see their crushes or other girls who lived too far away. They went to the stores for their mothers, stealing the obligatory piece of gum or chocolate, until the stores ran out of candy, then fruits, fresh vegetables, meat, milk. Families with boys were lucky, because most of them had few qualms about stoning squirrels, who’d become as tame as puppies over the years, folding their paws on the tummies, expecting a handout. The girls broke into two factions, those who thought the boys who didn’t hunt were darling and sweet and poetic, and those who thought the hunters were manly and sexy.

“Both those types of boys are crazy,” Lulu said. The girls had left their bikes piled up on the uncut grass of the local park, while they sat in the shade of a hundred-year oak. “Merely romantic guys some of you are gaga about are just setting themselves up to starve. And the other he-men types you’d be sick of in a day—no soul left to consider the stars or the little universes inside us.” Lulu talked like that in those days—pragmatic yet thinking herself soulful.

Coraline, her at-the-moment best friend, said that Lulu should just let the girls chitchat. “My parents went on a camping trip once with their friends and they didn’t bring enough food. So there they were miles from a store, and they had to make do with the scraps they had left. Their way of coping--talking about food, they told me, the best meals they’d had, their favorite restaurants. They couldn’t help it. And we can’t stop talking about boys.” The other girls screamed their approval. Some jumped up, linked arms, and swirled around until they fell breathless on the ground.

“I was just saying that making heroes of one group of guys or another ...” Lulu stopped. Two women, perhaps mother and daughter, were walking on the path below. Arm in arm, each clutching a parasol, they wore long dresses, an older style, patterned with sprigs of flowers. The girls watched them, eager to observe new faces. “Genteel poverty,” Lulu said. “Old aristocratic family, no money.”

“How do you know?” Selma asked. “You’ve met them before?”

“No, from books, silly. We used to have tons of them. I hid a few, but don’t ever repeat that. Cross your heart.”

“Hope to die,” Selma said. All the girls solemnly repeated the phrase.

“Just kidding,” Lulu said, smiling the way that brought out her dimples. But of course she wasn’t.

The women walked up the hill, closer to them, the young one graceful with strong strides, the older one huffing but not too much. Her daughter was watching out for her, and she settled down on a bench nestled under an old beech. They talked about the beech, how it must be at least a hundred and fifty years old, but still so healthy. The girls could hear them, so probably the women could hear them as well, but they didn’t care. They were harmless, obviously.

“Two old maids,” Coraline said, with a shrug of a shoulder that meant she wouldn’t be one.

Lulu didn’t comment on the stupidity of the remark. She was the straggler when the girls picked up their bikes and walked them down to the road. She glanced back at the women, and the older one nodded her head. She wouldn’t mind talking to them.

That happened sooner than she’d thought—the next morning when her mother had commissioned her to find flour in one of the shops. There wasn’t any, the grocer said, sold out. They say a new shipment will come next week. Or the next. His chins were crumpled onto his neck like stale doughnuts. He turned to the next customer, continuing his round of regrets. She kept her head down as she walked outside. She knew her mother still had a store of foodstuffs in the cellar, crated up to keep out the rats who were getting hungry too. But you had to go out every day in case something came in. She knew the government was breaking down, her father speaking to her quietly when her mother was in another room. He didn’t want to upset her mother, whom he thought was fragile and nervous. Of course her mother knew whatever was common knowledge, but they’d felt the need to protect her. An actress, you know, her father would always sum up.

She wasn’t watching where she was going, her thoughts sidetracking her, and bumped into someone outside the shop’s door. Both of the visiting ladies waved off her apologies, and each looped an arm through hers. “So nice to see someone we recognize,” she said, adding that she was Anna and her friend was Dagmar. Anna was the younger of the two. Lulu guessed by about a dozen years. They steered her to the café/bar next door and pushed open the door, its bell tinkling their arrival. Besides the manager, they were the only ones in the place. The women ordered three lemonades, and after the bartender mixed them, using a too-bright yellow powder, he walked out and took a cigarette from his back pocket.

“We’ve been dying to meet you,” Anna said. “Me and Dagmar.”

“You were? Do you need a babysitter? But you don’t live around here.” Lulu was confused and flattered. She stared into two pairs of olive-green eyes.

“We’ve met your father. At meetings.”

Maybe they were recruiters from a college, but then they’d know that colleges in the entire Southeast had been put on extended intersession. Until finances in the region improved. And the Government found replacements for the teachers who’d been fired for holding unacceptable views. Judging by their dated dresses, these women were remnants of a distant past.

“As you know—being your father’s daughter—the Government is crumbling, and the Guard found just the opening they needed to gain control of not only the Southeast but soon the entire country. We’re part of a third group that wants to bring down both these groups.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re very misguided. What can two women, out of touch I’m afraid, actually do?” Things hadn’t been disastrous yet in their town, but shortages were getting worse. Lulu couldn’t overlook that. She felt she left childhood, stepped across the line into an age she couldn’t name.

“We just want to look harmless,” Anna said. “So people look at us as odd and dotty.” She ran her fingers through her frizzy curls. Her fingers were too thin and fragile to be a threat to anyone.

“We’d like you to work with us,” Dagmar said. She might have been the older of the two, but she appeared sturdier than Anna, her voice deeper, forceful. Lulu couldn’t hold her stare.

“Carrying messages,” Anna said. Arms crossed, she caressed her pointy elbows, as if soothing herself and Lulu. “You’ll receive a sealed envelope from time to time. Voila.” She took one out of her pocket, square, addressed in discreet handwriting, and handed it to Lulu. “You never open it, just deliver it to the address. Any specifics, like slip under side door, are written in pencil under the address. That’s it. For now. Simple, right?”

“Is this dangerous? Why should I do anything for you? You haven’t told me a thing that would make me want to help you.”

“These are dangerous times. Both the Government and the Guards fighting them are in a power grab. Neither have plans to work for the average person. Look around—a decayed city, hungry people. There are no newspapers to tell you the facts now, but your age group didn’t read them much anyway.”

“I did,” Lulu said.

“That’s why we chose you.”

“And me riding my bike around can do any good?” The earth had always turned, spinning Lulu with it, but now she realized how precarious life is on the planet. She had to hold on and not fly off like dust in the wind. She’d lost her composure. She was breathing too fast. Unsettled.

“There was a saying, years and years ago,” Anna said. “War is not good for children and other living things. Your part in this requires no planning, just being discreet.” Lulu felt a pang of disappointment. Do you already want to do more? she chided herself. Anna stood up, smoothing the bodice of her bizarre dress. Dagmar’s dress hitched up when she stood—she was lean and rangy, her collar bones rising from her hollow chest. Lulu stared at their boots—tooled leather with sterling snakes climbing up the sides and steel-capped toes. Fighting boots.

Dagmar nodded. “Some more old words, One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”

“Over me?” Lulu said.

“No. You’re with us, a partisan.”

For years Lulu thought about getting identical boots when she pedaled furiously down back roads, certain she was followed; when she sweet-talked and big-eyed her way out of situations that had every indication of going south; when she pulled a partisan out of waist deep mud, catching her foot on a sunken log and breaking myriad small bones. She was still limping when she traded a rosewood cane with a gold horsehead knob (found in a decayed manor house housing six Government deserters dead drunk on the floor) for a sister pair of tooled leather, steel-capped boots that just about fit. She’d been carrying that injury for years now, still having to soak her foot before her ankle pulsed with pain.

* * *

Her foot was acting up now from too much sitting on the prison bench. It was ridiculous, waiting so long for the Administrator. She had perfected the art of raging inside while maintaining a pleasant half smile and placid eyes. She had to stand up and stretch out her ankle, so she might as well knock on the Administrator’s door. She never failed to feel a little sick when surmising what cruel, ego-driven men were doing behind closed doors. Nonetheless she found herself knocking, and then turning the handle. She poked her head inside. “Excuse me sir, but perhaps ...”

Lunging up from his desk, his eyes bulging, his nose a map of veins, he screamed in the Guards’ language. She usually understood enough of his language to get by; she’d even decoded their encrypted messages. But now his words tumbled out of her head like children’s blocks. She was utterly taken aback by the viciousness of his tone. She was a fool to be thrown off guard. She should have predicted his outrage. He was in charge and nobody would enter his space without his explicit permission. She’d probably have to pay him double now. She made profuse excuses, bowing her head, and closed the door silently behind her. Back to the bench, where she sat with her hands in prayer position beneath her chin. That’s how he would see her when he came out. Remorseful, contrite. If he deigned to come out. She thoroughly, heartily hated him and all the world’s cruel egoists.

Of course when he opened his door an hour later she was demure, bowing her head, playing total subordination. The goal here being the release of the girl. Just because she’d been notified that the prison would release her didn’t mean success was guaranteed. What she wanted was in and out. An unfortunate expression. She grimaced as she followed his fat buttocks into his office.

“Sir, I’m here for the release of Blaise Semel,” Lulu said. She pulled out the official-enough forms from her bag, now in the right order, and handed them across the mahogany desk looming between them. The Administrator scowled at the forms, tossing them down when he was done. The office was tricked out in cushy leather chairs, freshly painted cream walls, copies of masterpieces on the wall. Or maybe they were the real thing, looted from the houses of the formerly well off. Lulu hadn’t been asked to sit down, but she did now, unobtrusively sliding onto the buttery leather. “As you can see,” she said, nodding at the papers, “today is set for her release. As you can see, she attested under oath that she would never participate in further protests against those in authority.”

He scowled as if she’d questioned his ability to read through a document. Back to submission. “Thank you for your help, sir.”

“I only release those who have shown their cooperation and have been rehabilitated.” He interlaced his stubby fingers, nails neat and manicured. He grimaced—maybe he thought it was a smile—exposing white veneers and gold molars.

Lulu reached into her bag again, pulling out a velvet bag and giving it to him. “I believe in cooperation also.” He took out a sapphire cabochon, held it up to the grated window.

“And if I need more? More cooperation?”

“Naturally that would depend on how successfully we concluded this transaction. I have my contacts.” Her contacts were in a burlap bag, precious gems her agent Isolde had sweet-talked from a sympathetic general and his daughter-in-law.

“There are other ways of cooperating.” The old guy was soliciting her. Flirting. He was horrid, of course, but he could have flung her to the ground and straddled her by now if he’d had a mind to. “We’ll meet again.” He stared at her. His eyelashes were white over murky light eyes. “In some capacity.” He pressed a button on his desk and spoke into a handset. The language of the Guards, but again mostly unintelligible to her. She’d need to go back to studying it, especially since the Guards already controlled cities in the Northeast and Northwest. Full out war between the Guards and the Government was inevitable. And she wanted both sides destroyed, each determined to grab whatever land and possessions the people still had, crush their souls and spirit and intelligence. She and the other Resistance fighters had put together their cadres for subverting the efforts of the other two sides, not equals, of course, in strength or numbers, but underminers. Boring and destroying like boll weevils into the heart of their operations.

Lulu felt fear rise in her throat—maybe the Administrator was having Blaise cooperate—when he came in, a reedy girl beside him. She wore blue cotton pants and a long-sleeved top, grungy and crumpled. Lulu homed in on Blaise’s eyes. Whatever she had gone through here, her eyes were still alive. Time to leave before the Administrator changed his mind or extracted demands. She took Blaise by the arm and led her to the door. Lulu felt the girl’s arm tremble. She had to keep Blaise upright.

Outside, Blaise’s eyes watered from the shreds of sunlight that poked through the bleary sky. “Where’s my baby?” she said, grabbing Lulu’s shoulder. “Where is she?”

“With Isolde, the girl you gave her to at the rally. She’s bringing her to your mother. Like you told her to do.”

“Has she been sick? Is she safe? You’re not lying to me, are you?” Blaise looked miserable, her tears streaking tracks down her grimy cheeks. Lulu did what she should have done as soon as they got outside. She hugged her tightly, pressed her cheek to Blaise’s and whispered that the baby was safe and sound safe and sound safe and sound. When Blaise jerked away, Lulu crooned easy, easy, like settling a horse who had reared up in fright. Why should she believe Lulu, a stranger? Lulu was not really a comforter. Not for the first time, Lulu doubted that she had the common touch, the ability to soothe and comfort. She was better at organizing, determining who’d be better at placing bombs on tracks or recruiting new activists, or rounding up food, shelter, medicine. But especially now, when hostilities between the Guards and the Government had ignited, and both groups were intent on eliminating anyone who defied them, people needed those who could console. Nurture. She wasn’t sure she had it in her.

I’m inadequate, she thought. She needed to shake off the malaise that she knew gripped all of them, dullness of spirit alternating with panic. Sometimes your own self is the enemy. She steered Blaise to a red brick apartment building. Inside, leaves and dirt had piled up in the drafty entry. “Second floor,” Lulu said.

“Raul,” Blaise said. “Is he released too? Where is he?”

“We don’t know,” Lulu said. “Our people went to the men’s prison, but they had no record of him. Maybe he escaped. We’ll keep trying. So many are lost. We’ll have to get you home without him. I’m sorry we don’t have a better result.” Inside a shabby apartment right off the landing, Lulu pulled out a change of clothes, towel, soap, bread, and cheese and told Blaise they’d leave as soon as Blaise washed up and ate something.

Sitting at the kitchen table a few minutes later, Lulu watched Blaise eat, both crying and chewing. Her red hair startling against her bloodless face. She was ravenous. Lulu gave her a chance to compose herself—if that was even possible. “Were you hurt at the prison? We can give you medicine—we commandeered a small supply this week.”

“All the guards were women. So getting pregnant wasn’t possible. They did other things. But I got off with just some bruises. Others fared worse.”

“We’ll have to walk to the station. Are you up to it?” Although staying in the apartment wasn’t an option.

“I’ll do anything. I have to get home.”

“Of course. If anyone asks, you’re my daughter, we’ve been visiting your aunt Isole. But volunteer nothing.”

It was a long walk to the station on the edge of the city, instead of the central one only a few blocks away. Lulu couldn’t risk seeing anyone who knew her from her large apartment complex. There her role was busybody, sitting on the steps outside, bantering, giving advice. Not holding the arm of an unfamiliar young woman. The buildings became more rundown as they walked closer to the outskirts. Bands of kids roamed the streets looking for a little money, excitement, drugs, whatever was available that day. Lulu and Blaise had a beat-up cloth bag, no jewelry, workaday clothes. The kids had more profitable marks in mind.

Blaise asked for a drink or a piece of fruit. Grit had settled on their shoes and clothes. They entered a small grocery, mostly a counter with boxes of potatoes, apples, beets on the floor. The stands that had once held newspapers—plaques indicating The Times, The Globe, The Post still screwed into the metal—now housed thin bundles of kindling wood. Garden tools, rakes, hoes, shovels, stood rusting quietly along the wall perpendicular to the counter. This would be a good time to have a garden, Lulu thought, with food supplies so unpredictable. But the yards in this neighborhood were small, packed hard with pebbly dirt, airless. No earthworms making a home there, barely weeds.

They stood at the end of the line, just inside the door. The clerk moved slowly, even though the orders were small. A slightly built man came in and shoved the door closed, hard so that the potato crate lurched and a couple spuds bounced off. A woman on the way out grabbed a couple rolling along the floor and stuffed them in her bag. Nobody much noticed, since the door slammer took everyone’s attention. At first Lulu thought he looked anodyne--middle height, ordinary looks, clean shaven. Maybe it was the wind that pulled the door closed so abruptly. But as he strode to the front of the line, she felt a twinge of apprehension. His supple leather shoes, his cashmere coat and gloves were out of place in this desolate neighborhood. His light eyes looked through her as if she were a shadow, an apparition. Mean, cruel, they scared her; he’d be relentless if anyone came up against him. Lulu felt his menace, an unpredictability about him. She moved closer to Blaise.

On his way to the front he bumped into an elderly woman with a walker, knocking her down, and Blaise helped her up. Yes, it was admirable that Blaise had a good heart, but Lulu didn’t want any attention shifted to her and Blaise. They had to remain anonymous, faceless. Though Blaise was formally released (with the help of a flawless sapphire), she could be pulled back in any time now that she had a record.

“You,” he said to the shopkeeper, “I need you to put motor oil in my car.”

“I don’t usually sell motor oil,” the man said.

“Find some,” the man said.

The shopkeeper went into the back and brought out a rusty can. “Where’s your car, sir?” he said.

“The Daimler up the street.” Everyone swizzled their necks, looking at the red car a couple doors down. With its white hood, white walled tires, and large front grill, it was an antique that was meticulously kept up.

“As if they never saw a car before,” he said to the shopkeeper. He placed his well-groomed hands on the counter so that his rings glinted under the weak overhead light. “We need stiffer penalties for ragtag lots like these,” he said, jerking his head at the people in line. “No reason for them to live. A drain on the Government.”

Even the most uninformed knew that the Government hadn’t distributed food or other provisions since the emergence of swamp fever months back. Its hands were tied temporarily, the Government had said at the time, fighting the fever, even though now the fever was over. Lulu needed to react as she had been trained to do with sadistic, nihilistic people—commiserating, speaking levelly, making minimal eye contact until they could be contained.

Before she could say anything, Blaise got out of line and went up to the man, slow, unthreatening. Of course she was unthreatening, an unarmed girl. Lulu put her hand on Blaise’s shoulder to move her aside. She wouldn’t budge.

“Leave them alone. They’ve done nothing.” Blaise was standing inches from him now, her hands clasped in front of her chest.

“You’ll come with me to the station,” he said, a half-smile narrowing his lips. “The sergeant will want to meet with you.”

Blaise pushed him, hard, her fists tight knots. He’ll kill Blaise now, Lulu thought. And then everybody else. She looked at the men and women, still standing in line, and shouted run, go out. No one moved; fear, panic, terror had rooted them in place as surely as if they’d been glued to the plank floor. She heard the thump behind her; amazingly, Blaise had knocked the man down, flat on his back. The back of his head hit the blade of one of the hoes lined against the side wall. The man wheezed like a bellow, gasped. His heels kicked the floor a half dozen times, stopped. Lulu kneeled down to touch his neck. Nothing. She stared at Blaise. Everybody did.

Lulu grabbed her hand and pulled Blaise outside. The tremendous strength Blaise had displayed ebbed now, her lips pale as her skin. “What happened in there?” Lulu asked, though she didn’t expect Blaise to answer. Half running beside Lulu was as much as she could do. They made it to the station without Blaise falling in a heap. Lulu had bought the tickets the day before. That was normal procedure so there’d be no last-minute fiddling for bills or coins at the window—or being told that money had been devalued again and she’d need to fish twice as much out of her purse. It was the night train they were waiting for, chosen in case things didn’t go according to plan. They hadn’t gone according to plan—nowhere near—and there was a good chance the police would burst into the station. They’d let you go only if you gave them a good enough bribe, and Lulu had prepared for that. Lulu, the mistress of all contingencies, except when a girl went wild on her watch.

They sat on the wooden bench farthest from the station door. Lulu pulled out a thin woolen shawl from her bag. A green and brown paisley, it was the kind the old bubbies had worn for eons. An item that was as familiar and unobtrusive as a chipped teapot. She draped it over both of them, and Lulu pulled Blaise’s head down on her shoulder. A mother and her teenage daughter weary from travelling.

“I killed him,” Blaise whispered. She wouldn’t look at Lulu. “I didn’t mean to.”

“What would’ve happened if he hadn’t smashed his head? He’d jump up and kill you and probably the rest of us.”

“I reached a breaking point. I just went at him. If that’s an excuse.”

“It’s an excuse. Justified? I don’t know. You’re no saint.”

“Am I supposed to be?”

“No. You’ve been imprisoned. It’s taken an unspeakable toll on you. But it hasn’t destroyed your sense of justice--just brought it closer to the surface.”

“Is there hope for me? I’m going to drag this ... what I did around with me for the rest of my life. Now I do belong in prison.” Blaise stood up, muscles in her face and arms clenched. Lulu pulled her back down to the bench, held her tight.

“You’re not a cold-blooded killer. You said you didn’t mean to kill him. These are extraordinary times, and the old rules don’t apply.”

“They apply,” Blaise said.

“Yes, I suppose they do. Even now, at the edge of doom.”

“I just want my baby to live. Be happy, laugh, be kind. That won’t happen, will it? At the edge of doom.” Tears streaked a path from her cheeks to her chin. She was exhausted, purple blotches like bruises under her eyes. “The edge of doom sounds like the saddest poem.”

“It is from a poem, written ages ago. About love. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

“What does it mean?”

“That love doesn’t change, even to the end of your life. Even now.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“Yes. I’ve loved people, still do even though they’re mostly gone.”

Lulu and Blaise fell silent, waiting for the train. It was eerily still in the station, no one frantically rushing in or out trying to stay clear of danger. As if there were a truce in this city. Even hope.