The water filters are growing mold on the iron racks of the Rust Belt clinic. The auxiliary machine’s sobs mingle with the steam rain pounding on the tin roof. Laila has always felt that this broken-down place is hiding something no one has told her. Then, one day, as she fits a mechanical arm onto a dying scavenger, a burning mark suddenly brands her palm, as if someone has pressed the fire of the Mist Sea into her bones.
The mark is the sign of a Fireforger, and a target for the Church’s hunters. The label “Mist Sea Swallows the City” on an old map, the half of a copper plate Martha clutched in her final moments, and the Waterling slime that won’t come off Caleb’s gunwale gradually pull her into a greater maelstrom. The suffering the people of the Rust Belt have endured for generations is no fate at all. It is a cage stitched together by someone through the “Cycle of the End.”
She starts hiding blueprints in the steam pipes and dismantling the Church’s surveillance eyes in abandoned factories. Even the silent record player in the corner of the clinic becomes a code for passing messages. But the farther she goes, the more she discovers that everyone around her is hiding something. Caleb, who always has a menthol cigarette between his lips, seems to have something even more terrifying locked beneath his boat. Even the mark on her own palm sometimes reflects memories that don’t belong to her.
The steam rain keeps falling, and the rusty tang of the water filters is beginning to mingle with the smell of gunpowder. Laila grips the mechanical wrench she has just repaired, her knuckles pressed against the burning pain of the mark. This time, she thinks, a little light ought to seep through the cracks of the Rust Belt.
