INTO DREAM

A slumber order arrives by scroll, and when Torm tells her frightened sister she won't be going under herself — she'll keep working — her sister's biggest fear is that the Elders will find out and separate them. Torm puts her at ease, delivers the dream drop, and watches her sister dissolve into a deep, beautiful slumber. Standing over the nearly empty water supply, Nurse Rina's cruel words echo in her head — get the river flowing or say goodbye — and in that moment Torm decides she will do exactly that. She connects the remaining water tanks to the vapor machine, buying her sister two months, packs her gear, kisses her sister's forehead, and slips quietly past the sleeping village and its guards into the night. At the river's edge she finds a search party heading north toward the Great Falls, but something deep and instinctive pulls her in the opposite direction — and trusting that instinct the way she trusts her science, Torm goes south.