Max walked out across the hard concrete in the night with Ingrid beside him.
The top of the walls ran a hundred kilometres wide and the concrete carried all the way across under their boots, unbroken, cold, and at the far end stood the glass houses, one after another, curving away with the wall until they went past anything her eyes could hold.
A soldier in each one. Black uniform, and the same words across every back in white block letters.
GUARDIANS OF THE WALLS.
"I didn't know they were this big," Ingrid said. The wind took the last word and thinned it.
"Neither did I."
Max's blond hair lifted clean off his forehead. The wind came at them head-on and pressed their clothes flat against their bodies, dragged at everything behind them.
He turned to face her, and the same wind took hold of the back of his shirt, ballooning it once before it flattened again.
"Goth has the walls now," Ingrid said. "So what's the plan?"
"The plan."
