She finally raised her gaze. Her left eye was brown, her right one a milky prosthetic that clicked softly when she blinked—a souvenir from the Lower Surge, before they sealed the Old Metro. “You want to end up like the sprofondati ? The sunken ones?”
“And?”
Elara laughed—a dry, kind sound. “Famous last words, stamped and certified.” He’d arrived in Internapoli three years ago, on a cargo barge from the mainland, when the fog was so thick that the city’s towers looked like a forest of broken masts. The immigration officer had taken one look at his papers—forged, but good forgeries—and stamped his wrist with a biodegradable ink that read Soggiorno Temporaneo . Temporary Stay. internapoli city
“I’m thinking about the tunnels,” Marco said.
Marco sat down. He picked up the espresso. The cup was warm, imperfect, real. Through the café window, he could see the Archivio’s black stone curve, and beyond it, the harbor where the cargo barges arrived with their fog-damp passengers, their forged papers, their temporary stays. She finally raised her gaze
The neon sign above the café flickered— Sospiro —in that unstable lavender-pink that meant the city’s grid was dreaming again. Marco pressed his palm to the wet iron table. Rain from three hours ago still clung to everything. Internapoli didn’t dry; it merely decided, moment by moment, whether you would feel the dampness or not.
One pan held a single object: a small, polished sphere of what looked like obsidian. The other pan was empty. The sunken ones
He touched his cup to hers. The chipped rims fit together like puzzle pieces from different boxes.