"No one else seems to mind it very much," Rosella remarked quietly, thinking back to the people she'd passed as she ran through the City. They'd all seemed perplexed, bemused, and usually intrigued by the changes in the City, but none had been as horrified or disgusted as she had. "But other people are used to--to things like that, I suppose."

She drew a slow breath, then let it out again, glancing over at Sam and giving him a shaky smile of her own. "Spelunking? That sounds like the sound a heavy rock makes when you throw it in a deep pond. But anything sounds more interesting than sitting around in a cave all day, really."