Though I was tired, terror gave my muscles strength. As soon as we gained enough distance through stealth, I broke into a headlong run. My feet pounded over the ground. I’d run until I buried the horror. Nassau hadn’t been prepared; they hadn’t believed the Freaks could be a large-scale threat. I tried not to imagine the fear of their brats or the way their Breeders must have screamed. Their Hunters had failed.
We wouldn’t. We couldn’t. We had to get home and warn the elders.
My feet moved, but I went nowhere. Running, as the earth opened, trapping me. Openmouthed, I tried to scream, but no sound emerged. Then blackness swirled in, carrying me away. Everything shifted.
The enclave sprawled before me, filled with a hateful crowd, their faces twisted with condemnation. They spat on me as I passed through the warren toward the barricades. I lifted my chin and pretended not to see them. Fade met me there. We stood mute while they rifled through our things. A Huntress flung my bag at my head, and I caught it. I hardly dared breathe when she stepped close.
“You disgust me,” she said, low.
I said nothing. Like so many times before, Fade and I climbed across and left the enclave behind. But this time, we weren’t heading on patrol. No safety awaited us. Without thinking, without seeking a direction, I broke into a run.
I ran until the pain in my side matched the one in my heart. At length he grabbed me from behind and gave me a shake. “We’re not going to make it if you keep this up.”
The scene changed. Pain and shame melted into terror. I had no choice but to leave my home. The unknown would swallow me up.
Soon the shadows devoured us and I could only see the vague Fade-shape nearby. “I’ll go up first.”
I didn’t argue, but I didn’t let him get far ahead of me either. As soon as he started to climb, I did too. The metal was slick beneath my palms; several times I nearly lost my balance and fell. Grimly, I continued up.
“Anything?”
“Almost there.” I heard him feeling around, and then the scrape of metal on stone. He pulled himself out of what looked like a small hole. Diffuse light spilled down, a tint different from any I’d ever seen. It was sweetly silver and cool, like a drink of water. With Fade’s help, I scrambled up the rest of the way and saw the world above for the first time.
It stole my breath. I spun in a slow circle, trembling at the size of it. I tilted my head back and saw overhead a vast field of black, spattered with brightness. I wanted to crouch down and cover my head. It was too much space, and horror overwhelmed me.
“Easy,” Fade said. “Look down. Trust me.”
Morning came after a night of devastating dreams, most of them true, and with it a dull, throbbing headache. Still shaking, I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Everything had a price, and this was mine. During my waking hours, I could be calm and in control, but at night, my fears crept in on quiet feet, haunting my sleep. Sometimes my past felt like a heavy chain about my neck, but a Huntress wouldn’t let it prevent her from moving forward and taking action.
Exhausted, I crawled out of bed, washed up in cold water, and got ready for school. As I trudged down the stairs, I shook my head at the waste. What did I need to learn that I didn’t know already? But there was no convincing anyone of that. Apparently, it was a rule that I had to attend until I was sixteen—at which point I could remove myself. If Momma Oaks had anything to say about it, I would work with her full time, making clothes.
Sometimes I’d rather go back down below.
School
The school was the size of a large house, the interior space divided up by age groups. Colorful charts and pictures decorated most of the walls, except for the one where the blackboard hung. It was smooth, but hard like a rock, and Mrs. James, the teacher, used white sticks to write on it. Sometimes the brats scrawled stupid messages on it, often about Stalker or me.
Mrs. James moved among us, supervising our work. I hated this because I sat with brats younger than myself. I held my pencil awkwardly; writing didn’t come as easy as using my knives. The brats laughed at me behind their hands, eyes amused and innocent. I couldn’t even bring myself to dislike them for their careless prejudice.
They knew only safety and comfort. These brats were smug and self-assured, confident of their place in the world. In some respects I envied them. They didn’t have nightmares, or if they did, they weren’t about real things. Most had never seen a monster, let alone killed one. They’d never seen a Freak feeding on someone who died in the enclave, and then was cast out like garbage. They didn’t know how ruined the world was beyond the walls; they’d never felt claws tearing through their flesh. Small wonder I had nothing in common with these Salvation young.
As for the teacher, Mrs. James thought Stalker was a savage. Fade she liked a little better, because his scars could be hidden, and he knew how to show a polite, distant face. He had been doing it for years, after all, well before we went Topside. Nobody saw anything he didn’t intend to reveal. Mrs. James liked Tegan, much as all adults did, whereas she sighed at me, calling me an “unfortunate case of blighted potential,” whatever that meant.
Today, she was running on about some terrible tragedy, determined we’d learn from our forebearers’ mistakes. “And so, that’s why it’s imperative to pay attention to the past. We don’t want to repeat such errors, do we?”
While Mrs. James lectured, my mind wandered. Things that happened in the enclave—that I hadn’t questioned at the time—troubled me now. I wondered how bad a person I was for not realizing there were problems sooner. Sometimes worry and regret balled up in my stomach like a sickness.
I killed my first man when I was twelve years old.
It was my final trial, the last test I would undergo before being accepted as a Huntress. Though I had been training for it, this deed determined whether I had a fierce heart. I could still see his face, even three and a half years later; he had been weak and injured. The elders told me he was a Nassau spy, caught skulking inside our borders outside the safety of a trading party. I remember how he begged for mercy, his voice hoarse with despair. I’d steeled myself. It was the first time I’d held a knife, as brats owned no weapons. In hindsight, I should have smelled the stench of the elders’ dishonesty, but I hadn’t paid close enough attention.
“They brought me here,” he’d moaned. “They brought me.”