I killed them all with my own hands.
CHAPTER 11
MEADOW
When I was younger, my mother showed me photographs of something she used to go to—a baseball game. She told me her mother held her close the entire time so she wouldn’t get lost in the crushing sea of people crowding the stadium. She was worried she’d get separated from her, get pushed and shoved so far away that she’d never see her mother again.
I remember the fear that gripped my heart as I looked at the photograph. “It’s like the Shallows,” I said to her. “I’m going to lose you, aren’t I?”
“You’ll never lose me, Meadow.” My mother smiled down at me.
I believed her then.
Everywhere I turn in the city, there’s another face. Another Catalogue Number, another hot, sweaty body pressed up against mine. It is stifling. If I stumbled over and fell, I’d disappear, and no one would know or care.
“Watch it!” A man scowls down at me as I trample over his feet. I don’t get the chance to apologize before he’s engulfed by the crowd.
In the distance, I can see the Catalogue Building, a monstrous black dome that seems to scrape the underside of the clouds. It’s the only city building that isn’t covered in filth and grime and tattered posters that claim “Murder Is Madness, Stay Safe with the Initiative.”
I pass the apartment building where we used to live. I was three when the Initiative took over, and I do not remember much. I remember pain, when my Catalogue Number was tattooed onto my forehead. I remember sobbing myself to sleep, and my mother opening the windows of my bedroom to let the night air soothe me. Now those windows are boarded up with planks of old salvaged wood. A rusted tricycle sits at the bottom of the steps. An elderly man and his wife pass me, carrying their belongings. Probably trying to cross the Perimeter, as many do, thinking safety is just a short trip and a life’s worth of credits away. Maybe even thinking that life is still the same out there.
I consider telling them to turn around and go home. They are breaking Commandment Two: Thou shalt not attempt to cross the Perimeter.
I consider telling them that if they get too close, the Pulse will send out a shock wave and paralyze them. They probably know all that. They probably know the risks. They probably don’t care anymore.
I fork left when I come to the Library.
My father brought me to the Library, only once, when we had enough Creds to get inside. He pulled an old book from the shelves and brushed off the dust. I remember the way the dust tickled my nose as it danced through the air. My father held the book out to me. It was heavy in my arms, like an anchor.
“Take it, Meadow,” he said. “Take it and run.”
So I did. I walked past the scanners, head held high, silver curls brushed back from my eyes so I could see where I was going.
I didn’t know the alarms would go off when I walked out the doors. And then they began to chase me. The Initiative security guards, from out of nowhere.
My father didn’t come to my aid. He looked away, as if he didn’t know me.
I made it home on my own before dark with the History of the Shallows still clutched in my hands. I am strong because of my father. I know I don’t need anyone to survive.
So now, when three Landers, members of a street gang, approach me in the back alley behind the Library, knives drawn, the silver barrel of a gun pointed at my heart, I know I am ready.
“Hey, baby.” The first man’s voice is raspy, like an old smoker’s. He eyes my work badge with the desperate hunger of a starving man. “You don’t look old enough to work. Why don’t I take that off your hands for you?”
“You could sell that sucker for a hundred Creds, boss,” the man with the gun says.
“Make it two hundred when we sell it right back to the Initiative,” the third laughs.
“It’s going to cost you more than Creds to take this from me,” I say as they close in on me. I can smell human waste and the scent of stale alcohol. The first Lander reaches me, places his hand on my breast, while the second one steps behind me, so close I can almost imagine his chest moving with each inhale. I know what they plan to do.
How they got a gun, I am not sure. Guns are scarce. My father owns a gun like this one, from before the Perimeter went up. It is hidden under the floorboards of our houseboat. Seeing one now helps me focus.
I take the badge from around my neck and let it drop to the street.
The first one is easy, like choking a child. He collapses to the concrete and I rip the gun from his fingers.
The second lunges at me, but I’m too fast. I dodge his blade and find the handle of my dagger. I sink the blade into his chest without hesitation. He crumples to the ground and I shatter his nose with the heel of my boot.
The streets are so crowded that no one hears me shoot the third.
CHAPTER 12
ZEPHYR
The bottom of the body cart is stained a deep crimson.
After we burn the last corpse, Talan and I push the cart to the storage room and park it with the others. Tonight, a cleansing system in the ceiling of the room will remove the blood from all of them.
But the dead will still be dead. Nothing can ever change that.
“There’s an old building over on South that’s full of crap,” Talan says. I hold the door open for her, but she shrugs past me and opens the other one. Always independent. Never taking help from anyone. “Feel like playing maid for a few hours? Making some extra Creds?”
“Nah, but there’s a one-eyed prostitute over on Fifth,” I say. “Lend me some Creds?”