“See?” taunted the woman, drawing a pair of cuffs from her back pocket. “All bark and no—”
Kate pulled the trigger.
The bullet struck the fire escape with a deafening crack, and the three thugs jumped, twisting reflexively toward the sound as Kate took off. The shock gained her a second’s head start, nothing more. She mounted the dumpster half an instant before the woman reached it, fingers clutching at her ankle. Kate kicked her away, swung herself up over the low wall, and dropped to the other side.
She hit the ground running and beelined south toward the Seam, hoping they wouldn’t follow.
But the too-quiet streets behind her filled with shouts and echoing steps. Kate was still sore from her run in the Waste, but imminent danger had a way of silencing pain. At last the Seam came into sight, three stories of wood and metal carving a line between North and South City.
She was surprised to see figures along its top, but she didn’t have time to wonder who they were. She charged toward the nearest gate, only to realize it was bolted shut. A call went up behind her and Kate skidded, changing direction as she ran for the next gate. Locked. But there had to be a way through.
Turn and fight, said the darkness, but she kept running, and there, at last, a way out—or in. A building, one of the structures consumed by the wall. The doors were plated with copper and there was a sign posted on them, something about a checkpoint, but she didn’t have time to stop and read, stop and think—
The doors swung open, and she burst through into a derelict lobby. There were voices nearby, the shuffle of feet, but Kate kept running—across the cavernous space toward a second set of doors, a mirror to the first.
Locked.
Of course, they were locked. Kate threw her shoulder against the wood once, twice, then reared back and slammed her reinforced heel into the digital lock. It cracked and gave just as the northern doors swung open behind her. A voice echoed through the hall.
“Get back here you bit—”
But Kate was already through the doors and out onto the southern side of the city.
Shouts went up from the Seam overhead but she kept running, taking a zigzag course through alleys and around corners, before finally slowing to a jog and then a walk and then, at last, limping to a stop. She clutched her side and realized she was still gripping the gun, knuckles white, and she had no idea where she was, but at least she was on the right side of the Seam.
That was a start.
The bag slid from her shoulder, and Kate sank to one knee and started rummaging through it right before she felt the rush of air, the weight of a mass falling toward her. She jumped back, narrowly avoiding the body that crashed to the ground.
Only it didn’t crash at all.
The shape landed in an elegant crouch and then rose, revealing long, lean limbs, and a plume of silver hair. Kate swung the gun up on instinct, but the creature was already closing the gap, fingers vising around Kate’s wrist before she could think to aim. The gun tumbled from her grip, even as the urge to fight washed through her, but it broke against a wall of shock at the creature’s eyes, which were not a burning red, but a flat, colorless gray. Kate couldn’t tell if the monster was a man or a woman, but she knew one thing: it was a Sunai.
A short steel blade appeared in the Sunai’s free hand, long fingers twirling the weapon, but what Kate had first taken for an ornamented hilt was in fact a kind of flute.
And the Sunai was lifting the instrument, as if to play.
“Wait,” said Kate—what a useless word—as the instrument brushed the Sunai’s lips. “I’m not—your enemy—” She tried to twist free, but the Sunai’s grip was steel.
“Only the guilty fight. Are you guilty, then?”
The answer rose in Kate’s throat, and when she swallowed, trying to hold it at bay, the Sunai’s hand tightened to the point of pain around her wrist, and the first beads of bloody light began to shine on the surface of her skin.
Disgust darkened the Sunai’s face and Kate’s head swam, her senses already slipping, but she kicked out, twisting sideways as she did, and managed to wrench herself free, free of the Sunai’s hold and the pain and the nearness of her own death. She staggered back a step, two, shoulders colliding with a wall as she clutched her wrist, the pricks of light already gone beneath her skin.
“I’m on your side!” she snapped, even as her fingers ached for the gun, the knife, the iron spike.
“You are a sinner,” snarled the Sunai with sudden force. “You will never be on our—”
“Caught you!” One of the thugs from North City came crashing around the corner, brandishing a pair of knives. “Thought you could—”
He saw the Sunai, and froze, while the Sunai’s own look darkened, their cold gray eyes taking in the collar around his throat. “What a foolish Fang you are.”
The thug was already scrambling away, but it was too late. The Sunai was on him in an instant, pulling him into an embrace that might have passed for tender, if not for the blade protruding from his side, the red light flooding to the surface of his skin, the way his mouth opened in a strangled scream.
Kate saw her chance and took off running.
She made it five steps and then an arm marked with black X’s snaked around her shoulders, pulling her close before she even registered the sound of the man’s body hitting the pavement.
“Be still,” said the monster in Kate’s ear. “The fight is over. You have already lost.” Long fingers slid through Kate’s hair and tightened, forcing her head back. “Try to flee, and you will die in pain. Kneel, and I will make it quick.”
“I know August.”
The Sunai paused at that. “How?”
What were they? Friends? Allies? “He saved my life,” she said at last, “and I saved his.”
“I see.” The Sunai hummed thoughtfully. And then the iron grip was back. “Then you are even.”
Panic shuddered through her. “Wait,” she pleaded, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I have information.”
A boot caught her behind the knees and her legs buckled, forcing her down. “I will hear your confession soon enough.”
“If you just let me see August.”
“Enough.”
Callum Harker once told Kate that only fools shouted when they wanted others to listen. Smart men spoke softly, expecting to be heard.
Now, Kate raised her voice, as loud as she possibly could.
“AUGUST FLYNN!” she called out, right before the Sunai’s blade came up beneath her chin. Blood—bright, red, human—coated its length, the tang of copper tickling her throat as her own voice echoed through the city streets.
“I warned you,” growled the Sunai.
Kate’s heart hammered in her ears.
Not like this.
Her bag sat several feet away. The gun glinted at the base of the wall. The iron spike traced a cool line against her shin. She hadn’t come this far just to be reaped. If she was going to die, she’d be damned if she did it on her knees.
“There is a new monster in your city,” she said.
The blade’s edge grazed her throat.
“It’s turning humans on each other.”
At that, the Sunai hesitated, the blade drew back a fraction, and Kate saw her only chance.
“What did you—”
But Kate was already up, spinning as she rose. She caught the flute with the spike, and the instrument went skidding away down the street before the Sunai’s fist cracked across her face.
She went down hard, vision going black and then white, head still ringing as she scrambled up. She never made it. The Sunai dragged her to her feet, and threw her like a scrap against the wall. The air left her lungs, and the shadow in her head called for blood even as the Sunai wrapped a hand around Kate’s throat—
“Soro, stop.”
The command echoed, metal on stone.
The Sunai’s hand fell away from Kate’s throat and she sank to her knees on the pavement. The world tilted and swam
, but she dragged her head up and saw him standing at the mouth of the alley.
August.
He was dressed in FTF fatigues, a steel violin hanging from his fingers. The last six months had changed Kate in small ways, but the changes to August Flynn were bigger. He was still lean, but he’d grown into his height, broad shoulders filling out his uniform. The lines of his face were sharp and strong, black curls sweeping over gray eyes—once pale, now the color of iron. But it was more than that, more than the sum of so many pieces. It was the way he held himself, not like the boy she’d met at Colton, hunched against some invisible wind, or the one she’d fled with through the Waste, arms wrapped around his ribs as if he could hold himself together.
This August took up space.
The Sunai—Soro—glared down at her, but didn’t attack again.
Kate forced herself to her feet. “Hey there, stranger.”
“Kate,” answered August.
He didn’t seem happy to see her. He didn’t seem anything to see her, his face arranged into a mask of total neutrality, as if she were nothing, no one. When Kate took a step toward him, Soro blocked her way.
“Soro. This is Katherine Harker. She’s—” His gaze cut toward her, then away, and Kate realized he didn’t know what to call her either, “an ally.”
“The FTF does not consort with criminals.”
“She said she has information.”
Of course he’d heard. He was Sunai. He could hear a pin drop a block away. “Henry will want to speak with her.”
“But her soul is red.”
“Call it in,” snapped August. “Let the Compound know we’re coming. That’s an order.”
Kate stared at him. Since when did August Flynn give orders?
But the other Sunai didn’t question him further, only obeyed, speaking briskly into a comm. The words were lost as the Sunai turned away and August stepped in front of Kate.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice low. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“Nice to see you, too,” she snapped.
His gaze tracked over her, taking in the bruise rising on her cheekbone, the five purple lines around her wrist.
His voice softened a fraction. “Are you all right?”
Four small words, but in that question she glimpsed the August she’d known, the one who cared so much more than he should.
She ached, but at least the red light—that terrible, unnatural reminder of what she’d done—was gone.
“I’m alive. Thanks,” she added, “for stepping in.”
But the softness had already vanished, leaving his features smooth and cold. Somewhere nearby, the familiar drone of a car’s engine was rising. He produced a zip tie and looped the plastic around her hands as the vehicle came whipping around the corner.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, right before a sack came down over her head.
It had been five years since the car crash.
Five years since the force of Kate’s head against the glass had shattered her right eardrum and robbed her of half her hearing. Five years, and most days, she got by. She still had one good ear and four other senses all firing to make up the difference.
But as the hood came down over her head, the loss of a second sense left her disoriented.
Disembodied noise—voices, car doors, comm units—reached her good ear in fragments through the suffocating cloth. No one spoke—at least, not to her. One second August’s hand was on her arm, and the next it was gone, replaced by other, rougher hands, forcing her body forward, head down, off the street and into a vehicle. Her wrist ached against the plastic zip tie, her cheek throbbing from the Sunai’s punch.
There was a thin line of light at the bottom of the hood, but everything else was reduced to shades of black, the jostle of tires, the hum of the engine. They drove for three minutes, nearly four, and when they stopped, Kate had to resist the simple, animal urge to fight back as she was pulled from the car.
She didn’t say anything, didn’t trust herself to speak. Besides, she had a feeling the time would come when she’d have to. Breathe, she told her lungs. In, one two. Out, one two.
The ground changed subtly beneath her feet—asphalt, concrete, rubber, concrete again—the atmospheric shifts of outdoor and indoor, the echo that came with walled space. She tried to keep track, but somewhere she stumbled and in that dizzying moment, she lost the thread.
Then—a hallway, a threshold, a metal chair.
The momentary kiss of a knife against her wrists, cold on warm, a flicker of panic before the zip tie broke, and then, just as quick, the weight of the cuffs, the clank and pull of metal threaded through metal, fastening her hands to a metal table.
Steps, the door falling closed.
Then, silence.
Kate hated silence, but she held on to it now, used the lack of information to steady her spinning head and focus on the task at hand. She splayed her fingers against the cold metal and tried to decide which would be less suspicious, panic or calm.
The door opened.
Footsteps moved toward her, and then the hood came off.
Kate squinted in the sudden light—stripes of harsh, artificial white embedded in the ceiling—as Soro rounded the table, the shining hilt of the flute-knife jutting from the Sunai’s pocket. There was no sign of August. No sign of anyone else. The room was small and square, bare save for the table, two chairs, and the red light of a surveillance camera in the corner. She kept her gaze down.
The wraithlike Sunai, meanwhile, was looking at Kate as though she were the monster in the room. Soro said nothing as the bag—her bag—was upended on the table. When the first metal spike hit the table, Kate’s pulse rose, longing to lunge for it, even though the chain wouldn’t reach, even though it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good if it did. She kept her eyes on the cuffs themselves instead, studying the intricacies of each steel loop.
But as Soro began to methodically arrange the contents of Kate’s bag, displaying them as if they were tools in a torturer’s kit, another force began to pull at her—the Sunai’s presence, like a hand at her back, a subtle, insistent urge to speak. Kate kept her mouth shut as Soro sank into the opposite chair.
“Well, then,” said the Sunai. “Let’s begin.”
The surveillance feed hummed with static.
It was low enough that humans probably didn’t notice, but the sound filled August’s head, a background of white noise behind the video.
Kate Harker sat unmoving in one of the two chairs, while the shadow beneath her feet twitched and tangled around the table legs.
Her hair was different—bangs falling into her eyes—but other than that, she looked the same, as if the last six months hadn’t touched her.
Do you know where she is? Alice had goaded him.
Far away from here. Far away from you.
Only she wasn’t, she was right here.
Why had she come back?
Ilsa’s gaze flicked toward him, featherlight, as if she’d heard the question in his head. August kept his eyes on Kate.
She looked almost bored, but he knew it was an act, because everything about Kate had always been an act—the bravado, the cold air, all the aspects of her father arranged into a shield, a mask.
Henry stepped up beside them. On the screen, the door at Kate’s back swung open and Soro strode in. When the Sunai glanced up at the camera lens, their gray eyes registered as a smudge of black. Kate’s voice echoed through his head. He’d been two blocks away when she’d screamed his name. If he’d been any later . . .
“I should have been the one to question her,” said August.
Henry brought a hand to his shoulder. “You’re not objective.”
He shrugged off the touch. “Soro nearly killed her.”
“If you didn’t know Kate, would you have spared her?”
August stiffened. “That isn’t fair.”
Fair? chided the voice in his head. A sinner is a sinner.
&nb
sp; But it wasn’t that simple. Not when it came to Kate. She was his past. A reminder of who he’d been, who he’d wanted to be. Of school uniforms, and fevers, of starving and stardust and—
“Well then. Let’s begin.”
He dragged his spiraling mind to a stop as the mic flared to life and Soro’s voice filtered through.
“What is your name?”
Kate tipped her head a fraction. To everyone else, it might have registered as boredom, but August knew she was turning her good ear away from the Sunai.
“Katherine Olivia Harker,” she answered. If she was afraid, she was doing a good job of keeping it off her face. She tapped the cuffs with a nail. “Are these pure metal or alloy?”
“How old are you?”
“Do you really need to establish a baseline, when you know I can’t lie?”
“Answer the question.”
“Eighteen. I was born at three in the morning on a Wednesday in Jan—”
“Are you the daughter of Callum Harker?”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid?” asked Soro.
“Should I be?”
“You are a sinner,” said Soro.
“If that’s a question,” said Kate, “then you need to work on your inflection.” August shook his head—some things really hadn’t changed—but Kate only straightened in her seat. “You’re new. What’s your name? Sorrow? That’s what August called you, right? Not very uplifting is it? Are these too many questions? I know you have to tell the truth.”
“As do you,” countered Soro. “Why did you leave Verity six months ago?”
Kate paused a moment before answering—a display of will. “Call me crazy,” she said slowly, “but I just didn’t feel very welcome anymore. Not after my father tried to kill me.”
“And why did you return?”
That question struck a chord. “I tried to tell you,” said Kate. “I’m hunting a monster.”
At August’s side, Henry tensed.
On the screen, Soro inclined their head. “What kind of monster?”
Kate shifted in her seat. “I don’t know.”
“What does it feed on?”
“Violence? Chaos? Death? I’m not sure. It doesn’t kill with its own hands. As far as I can tell, it convinces its victims to do the job. It turns people against each other.”
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