by Audrey Grey
The left side of my brain tingles as if a miniscule pulsing electrode is imbedded inside my skull. Microplant. Even without the robotic timbre of the electro-larynx, I recognize Nicolai’s arrogant, refined tone.
The one and only, the voice confirms. Its smugness dissipates any doubts I had left.
I find the mirror and part my hair just above the left temple, rubbing away the grime to expose a fresh, faint-red line no longer than an inch above the old Microplant scar. Nicolai has imbedded a new Microplant into my brain that allows us to communicate.
Correct again, Nicolai says. It was a risk, given your condition, but entirely worth it. Now I know just how broken you are.
I’m not broken. But saying it doesn’t make me believe it.
Your nightmares say otherwise.
You’re sick. You probably get off on this. To drive home my point, I imagine me violently punching what’s left of his face.
I can’t hear him laughing, but I can feel it.
Why did you bring me here? I mentally shout, shaking my head in an effort to dislodge the itching/crawling feeling his presence creates inside my brain.
The Archduchess, my dear, is cunning, but she lacks creativity. She knows this is the last place you would go—but she fails to understand that reasoning makes her predictable. By the time she searches here, we will be gone.
I get the feeling there’s more behind his reasoning. That he wants me to remember what happened here the night my father died. But all I can think about is the Archduchess tracking me down. Promise me she won’t find me, Nicolai. Please.
Sorry, I don’t do promises. But the plan is sound.
“No, it’s stupid,” I say aloud, testing if the Microplant can pick up spoken voice as well.
Time will tell, Everly. There’s a long pause. Rest up. Tonight is your big transformation.
Can’t wait. Hopefully my sarcasm translates.
I stare into the mirror, ignoring the pitiful creature staring back.
“Connect me,” says the creature.
My heart pounds as I wait for the interface beneath the mirror’s surface to respond, connecting me to Royalist sanctioned news. Instead, fuzzy black-and-white dots snow across the glass. It turns black, and the words No Connection pulse across the surface. That’s when I notice the continuous newsfeed running across the bottom.
Do not gather in groups larger than ten. Do not go out during Shadow Fall or after dark.
More edicts scroll across, but I look away. There is no more news. No way to learn what is happening in the world. Not that we ever got anything other than what the Emperor wanted to spoon-feed us. I know because my mother headed the propaganda division.
The bathroom is exactly as Max and I left it. Sunbeams gush from the skylight above. A red toothbrush peeks from a cup on the counter. Wind-up action figures line the counter in full-scale assault, and Ms. Jane, my favorite doll, slumps in the corner, a key-shaped dial protruding from her back.
My mother was a devout Royalist from the esteemed Gold House Lockhart, controller of the west coast shipping lines. Their massive steamships ferried the Royalists’ precious goods from the Diamond City factories to the north.
My mother made sure that most of our toys were Reformation Act approved, lacking any form of technology. Most prewar items had been systematically destroyed in the Great Purge anyway, right after the Reformation Act came to pass.
I never broke the rules. I wanted to make my mother proud. See, Mother, I wanted to say. I can be good.
Max, on the other hand, traded his rations for any pre-Reformation Act toy he could get his grubby little hands on. The imp! And somehow he never got in trouble. They felt sorry for him. Soon he would have to enter the factories.
My father knew from experience how Max would suffer. My father worked the forges until age twelve, when his uncommon brilliance earned him a coveted serving position on a Gold estate and eventually a Gold education. When Max asked what it would be like down there, my father’s eyes went all distant and he changed the subject.
So Max got away with being Max while I had to be perfect, had to fight for every smile, every fleeting look of praise my mother afforded me. Sometimes being Chosen wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I lean against the counter, close my eyes for a moment. If not for the red and black Fienian graffiti scrawled across the faded ocean-blue walls, I can almost pretend I am eight again, perched on the counter, Max yelling behind the door for me to hurry up, steam from the hot bath filming the mirror as I trace the constellations in the condensation.
Now the words Death to The Chosen and Royalists Blow drip down the mirror instead. The Fienian symbol, a scorpion wrapped around a dying phoenix, covers the ceiling.
I open my book to the last chapter titled Bestiary Mythology, turning the pages until the same enormous red scorpion appears. A drop of poison glistens from its tail barb. I scan the caption below: In his hubris, Orion swore to kill all the beasts of this world, but Gaia, goddess of the earth, sent the Scorpion to protect them, and it felled Orion with one mighty blow.
The graffiti reminds me that everything’s different now. Even me. Especially me.
“I hate this place,” I say to the monstrous girl in the mirror. Her face twists into a scowl.
Apparently she agrees.
I put away my forbidden book. Like so many countless mornings before, I head downstairs. At the landing, my gaze stops on the wine-colored stain warping the wood and then follows the fingers of old blood down the steps.
The breath inside my chest seems to disappear.
Breathe. It’s the girl from the mirror, the one who ate rats and carved sticks meant to impale people and counted rocks to keep from going insane.
She counts to three. Whispers the same words she chanted to me in the darkness.
Inhale. Exhale. Survive.
The kitchen is small but comfortable, designed especially to make use of the minimal space. A slant of golden light sparkles and stretches across the shiny cupboards. I want to touch it. No, I want to paint it, to possess it somehow. Make it last forever.
My gaze falls to the corner. Max, Dad? Their names die in my chest as Riser’s one eye locks onto mine. He’s scrubbed clean. Razor-edged jaw shaved smooth. Dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair shiny and freshly washed, pulled neatly back. Smartly tailored gray trousers and a charcoal vest hang off the sharp angles of his body.
I frown. This is a dangerous lie, like dressing a crocodile in sheepskin.
After what feels like a brief assessment—Riser’s eye roams from my feet to my head, systematically cataloguing my body—Riser turns back to watch the man hunched over the range. The one who I thought might be my dad.
Of course he is nothing like my father. Barrel-chested, short, with sandy-gray hair shaved at the sides and twined into a long braid. Stripes mark his eyebrows, and stubble shadows his blunt, square jaw. He wears a partially undone, worn leather vest, with coarse gray hair peeking through. Two crude, black noose tattoos adorn each burley shoulder.
Mercs. Nicolai hired Mercenaries. Disgraced ex-Centurions with no master except currency.
The Merc turns and flashes a greasy smile, revealing more than a few non-sanctioned gold teeth. Brown tar-stains muddy the rest. “Lady.” He tips his ill-fitted brown bowler hat, and the neat half-inch scar above his eyebrow where he removed his Centurion Microplant flashes, erasing any doubts I had left about his shadowy profession. “Name’s Brogue.”
I cross my arms, scanning his pockets for pilfered silverware or anything else a Merc might find worthy of stealing. “Where’s Bramble?”
Brogue lifts a hoary eyebrow in question.
“The machine that was with me.”
“Ah! The sensor.” He nods toward the basement. “A bit waterlogged at the moment, but nothing I can’t fix.”
I jut out my chin. “I want him back.”
“Okay. But first some grub, yeah?”
The smell from the food hits me lik
e a train. My stomach tightens, and my gaze fastens to the scrambled eggs slowly forming in the pan. Their vivid yellow color and rubbery texture tells me they are synthetic, but that does nothing to dampen my hunger.
Brogue scrapes the mixture with a spatula and folds the lumpy blob over, sprinkling in a few bits of something brown. His movements are smooth and exact, not jittery like most twitchers. But the telltale almond aroma of tar clings to his skin like cologne.
When Brogue turns around to dole out the eggs onto the two green plates on the counter, both Riser and I flank his back, guarding the food.
Old habits die hard.
Brogue ducks beneath us and manages to toss a bit onto the first plate before Riser snags it and wolfs the eggs down, steaming hot.
Chuckling, Brogue holds up a fork. “Ever seen one of these, boy?”
Riser stares through him. I’m pretty sure handing Riser a pronged utensil is a bad idea.
Brogue shrugs and sets the fork down. “Well, at least chew before you swallow. There’s enough for everyone.”
I can’t seem to help myself. The eggs barely hit my plate before they are burning their way down my throat.
Sighing, Brogue slaps the rest of the eggs onto my and Riser’s plates. I inhale the food so fast I can’t even taste it. A tiny glob falls onto the floor, and Riser and I both drop, scuffling for the morsel
Riser wins. He clamps his fluffy yellow prize between his dirty thumb and forefinger and holds it up.
One deep-blue eye assesses me over his fingertips. I can’t read his expression. It’s as if his face is a shield guarding the contents inside.
The idea that I cannot break through his walls and access his intentions is maddening.
Sighing, he offers the bite to me. Is there a slight curve to his lips? Maybe.
My fingers itch to take it. My tongue waters in anticipation. And yet I hate him for his unexpectedly kind gesture. He thinks he can trick me into letting my guard down, but he doesn’t know that I remember him.
“Take it,” Riser orders. His eyebrows furrow together as an impatient breath hisses from his parted lips. Obviously this is new to him. Sharing. And the vulnerability that comes with it.
“No,” I growl, clenching my fist to keep from giving in. I make my face flat and unreadable. He cannot see my desperation.
“You need it more than me. Take it.”
It is an order. Refuse and I am establishing my position while questioning his. Tension thickens the air until it feels as if electricity skips across my skin.
I study his one eye, thinking how my mother would have loved trying to capture it on canvas. The blue so deep and rich the shadows turn it inky-black. She collected broken things, my mother. She found them interesting, a challenge.
But I’m pretty sure Riser is too broken, even for her.
“I’d rather starve.” I leave him there still holding his offering.
Brogue turns away when I pass, but not before I spot the pity in his eyes. Now that my stomach is full, I am mad at myself for acting so desperate before.
It won’t happen again.
“What happened to the city?” I ask, pausing by the window.
Brogue follows my gaze. “Your sector didn’t upload when they was supposed to, and the Emperor stripped their rations. Then the bitch in the sky sent tsunamis to batter the coast, destroying the factories. She warmed the waters till the fish died. Made the crops stop growing too. So they rioted.” He rubs a thick finger over his jaw. “But the drones stopped that madness quick as a Fienian uprising, they did.”
My concentration is broken by a change of some sort. Something that I can’t quite pinpoint but my senses pick up. A dark shadow spills from the window, creeps across the kitchen, unspooling to fill the corners.
Shadow Fall. Brogue crosses to the door and creaks it open, then disappears. I follow.
The door barely cracks before Brogue is pushing me back. “Sorry, girl. We’re in lockdown during Shadow Fall. Arm the alarm, and don’t let anyone in until you see the sun again. Even us.”
There are two more Mercs posted on the doorstep. A young woman around my age, red hair French-braided to her lower back, and a baby-faced young man. Although they don’t turn to acknowledge me, the pit has taught me that their tense shoulders and fidgety hands mean they are afraid. Scared Mercs. That’s a new one.
The door shuts in my face.
Seconds after I set the alarm, there’s a droning sigh and the power shuts off. The alarm beeps, goes silent.
“The sun,” I mutter. Solar energy is useless without it, although there should be enough stored to keep working for a few more hours.
The shadow murk drapes my bedroom in darkness. I stand in the middle of the dim room, trying to hold my food down as my weak stomach tries to force it back up. Noises draw me to the window. Loud banging like metal pipes being slammed against brick reverberates the walls. Glass shatters somewhere close. Shouts erupt, followed by the sound of scuffling.
The floorboard creaks behind me. Already on edge, I whip around to see Riser, shadows layering his face and body. He looks completely at home in the shadow murk.
“What are you doing?” I say, taking a step back. “Get out!”
I say this on instinct just like I have to Max a million times before. Immediately I know that Riser will see this as a challenge.
“If I don’t?” The pitch-black eyebrow over his good eye arches. His voice is soft, curious. Another test.
“Then I will make you.”
“All the blood you lost yesterday . . .” His head cocks sideways, a half-smile on his face. “I’d hate to take more.”
“Would you? Because I’m beginning to wonder.”
We face off in a staring contest. Finally, I throw up my hands. “Fine! Stay. But this isn’t the pit. You have to knock before you come into someone’s room.”
“This is where you lived before?” He somehow inches closer without appearing to move.
“Yes. This is my house—or was.”
Looking around, he pauses on the stars glowing above my bed. In the dim light, it’s hard to read the fleeting emotions that soften his face and make him momentarily seem to forget about me.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “A stupid paint that fluoresces in the dark.”
“Why paint them?” Riser frowns at the idea. “You can see them from your window.”
I stare up, remembering the silky feel of the iridescent paint as it glided over the ceiling. The glimmery drops that freckled my mom’s skin and hair. Her rare, carefree laughter as I tried to wipe the spilled paint from my cheek, smudging it. “Because I was a kid, okay?” My voice cracks with anger. “A dumb kid who didn’t understand anything.”
I can’t look at the fake stars anymore. Can’t sit in the fake room that belonged to the dead girl for one second longer. But I don’t know where else to go. I feel like I’m in prison all over again, except this time the walls are invisible.
Tiptoeing around the broken glass, I carefully pop the windowsill and lift. It catches halfway, but the gap is wide enough I can slide out headfirst and crabwalk along the eaves. It takes only a few seconds for Riser to follow; he doesn’t make a sound as he slinks across the tile, perching a few feet from me.
The solar tiles crunch beneath my bare feet. Remnants of the old world when everything ran on the sun, they must be at least fifty years old. That explains the shortage of power.
An eerie shade of green haunts the skyline, flickering orange here and there where the city burns. The faraway shriek of drones stirs the air. Crowning the horizon is the enormous wall that separates our Diamond City from the Royalist cities beyond. A few dark spires peek from the other side.
Hanging from the divider are corpses, the dark cloaks of the Royalist guards flapping in the breeze. Most of the Royalist cities this far south will have been evacuated by now. The Silvers to the mountains, the Golds to Hyperion.
And we’re left here in the shadow of Pandora.
I find Her nestled between the clouds, seeping red fire. A shiver wriggles down my spine. If I look close enough, I can almost see the dusty haze encircling Her: the debris field. Even if the Royal astronomers are right and Pandora doesn’t hit directly, the chunks of rock shadowing Her will take out entire cities, smashing into oceans and kicking up deadly clouds of dust that will enshroud the world.
I look down. Shadow Fall has cleared the market, but tent fires still smolder, hanging metal pots clang in the wind, and feral dogs sniff out what the occupants so abruptly left behind.
“It wasn’t always like this,” I say to Riser, who’s watching the feral dogs like he wants to spring from the rooftop and join them. For some reason it’s important he knows beautiful things exist outside the pit.
While Riser studies the ruined city, I study him. Wind ruffles his dark, wavy hair back, revealing soot-colored eyebrows and eyelashes and knife-edged cheekbones that trap deep shadows. In this strange light, the scars crisscrossing his face are silvery-white. Except for the gash over his eye, the scars are fine and delicate, marking nearly every inch of his exposed flesh.
“Brogue’s a twitcher just like the screws,” Riser remarks from the corner of his mouth. He probably knows I’ve been studying him, just like he knows about Brogue. Pit Boy misses nothing.
“Just figured that out?” I immediately regret my childish tone, but I can’t stand him thinking he knows more than me.
Riser slowly turns to face me, his expression unreadable. “I’m not the enemy, Everly.”
I feel something inside me soften. Riser would make a strong ally. And I don’t hate him, not exactly. In fact, right now he’s about the closest thing to a friend I’ve had in years. But I can’t forget that he was one of them.
No, is one of them. He helped capture me and tie me up. Who knows the horrors I would have suffered if I hadn’t broken free and escaped?
No, Pit Boy can’t be trusted.
“Together,” Riser urges, “you’d have a better chance at saving Max.”
I grind my jaw. It’s like he’s slowly peeling away at me. “Please, don’t say his name.”
