My father told me that the bridges were built to ease congestion on Haven’s streets—some suspended from steel cables hooked to the buildings, some made of ropes—and were never intended as dwellings. But my whole life, the bridges up in the Pents have been crowded. Scattered sporadically on both sides of this narrow bridge, families live in tiny shacks made of cardboard, fabric, newspaper—whatever building materials they could find. No habitable space is wasted in Haven, even these rickety bridges.
I see a new gap in the bridge, and after making sure Jayma noticed it, too, I step over and avoid looking down the sixteen-odd floors to the ground. The materials of the missing section of bridge are being used as the wall of a shack. I shake my head. What’s the sense in having privacy if your floor falls out below you?
With a loud bang, a sheet of aluminum lands a few feet ahead of us, shaking the bridge. Shielding our heads with our arms, Jayma and I look up. This bridge is not only rickety, but it runs beneath two others much worse. A few heads peek out of shelters to investigate, and a boy of about ten runs to grab the metal and drag it home. He reminds me of Drake.
Even though my brother might have better air and more light for reading out here in the open, I can’t imagine living on one of these bridges, or worse, on a poorly ventilated roof. Besides, it’s silly to even contemplate requesting a move. Management would discover Drake.
Reaching the end of the bridge, I crouch and grab a rope, then climb down several floors. At the knot at the rope’s end, I use both legs to push off the side of the building and swing from the rope to land on a metal platform jutting out from the next building. Vibrations penetrate my feet, rising up to my clenched teeth.
Jayma follows, and after landing she leans in close. “Finally. Now you can tell me. What happened up on the roof? I didn’t want to ask in the crowds.”
“Nothing happened.” I glance around, checking for eavesdroppers. It’s safe here.
“Come on,” she says. “Since when do we have secrets? Tell me.” Her voice lowers. “Why did you look so upset after talking to Cal?” She gasps and grabs my hand. “Does he like someone else? Is he getting a dating license?”
My heart pinches. “It’s nothing like that. I was just in a hurry to check on Drake.” It’s not a total lie. But I’m confused about Cal, and my emotions are banging hard to get out, like we’re in a physical fight I can’t let them win. I’d give anything to tell Jayma my biggest secrets, give anything to be a Normal like her, give anything to turn back time to when our friendship was free and easy with no secrets, when we shared everything.
“Why are you upset then?” she asks. “Is it Drake?”
“I worry he’ll get caught and taken to the Hospital.”
Jayma’s pale green eyes open wide with compassion. “Some people say it’s just rumors, but after Jack was taken to the Hospital . . .” Her eyes fill with tears. “I can’t bear the thought of them taking Drake there.”
Her big brother, Jack, caught the flu two winters ago and, after he missed work three days in a row, his supervisor reported his absence to the Comps. When they realized it was more than a cold, Health & Safety swooped in and carted him to the Hospital, later claiming he died of his illness.
Not likely.
Jack worked in Sky Maintenance, and it’s a never-spoken truth that lower-level employees only go in to the Hospital—none ever come out. I shudder imagining the truth. His death is why I trust Jayma to keep Drake’s injury a secret. She knows what Management does to the weak and the sick and the injured—not to mention Parasites and Deviants. Drake has three strikes. Big ones.
“Have you ever told anyone?” I ask. “That Drake lives with me?”
“No.” Her eyes broadcast shock.
Air rushes out of my chest. “I knew you’d never.” I don’t want to talk about Drake or the Hospital anymore. Pretending to hear something, I raise a finger to my lips. She presses hers tightly together and nods.
Cal’s news roused raw memories of the day my father killed my mother. We learned in GT that Deviants aspire to wipe out all Normals, but I’m proof that’s not always true. I just want to fit in.
I shudder, wondering if something inside me lies dormant, waiting to snap. If someday I’ll change into a murderous monster. But if I dwell on the dangers I face, I could hurt Jayma, so I push the offending emotions down.
Stepping off the metal platform onto the building’s foot-wide window ledge, I press my back against the bricks. This building’s corridors are clogged, so it’s faster to go around it than through. Taking controlled side steps, I rub my ring. It doesn’t pay to dwell on the past.
CHAPTER THREE
THE HUB IS crazy crowded. We step into the square of light from under the crisscross of bridges, and I shield my eyes against the bright lights that bounce off the sky and glint off the glass of the highly polished towers. Rare in the Pents, glass isn’t in short supply in the Hub—neither is light. Few individual citizens can afford more than one weak bulb, and with Management controlling and limiting energy from the windmills and solar panels, the Hub is the only bright place in Haven.
Above us, neon billboards blast messages from the Communication Department: Haven Equals Safety, Compliance: Your Key to Happiness!, The P&P—Your Safety Guarantee. The last ad has an image of two young men, one choking on dust and the other being chased by a Shredder. Its eyes bulge from its skull, and its human-shaped body is near skeletal and covered by skin scabbed with dried blood.
I wrinkle my nose in disgust. All around us people are grinning, talking loudly. The air’s charged.
“All this for a lottery?” I say to Jayma and she shrugs.
Scout bounds up to us. “Someone’s getting exed.”
My stomach clenches. I’m so repulsed I can’t look at Scout—excited when he should be appalled.
“Come on,” he says. “We’ve got a great view of the screens from the line.” He points ahead, and I turn to see Cal staring right at me. My body temperature rises, and I look down to my feet.
“Did you know?” I ask Jayma.
She shakes her head, and then turns to Scout. “Can you go back to the line and give us a minute? We’ll join you guys soon. We’re not finished with our girl talk.”
Backing away, he lifts his hands, then heads for his older brother.
“I didn’t know.” Jayma grabs on to my arm and squeezes. “I’m sorry. I know you hate seeing these. Do you want to come back tomorrow instead?”
“We’re here now.” I smile to cover my churning nausea. “It’s okay.” It’s not—at all—but it took us nearly an hour to cover the distance from home to the Hub, and now I know why so many people were crowding our route. An Expunging.
Jayma hugs me and I try not to stiffen.
“I’m so glad you’re my friend,” she says, and her body’s so thin, I fear she’ll snap if I hug her as hard as she’s hugging me.
“Thanks. Me, too.”
“Seriously.” She pulls back and looks me directly in the eyes.
I let my gaze drift to the side but she dips her face around, forcing me to maintain eye contact.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she says. “Let me help you for once. If it weren’t for you, I’d be curled up in a little ball and crying half the time.”
“You’re the happiest person I know.”
“Because I have you. Because you’re so strong and brave, and you’re always there for me.”
I pull her into another hug. “You’re always there for me, too.”
The crowd roars, and everyone turns toward the huge screens that surround the square. I don’t want to look up. I know I shouldn’t, yet I do.
The man being exed is short and thin, his clothes embedded with grime. Over the booming speakers, the announcer tells us this man’s a Parasite, having walked away from his work assignment four months ago—probably because he was asked to do something dangerous like external dome repairs. But the announcer doesn’t mention the reasons and instead tells u
s how the man’s been hiding, stealing food, and generally undermining Haven’s economy, our safety. To hear the crowd’s reaction to the man’s crimes, you’d think he’d committed mass murder.
Expungings are televised in the Hub as a deterrent, but a good number of those exed are Deviants. Our crime is existing. Witnessing an expunging, the only thing I’m deterred from is admitting what I am.
Like everyone else, I grew up believing what I’d been taught: that all Deviants are a threat to Haven. And after my father attacked us and I learned he was a Deviant, I hated them more than most. But then I discovered Drake’s Deviance, and later my own. . . . Now all I want is to learn there’s a cure, and failing that, to stay hidden. If there were any way to get rid of my curse, I would.
Up on the screens, the cameras, mounted on the outside of the dome and on nearby poles, capture six Compliance Officers wearing dust protection suits and sealed helmets as they push the man through a door in the dome. A strong wind swirls the dust in huge sheets, creating an eerie sound, like someone whistling into a microphone. One Comp shoves the exed man, and he stumbles to his knees. Dust flies up around him.
Jayma gasps and grips my hand. The man covers his nose and mouth with his arm, but we all know it’s futile. Outside without a mask he can’t avoid inhaling the dust, and while his fate isn’t certain, it’s sealed. At this point he’s lucky if he’s destined to become a Shredder.
I feel the urge to shout at the screen, to tell him to bend down and pull in as much dust as he can, to let it clog his lungs. Drowning on dust would be better than being alive for the torture.
My hope doesn’t last long, and a pack of about ten Shredders swarms in, teeth bared, their skin a deep maroon that resembles dried meat.
The Comps retreat and seal the door to Haven, and the man scrambles back and slams into the outside of the dome. The Shredders surround him in a tight semicircle, and the biggest one—a creature wearing a cowboy hat—opens his mouth in what looks like a roar, but we can’t hear over the squealing wind.
Four Shredders rush forward and lift the man like he’s a feather, holding him by his limbs. The cowboy Shredder roars again and they drop the man, catching him just before he hits the dust. Leaping forward, the leader moves so quickly I don’t see his knife until it’s against the man’s face.
The camera zooms in, and the man’s fear slices straight to my heart. His eyes are wide and frozen in terror. The knife scrapes a layer of skin off his cheek, and the Shredder laughs and drapes the skin onto his own chest like a medal. The crowd cheers.
The backs of my eyes tingle with the threat of my curse. I can’t let my emotions take hold.
The Shredders laugh and lunge at the man as the cowboy Shredder swipes the broadside of the blade across his biceps, adding a glistening layer of blood to his scabbed skin. I look away.
My chest heaves as I try to draw air, and I rub my mom’s ring. I can’t let my curse emerge. Too many people around. This is what awaits me if I’m caught, what awaits my little brother if I don’t protect him.
This is what happened to my father. Monsters like this killed my dad.
I don’t care what he did; no one deserves this kind of death. Shredders are crazy and sadistic and don’t kill quickly. Some of their victims survive for weeks before the Shredders finish tearing strips off their bodies and harvesting body parts for their nightmarish trophy displays.
I could almost understand Shredders if they actually ate their victims, if they were starving out there and saw people as meat. But they don’t. Shredders live off the dust. They use the exed Haven employees for their amusement, and then leave their remains for the rats.
I shudder. I may have eaten a creature that once gnawed human flesh.
The exed man screams, and it’s all I can do to keep from tucking into a ball and wrapping my arms over my shins. I frantically rub my thumb on my ring. It’s not working, so I try to imagine my body flooding with icy light like the overhead bulbs at GT. But not just one light—hundreds, enough to erase my thoughts, numb my body, and freeze my heart. White space. White space. White space.
I can’t find it.
Jayma touches my back. “Are you okay?”
I jump. I need to get out of here. Now. “Save me a place in line?”
Without waiting for Jayma’s answer, without even looking at her, I run and push through the crowd that remains fixated on the screens’ horror show.
Struggling to find a private place to recover, I spot a break in the ocean of bodies and burst into a dark alley I’ve never explored. From the look of the asphalt surface, it was part of a road BTD, but new walls have been built at each side, narrowing the alley to barely four feet across. At intervals, iron ladders hang down that must be the entryways to homes. Nice ones, given their proximity to the Hub. I wonder if I’ll get in trouble if I’m caught here.
I don’t care. Not right now. I stop running and press my back against a wall that’s cool and comforting, some kind of sheet metal. Closing my eyes, I wait for my heart rate to slow, for my emotions to come back under control so I can rejoin society and claim my rations.
Society. Ha!
Right now, I’m repelled by this society I’m part of—yet not. I may have an employee number. I might follow the P&P Manual—mostly—but since I discovered my curse I haven’t belonged in Haven. As hard as I try, I’ll never fit in, never be a Normal.
I almost wish I could become a Parasite and hide up on the rooftops out of sight, but I wouldn’t be able to move Drake quickly enough if the Comps came. Plus, while I can do with less food, I’m less sure about the vitamin powders we get to prevent the spread of disease and to compensate for the nutrients from foods humans ate BTD. I’m already concerned that Drake and I aren’t getting enough on half rations.
I draw long breaths. If Drake and I want to eat this month, I need to get it together and go back to the Hub. Who knows when I’ll find more rats. The Comps might have already discovered the nest on our roof. For all I know, Cal reported them.
“Glory,” a deep voice says—a voice I don’t recognize. “I’ve got a message for you.”
Turning, I see a boy who looks about my age, maybe older. He’s tall, even taller than Cal and much broader, more imposing.
I draw a sharp breath through my nose and wonder where and how he’s managed to get enough protein to build muscles like that. Muscles that alter the shape of his shoulders and the width of his chest into a form rarely seen in Haven.
He’s Management. Or a Comp. He must be—even though he’s not only too young, he’s not in uniform or a suit. His oversized coat, made of layers of heavy cloth, is belted loosely at his waist with a rope tied in what looks like a slipknot. Below the rope, the fabric flares out and brushes the tops of his boots.
It’s too late to run—he’s standing too close and knows my name.
“Who are you?” I ask, keeping my gaze from his eyes.
“Name’s Burn.”
“You have a message?”
He taps my shoe with his heavy boot. “Look at me.”
He asked for it. I look up, and he’s so close the heat from his body penetrates my skin. His hair is thick and dark and long, and there’s stubble on his upper lip and jaw. He reminds me of a wolf or a bear or one of the other now-extinct creatures I’ve seen in books or stuffed at the museum.
My throat closes and I try to look away, but he takes my chin in his thick, strong fingers and forces me to look at him. “The message”—his voice is gruff—“is from your father.”
I break free to run but he grabs my arm.
My heart races, my eyes tingle and sting. If I dare look into his eyes, I might kill him.
I should kill him.
“Let me go.” I struggle against his grip, his hand a steel trap. “You’re lying. My father is dead.”
“No, Glory”—he meets my eyes—“he’s not.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“LIAR.” I STARE at Burn. “My father was expunged three yea
rs ago.”
Burn pulls my face around, and he’s so close it’s impossible to look at him without triggering my curse. I can’t do that. He might eat me.
“He’s alive. And your brother’s in danger.”
I raise my chin. “I don’t have a brother.”
“Then who’s Drake?”
My chest constricts. “Don’t you dare hurt him.” My words explode.
“I’m not the danger.”
I jerk away, slam into the metal wall, and the vibrations clamber up my spine. My dad’s coming back to finish what he started. To kill me and Drake.
But rejecting that theory, I banish my fear. This Burn guy is lying. My father’s dead and I hate how this boy has twisted my mind with such ease.
He runs thick fingers over his jaw. He could crush my neck with one hand.
“Your father sent me,” he says. “To get you to safety.”
“Safety? He tried to kill us.” And he’s dead now. Either dead or a Shredder.
Burn towers over me, but I square my shoulders.
“You’re lying. What do you really want?” I narrow my eyes as my curse starts to build.
“Glory!” Cal’s voice travels down the alleyway, and I spin to see his lean silhouette at the mouth of the Hub.
“Down here,” I call out and he runs toward us.
I turn back to Burn but he’s gone. Vanished. I spin and look up to see a shape near the top of one of the ladders, but it’s impossible for him to have climbed so quickly. A shadow moves near the roof of another building. That can’t be him, either, so I look farther down the alley. It’s like he evaporated—or I imagined him in the first place.
The expunging must have brought back bad memories of my father, not to mention the shame and horror of discovering my own curse. I had to have been hallucinating. The alternative’s much worse.
Deviants (The Dust Chronicles) Page 3
