Temporarily blinded, the man with the gun falls to the floor. The sound from the grenade has shaken his inner ear fluid, causing complete disorientation. Silver, having protected herself as best she could, is already beginning to recover her eyesight. Kneeling on all fours, she waits for her equilibrium to be restored, only vaguely aware of four armed men entering the room behind her.
Police Division Agents, in full combat uniform.
Two of them haul the gun man up off the floor and lead him away, while another confiscates his weapon. A fourth reaches for Silver’s arm and pulls her to her feet. Her ears still ringing, her vision still blurred, she can barely make out the name on his jacket.
Luka Kinsella.
As he props her up against a nearby table, she reaches out for him and places a flat palm against his chest.
“Luka …”
He brushes her hand away. In doing so, he gets her blood all over his fingers. Turning her inner arm upward, he gets a good look at the wound—and the others beside it—before she pulls herself back.
Withdrawing too late to avoid garnering his concern, she turns away and pretends to ignore the heavy hand upon her shoulder.
“Don’t go anywhere.” He squeezes her. “I’ll fetch your Liaison.”
She clutches at his jacket, trying to hold him back, but she grabs a fistful of air and he’s gone in the blink of an eye. Regaining more stability every second, she fumbles her way toward the broken window and looks down onto the street below. Out there, Luka emerges onto the street and removes his helmet while digging around in one of his pockets. Moments later, he tosses something to one of his colleagues and directs the Agent inside.
Before he disappears into the back of a Police Division armored truck, his deep green eyes dart up toward the window. Perfectly groomed, sandy colored hair refuses to be tousled by the wind, and he’s still clean shaven—just how Silver remembers him.
He tips his head to her before he turns and walks away, leaving her with that brief, you-can-still-count-on-me nod.
“Ms. Cross?”
Silver’s attention is whipped back into the room at the sound of her new Liaison’s voice.
“Silver,” she corrects the Liaison. “My name is Silver.”
“Your name is Ella Cross, and you broke protocol today.”
Almost back to one hundred percent functionality, Silver sighs and retrieves her hunting knife from the floor. “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”
Her Liaison, a slender brunette in her early twenties, probably doesn’t have the experience to keep Silver in line, but she’s more than willing to try.
Hands on hips, “You were kicked off this one this morning, after the fuck up at Kink Central. Remember? Another Bounty Hunter was already assigned the job.”
Silver wipes off the blade of her knife and looks around for the Chimera, absently commenting: “Job’s done.”
In truth, the job should’ve been done much earlier. She’s been a Bounty Hunter and an Enforcer for six years. That’s six years on the Police Division payroll as a valuable asset, turning in warrant Dodgers to meet their fate.
Enforcement.
Capital punishment.
Some call it an extension of the justice system. Others call it population control. Either way, any Fringer who racks up three arrests on their record ends up on the warrant list, and Fishers—like Silver’s pretty little Liaison Agent—are sent to hunt them down.
Enlisting the help of Bounty Hunters helps to expedite the process, and Silver, an ex-Hunter Division Commander, is an ideal candidate for the position.
Usually, that is.
But not today.
She should’ve had the Dodger hours ago, when she literally caught him with his pants down. At the precise moment she burst in on him, in the back room of a whore house, he was pissing into the mouth of a kneeling Jade while her hands were cuffed to the bedpost, and her ‘friend’ held her unwilling mouth open. He should’ve been an easy mark, but somehow he’d managed to give her the slip.
Since she arose this morning she’s been distracted, and when she’s not at her best the Dodgers can sense it. Even after all the years that have passed here, birthdays are still hard for her to bear. Without realizing it, she clutches at the dog tags around her neck. He’d be forty today, and he doesn’t even know that she still exists.
Alexander King.
At her request, he’d been informed of her death six years ago. Since then, she’d refused to even hear mention of his name.
Her Liaison jolts her back into reality.
“I’ll have to report you for insubordination.”
“Good luck with that.” Silver laughs. “Send the Commissioner my love, won’t you?”
Commissioner Gabriel Maydevine.
Formerly the Hunter General, he’s Silver’s old boss and—more importantly—her adoptive father. Every penny that Silver earns in bounty or enforcement she owes to Maydevine, who enlisted her when she was first banished.
The Liaison knows her insubordination threat is worthless.
Silver kicks at the Chimera to get its attention. Permanently blinded by the stun grenade, and now deaf in one ear, the animal is completely unable to navigate its surroundings. Stumbling around in circles, bashing its head against walls and furniture, it whines for help.
Silver grabs it by the scruff of its neck and holds it tight. The whimpering monster looks almost pathetic, so helpless and desperate. It tries to take a chunk out of her hand, but its tooth barely grazes her finger. Giving it no chance to get a more significant taste of her blood, she drives her blade into its skull, right up to the hilt.
Instant death.
Silver takes pleasure in her Liaison’s obvious disgust. As she wiggles the knife around to pull it free, one of the Chimera’s eyeballs pops out and lands directly at the Liaison’s feet.
“What happened to your predecessor?” Silver enquires.
Since Luka removed himself from the position six years ago, she’s been assigned more different Liaisons than she can keep track of. This one, the name on her jacket identifying her as Lidia Valentine, is yet another new face.
“You drove him away,” Valentine snarls at Silver. “He quit the Division because of you.”
“I think you’re giving me altogether too much credit.” Silver finds a pile of hemp rope—abundant in a hemp factory—and ties the Chimera’s front feet together. “I was just putting him through his paces.” She smiles up at Valentine.
Valentine doesn’t care to hear her side of the story, and tosses something small and cylindrical at her. “Luka said to give you this.”
Medical gauze.
Silver catches it with one hand. “Much appreciated.”
“I don’t know why he bothers.”
Taken aback by the venom in Valentine’s tone, Silver studies her expression for the slightest hint of an explanation for that sudden surge of emotion.
Jealousy?
Yes, that’s it: a quietly seething jealousy.
Silver makes the leap. “You’re fucking him?”
A flush of color to Valentine’s cheeks answers that question for her. Silver gets to her feet, hauling the Chimera’s corpse up and over her shoulder. She stands a good few inches above Valentine, and she’s got plenty more muscle. Backing Valentine up against a door frame, Silver looms into her personal space.
“Let’s get one thing straight: you can’t compete with the history that Luka and I have together. We’ve known each other longer than you’ve been alive, kid,” she spits that word out for emphasis.
Valentine tries hard not to be intimidated.
Silver reaches her hand—covered in the Chimera’s blood—up to Valentine’s face and runs her fingers lightly across her cheek, smearing blood all over her skin. “Gosh, you must be the lucky centennial.”
“Centennial?”
“The hundredth notch on his bedpost.”
Valentine pushes away Silver’s hand. “I’ll be requesting a reassignment fir
st thing in the morning.”
Silver shrugs. “Suit yourself. Have someone call me when the Dodger’s enforcement papers are signed.”
She begins to walk away, but Valentine calls her back.
“Wait.” She pulls a piece of folded paper out of her pocket. “I’m supposed to give you this.”
Silver takes it, unfolding it to reveal the name of another Dodger.
“Before noon tomorrow and we’ll pay you triple,” Valentine adds, rather begrudgingly.
“Why so generous?”
“He’s a Ripper. Leaving a trail of eight corpses behind him in less than a week bumps him up the most wanted list.”
Rippers.
The dangerous, untrained lunatics hired by Dodgers to rip the tags out of Fringers with a clean record—causing death, more often than not—so they can buy themselves more time in the District without the risk of enforcement.
“Still,” Silver is skeptical, “you’re not giving me much time.”
“Rules are rules.”
“Rules?”
“Five percent of your fee will be deducted for every hour you extend beyond the noon deadline.”
Silver’s eyebrow hits the sky. “Seriously?”
“It’s my understanding that the Commissioner wants to keep you … stimulated.”
Silver smirks.
A challenge.
She does love a challenge, and the Commissioner does love to bet on his favorite horse.
CHAPTER TWO
A Life, In Retrospect
Another day, another bounty.
This one—the prolific Ripper challenged to her by Commissioner Maydevine—put up a good fight, and Silver returns home to her dilapidated apartment above the theater with blood all over her hands.
It’s not quite noon, but she’s already on her second bottle of vodka. She has the munchies, too, and quickly raids the fridge for yesterday’s leftovers. The Chimera was only an adolescent, but it had enough meat on it to sustain two people for at least a week.
At the slam of the fridge, her arrival is noticed by the apartment’s other occupant: Alice.
Drabbed in ill-fitting clothes, dark glasses hiding her eyes from the sun, Alice darts in from the balcony, looking as though she was thrown together from the discarded parts of other people’s lives. She’s petite, with short blonde hair that she insists on cutting herself, despite the jagged edges. Not that it matters, since the uneven bob is a perfect frame for her dainty features.
Impossibly fair skin betrays the fact that she doesn’t get outside much, and adds to a look of fragility that could elicit care and tenderness from even the coldest heart. Barely a line on her face, her age is deceptively hard to calculate. She could be tiptoeing anywhere from mid-twenties to early thirties.
Watching Silver from the balcony door, she takes off her dark glasses and undresses her eyes—her bright, violet eyes. She glances from Silver’s bloody clothes to the vodka and back again, and she knows that today isn’t going well.
“What happened?”
Silver looks up at Alice, who’s barely recognizable as the frightened naked woman she first met in that damp, dark abandoned building six years ago, surrounded by Chimera.
She doesn’t answer her.
“Did something go wrong?” Alice persists.
Silver joins her on the balcony, and rests her tired frame upon an upturned crate, sucking back a healthy dose of the vodka. The alcohol’s warmth caresses her dry throat, and brings with it an almost instant feeling of relaxation.
Alice’s eyes drop to the custom made silver HK USP holstered at Silver’s belt, and the hunting knife. The Ella Cross engraved upon the hilt is barely visible beneath the blood. Like her hands, even the dog tags around her wrist are smeared with human fluid.
Nursing the bottle of vodka in her lap, Silver winces as the sun peeks out from behind a cloud, bathing light and warmth over the rotten city that surrounds her. She doesn’t need to turn and look at Alice to know that she’s trapped in her gaze.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says at last.
She takes another sip from the vodka and sets the bottle aside, placing it in a homemade cup holder made from the skull of a Chimera. A jagged circular hole cut roughly into the cranium is just the right size for the bottle.
Despite Silver’s arctic exterior, Alice is still determined to solicit contact with her. After all these years, she’s not been put off by Silver’s harsh tongue, or the pretence of a dead heart.
“You were gone all night.” Alice reaches for a nearby raggedy blanket and wraps it tightly around her shoulders, instinctively seeking some sort of comfort. “I didn’t know where you were.”
“I was working.”
Refusing to be drawn into a conversation about recent events, Silver remains distant. Repositioning her feet on a footrest made from the remains of the recently slaughtered Chimera, she inadvertently draws attention to the faint, lingering smell of death, hanging on the air like a circling bird of prey; a silent reminder of mortality.
There’s too much blood, Alice thinks. Silver’s clothes are covered in it, and she’s leaving a puddle on the floor.
“Is he dead?” she asks, tempting fate.
“Yup.”
Silence.
“Is that bad?”
“For him, I guess.”
More silence.
“I don’t understand … he had a warrant out for his enforcement, didn’t he?”
Silver reaches again for the vodka. “Uh-huh.”
“And now he’s dead?”
“This is getting repetitive.”
“Well, that is what you do for Commissioner Maydevine, isn’t it? You enforce people.”
Silver isn’t sure whether or not she should lie.
She doesn’t.
“What’s your point, Alice?”
“You would’ve pulled the trigger anyway, in the end. So I suppose I just don’t really understand what difference it makes whether he died now, or later.”
“I only get paid half if the fucker dies before the enforcement papers are signed.”
Whoa.
Present in her voice is a callous disregard that would’ve been utterly abhorrent to her six years ago. Even Alice, having only known Silver since her banishment, recognizes the stark and shocking change in her.
Silence.
Alice’s brain weaves thoughts. “They’re exploiting you. You know that, right?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Forcing a Hunter to kill humans. It’s against your code of honor.”
She’s right, but Silver would never let her see that she cares; it might be taken as a sign of weakness. “Killing things is all I’ve ever been any good at,” she insists. “Besides, who else could he ask?”
Though Silver keeps herself so well guarded, Alice knows a few key things about her past. She knows that Maydevine raised Silver since early childhood. She knows that he recruited her into the enforcement program. She knows that Silver will defend him to the hilt, no matter what.
Alice shrugs. “I thought he was supposed to protect you, that’s all.”
That sounds a little like criticism, but Silver ignores her insinuation of Maydevine’s poor parenting skills.
“People aren’t exactly standing in line for the chance to pull the trigger against one of their own, Al. He needs my help.”
“Is that how he sold it to you?”
Whether or not she deliberately intends to rile Silver is unclear, but Silver is immediately set on edge nonetheless.
“We’re family. We help each other.”
Alice’s shoulder rises and falls with a kind of antagonizing nonchalance. “Sort of, I guess.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alice doesn’t have a vocabulary extensive enough to be particularly socially tactful, so she says exactly what’s on her mind. “Just that, well, your parents are dead. You don’t have any real family left, do you?”
�
��Maydevine is my family, Al. Blood has very little to do with it, but maybe you’d have to be human to understand that.”
Ouch.
Alice’s genetic identity is something of a sore subject, and Silver knows that was a low shot. After six years together, answers have still not been forthcoming, and Silver’s grown tired of seeking them out. For the time being, Alice’s human body and Chimeran eyes remain a mystery—to both of them, apparently.
A second or two of awkward silence passes.
Finally, a distraction.
In the street below, a group of off-duty Hunters drag an unconscious, heavily sedated Chimera behind them. Since the animal is still alive, it’s not intended for food. At least, not right away. This one is ready to be sold to whichever Fringe District butcher shop is prepared to offer the best exchange.
It’ll be prepped for its first fight right away.
A fight to the death.
That’s entertainment, Fringe-style.
After the animal dies, either in this fight or the next, it’ll be skinned. The skin will be sold to tanneries to make leather for shoes, belts, and other accessories. No part of the creature will be wasted. Even bones can be carved into cutlery or jewelry—anything that can be sold or traded. A skull can make a pretty decent candlestick holder, and even the candles themselves—tallow candles—are fashioned from the layers of subcutaneous fat cut from around a Chimera’s belly.
Any trace of anger Alice felt a moment ago quickly dissipates at the sight of Silver’s sudden, raw anguish. “You still miss it, don’t you? The Hunter Division.”
“That surprises you?”
“I suppose I thought you might’ve found other things to focus on.”
Alice can’t conceal the hurt in her voice. Nor has she ever tried to hide the fact that all she’s ever wanted is Silver’s full and undivided attention. In the six years they’ve been together, Alice has tried everything to please her, in the hope that some kind of happiness might be enough to ensure her continued loyalty and protection—and companionship.
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