“Phaeden must be quaking in his Old World Prada boots to let you make a deal with me.” She smirks, her mood beginning to soften.
“The smell of mutiny is in the air. The citizens are gearing up for a revolt, and we need to take action.” He turns back to her. “Are you ready?”
Before she can answer, he signals to one of his men. The Agent approaches with another briefcase and opens it up on the table.
A portable tag kit.
The look of surprise leaps off Silver’s face as if she’d just been told that up was down. “Right now?!”
Maydevine flicks his second cigarette over the edge of the building and pulls a small zip-lock bag from his inside pocket.
A platinum tag.
One Agent takes the tag from him as another forcibly sits Silver back down at the table.
“You can’t expect me to do this alone?” she declares.
Maydevine shrugs. “I don’t care what you do, or how you do it. Just so long as it gets done, and nothing gets too fucked up in the process.”
A uniformed doctor swabs the inside of Silver’s left wrist with an alcohol solution.
“My team will need access, too.” She winces as the Omega doctor expertly slices open her wrist along her old scar.
“Your team?”
“My unit.”
“Seriously?” Maydevine frowns disbelief at her. “I’ll give you a unit of my best men. Pick them yourself, if you want.”
“That’s not the deal. Deal is: my unit of Hunters, or I walk.”
As if Maydevine needed any reminder that his Police Division men are of an inferior caliber, in her eyes. As if he deserved one more cheap shot at his voluntary demotion, when everything he’s done he’s done entirely for her.
As the Hunter General he’d lacked authority over the Fringe District. Hunter Division only has jurisdiction over the Out District—anything unreclaimed, where the Chimera lurk. The Police Division has jurisdiction over everything else.
He’d made no secret of the fact that, in his former position, he wouldn’t have been able to protect her. In order to do just that, he’d requested transfer into the Police Division and given up everything he’d ever worked for—and she hated it. She hated it then, and she hates it still.
Maydevine watches her expression closely, hoping to uncover a bluff behind her eyes.
No such luck.
“After all this time, you’re still pining for those reckless misfits?”
“They’re my reckless misfits,” Silver growls through clenched teeth. “Besides”—she watches her black tag be tweezed out from inside her—“I’m not the only one in need of a second chance.”
“You’re talking about Jax and Oz?”
“They’re both on their third strike. They’ve been Dodgers for months and they’re starting to push their luck.”
Maydevine shakes his head. “I can’t do it. There’s only one blue tag on the table, and it’s got your name on it.”
“Not that.” Silver negotiates the terms while she gets stitched up. “Their warrants.”
Maydevine gives a halfhearted shrug, not really putting the effort into it. If that’s all she wants, she can have it.
“Fine. Upon delivery.”
“Permanently,” Silver adds, pushing Maydevine to the very limits of his legal capabilities.
Maydevine hesitates, twirling a third cigarette between his fingers. “You’re asking me to give carte blanche to a pair of unstable fugitives?”
“They were set up, just like me.”
“You were caught up in a technicality, that’s all.”
“Some technicality.” Silver winces again when her wrist is sprayed with an antiseptic solution. “The point is, they don’t deserve to be here anymore than I do.”
“You have to drop this conspiracy theory bullshit, you know that?” He points the cigarette at her. “They did what they did and they were punished for it.”
“Even if you’re right and they are guilty, where’s the harm in making their life sentence a little more bearable?”
Maydevine finally lights up the cigarette, the fresh hit of nicotine bringing him some small sense of temporary relaxation. “It’s not as easy as you’re making it seem.”
“Doing the right thing seldom is.”
An Agent quickly scans Silver’s wrist with a small tag reading device, nodding to Maydevine to confirm that the new tag is working correctly.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” He puffs on the cigarette. “What you’re asking of me is an impossible thing.”
“You and I both know that’s not true.” Silver smiles, her comment silently piquing Carter’s interest. “Math may not be my strongest subject, but I know I’ve been arrested more than three times.” Her smile turns into a smirk. “And yet, I’m still here, and I’m not a Dodger.”
“You misunderstand me, kid.” Maydevine shakes his head. “Permanence is not something I’m capable of delivering.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m a year away from retirement.” A puff of a cigarette. “Even if I do acquiesce, their fate would soon fall into the hands of my successor.”
Carter’s eyes dart to Maydevine at the mention of the word, but Maydevine keeps his focus firmly on Silver, unaware of Carter’s subtle bid for his attention.
“As would yours,” Maydevine solemnly concludes.
Silence.
Silver breaks eye contact for the first time, staring down at her sore wrist while the doctor carefully bandages it up. Maydevine watches her from a distance, secretly wishing there was more that he could do to help. If not for their sake, then for hers.
“I’ll do what I can for them.” One last puff. “And that’s all I can say.” He tosses the cigarette away.
At the edge of the roof, Carter shakes his head in another silent protest, but Maydevine behaves as if he isn’t even there.
Addressing Silver, “I want the matter dead, you understand me?”
“That seems to have become my specialty,” Silver mutters, lost somewhere else inside her head.
Holding her bandaged wrist, she gets up and begins to walk away. All the while, Maydevine’s eyes never leave her, the subtle hint of emotion in his expression betraying a distinct sense of the fondness and the history between them.
“Ella,” he calls her back to him. “What about the others?”
She hesitates at the door, but doesn’t turn back. “Red lives for the thrill of the chase. She’d feel awful left out if I didn’t invite her along.”
“And the boy? King?”
“He’s part of my unit, isn’t he?” Trademark deflection.
Maydevine refuses to let her evade the topic. “Is that all he is now?”
Finally, Silver faces him again. “I’ve been dead for six years. I’m probably the last thing on his mind right now.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Silver dare not believe otherwise.
At last, “How is he?”
“Why don’t you just ask him yourself?” Maydevine reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded scrap of paper, holding it out to her.
All the rest of the world suddenly melting away from her, Silver retraces her steps across the roof and takes the paper from him.
A Sentinel District address.
“You want a ride?” he offers.
Silver shakes her head. “I’d rather walk.”
So nervous her stomach doesn’t know if it should somersault or throw up her breakfast, she clasps the piece of paper tightly in her hand, her knuckles turning white with tension. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Maydevine nods. “Breaking point of the One Way. Midnight. Don’t be late.”
She acknowledges the order with a faux salute and disappears through the doorway.
There’s silence.
Carter breaks it. “If this goes wrong …”
Maydevine takes a deep breath, drawing in the strength of his convictions. “If this goes wrong, you can e
nforce me yourself.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Crossing
After her meeting with Maydevine, Silver makes the trip across the Fringe District on foot. For the first time in a long time, there is a clear purpose in her steps.
She passes brawls on the streets, corpses abandoned in gutters, and utter dereliction seeping from every crack and crevice of this place that she knows all too well. She knows all of the shortcuts and the hideaways, every creep and every con man—and she fears nothing here. Walking through an alley way, the sight of a cloaked Ripper working his knife on the wrist of a corpse doesn’t even draw her attention.
At the edge of North Town, on the water front, Silver looks across at the Sentinel District. It positively gleams with privilege, and boasts wealth and elitism with every single brick and pane of glass, so perfectly placed. It’s a triumph of human success, while the Fringe District is the absolute embodiment of human failure.
The Fringe District is separated from the Sentinel District on all sides by a stretch of water, connected by just one bridge—Old World Verrazano-Narrows Bridge—where the tag Gateway is located. This bridge, now called the One Way, is the only way in or out of the Fringe District, and Silver approaches it now with trepidation.
She hasn’t been back to this spot since her banishment. Fringers have tried to make a statement by hanging banners on the walls of the slums facing the bridge: ‘fuck you, blue’, ‘keep out’, ‘death awaits’.
The buildings and the sidewalks are covered with graffiti: codes and messages embedded in symbols and drawings. It’s a language that paints every corner of the Fringe District, for those who know to look for it, and this runic code is interpretable only to the locals—the Fringers themselves. Here, at the neck of the One Way, the runic symbols are rife with warning: danger ahead, kingdom of death, punishment follows.
All along the Fringe District side of the bridge, rotting human heads are displayed atop large makeshift spikes. Some are hollow steel pipes, looted from the disused gas mains. Others are made out of fire pokers, or splintered pool cues.
Flies and crows swarm everywhere, and the ground is practically a living carpet of writhing, feasting maggots, multiplying by thousands more every day. A few of the severed heads have Police Division helmets on. These are Fishers, who paid the ultimate price for their foolhardy invasions into a world that refuses to submit to outsider control.
Silver walks past them slowly, glancing at some of the faces that are still recognizable. Some are familiar to her, others aren’t. One of them is an old Liaison Agent of hers, and now a rat is munching on his soupy brains.
Further onto the One Way and the symbolism, the warnings, and the smell of decay gives way into a long stretch of Old World tarmac, still stained with the blood and the horror of decades ago.
The midway section of the One Way Bridge.
Breaking point.
Here, the tag Gateway looms like a silent predator; a fly-trap waiting for its unsuspecting prey. Behind her, there is only poverty and misery. In front of her, there lies the façade of a would-be utopia. The Sentinel District is a fading mirage of perfection, faltering in the presence of terror among the people so helplessly confined within it.
This is the very place where your life can change, though never usually for the better. Standing before the Gateway, her wrist dripping blood through the thin bandage, she looks up at the automated machine guns positioned at the top of the Gateway arch. Motion sensors have already detected her approaching, and the guns have been reoriented to keep her in their sights—just in case.
A teardrop of blood escapes the hemp gauze, trickling down her wrist and across the palm of her hand, leaving a bright red streak along the crumpled piece of paper before it finally drips from her fingertips onto the cracked and crumbling tarmac below.
She unfolds the paper again, silently reassuring herself.
Alexander King.
Not a figment of her imagination.
More tiny droplets of her blood start to seep through the saturated bandage, splashing against the ground at her feet. Covered with graffiti, years of anger and desperation have been preserved for all eternity on what remains of the Old World tarmac—and that’s not all.
People have taken their own lives here, in protest against their banishment. Though the elements see to it that much of the evidence is quickly washed away, some traces remain.
Blood.
Broken razorblades.
Skull fragments, complete with locks of hair matted with brain juice.
Shell casings.
Fearing a trick, she hesitates.
She takes just one step closer to the painted yellow line on the ground directly beneath the Gateway, and the guns follow her. She’d be shot dead in an instant if her tag wasn’t programmed correctly, or if this was all just some sort of elaborate scam.
One more step.
She takes a deep breath and holds it in her lungs like the last draw of life.
Another step.
More.
In five slow, painstaking steps she crosses beyond the Gateway.
The guns retract into a neutral position.
Exhale.
Relief.
Silence.
She keeps walking.
CHAPTER SIX
Alexander King
Silver approaches a harmless-looking Sentinel District bookstore that specializes in reclaimed Old World books. She checks the address against the piece of paper in her hand.
A perfect match.
No use left for the paper, she scrunches it up and tosses it down onto the pavement, at which point a litterbot scurries toward her. Instinctively, she draws her gun on it: a small, spiderlike creation, designed for one purpose only. Remembering what it is, she holsters her weapon and hopes that nobody witnessed the overreaction.
She watches as it senses the paper, scoops it up, and scuttles it over to a nearby trash can. Once the trash has been successfully disposed of, the litterbot slots itself into a charging zone nestled in the side of the trash can, where it will wait patiently for more work.
Turning her attention back to the bookstore, she runs her eyes over the window display: a selection of highly sought after Old World books, recovered from the remains of prior human civilization.
The bell on the door tinkles as she opens it … then plummets to the floor at her feet with a somewhat disenchanting thud. Alex hears the noise and enters the storefront through a door at the back, his nose buried deep inside an Old World reference book.
He has salt-and-pepper hair now, although it shows no signs of receding. With practice, he’s cultivated the notion of ‘permanently windswept’ into something truly dramatic, and his rough charm wears it well.
Unshaven, he verges on scruffy but hangs on to carelessly handsome. Beneath casual, understated clothes, he hides the still well-maintained physique of a Hunter. Today, with a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, he looks unassuming and average. To the untrained eye, that is.
Not to Silver’s eye.
Stomach flip.
Silver tries to hold back a small smile when she sees him, her heart suddenly realizing that six years is an awfully long no time at all. After all, what the mind tries to conceal beneath business and needs and the innumerous complications of life, the heart is able to reignite with a single glance.
The thumping in her chest is so hard it hurts, and she feels dizzy with adrenalin.
At first, he doesn’t even look up from his book. “Can I help you?”
He turns the page, expecting a standard response, but Silver remains silent. Too struck by him to speak, the words get stuck in her throat, so tight she can’t even swallow. Finally, he closes the book with a sharp snap, takes off his reading glasses and looks up.
Realization.
“Holy cow …” He stumbles back a few paces.
“Moo.” Silver smiles.
Alex looks around him, suddenly disconcerted. “This is the most viv
id dream I’ve ever had. I could’ve sworn I was awake.”
“I’m pretty sure you are.”
“No, see, if I was awake you’d be a sweet, little old lady looking for the last Old World copy of Knit Your Socks On, because you can’t be here.”
“Well, okay, but if this is your dream, then how come I’m wearing clothes?” Silver grins.
The grin still on her face, she takes a step toward Alex.
He takes a step back.
Ouch.
Openly hurt by his reticence, the grin dissolves and Silver bites on the edge of her tongue to distract her brain from tear production. “Really? Is that how it is?”
She tries to force the quiver from her voice, but fails, and despite her best efforts to conceal it, Alex can see the fragility behind her eyes. Still wary, he fights the instinct to comfort her, even though his whole body aches to feel the warmth of her touch.
“Alex …” she whispers.
The sound of his name upon her lips jumpstarts a heart that’s been cruising downhill in neutral for too long, but he holds it back. “If you’re really alive, and here, then you’re in violation of the banishment order.” Trying to keep a grip on calm rationality, his voice sounds forced and insincere.
Silver tries to smile, teasing him a little. “Are you complaining?”
“Only if I’m going to get into trouble.”
“Well, in that case, I have special dispensation.” The grin returns.
Still no response from Alex.
Until, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d rather have you far away and alive than right here in front of me, shot dead by the Police Division.”
Silver glances outside into the empty street, then back toward Alex. “I don’t hear any sirens. Do you?”
Alex shakes his head, performing a nervous hair ruffle. “I’m so sure that this isn’t possible.”
“How sure?”
All he can do is stare.
Silver takes another step toward him and this time he stays put, letting her begin to close the distance between them. She holds her hands out, very slowly, and takes the book away from him, setting it down beside the cash register.
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