“Apologies for the interruption, General.” He bows his head. “The Commissioner requested I give you this before you leave.”
Silver glances down at the case, recognizing it instantly.
The crest on the front of it reads ‘J.C.’.
Jonathan Cross.
His gun case.
The Agent opens up the case to reveal Silver’s inherited HK USP. Alongside it: Jonathan Cross’s Hunter Division dog tags. Swelling with emotion, Silver looks up at Maydevine in the watchtower.
The stalemate is broken.
A gesture like this means more than countless words, and she knows it. What she doesn’t know, though, is that Alex had his own hand in it. Not so long ago, he’d presented Maydevine with the dog tags and suggested, in no uncertain terms, that he should swallow his pride and make at least some effort to repair the emotional rift between himself and his only child.
From the watchtower, Maydevine gives Silver a fatherly nod of approval, encouraging her to take the gun.
She does.
First, she wraps the dog tags around her wrist. Second, she takes the gun and loads the clip, trading the junior Agent for the inferior replica she’s been carrying in her main holster.
“Thank you.” She dismisses him.
Moments later, the gates open up into a holding area called the Bin. It serves as an additional barrier between the Sentinel District and the City Bridge, providing yet one more line of defense against any wandering Chimera—or any other creature, for that matter—that might try to force its way into the city.
Silver leads the Hunter Division front line into the Bin, where they wait for the city gates to fully close behind them before the barrier onto the City Bridge can be opened. Snipers are positioned along the top of the outside wall of the Bin, ready to pick off any overeager enemy Chimera.
Slowly, the barrier creaks open, the pulley system grinding against its badly lubricated joints. She hears the rest of the front line ready their weapons behind her, while she stands motionless.
They aim their guns, while she waits.
One single Chimera scrambles underneath the barrier as it opens, and it’s immediately dispatched by a sniper. The Hunters breathe a collective sigh of relief when the door opens fully, and reveals the empty City Bridge before them.
Amaranthe is secure—for now.
Forming a convoy of armored trucks, Silver leads the front line onward toward the entrance to the Out District, passing over the derelict Belt beneath them. Their progress is watched closely by the snipers, ready to fire at any indication of trouble. As they reach the fortified gate on the other side, a horde of Fusions and exiled humans falls into a hushed silence.
The Out District side of the electrified gate was once covered in a blue tarpaulin, to prevent eyes from looking either in or out. Now, though, after weeks and months of exposure to the elements, the tarpaulin is torn and ragged, and blows wildly in the wind.
Silver halts her Division ten feet short of the fence.
Some of the faces on the other side may recognize her; those who once wore the emblems, but were since banished and forgotten. Silently, one body pushes in front of all the others and approaches the fence, standing confidently to face Silver. It’s a face unknown to her: a Fusion female of similar age and build to her own.
Silver breaks the silence. “Do you speak for these people?” She tips her head to the crowds behind the Fusion.
The Fusion spits her ‘gum’—a balled up chunk of over-cooked human gristle, leftover from a recent meal—out onto the ground at the base of the fence. “Someone has to.”
“Well, I’m here to speak for mine.”
“You can speak, but I won’t say we’ll listen.”
“You’ll have to, if you want to live.”
The intrigued Fusion waits for her to continue.
“The city’s prepared to offer temporary asylum in the Belt to those who remain unaffected by the virus. Once we’re able to engineer a vaccine, the city will see to it that everyone being held in the Belt will receive it before the protection of asylum is withdrawn.”
“What about the reclamation?”
“I’m not here to negotiate those terms with you.”
“Of course not.” The Fusion scowls.
“The continuation of the Third Reclamation has been temporarily deferred, pending the resolution of the viral crisis—you know that. We’re under new governance now, and once the wellbeing of the city is restored, I’m sure that plans for the next stage of the reclamation will be re-examined.”
“And what’s to say you won’t just hole us up in tight quarters to hasten your plans for extermination?”
“If we wanted you dead, we’d leave you where you are.”
Silence.
“Trust me”—Silver plants her hands on her hips—“this is the best offer you’re going to get all day.”
“We won’t give up our land.”
“When the time comes, the Governor’s prepared to consider a truce that will incorporate both the needs of the Fusion colony, and the needs of the human population. This proposal is expected to include the formal establishment of an area of the Out District as a recognized state belonging to your people.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t believe me? You’ll be officially seceded from the rest of the Out District, which will remain the property of our government and allow for the expansion of the city into other areas that are uninhabited.” Silver lets that settle. “Now, I think it would be polite for you to graciously accept our offer of asylum, and to prepare your people for the transition.”
“And how do you propose I do that?”
“Telling them not to shoot at us would be a fine start.”
*************************
An hour or so later, a white medical tent has been erected on City Bridge. Heavily armed Hunters line the Out District gate, allowing people to pass by them in single file toward the tent.
They’re there for crowd control. Anyone caught jumping the line or causing a stir is volunteering for a public beating. Anyone who’s obviously sick is pulled aside and dispatched. Which means, in plain terms, they’re shot in the head.
Inside the tent, all asylum seekers must pass through a metal detector. If the metal detector is set off, they’re told to unload their weapons into a large metal bin, guarded by Hunters. They have to keep passing through the metal detector—and will be strip searched, if necessary—until the Hunters are assured they aren’t concealing any more weapons.
After they’ve been disarmed, each individual is forced to submit a sample of blood. A laboratory technician pricks the finger of each person in turn, and runs it through a portable CBC device to determine whether or not they’re carrying the virus.
If they are, they’re shown through a separate exit and silently dispatched. Which only means, of course, that the gun used to shoot them in the face is fitted with a silencer. On the other hand, if they’re found to be uninfected, they’re quickly loaded into a transport vehicle and taken to the Belt in large groups.
Lucky for them.
Suddenly, there’s a kerfuffle just beyond the entrance to the Out District. A small crowd surrounds two Fusion males who’re tangled up in a fist fight, and a woman gets knocked down in the push-and-shove of the jeering mob.
Two Hunters respond to the brawl, but instead of intervening, they start taking part in the assault. Silver forces her way into the fight and breaks it up, pulling one of the Hunters off a Fusion who’s been beaten to the ground. The pissed off Hunter responds by lifting his visor and pushing her away.
It’s McKean.
“Don’t forget which side you’re on,” he growls, before slamming his visor shut and storming off.
Silver would retaliate with an obscene hand gesture, but she can’t be seen lowering herself to such tactics—not given her new position. Carefully controlling her behavior, she looks down at the woman on the ground, ready to help her up, not
at all prepared for what she sees.
Alice.
Pregnant.
Approaching the end of her second trimester, her belly beautifully and perfectly round, she looks up at Silver and they both hesitate. Recovering from the shock first, Silver reaches her hand out to Alice and helps her get back on her feet. Both are lost for words, and Silver isn’t sure if she should let their familiarity show.
“Are you okay?” she asks finally.
Alice nods.
Thinking quickly, Silver leads her over to the tent and brings her to the front of the line. The Hunter stationed there flashes her a questioning look.
“She’s pregnant,” Silver defends.
Once Alice is safely inside one of the transport vehicles destined for the Belt, having tested negative for the virus, Silver turns her attention back to the crowd. One of the other Hunters—presumably McKean—is glaring at her from behind his visor.
He thinks she’s weak.
She can tell.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Vengeance
As the day draws to a close, the last individuals have passed through the tent and are now safely contained within the Belt. With nightfall approaching, Silver orders three of the Hunter units—with herself at the helm—to perform a sweep of the sectors just outside the gate. Their orders are abrupt and straight forward: round up any stragglers, and kill anything else that moves.
As Silver exits the last cleared building in her designated sector, she feels content that there’s nothing else worth saving still lingering in the darkness. “All units fall back,” she calls out over the headsets. “Hunter General’s orders: fall back immediately.”
She admires her bleak surroundings, wrinkling up her nose at the fetid stench of fiery death that still permeates the dry and eerily calm air of the Out District.
“There’s nothing left out here,” she mutters to herself.
Almost immediately, her headset crackles.
“Backup,” another Hunter calls. “I repeat: I need backup. I have three hostiles and no ammo. In need of immediate assistance in Sector Five.”
Silver rolls her eyes. Any experienced Hunter worth his or her salt should be able to muscle their way out of a situation like that, but the Hunter Division she’s inherited is a far cry from the one she once served in.
“This is the Hunter General,” Silver responds. “I’m in Sector Five. What’s your location?”
The distressed Hunter gives her the co-ordinates of an old apartment building less than a block away, and she makes her way there on foot. Entering the dark, creaking shell with her gun drawn and expecting a fight, she’s disappointed.
Silence.
The building is oddly serene, with no evidence of a struggle, or of a Hunter in danger.
More crackles.
“I’m on the third floor,” the headset reveals.
On her way up, Silver notes that the entire building seems suspiciously quiet. There’s no motion whatsoever. No Chimera, either alive or dead. Her training and years of experience conflict irreconcilably with the actuality of her surroundings, triggering an array of alarm bells inside her tactically driven mind.
On the third floor, the sound of a creaking floorboard draws her into a room at the end of the hallway. Expecting to find a Chimera, she swings through the doorway ready to fire her weapon.
“What the … ?”
She doesn’t even get to finish her sentence.
In a moment of confusion, she lowers her weapon. A fresh Chimera corpse lies on the floor in the middle of the room, blood still pouring from its wounds.
A gunshot.
A bullet rips through Silver’s right arm—her gun arm—severing her brachial nerve and shocking her hand into releasing her weapon. The gun clatters to the floor, landing in a pool of Chimeran blood.
Clutching at her arm, Silver swivels to face her attacker.
McKean.
Again.
A smile begins to seep slowly out across his lips and he allows himself to enjoy the moment, his gun still aimed at her. Silver keeps her eyes fixed on him, while exploiting her peripheral vision to locate any possible exits in the room. She finds only two: the window, and the doorway McKean is standing in.
Silver backs herself up against a bookshelf. “I had a feeling we weren’t quite done with each other.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
“What’s the matter? You’re still bitter because I shot you?”
“I bet you wish you’d killed me.”
“Same.”
McKean’s smile dissolves into a scowl. “You shouldn’t have lived. Nobody lives, for god’s sake!” He allows his anger to temporarily take control of him. “How the fuck did you even get out of the pit alive?!”
Confused, Silver frowns. “Excuse me?”
“Not one, but three Chimera! And yet there you fucking were in that hospital bed!”
Silver’s face melts from confusion into a dawning realization. “It was you? You infected me with CV2?”
“Yes! But not before I drugged you and sold you to a butcher shop in the Fringe.” McKean laughs. “You really don’t remember?”
Silver shakes her head. “What butcher shop?”
“The Dirty Dog. As if it matters.”
It does matter. Very much.
And Silver does remember something.
Jake, her old Fringe District associate.
She remembers him, and the needle he stuck in her arm. She’d thought it was an old memory, mixed up with recent history in the complex muddle of dying and her brain’s desperate attempt to make sense of the chaos.
She was drugged, and he’d given her the kick.
Amphetamines.
Frequently taken by Hunters, kicks are used to counter the effects of sleep deprivation. Over the years, it’s become a popular—albeit completely illegal—stimulant that’ll give you a kick a thousand times more potent than caffeine.
In Silver’s case, it gave her a fighting chance.
McKean laughs. “Pitching a former Hunter against the creatures she used to hunt? Priceless.” He thinks about it. “Actually, not priceless. I got fifty percent of the door money, and let me tell you, that’ll be paying for my Fringe entertainment for a long time to come.”
Silver struggles to remember more. She vaguely recalls drowning her sorrows in a bar, but that could’ve been any other night that week.
McKean takes advantage of her temporary vulnerability. “You know what? I wish you could remember. I wish I knew how you managed to get out of there with enough life left in you to go run for help. You had so much ketamine and Rohypnol in your system, I’m surprised you even knew how to put one foot in front of the other.”
Thanks to Jake, she thinks.
“And when I heard that you got free, I didn’t even think that much of it.” McKean is starting to sound awfully cocky. “I figured you’d just turn up dead somewhere, or not at all. Either way, who would give a shit? Then I hear that some woman got brought into Western Point after a Chimera attack.
“So I go down there to check it out and, fuck me, look who I found?! A living, breathing corpse, being watched over by her faithful little sheep. Thank god Maydevine isn’t quite as diligent as your boyfriend. All I needed was a minute to slip into your room and give you my little parting gift.”
Silver begins to put the pieces together in her mind. “The virus. That means … the laptop is yours?”
“You were supposed to trade me. The laptop and my immunity, in exchange for the name of the person responsible for engineering the virus and instigating its release.”
“That sounds like a nice enough plan. What went wrong?”
McKean takes a step closer to her, forcing her up tighter against the bookshelf.
“I don’t like you,” he sneers.
“You double-crossed me.” She rolls her eyes. “Again.”
“I did what had to be done.”
“We still have the contents of the laptop
. You can kill me—or try, again—but it’s too late. We’ve already told the Governor everything,” she outright lies.
“You’ve got a glorified recipe book, that’s all. No names, no leads, and the entire thing was completely off-record. I’ll enjoy watching your men struggle with aimless suspicion while they weep over your corpse, though.”
Standing less than two feet away, McKean pushes his gun against Silver’s temple.
A noise.
In the hallway.
The scuffle draws his attention for a split second, which is just long enough for Silver to capitalize on the distraction. She pulls his wrist off-aim and brings a swift knee under his ribcage, causing him to fire an accidental round into the wall. Now the one in control, she takes the gun from him and pushes him to his knees, watching him struggle to take a breath.
A Chimera appears in the doorway.
It hesitates, smelling the air in the room. It smells blood: human and Chimera. A panicked McKean tries to get to his feet, fumbling for a second gun that can’t be found.
At first, Silver’s Hunter instincts lead her to aim McKean’s gun at the Chimera … but then she reconsiders. She shoots McKean in both legs, making him a much easier target for the hungry animal.
McKean reels from the pain and Silver steps back, giving the Chimera a clear path into the room—and to McKean.
“Don’t do this!” he wails. “You’re making a mistake!”
Retrieving her own weapon from the floor, Silver ignores him.
“We can cut a deal,” he pleads.
“Although I have no direct recollection of it, I’m guessing that I’ve heard that line before. Besides, need I remind you that I spent six years in the Fringe because of what you did?”
“You’re still sore about that? I was only doing my job!”
“Your job?!” Silver bursts. “Since when was it your job to set me up?”
“I was following orders!”
“Whose?”
“General Jenkins.”
Silver is momentarily thrown for a loop. For all her suspicions about Phaeden Rist, she’d never once thought to question the integrity of Darius Jenkins. “Why?” she asks. “Why was he so invested in that?”
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