“I can’t keep doing this,” he said.
Henry eyed the book. “Astronomy?” he said asked with false lightness. “So take a break.”
August looked his father in the eyes. Henry Flynn had kind eyes and a sad mouth, or sad eyes and a kind mouth; he could never keep them straight. Faces had so many features, infinitely divisible, and yet they all added up to single, identifiable expressions like pride, disgust, frustration, fatigue—he was losing his train of thought again. He fought to catch it before it rolled out of reach. “I’m not talking about the book.”
“August . . . ,” started Henry, because he already knew where this was going. “We’re not having this discussion.”
“But if you’d just—”
“The task force is off the table.”
The steel door slid open again and Emily Flynn walked in with a box of supplies and set them on the counter. She was a fraction taller than her husband, her shoulders broader, with dark skin, a halo of short hair, and a holster on her hip. Emily had a soldier’s gait, but she shared Henry’s tired eyes and set jaw. “Not this again,” she said.
“I’m surrounded by the FTF all the time,” protested August. “Whenever I go anywhere, I dress like them. Is it such a step for me to be one of them?”
“Yes,” said Henry.
“It isn’t safe,” added Emily as she started unpacking the food. “Is Ilsa in her room? I thought we could—”
But August wouldn’t let it go. “Nowhere is safe,” he cut in. “That’s the whole point. Your people are out there risking their lives every day against those things, and I’m in here reading about stars, pretending like everything is fine.”
Emily shook her head and drew a knife from a slot on the counter. She started chopping vegetables, creating order of chaos, one slice at a time. “The compound is safe, August. At least safer than the streets right now.”
“Which is why I should be out there helping in the red.”
“You do your part,” said Henry. “That’s—”
“What are you so afraid of?” snapped August.
Emily set the knife down with a click. “Do you even have to ask?”
“You think I’ll get hurt?” And then, before she could answer, August was on his feet. In a single, fluid move he took up the knife and drove it down into his hand. Henry flinched, and Emily sucked in a breath, but the blade glanced off August’s skin as if it were stone, the tip burying in the chopping block beneath. The kitchen went very quiet.
“You act as though I’m made of glass,” he said, letting go of the knife. “But I’m not.” He took her hands, the way he’d seen Henry do so many times. “Em,” he said, softly. “Mom. I’m not fragile. I’m the opposite of fragile.”
“You’re not invincible, either,” she said. “Not—”
“I’m not putting you out there,” Henry cut in. “If Harker’s men catch you—”
“You let Leo lead the entire task force,” countered August. “His face is plastered everywhere, and he is still alive.”
“That’s different,” said Henry and Emily at the same time.
“How?” he challenged.
Emily brought her hands to August’s face, the way she did when he was a child—but that wasn’t the right word. He’d never been a child, not really, children didn’t come together fully formed in the middle of a crime scene. “We just want to protect you. Leo’s been part of the campaign from day one. But that makes him a constant target. And the more ground we gain in this city, the more Harker’s men will try to exploit our weaknesses and steal our strengths.”
“And which am I?” asked August, pulling away. “Your weakness, or your strength?”
Emily’s warm brown eyes went wide and flat as the word spilled out. “Both.”
It was unfair to ask, but the truth still stung.
“Where is this coming from?” asked Henry, rubbing his eyes. “You don’t really want to fight.”
He was right, August didn’t want to fight—not on the streets in the dead of night, and not here with his family—but there was this horrible vibration in his bones, something struggling to get out, a melody getting louder and louder in his head. “No,” he said. “But I want to help.”
“You already do,” insisted Henry. “The task force can only treat the symptoms. You and Ilsa and Leo, you treat the disease. That’s how it works.”
But it’s not working! August wanted to shout. The V-City truce had held for only six years—Harker on one side, and Flynn on the other—and it was already fraying. Everyone knew it wouldn’t hold. Every night, more death crept across the Seam. There were too many monsters, and not enough good men.
“Please,” he said. “I can do more if you let me.”
“August . . . ,” started Henry.
He held up his hand. “Just promise me you’ll think about it.” And with that he backed out of the kitchen before his parents were forced to tell him the truth.
August’s room was an exercise in entropy and order, a kind of contained chaos. It was small and windowless, close in a way that would have been claustrophobic if it weren’t so familiar. Books had long outgrown their shelves and were now stacked in precarious piles on and around his bed, several more open and splayed, pages down, across the sheets. Some people favored a genre or subject; August had little preference, so long as it wasn’t fiction—he wanted to learn everything about the world as it was, had been, could be. As someone who had come quite suddenly into being, like the end of a magic trick, he feared the tenuous nature of his existence, feared that at any moment he might simply cease to be again.
The books were stacked by subject: astronomy, religion, history, philosophy.
He was homeschooled, which really meant he was self-schooled—sometimes Ilsa tried to help, when her mind worked in columns instead of knots, but his brother, Leo, had no patience for books, and Henry and Emily were too busy, so most of the time August was on his own. And most of the time it was okay. Or rather, it used to be okay. He wasn’t sure when exactly the insulation had started to feel like isolation, just that it had.
The only other thing in his room besides furniture and books was a violin. It sat in an open case balanced across two stacks of books, and August drifted instinctively toward it, but resisted the urge to take it up and play. Instead he nudged a copy of Plato off his pillow and slumped down onto the tangled sheets.
The room was stuffy, and he pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the hundreds of black tallies that started at his left wrist and worked their way up, over elbow and shoulder, around collarbone and rib.
Tonight there were four hundred and twelve.
August pushed the dark hair out of his eyes and listened to Henry and Emily Flynn, still in the kitchen, as they talked on in their soft-spoken way, about him, and the city, and the truce.
What would happen if it actually broke? When. Leo always said when.
August hadn’t been alive to see the territory wars that broke out in the wake of the Phenomenon, had only heard tales of the bloodshed. But he could see the fear in Flynn’s eyes whenever the topic came up—which was more and more often. Leo didn’t seem worried—he claimed that Henry had won the territory war, that whatever happened to cause the truce was their doing, that they could do it again.
“When it comes,” Leo would say, “we will be ready.”
“No,” Flynn would answer, his expression bleak, “no one is ready for that.”
Eventually, the voices in the other room faded, and August was left alone with his thoughts. He closed his eyes, seeking peace, but as soon as the silence settled it was broken, the distant stutter of gunfire echoing against his skull as it always did—the sound invading every quiet moment.
It began with a bang.
He rolled over and dug the music player out from under his pillow, pressing the buds into his ears and hitting play. Classical music flared, loud and bright and wonderful, and he sank back into the melody as numbers wandered through
his head.
Twelve. Six. Four.
Twelve years since the Phenomenon, when violence started taking shape, and V-City fell apart.
Six years since the truce that put it back together, not as one city, but two.
And four since the day he woke up in a middle-school cafeteria as it was being cordoned off with crime-scene tape.
“Oh God,” someone had said, taking him by the elbow. “Where did you come from?” And then, shouting to someone else, “I’ve found a boy!” She’d knelt down so she was looking into his face, and he could tell that she was trying to block his view of something. Something terrible. “What’s your name, hon?”
August had looked up at her blankly.
“Must be in shock,” said a man.
“Get him out of here,” said another.
The woman took his hands. “Honey, I want you to close your eyes.” That was when he saw past her. To the black sheets, lined up like tallies on the floor.
The first symphony ended in August’s ears, and a moment later, the second started up. He could pick out every chord, every note; yet if he focused hard enough, he could still hear his father’s murmur, his mother’s pacing. Which is why he had no trouble hearing the triple beep of Henry’s cell. No trouble hearing him answer it or catching the words when his voice dipped lower, threading with concern.
“When? You’re sure? When was she enrolled? No, no, I’m glad you told me. Okay. Yes, I know. I’ll handle it.”
The call ended, and Henry went silent before speaking again, this time with Leo. August had heard everything but his brother’s return. They were talking about him.
He sat up, yanking the buds from his ears.
“Give him what he wants,” Leo was saying in his low, even way. “You treat him more like a pet than a son, when he’s neither. We are soldiers, Flynn. We are holy fire. . . .” August rolled his eyes. He appreciated his brother’s vote of confidence, but could do without the righteousness. “And you’re smothering him.”
That much he agreed with.
Emily joined in. “We’re trying to—”
“To protect him?” chided Leo. “When the truce falls apart, this compound will not keep him safe.”
“We’re not sending him behind enemy lines.”
“You’ve been given an opportunity. I simply suggest you use it. . . .”
“The risk—”
“Is not that great, as long as he’s careful. And the advantage—”
August was sick of being talked about as if he weren’t there, as if he couldn’t hear, so he shoved to his feet, upsetting a tower of books on his way past. He was too late—the conversation was over by the time he opened his door. Leo was gone, and his father was reaching out, as if about to knock.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Henry didn’t try to hold back the truth. “You were right,” he said. “You deserve the chance to help. And I think I’ve found a way.”
August broke into a smile.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “I’m in.”
VERSE 1
MONSTER, MAY I?
This was not what August had in mind.
The schoolbag sagged open on the bed, spilling supplies—and the uniform was way too tight. Emily claimed that was the style, but August felt like the clothes were trying to strangle him. The Flynn Task Force outfits were flexible, designed for combat, but the Colton Academy uniform was stiff, suffocating. His shirtsleeves came to rest just above his wrist bones, and the lowest of the black tallies on his forearm—now four hundred and eighteen—showed every time he crooked his elbow. August growled and tugged the fabric down again. He ran a comb through his hair, which didn’t really stop the black curls from falling into his pale eyes, but at least he tried.
He straightened and found his gaze in the mirror, but his expression stared back with a vacancy that made him shudder. On Leo, the expressionless planes of his face registered as confidence. On Ilsa, the evenness read as serenity. But August just looked lost. He’d studied Henry and Emily and everyone else he came across, from the FTF cadets to the sinners, tried to memorize the way their features lit up with excitement, twisted with anger or guilt. He spent hours in front of the mirror, trying to master the nuances and re-create those faces, while Leo looked on with his flat black stare.
“You’re wasting your time,” his brother would say.
But Leo was wrong; those hours were going to pay off. August blinked—another natural act that felt unnatural, affected—managed a tiny, thoughtful crease between his brows, and recited the words he’d practiced.
“My name is—Freddie Gallagher.” There was a slight hitch before the F, as the words scratched his throat. It wasn’t a lie, not really—it was a borrowed name, just like August. He didn’t have one of his own. Henry had chosen the name August and now August chose the name Freddie, and they both belonged to him, just as neither did. That’s what he told himself, over and over and over until he believed it, because truth wasn’t the same thing as fact. It was personal. He swallowed, tried the second line, the one meant only for him. “I am not a . . .”
But his throat closed up. The words got stuck.
I am not a monster, that’s what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t found a way to make it true.
“Don’t you look handsome,” came a voice from the door.
August’s gaze traveled up a fraction in the mirror to see his sister, Ilsa, leaning in the doorway, wearing the barest hint of a smile. She was older than August, but she looked like a doll, her long, strawberry-blond hair pulled up in its usual messy nest, and her large blue eyes feverish, as if she hadn’t slept (she rarely did).
“Handsome,” she said, pushing off the door, “but not happy.” Ilsa padded forward into the room, her bare feet moving effortlessly around the books, though she never looked down. “You should be happy, little brother. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Was it? August had always imagined himself in FTF fatigues, guarding the Seam and protecting South City. Like Leo. He heard the troops talk about his brother as if he were a god, keeping the darkness at bay with nothing but the piece of music in his head. Feared. Worshiped. August straightened his collar, which made his sleeves ride up again. He tugged them down as Ilsa snaked her arms around his shoulders. He stilled. Leo refused such contact, and August didn’t know what to make of it—too often touching was a part of taking—but Ilsa had always been like this, tactile, and he reached up and touched her arm.
Where his skin was marked with short black lines, hers was covered in stars. A whole sky’s worth, or so he thought. August had never seen more than a handful of real stars on nights when the grid went down. But he’d heard about places where the city lights didn’t reach, where there were so many stars you could see by them, even on a moonless night.
“You’re dreaming,” said Ilsa in her singsong way. She rested her chin on top of his shoulder, and squinted. “What is that in your eyes?”
“What?”
“That speck. Right there. Is it fear?”
He found her gaze in the mirror. “Maybe,” he admitted. He hadn’t set foot in a school, not since the day of his catalyst, and nerves rang like bells behind his ribs. But there was something else, too, a strange excitement at the idea of playing normal, and every time he tried to untangle how he felt, he just ended up in knots.
“They’re setting you free,” said Ilsa. She spun him around and leaned in until her face was barely an inch from his. Mint. She always smelled like mint. “Be happy, little brother.” But then the joy fell out of her voice, and her blue eyes darkened, sliding from noon blue to twilight without a blink between. “And be careful.”
August managed a ghost of a smile for her. “I’m always careful, Ilsa.”
But she didn’t seem to hear. She was shaking her head now, a slow, side-to-side motion that didn’t stop when it should. Ilsa got tangled up so easily, sometimes for a few moments, sometimes a few days.
??
?It’s okay,” he said gently, trying to draw her back.
“The city is such a big place,” she said, her voice tight as strings. “It’s full of holes. Don’t fall in.”
Ilsa hadn’t left the Flynn compound in six years. Not since the day of the truce. August didn’t know the details, not all of them, but he knew his sister stayed inside, no matter what.
“I’ll watch my step,” he said.
Her fingers tightened on his arms. And then her eyes lightened and she was there again. “Of course you will,” she said, all sunshine.
She kissed the top of his head, and he ducked out of her arms and went to his bed, where his violin case sat open, the beautiful instrument waiting inside. August wanted to play—the desire a hollow weight in his chest, like hunger—but he only let himself run his fingers over the wood before snapping the case shut.
He checked his watch as he moved through the dark apartment. 6:15. Even here, twenty stories up, at the top of the Flynn compound, the first morning light was still buried behind the sprawl of buildings to the east.
In the kitchen he found a black lunch bag with a note pinned to the front:
Have a great first day.
I hope you don’t mind, I took a bite.
~Em
When August opened the bag, he saw that everything inside, from the sandwich to the candy bar, was already half-eaten. It was a sweet gesture, really. Emily hadn’t just packed him a lunch. She’d packed an excuse. If anyone bothered to ask, he could say he’d already eaten.
Only a green apple sat, untouched, in the bottom of the bag.
The kitchen lights came on as he was shoving the lunch sack in his bag, and Henry wandered in, nursing a cup of coffee. He still looked tired. He always looked tired.
“August,” he said with a yawn.
“Dad. You’re up early.”
Henry was practically nocturnal. He had a saying—the monsters hunt at night, and so must we—but lately his nights had gotten even longer. August tried to imagine what he must have been like, back before the Phenomenon—before violence gave way to the Corsai and the Malchai and the Sunai, before the anarchy, the closed borders, the infighting, the chaos. Before Henry lost his parents, his brothers, his first wife. Before he became the Flynn the city turned to, the only Flynn it had. The creator of the FTF, and the only man willing to stand up to a glorified criminal and fight.