“My girl’s not feeling well,” Chris told the doorman as they approached the line outside the Norns. “Can we get inside so none of the N—so no one notices?”
Harmony’s posture had shifted as they’d walked. She leaned on him, appearing fragile, and simultaneously tilted her head so that the bruises along her collarbone were visible. “It’s okay. I can wait out here,” she murmured to him. “I don’t mind—”
“I do,” he snapped. He pulled her closer, caught her hand in his, and lifted it to his lips to kiss her wrist. In the process, the sleeve of her jacket slid back, exposing the bruised and needle-marked skin of her arm. He wasn’t sure what she’d injected into her body. Drugs? Nothing? It wasn’t disease: he was certain of that. Harmony’s pallor, bruises, and demeanor were all lures. She counted on the illusion of sickness, and most nights, it was enough.
Chris caught her gaze. “Harm?”
“I’m fine,” she lied. She hadn’t been fine in a long time, but that wasn’t something he knew how to fix.
The doorman motioned them in. “You shouldn’t have her out here when she’s sick, man.”
The frown Chris gave the man wasn’t faked. “If I could keep her somewhere safe, I would.”
Harmony winced. “Come dance with me.”
Sometimes, he wished they could go out to the clubs for an actual date. Instead, their evenings were spent training, hunting, and killing. It had long since stopped being the life he wanted, but he couldn’t leave here without her. He wouldn’t. Instead, he kept his arm around her, and together they made their way into the crowd. Time hadn’t healed him; no amount of killing seemed to bring him peace. It had helped her, but he had been fighting for a couple of years before she had joined him. Maybe that was the difference: he was tired.
Harmony tensed as she saw her prey: a Nido approached, trying to sniff her out.
Chris wondered how far she’d go to ensnare them. The bruises on her arm were injection marks. As much as he believed that she wouldn’t sicken herself too much to fight, he also knew that if she could carry a disease that lured them, she would. Mentally, he made a note to try to get some clothes worn by the recently ill. Doing so was difficult, because the scent of illness faded too soon, but it was a strategy that added a little bit of extra verisimilitude.
“Couple fight now,” Harmony whispered as he pulled her toward him.
“Harm—”
“Teammates, Chris. I’m not as vulnerable as I look. You know that.” She looked down, so her forehead was resting against his chest while she spoke.
“I still worry,” he said. They could only use so many scenarios before they were caught. They rotated sections, rotated clubs within the sections, but even that wasn’t enough. Different scenarios made sense.
“It’s what we do; it’s worth it.” Harmony’s voice sounded raw. “If we’re going to die, it has to be for something, Chris. If we’re going to live—”
“I know,” he interrupted. You’re my reason, Harm. My religion. He put his hand on the back of her neck. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Not too fast.”
“Count five and go.” Chris watched the Nido approach with the same trepidation he always felt. He and Harmony had a system, and it worked—but so had the system he and Chastity had used.
“You don’t understand.” Harmony shoved him and turned away, running into the Nido’s arms as if she were unaware that he was there all along.
Now comes the hard part.
Chris stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink. He wasn’t going to walk out the moment Harmony left. More than half the time, Nidos in this part of town worked in pairs. It made this section harder to work, but it also meant that hunting here usually meant two kills. Of course, it also meant that their side often took more risks—and more casualties.
In the mirror that hung behind the liquor bottles, Chris watch as the Nido said something to Harmony. In barely three minutes, he had an arm around her, leading her away, taking her outside. The challenge for Chris was in not looking over his shoulder, not racing outside, not scooping her up and insisting they escape north to try to find a safer place to live.
Instead of doing all the things he wanted to, Chris waited, half hoping that the Nido’s partner would arrive and half hoping that there was no partner so he could move on to the next step of this strategy: run after his emotional girlfriend.
Harmony nodded and held on to the Nido’s arm as he directed her to a side door of the Norns. Her heart was steadier every time she did this, as if there was a calm almost in reach, and she wondered guiltily if the calm was death. She wasn’t going to slit her wrists or do anything drastic, but she was well aware that most hunters died. Dying while fighting for a better future seemed like a good way to go, maybe even a way to reach the kind of afterlife where she could be happy, where she could enjoy the sort of existence that people talked about when they talked about before.
The crack of metal on metal echoed as the door hit the handrail on the cement ramp into the alley. If she hadn’t been going outside to kill him, stepping into the poorly lit alley would be unsettling. As it was, she found the dark comforting.
“Do you have a car or something?” She slid her free hand into her pants pocket to withdraw the knife hidden there, but before she withdrew it, a beam of light flashed on, aimed directly at her and blinding her temporarily.
“You won’t need that,” the Nido beside her said.
Then another voice drew her attention: “She’s my only other child. We’ll be even now, right?”
“Daddy?” Harmony stumbled, partly from the inability to see and partly from the panic that washed over her. “Daddy! What are you doing here?”
She jerked her arm away from the Nido, but he caught her, gripping her biceps with a bruising hand before she could go very far. Think, Harm. Think. She couldn’t expect Chris to hear her if she screamed; the music inside was too loud. All she could do was buy time until he got there—except every scenario she knew was a blank then. Her father was it, the last family she knew she still had. Her sister was dead; her mother was dead.
The light lowered, and she saw another Nido standing beside her father. This one looked like a reasonably attractive woman, and she stood beside Harmony’s father like she was his date: a small smile on her lips and a hand resting lightly in the crook of his folded arm.
“She looks a lot like the other one,” the female Nido said.
Harmony looked at her father. “Daddy?”
He shook his head. “I tried to save you. I told you what would happen. You didn’t listen.”
The Nido patted his cheek with her free hand. “We took care of the problem last time, and we’ll fix this too.”
A cry escaped Harmony’s lips. It might have been a word, or it might have been only a sound. She wasn’t sure. The Nido restraining her stepped away, and she almost fell. She took several steps toward her father. “How? Why?”
There were two Nidos with her father, and even though she wasn’t being held back, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, much less what she could do.
“Your sister caught their attention. What was I to do?” Her father glared at her through bloodshot eyes. His sallow, fleshy face didn’t look anything like the father she remembered.
Harmony shook her head. “And Mom?”
He stepped closer, so he was near enough that she could embrace him. “That wasn’t my doing. I didn’t know. . . . She was sick, and I only left her at the hospital for the night. I didn’t know they—”
“But you knew when you . . . what? Told them where Chas would be?”
“I had to make a choice,” he pleaded. “I tried to save you.”
Although the two Nidos watched them, they didn’t interfere. Harmony looked into her father’s face, but she couldn’t summon any words for him. Night after night, she’d hoped he would recover from the dual tragedies of her mother’s and sister’s deaths, but he wouldn’t. He was responsible, and now the
y both knew it.
“You told them where Chastity was . . . and now me too?”
“All I did was add it to the necklace. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen.” He pointed at her. “The tracker is on that. I had no choice.”
Harm’s hand went to the charms around her throat. She yanked the necklace free and threw it at him. “You had a choice.”
“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “They would’ve killed us both. They would’ve killed all three of us before, when Chastity was blaspheming. I saved you then. What was I to do?”
“Not give either of your daughters to the monsters. If there is another world where we meet after this life, I hope Chastity and Mom are there waiting for us.” She slipped her hand into her pocket. “Maybe they’ll forgive you, Daddy. Maybe I will too.”
She withdrew the knife and shoved the blade hilt-deep into his throat. As the Nidos grabbed her arms, she watched her father clutch his bleeding throat. It wouldn’t help. She’d learned where to stab a human; she’d severed his carotid artery.
“If I hated you, I’d have let you go into their foul stew while you were still alive,” she told him as he died.
The distant sounds of music, the sizzle of a nearby streetlight, and her father’s dying were all she heard then. The Nidos gripped her arms, but she kept her hand tight on the hilt of her knife.
I don’t want to die.
If she didn’t get away, she’d end up drowning in corpses. The images in her mind were almost as vivid as the real thing had been. This time, though, Chastity wouldn’t be there to rescue her.
Harmony let her body go suddenly limp, surprising them and dropping to the ground as they lost their grip on her. That was one of the first lessons she’d learned: do the unexpected. Most captives tried to tug away or shove, so her captors were likely to be ready for that.
As she rolled to her feet, she launched herself at one of the Nidos. She knew she couldn’t kill them both, but she wasn’t going to let them take her away. Better to die fighting than drown in the dead. Her shoulder stung from an unavoidable stab wound, and she knew dimly that there were other wounds she wasn’t registering yet. None of that mattered though. I want to live. I want Chris to live. She knew he should’ve been there by now, and the thought of reaching him, of keeping him out of their vats, was enough to give her an extra surge of adrenaline.
“Harmony!” Chris yelled.
She wasn’t sure when Chris had come outside. All she knew for sure was that she was on the ground, on top of the Nido, and her knife was wet in her hand. A trickle of something dripped down her cheek. She didn’t know if it was her tears or her father’s blood. The temptation to look at Chris warred with the fear that he’d look at her with disgust.
“Harm,” he repeated, softly this time. He had hands on her waist, lifting her up with little effort, as if she really was the rag doll she suddenly felt like. He pulled her away from the dead Nido and her now-dead father.
“You’re bleeding,” she said foolishly. Bleeding was normal; death was normal.
He took her hand, and uncurled her fingers from the hilt of the knife. “There was one inside, too, or I’d have been here sooner.”
“This time . . . I thought . . . I really thought I was going to die,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die.”
Instead of saying things that would make her fall apart, he suggested the same thing he had not long after Chastity died: “We could go north. Try to get to somewhere safer.”
She leaned against his side, not just because of the ritual but because she wanted to feel close to him, and this time, she gave him the answer she never had before, “Yes.”
And they walked away from the Norns, away from the father who’d betrayed her, and away from a life that held a too-soon expiration date.
Burn 3
by Kami Garcia
THE FACES OF missing children flash across three vid screens above our heads, forming a gargantuan triangle that looms over the street. Children have been disappearing for weeks now. Protectorate officers claim they’re runaways, but there’s nowhere to go inside the Dome. The truth is no one cares about a bunch of poor kids from Burn 3.
I glance at the screen again and squeeze my little sister’s hand tighter, dragging her through the filthy alley.
“Why are we running?” Sky asks.
“We’re just walking fast.”
I don’t like bringing her outside at night, but we’re out of purification tablets and she hasn’t had any water all day. The dirty streets are bathed in neon light from the signs marking the rows of identical black metal doors that serve as storefronts. In the distance, towering buildings covered in silver reflective panels rise up around a labyrinth of alleys. Those buildings are all that’s left of the city that stood here twenty years ago. Retrofitted and repurposed for the world we live in now. I’ve never been anywhere near there. It’s the wealthy part of Burn 3, no place for poor kids like us.
We reach an exposed stall draped in a black plastic tarp. An old woman swathed in layers of dark fabric huddles underneath. Her face is pebbled on one side, the result of poorly healed burns. Even though the Dome keeps us under a constant shadow, it’s dangerous to be outside all day, and I feel sorry for her. But few people can afford the high rent for an indoor shop.
“Two purification tablets, please.” I hold out the coins stamped with a crude number three on both sides.
She takes the currency in her gloved hand and gives me two pink tablets. They don’t look like much, but they’ll turn the black water running through the pipes a safer shade of gray. Before our father died, he told us stories about the world before the Burn. A time when water was clear and you could drink it straight from the faucet, and walk outside to stand in the sun without layers of protective clothing. That was before his mind deteriorated and I couldn’t tell if his stories were memories or delusions.
A siren eclipses the sounds around us and an automated voice issues a directive. “Alert: the atmosphere inside the Dome has reached Level 2. Please put on your goggles and return to your domiciles immediately. Alert: the atmosphere inside the Dome—”
“Hurry home,” the old woman says, collapsing the tarp around her like a tent.
My sister looks up at me, blue eyes wide. “I’m scared, Phoenix.”
“Put on your goggles.” I dig in my pocket for mine.
She unfolds the wraparound eyewear that makes everything look bright green, a color you never see inside the Dome.
“Run,” I yell, pulling her along behind me.
A man pushes Sky, and she stumbles. He glances at her and starts to turn away without offering help or an apology. Tears run down my sister’s face.
I shove him as hard as I can, and grab my sister’s hand. She runs behind me until we reach our building, a twenty-story domicile divided into single rooms. The Dome is so crowded that there’s nowhere left to build but up, even though it’s more dangerous on the higher floors.
Our room is on the eighteenth floor.
I unlock the door and push Sky inside. “Get in the shelter.”
She scrambles for the makeshift tent in the center of the room. It’s made from Firestall, an engineered material that absorbs heat and UV rays.
The Dome is supposed to protect us from the holes in the ozone layer—holes that turned more than two-thirds of the world to ash twenty years ago. But the sun’s invisible hand can still reach into the Dome. The burns people suffer on a daily basis are proof of that. Most of us have been victims at least once, our skin curling like the edges of burning paper.
Some people believe you’re more likely to get burned in the buildings without reflective panels like this one. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can’t take chances with my sister. Sky’s skin is perfectly smooth. She’s never felt the savage itching and heat of a burn, and I’m not going to let her feel it now.
We huddle together in the darkness, and Sky chokes back tears. “I’m scared.”
“
Don’t worry.” I pull her closer and listen to the alert repeating over and over until I fall asleep, more worried than ever.
In the morning, I look out the small window and see people wandering through the streets. The alert must be over, though many are still wearing their protective goggles. My father told me this city was called New York before the Burn. The buildings were even taller than the ones beyond the alleys, so tall they seemed to touch the clouds. He said you could see the clouds too—white streaks in a blue sky. A sky filled with beauty instead of destruction.
The Burn happened suddenly, although scientists had predicted it years before. The sky turned red and the temperature rose dangerously. No one could step outside without suffering third-degree burns. Within weeks, the heat was melting steel and plastic. My father said hundreds of thousands died after inhaling the toxic fumes from their disintegrating homes.
For years, people lived in the sewers or underground shelters until scientists developed a compound strong enough to withstand the temperatures in the areas where the atmosphere was still intact.
People traveled hundreds of miles underground until they reached a safe zone—a place without a hole in the sky above it. They built the Dome and named our city Burn 3 because it was the third city in the world to turn to ash.
From where I stand looking down on the black coats rushing through the gray streets, the city still looks like it’s made of ash.
I drop the purification tablets into two black cups of water and watch the liquid turn a less lethal shade of charcoal. I choke mine down and leave Sky’s on the counter. She’s still asleep, blond hair peeking out from beneath the ratty blanket. I can’t stand to wake her. The world of her dreams is so much better than the one we live in.
I leave her a note instead.
An hour later, I climb the eighteen flights of stairs with two food packets tucked in my pocket. Noodles with spicy red sauce, Sky’s favorite. Orange doors line both sides of the hallways and I can see ours from the landing.