The Murder Complex

  “Flux, Talan. That’s disgusting. Just shut up and push.”

  We reach the door of the Furnace Room, and I can already feel the heat. Sometimes I feel like I’m just going to sweat forever. Just an eternal drip, drip, dripping down my back. I lean my forehead against the scanner, a long black rectangle that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. The door click-whirrs open, and Talan and I push the cart inside.

  The roar of the furnace is like rushing water, or the engine of a Leech boat starting up. After years of working together, Talan and I have a routine. I scan the foreheads of the dead with a portable scanner, attached by a cord to the wall. Talan holds back her puke as we lift the bodies, together, and throw them into the furnace. It’s loud, and I can’t hear what Talan is babbling on about. Thank the stars. Because I’m not in the mood to listen to her anyways.

  All I want to do is think about her. The girl in my dreams.

  It sounds stupid, like a fairy tale, or some sort of romantic sob story Talan would pick up if she had the Creds. But every night, the girl is there, silver hair hanging in waves to her waist like liquid moonlight, gray eyes the color of the ocean when a storm is about to roll in.

  She isn’t beautiful. She’s different, rigid and untouchable, sort of like she’s carved out of stone. She keeps me sane when nothing else can. It’s like she holds me to the ground, like gravity, except much stronger. She protects me from the faceless people who haunt me each night and every waking moment.

  There’s twelve of them. Twelve numbers. Twelve human beings.

  I killed them all with my own hands.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER 11

  MEADOW

  When I was younger, my mother showed me photographs of something she used to go to— a baseball game. She told me her mother held her close the entire time so she wouldn’t get lost in the crushing sea of people crowding the stadium. She was worried she’d get separated from her, get pushed and shoved so far away that she’d never see her mother again.

  I remember the fear that gripped my heart as I looked at the photograph. “It’s like the Shallows,” I said to her. “I’m going to lose you, aren’t I?”

  “You’ll never lose me, Meadow.” My mother smiled down at me.

  I believed her then.

  Everywhere I turn in the city, there’s another face. Another Catalogue Number, another hot, sweaty body pressed up against mine. It is stifling. If I stumbled over and fell, I’d disappear, and no one would know or care.

  “Watch it!” A man scowls down at me as I trample over his feet. I don’t get the chance to apologize before he’s engulfed by the crowd.

  In the distance, I can see the Catalogue Building, a monstrous black dome that seems to scrape the underside of the clouds. It’s the only city building that isn’t covered in filth and grime and tattered posters that claim “Murder Is Madness, Stay Safe with the Initiative.”

  I pass the apartment building where we used to live. I was three when the Initiative took over, and I do not remember much. I remember pain, when my Catalogue Number was tattooed onto my forehead. I remember sobbing myself to sleep, and my mother opening the windows of my bedroom to let the night air soothe me. Now those windows are boarded up with planks of old salvaged wood. A rusted tricycle sits at the bottom of the steps. An elderly man and his wife pass me, carrying their belongings. Probably trying to cross the Perimeter, as many do, thinking safety is just a short trip and a life’s worth of credits away. Maybe even thinking that life is still the same out there.

  I consider telling them to turn around and go home. They are breaking Commandment Two: Thou shalt not attempt to cross the Perimeter.

  I consider telling them that if they get too close, the Pulse will send out a shock wave and paralyze them. They probably know all that. They probably know the risks. They probably don’t care anymore.

  I fork left when I come to the Library.

  My father brought me to the Library, only once, when we had enough Creds to get inside. He pulled an old book from the shelves and brushed off the dust. I remember the way the dust tickled my nose as it danced through the air. My father held the book out to me. It was heavy in my arms, like an anchor.

  “Take it, Meadow,” he said. “Take it and run.”

  So I did. I walked past the scanners, head held high, silver curls brushed back from my eyes so I could see where I was going.

  I didn’t know the alarms would go off when I walked out the doors. And then they were on me. The Initiative security guards, from out of nowhere.

  My father didn’t come to my aid. He looked away, as if he didn’t know me.

  I made it home on my own before dark with the History of the Shallows still clutched in my hands. I am strong because of my father. I know I don’t need anyone to survive.

  So now, when three Landers, members of a street gang, approach me in the back alley behind the Library, knives drawn, the silver barrel of a gun pointed at my heart, I know I am ready.

  “Hey, baby.” The first man’s voice is raspy, like an old smoker’s. He eyes my work badge with the desperate hunger of a starving man. “You don’t look old enough to work. Why don’t I take that off your hands for you?”

  “You could sell that sucker for a hundred Creds, boss,” the man with the gun says.

  “Make it two hundred when we sell it right back to the Initiative,” the third laughs.

  “It’s going to cost you more than Creds to take this from me,” I say as they close in on me. I can smell human waste and the scent of stale alcohol. The first Lander reaches me, places his hand on my breast, while the second one steps behind me, so close I can feel his chest moving with each inhale. I know what they plan to do.

  How they got a gun, I am not sure. Guns are scarce. My father owns a gun like this one, from before the Perimeter went up. It is hidden under the floorboards of our houseboat. Seeing one now helps me focus.

  I take the badge from around my neck and let it drop to the street.

  The first one is easy, like choking a child. He collapses to the concrete and I rip the gun from his fingers.

  The second lunges at me, but I’m too fast. I dodge his blade and find the handle of my dagger. I sink the blade into his chest without hesitation. He crumples to the ground and I shatter his nose with the heel of my boot.

  The streets are so crowded that no one hears me shoot the third.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER 12

  ZEPHYR

  The bottom of the body cart is stained a deep crimson.

  After we burn the last corpse, Talan and I push the cart to the storage room and park it with the others. Tonight, a cleansing system in the ceiling of the room will remove the blood from all of them.

  But the dead will still be dead. Nothing can ever change that.

  “There’s an old building over on South that’s full of crap,” Talan says. I hold the door open for her, but she shrugs past me and opens the other one. Always independent. Never taking help from anyone. “Feel like playing maid for a few hours? Making some extra Creds?”

  “Nah, but there’s a one-eyed prostitute over on Fifth,” I say. “Lend me some Creds?”

  “You’re such a ChumHead.” Talan shoves my shoulder. “If you’re going to visit a prostitute, then I should get to be one.”

  “No deal. No deal at all.”

  We step over a man sleeping in the street, and Talan steals the hat right off his head. “Still thinking about that kid, huh?”

  She knows me too well.

  Not a boy I murdered. Not a victim.

  But just a Ward, and a new one, at that.

  Eight years old. Missing a tooth, with deep brown hair the same color as mine. He sho
wed up last week with a Leech officer, a fresh X tattooed on the back of his neck. The boy’s face was stained with tears, and I don’t know if he’s stopped crying since.

  “It’s like watching my life on replay,” I say to Talan. She looks good in the ball cap, but it’ll only make her a target for someone else. Everyone wants what isn’t theirs to have. I take it from her head and toss it into the gutter. She groans, but this is a game we play often. Soon she’ll steal something else.

  Eventually, she might get caught doing it, and then she’ll be another person for the Leeches to shoot in the head. Live target practice. “What’s that word they use? Kleptomaniac?”

  “It’s called borrowing,” Talan corrects me. “Not stealing.”

  If a Sellout saw Talan stealing, they’d take her right to the Leeches for a nice payday. When Sellouts catch Wards breaking a Commandment, they earn out big, because the Leeches can’t see everything that goes on. Most of it. But they don’t always see all of it.

  “Actually, I do feel like cleaning out that building.”

  “Hell, no,” Talan says. She grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop. Turns to face me, her blue eyes set in a cold glare. “I’m not doing a job so you can give your Creds to some random orphan.” She puts her hand on her hip. Something that Arden used to do. “If that boy’s father hadn’t died, his son wouldn’t be in the Reserve right now. It’s not up to you to fix this problem.”

  “Someone has to do it.”

  “You don’t have to take care of everyone,” Talan says. “People die. Kids become Wards, and the world’s a big pile of skitz, but so what? There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She puts her arm around my waist and tows me along. The train rattles past, shaking the ground beneath our feet. We go by the Graveyard, where the loony-headed citizens all go, the ones driven crazy by the Shallows. There’s a couple of towers between the trash mountains that are constantly spilling out steam, so the whole thing looks like some creepy ghost hangout.

  “Maybe you’re right about helping people,” I say, stepping over a plastic bag that dances away with the wind, “but if it makes me feel better . . . why does it matter?”

  I feel her sigh. “Because there will always be new Wards. There will always be people to take care of,” she says.

  “But if I can help just one—” She cuts me off.

  “Stop being a saint. And anyways, you’re busy taking care of me, ChumHead. And lucky for you, I’m a full time job.”

  She puts her head on my shoulder and we walk the rest of the way to the Reserve in silence.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER 13

  MEADOW

  The first time I went to the Rations Hall, my mother was still alive.

  Peri was just a tiny being in her stomach then, growing bigger every day. We lived in an apartment on the edge of the city, and even though the murders hadn’t started yet, the world was still far from safe.

  “I don’t want to go,” I begged my mother. I wanted to stay home and feel Peri kick, and listen to my mother tell us both stories. Instead, she kissed my forehead and told me to follow my father outside. “Be safe,” she warned me. “Listen to your father,” she told Koi.

  I still remember the sound of the three locks clicking the second we left the apartment.

  Koi’s hand was clenched tightly over my own so I wouldn’t get lost. His palm was drenched in sweat, wet, like he’d just come right out of the ocean, and he kept looking down at me, as if I’d simply disappear and never come back.

  My father kept his eyes on the road the entire time, never checking on us, never slowing when we had trouble pushing through the crowds.

  The second we walked inside the Rations Hall, I realized why my father wanted us to come.

  Food.

  There was food displayed behind one wall made of glass so we could see it. Koi let go of my hand. He rushed toward the wall and grabbed a bag of rations, so proud to have food for our family.

  I cried out. I wanted to follow him, as I always did, but my father silenced me.

  “You can both learn from this, Meadow,” he said. I watched from behind my father’s back as an Initiative soldier held a gun to Koi’s head, finger poised to squeeze the trigger.

  In exchange for Koi’s life, we left with my father’s eye swollen shut and not a single ration for the week. We were lucky the Initiative did not kill us all.

  That night, my father chained Koi to the kitchen table and made him sleep standing up. “You must work for what you deserve,” he told him. “Nothing the Initiative offers us is free.”

  There is a line of people standing in front of the Rations Hall, trailing all the way down the street and along the train tracks. A dead body lies near the doorway, flies swarming around the gaping eye sockets that have been picked clean by the gulls.

  I’m not sure where to go in, where to start, so I just stand there for a while, counting the number of people.

  105. 150. 210, before the line disappears around the corner.

  “You the new recruit?”

  I turn around. An Initiative woman is lying on her back on a generator box, popping gum. I have never had gum, but the way she’s chewing it makes me want to try some.

  I nod my head and swallow hard.

  “Well, come on over,” she says. “I don’t bite. Name’s Orion. Like the constellation, you know?” I hide my smile, thinking of the time Peri asked me if Orion was really fat, because his belt was so big.

  I’ve never casually spoken to an Initiative officer, let alone a woman. Her uniform is all black, with laced leather boots that reach her knees and a black pistol attached to her hip. But something about Orion is different. I notice a white and red band sewn into the fabric around her thigh. “You’re a medic?” I ask.

  “More of us are, these days,” she says. “And we’re about to be late.”

  I step across the train tracks and stand a ways from her, careful not to get too close. My blood is starting to boil. All the chaos, all the murders, and they do nothing but make us more afraid. They are the shepherds that turn a blind eye when the wolves come to play. “Meadow Woodson.” Orion holds up a small handheld. My name, face, and Catalogue Number shine back at me from the screen. I am not smiling in the photograph. I remember when it was retaken, just days before my mother died. “Says here it’s your first job. Things go well, you’re stuck here for life, Blondie. Think you can handle it?” Her hair is chopped short, revealing a thick line of scars, like claw marks on her neck. Orion is tough. I can tell by the wiry muscles in her skull-tattooed arms, and the way she keeps swiveling her head, watching the citizens all around us.

  But I bet I am tougher. “I can handle myself just fine,” I say. I nod at the scars on her neck. “What happened to you?”

  “Got jumped a few years ago. Wanna know why?” She rolls over onto her stomach, and the generator rocks a little as she hops down. “You’ll find out soon enough.” I hear the two short chirps that signal the start of the workday. “Follow me. Don’t speak. Don’t ask questions. You’ll figure it out eventually.” Orion waves her hand. “Move it people, move it!”

  We shove through the crowd and go around to the back of the building, where there’s less of a crush, but still too many people to really be safe. I stand guard while Orion scans her Catalogue Number. The door clicks open, and we slip into the Rations Hall.

  As soon as we walk in I want to turn around and head back to the ocean, where the air is clean and crisp. Here, flies dip and dodge the swatting hands of the Initiative soldiers standing guard around the room. The air is sweltering hot, and with each step I get a dose of body odor and the scent of rotting meat. Rows of metal tables fill the center of the room. It looks as if they have not been cleaned in months.

  “They told me I’d get used to the smell, eventually,” Orion says. “They l
ied.” She presses her forehead to a scanner imbedded in another thick metal door. There are what look like fist marks in the metal.

  I follow her into a massive room full of wood crates stacked to the ceiling. “Crates hold the rations,” Orion says, slamming her fist on one of them. “It doesn’t go bad, so don’t worry about it not being able to take the heat.”

  So much food, just sitting here waiting. I can just imagine my father’s face if he were to see this.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Orion says, raising a pierced eyebrow at me. She pats the gun on her thigh. But then, strangely, she smiles. “Nah. If you were that stupid, you’d have tried something already. This way.” I follow her to a wall of thick glass. “Walls are bulletproof,” Orion says. Before I know it, lightning fast, she has pulled out her gun and fired a bullet at the wall.

  It sticks in the glass like a dart. My ears ring. “I just love that.” Orion laughs, holsters her gun, and moves along like nothing happened. There is a counter underneath the glass, and every few feet, holes in the glass above the counter, just large enough for a plate of food or a bundle of rations.

  “Those holes aren’t bulletproof,” I say, too loud. My ears are still ringing.

  Orion shrugs her shoulders. “Neither are we. Makes it interesting, don’t you think?”

  Sweat drips down my spine, and I shudder. This is where the Initiative almost killed Koi so many years ago. I cast Orion a sideways glance.

  “You look scared,” she says. “Leave now if you want. I’m sure there are plenty of other little blonde girls who’d kill for this job.”

  I cross my arms and stare right into her brown eyes. “I’m not leaving unless you shoot me and carry my dead body out.”

  Orion laughs. “Good girl. Gear up.” She tosses me a pair of thick gloves and directs me to stand behind a line on the floor. “The job’s easy. Wait while they scan their numbers. Then check the screens, here. We’re supposed to give them exactly what it says, and nothing more. You tough?”