Our Dark Duet

  He spun on her.

  “Enough.”

  Kate flinched but didn’t back down. “This new you—”

  “—is none of your business,” he snapped. “You don’t get to stand here and judge me, Kate. You left. You ran away, and I stayed and fought for this city, for these people. I’m sorry you don’t like the new me, but I did what I had to. I became what this world needed me to be.” By the time he finished, he was breathless.

  Kate stared, her expression carved in ice. And then she came close, close enough for him to see the glint of silver through her bangs. “You’re lying.”

  “I can’t lie.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Kate, turning her back on him. “There’s one kind of lie even you can tell. Do you know what it is?” She met his gaze in the steel doors. “The kind you tell yourself.”

  August clenched his teeth.

  Don’t listen to her, warned Leo. She doesn’t understand. She can’t.

  The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened, and Kate strode out, and nearly collided with Colin.

  He went white at the sight of her, then looked to August with all the desperation of a drowning man. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Kate raised a brow. “Am I supposed to know you?”

  “Kate,” said August, “this is Colin Stevenson.”

  Colin managed a nervous smile that did nothing to hide his discomfort. “We both went to Colton.”

  “Sorry,” she said blandly. “It was a brief and tumultuous enrollment.”

  Colin shifted from foot to foot. “It’s cool, I don’t expect you to remember me. I tried to stay off your radar.”

  “Probably smart.”

  August cleared his throat. “You’ll be joining Colin’s squad for the day.” She shot him a mischievous look that said will I? And August narrowed his eyes. Yes.

  “Yeah, I’ll be, uh, showing you the ropes.”

  Kate kept her gaze on August as she flashed a cool smile. “Lead on.”

  He fell in step behind them as Colin gave Kate the tour. Listened to her punctuate the speech with mm-hmms and I sees, even though she clearly wasn’t listening.

  “The training rooms are all located on the first and second floors and down that way’s the cafeteria, which is like the cafeteria at Colton except for the fact the food is awful. . . .”

  As they moved through the halls, August felt the familiar shift of eyes, the weight of attention, but for once it wasn’t all on him. The soldiers were looking at Kate, murmuring under their breath, and he could hear, too clearly, the tension in their voices, the anger in their words.

  He glanced up and realized Colin was looking at him expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Did I miss anything?”

  “Don’t worry,” cut in Kate. “I’m a quick learner.”

  Colin’s watch gave a sudden chirp. “Five minutes: we better get to the training hall. Any questions?”

  Kate brightened. “Where do they keep the weapons?”

  Colin laughed nervously, as if he couldn’t tell whether or not she was serious. August knew she was.

  “All tech is stored on Sublevel 1—” started Colin.

  “But to take any of the weapons out,” added August, “you have to be approved. Which you won’t be.”

  Kate shrugged. “Good to know,” she said, shoving Colin toward the training hall.

  “Come on. We don’t want to be late.”

  August caught Kate’s shoulder and leaned in, his voice low, close: “There are security cameras everywhere,” he said, “so keep your head down.”

  She shot him a dry smile. “Thanks for the tip,” she said.

  And then she was gone.

  Six months in Prosperity, and Kate had almost forgotten what it felt like to be hated.

  To be always on display—that strange imbalance of being recognized, judged by your face, your name.

  Six months of being no one, and now, as Colin led her into the training hall—putting space between them with every stride—she felt the news travel like a current, felt the heads turn. They looked at her and saw not a girl but a symbol, an idea, a stand-in for all their resentment and blame. Her skin prickled under the scrutiny, and she forced herself to focus on the room itself instead of the discomfort or the dark voice in her head.

  Hundreds were packed into what looked like it might once have been a ballroom. A narrow running track edged the wall, the space within broken into training stations. The youngest soldiers looked twelve or thirteen. The oldest were white haired. They were a mix of North and South City—they wore their differences on their faces (the difference between shock and anger, curiosity and fear, caution and contempt), but in every single pair of eyes, in every twitch of lip and brow, a single commonality: distrust.

  I don’t trust you either, thought Kate.

  Six months—and it came back, like riding a bike. Her spine straightened. Her chin went up. It had always been an act of sorts, a part, but it was one she knew how to play.

  “You’ll be in Team Twenty-Four with me,” said Colin, leading her toward a group of fifteen or so cadets standing just inside the track.

  “Thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Stevenson.” The instructor was a stocky woman with a square jaw and cold blue eyes that landed on Kate for a long moment before returning to the eight crates sitting on the floor.

  “This,” said the woman holding up a modified rifle, “is an AL-9. Who can tell me why our Night Squads carry them?”

  “They can be modified to hold shatter shells.”

  The words were out before Kate realized she’d spoken. Again, those blue eyes found her, as did every other pair. Kate cursed herself—why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut?

  “Continue, Miss . . .”

  The instructor was obviously going to make her say it.

  “Harker,” offered Kate. And then, pressing ahead, “Shatter shells are designed to break apart on contact. They’d have to be dipped in silver, iron, or some other pure metal to do any real damage, but within say, fifty yards, they might have enough force to penetrate a Malchai’s bone plate. A spike driven up behind the shield would be a better bet, but that method does require close contact.”

  The rest of the training hall kept buzzing with noise, but Team Twenty-Four was a pocket of silence. The instructor didn’t need to raise her voice to break it.

  “Indeed,” she said curtly. “Each crate contains the parts for an AL-9. You’ll spend the next hour assembling and disassembling them. Pair off.”

  A guy tapped Colin’s sleeve, and he shot Kate a questioning look, visibly relieved when she shooed him away.

  She didn’t bother waiting for a partner—she went to the nearest case and knelt over it, sliding back the clasps—so she was surprised when a shadow suddenly loomed overhead, and a second later another girl knelt across from her. She looked a year older than Kate, maybe two, with curly black hair and a glare that said South City.

  “Mony,” she said, by way of introduction.

  “Kate.”

  “I know.”

  “I figured.” She nodded at the crate. “You first.”

  The girl raised a brow. “Eyes open or closed?”

  “Suit yourself,” said Kate, “but when you use it out there, I’d suggest keeping your eyes open.” That earned her the barest smile.

  She watched as the girl assembled the weapon with swift, sure movements, humming under her breath.

  Monsters, monsters, big and small . . .

  “Have you ever actually fired one of these?” asked Kate.

  Mony’s hands kept moving. “Only active squads are armed. Team Twenty-Four is still in training.”

  “So we don’t actually fight?”

  Kate chose we on purpose, one of those simple psychological cues that turned you vs. me into us vs. them.

  Mony checked the barrel. “Occasionally we get tapped for day patrols, or guard shift, but most of our work is onsite until we’re cl
eared for active duty.”

  “I’m going out for the Night Squad,” said Colin, one row over.

  Mony rolled her eyes at him. “As what? A stepstool?”

  Colin colored, and made an effort to sit up straighter, as if his height deficiency was just a matter of posture.

  “So you never go out?” asked Kate.

  “We’re lucky to be here.” Mony set the assembled weapon on the crate. “Your turn.”

  Kate reached for the gun, but the moment it was in her hands, the thing in her head began to stir. It was like a cold, or a pulled muscle, something you almost forgot about until you coughed, or moved the wrong way, and then it flared. For just a few minutes, she’d forgotten, and now her pulse sounded loud and steady in her ears, muting the world beyond, and she felt suddenly calm—the kind of calm that comes with realizing you’re in a dream, knowing nothing can hurt you.

  “Hey,” said Mony, the word muffled, distant, but there. “You good?”

  Kate blinked. She looked down at the gun.

  It’s empty, she told her hands. Put it down.

  “Yeah,” she said slowly, setting the weapon back on the crate. “Guns just aren’t my thing.”

  Mony snatched the weapon back and started breaking it down.

  “Good luck with that.”

  The instructor blew a whistle, and Team Twenty-Four let out a collective sigh, slumping onto the mats. They’d moved from firearms to formations, cardio to crunches.

  “I hate sit-ups,” moaned Colin, clutching his stomach. “I don’t see what strong abs have to do with hunting monsters . . .”

  But Kate felt better than she had in days. Her muscles burned in a pleasant way from the simple physical exertion, and it left her feeling in control of her body, her mind. She got to her feet, ready for the next exercise, but the team was moving toward the doors.

  “Lunch break,” explained Mony.

  They took a left and hit a broad corridor teeming with people in the dark grays and greens of the FTF. She expected the crowd to part around her, the way it had back at Colton, but the difference between Colton and the Compound was that, for every five people who swung wide, one went out of their way to knock into her.

  “Watch it,” warned someone after they checked her in the side.

  Kate’s pulse rose. Her fingers curled into a fist.

  But Colin was the worst, not because he went out of his way to be cruel—just the opposite, he tried to comfort her.

  “When I first got here,” he said, “half the cadets wouldn’t even talk to me because I was from North City, and my dad isn’t even . . .”

  Mony shot him a look—bless her—and Colin trailed off as they reached the cafeteria.

  The place was packed.

  With this many people, it should have been easy to disappear by degrees, lose a step here and there, fall to the back of the pack and then just slip away. But every time Colin’s attention drifted, Mony was there to pick up the slack.

  “This is nothing,” she said as they wove through the crowd.

  “Yeah,” said Colin. “There are nearly ten million people under the FTF’s protection just in South City, and fifty thousand of them are active soldiers—”

  “Oh God,” muttered Mony, “he’s like a wind-up toy.”

  Colin didn’t seem to care. “Everyone has to be willing to serve, but there are different ways to do that. There’s recon, supply, management, but everyone goes through training, first . . .”

  Kate’s attention slid toward the polished steel of the utensils—she took a sandwich instead. “How many people live here?” she asked.

  Mony groaned. “Don’t encourage him.”

  “Only about fifteen hundred people live in the Compound. The rest of the soldiers are spread out across two square blocks. It’s high-density living, but it allows them to keep the power on.”

  Kate frowned. “Where does it come from?”

  Colin opened his mouth to answer, but Mony cut him off.

  “Solar generators,” she said. “Now dear God, before I die of boredom, let me eat.”

  The whole team moved toward a table with the automatic flow of routine, and Kate followed. It was clear she was expected to sit with them—and equally clear they didn’t want her there. Bodies twisted away. Conversations lowered to a buzz in her good ear. Even Colin and Mony were growing tense under the scrutiny.

  She was picking at her food, appetite fading, when Colin lowered his voice and leaned toward her.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said, and Kate didn’t answer, because it was obvious he was going to ask either way. “Where have you been?” Mony raised a brow. “Sorry, I know it’s none of my business, it’s just—there’s kind of a pool going. I don’t normally bet, but there’s a candy bar in the pot and, like, half the squads thought you were dead but I’ve got five that you were hiding in the Waste and—”

  “Prosperity.”

  His eyes widened. “Seriously? Why would you come back?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said, “monsters, mayhem, revenge.”

  She got to her feet. “Look,” she said, “playing soldier seems fun, but I have work to do.”

  Colin’s head shot up. “Where are you going?”

  “The bathroom,” she said, and then, when Colin made a move to rise. “I think I can find my way.”

  His attention twitched between his food and her, clearly torn.

  But it was Mony who spoke up. “Fifteen minutes,” she said, tapping her watch. “If you’re not back in the training hall, the whole team pays for it.”

  Kate nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  Kate headed for Sublevel 1.

  Nobody stopped her, not when she passed the bathrooms or the bank of elevators, not when she slipped into the stairwell and started down.

  The benefits of walking with purpose, she thought. People didn’t just assume you knew where you were going—they assumed you were supposed to be going there.

  At least until she pushed open the door and stepped into the weapons cache. A man sat at a desk, the wide corridor beyond him lined with armored vests and helmets. She glimpsed weapons through several open doors.

  He was skimming something on his tablet, but his head snapped up when she walked in. His eyes instantly narrowed.

  Kate forced a lightness into her voice. “Is this the lost and found?”

  “Does this look like a lost and found?”

  “Hey, I’m just following orders. My captain lost some equipment and it’s my job to find it.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  “A pair of spikes. Iron. About the length of my forearm.”

  “That’s not something we issue.”

  Your loss, thought Kate, but she only shrugged. “She’s from North City. Must have been a relic.”

  “Squad?”

  “Twenty-Four.”

  “Name?”

  “The instructor’s?”

  “Yours.”

  “Mony,” said Kate, instantly regretting it. He was clearly waiting for a last name, but she hadn’t learned it. “Look, never mind, I’m sure the spikes will turn up—”

  Something lit up on the man’s screen, and Kate didn’t know if it was a red flag or an ordinary message, but his expression went stony and her pulse rose. She took a step back.

  “Stay put,” he said, two words that made Kate want to do the opposite. Her gaze flicked from the weapons on the walls to the one holstered at the man’s hip, but the elevator doors were already opening behind her. And Ilsa stepped out.

  She was barefoot in a sundress, her hair a cloud of wild red curls and her shoulders speckled with stars, but it was the brutal red scar across her throat that Kate saw first.

  The man at the desk stood and bowed his head, a gesture halfway between deference and fear, but Kate’s spirits lifted at the sight of the Sunai.

  The first—and only—time they’d met, Kate had woken in a strange motel to find the Sunai’s face inches from her own.
She’d heard the stories of Ilsa Flynn. The ones that painted the first Sunai as the worst of the monsters, a walking massacre who’d once shed her human form and reduced two hundred lives and a downtown block to charred remains. But the Ilsa in that hotel—the one here now—was someone else. Someone gentle, kind.

  She gave Kate a look, lightly scolding, and even without a voice, Kate could imagine her saying, You shouldn’t be down here and you know it.

  Ilsa flicked her fingers toward the soldier, as if shaking off water, took Kate’s hand, and drew her back into the elevator.

  “It was worth a shot,” murmured Kate as the doors closed, but Ilsa’s expression was already twisting, a shadow crossing the delicate planes of her face. The air itself seemed to change, laced with a sudden new chill, as if Ilsa’s mood were a tangible thing.

  “What is it?”

  Ilsa reached up, thin fingers hovering over Kate’s eyes—no, just the one. Her stomach dropped. Ilsa knew—about the shard, the sickness. A dozen different thoughts rose to Kate’s mind, but it was a question that crossed her lips.

  “What happened to August?”

  Ilsa’s hands fell away.

  She shook her head, but Kate had the feeling that Ilsa wasn’t saying no, so much as expressing some great sadnesss.

  The elevator stopped on the training floor, and the doors slid open. As Kate stepped out, Ilsa brightened, holding up one hand. The other vanished into the deep pockets of her sundress, and a second later she produced Kate’s tablet. The one Soro had taken.

  Ilsa held the device up, as if in answer, before pushing it into Kate’s hands. Kate stared down at the tablet, then slipped it into her vest pocket as her watch chimed a warning. She was out of time.

  At one end of the corridor stood an exit, unguarded.

  At the other, the door to the training hall.

  Kate swore under her breath and took off running.

  She was late.

  Team Twenty-Four was already gathered, two of the older soldiers squaring off, one with a red kerchief knotted at his throat.

  “Your objective,” the instructor was saying, “is to subdue the Fang as quickly as possible.” The woman saw Kate jogging up and a malicious little glee sparked on her face.