The Invasion of the Tearling

“Scan her and bring her inside.”


Lily held still for the body scanner, though the black man gave her an extra sharp prod in the stomach. The scanner made her wonder, again, where they had gotten all of this hardware. Security equipment was supposed to be tagged upon manufacture. Had the Blue Horizon figured out a way to remove the tracking chips from equipment as well as people? When the scan was done, Dorian chattered the strange language into her own headset for a moment and then prodded Lily with the tip of her rifle.

“Inside.”

Lily went through the warehouse door, her hands still laced behind her head, and blinked as light assaulted her eyes, blinding her for a few moments. When she recovered, she found herself in a large room with corrugated metal walls. A small table was set up in the middle of the room, two men seated there. Lily first spotted Jonathan, standing behind a chair at the far end, and in the chair sat William Tear, staring with narrowed eyes at the man opposite. Dorian prodded Lily in the back with her rifle, and Lily marched forward. Several more guards moved to surround her now, though she was relieved to see that they only had pistols. Two of the guards were women, which surprised Lily; she had somehow assumed that Dorian was unique.

Tear looked up in annoyance as they approached, but as he spotted Lily, his face changed, became unreadable, and he stood up from his chair. The man at the near end of the table turned around, and Lily fought not to recoil. He had lost most of his face to acid, or something worse. Red, angry tissue covered his cheekbones and crawled over his forehead. His teeth were just as bad as those of the man outside.

“Nice, Tear,” the burned man rasped. “Your people let a Security agent through.”

“No,” Tear replied coldly. “Not sure what she is, Parker, but she’s not Security.”

“Look at her clothes. Whatever she is, she’s wall meat, and she’s seen my face.”

Parker came toward Lily. His disfigurement made him look simultaneously ancient and rapacious, and Lily shrank back. He reached out and grabbed her breast, roughly, wrenching it to the left, and Lily clamped her lips shut on a groan.

“Take your hands off her.” Tear’s voice had turned to ice now.

“Why should I?” Parker grabbed at Lily’s other breast, and her hand balled into a fist. But then she felt Dorian’s hand slide over her shoulder and clamp there, a warning. Lily closed her eyes, forced herself to be still.

“Because if you don’t, Parker, I break that hand and throw you out of here with nothing, none of my toys. How would you like that?”

Parker’s face twisted angrily, but he finally let go. Lily backed up, clutching her aching breast, until she bumped into Dorian’s rifle again. These people, Parker and his men, were what Lily had always pictured when she thought about life outside the wall: violent and careless, with none of the fundamental decency she sensed from Tear and his people. So what were they doing here?

Tear left the table and Jonathan followed, keeping close, in the same way that he did with Lily. His eyes constantly landed on Tear and then flitted away, anxious, looking for threats, and at that moment Lily realized that Jonathan had never really been her bodyguard. He was Tear’s man, and Lily had only been an incidental stop on the way.

Tear halted in front of her, and she was struck again by his military posture: straight, with the heels together. Time seemed to be slipping away again; she wished she could check her watch, but she kept her hands up. It would be long past midnight now. How many hours until dawn?

“Mrs. Mayhew. Why are you here?”

Lily took a deep breath and repeated the entire evening’s events, everything since Arnie Welch had shown up for dinner. She omitted nothing except Greg and the picture frame; when the moment came, she found herself unable to tell that story in front of all of these people. Tear’s gaze never wavered from her as she spoke, and Lily found that she had been right, that night in the nursery: his eyes were not grey but silver, a bright and glimmering silver. Lily had to fight not to look down.

“She’s lying,” Parker announced flatly, when Lily had finished.

Jonathan leaned over to whisper into Tear’s ear, and Tear nodded. “We did lose Goodin a week ago. Several bodies were burned beyond recovery in that explosion.”

“That’s an easy piece of bullshit for Security! They could have identified your man by dental records and then sent this whore in to tell a story.”

“Security doesn’t have any medical records on my people.”

“Someone else talked.”

“How did she know where to find us, then, Parker?” Tear’s voice thinned with contempt, but he turned to Dorian. “Dori. Take your boys out and have a look around. Thirty minutes.”