“Oh, you mean, sorry, duty calls? That’s your definition of a note? What the fuck is going on?” Kate winced. Riley never swore. “Is this about what you saw? At the restaurant? What are we dealing with here?”
“We aren’t dealing with anything,” she said. “I’m working this one myself.”
“Why?” He cracked his shin audibly against something and swore again under his breath. “What’s going on?”
Kate leaned back against the cold metal of the lockers, and tried to keep her voice light. “It’s complicated. I’ve got a lead, but it’s not in Prosperity, and I don’t know how long it will take; that’s why I sent the files, just in case . . .” She couldn’t finish that sentence, so she changed course. “I’ll be back. As soon as it’s done. Tell the Wardens.”
“Will I be lying?”
“I hope not.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.” The word scraped her throat. And then, because Riley had given her so much, and she had given him so little, she added, “To Verity.”
Riley let out a long, shaky breath, but there was no surprise in his silence, as if he’d known all along. When he spoke, his voice was urgent.
“Listen to me, whatever’s going on, whatever you’re running away from, or toward, I just want you to know—”
Kate swiped a tear from her cheek and killed the call.
Before he could call back, she switched the phone off and dropped it in the envelope, sliding the contents beneath the lockers for safekeeping.
The bathrooms were as clean as the rest of the Crossroads, pristine in an industrial sort of way. A mirror ran the length of one wall above a bank of sinks, and Kate set her sunglasses on the counter and washed her face, wishing she could scrub away the call with Riley, the doubt he’d kicked up like dust inside her head.
She was doing the right thing—wasn’t she?
She knew the city in the vision, knew she was headed in the right direction.
Unless she was wrong. The shadow was in her head, weaving through her memories, her darkest thoughts and fears. What if she was only seeing what it wanted? What if she’d left Prosperity for nothing? What if what if what if—
Enough.
She knew the difference between truth and lie, between vision and dream, between her mind and the monster’s. Didn’t she?
She looked up and found her gaze in the mirror.
Her stomach turned. The crack in her left eye was larger, stealing across the blue. Was it spreading on its own, or was she worrying it like a wound? She hesitated, weighing the potential damage against the need for certainty, all the while losing ground against the shard’s strange pull.
The need won out—Kate held her gaze.
“Where are you?” she whispered. It was the same question she’d asked herself a thousand times over the years, whenever she wanted to imagine herself somewhere else, someone else, but the darkness answered by pulling her forward, down into—
The hallway of the house beyond the Waste dead flowers on the sill a broken picture on the floor a coat of dust as thick as paint on everything and she has never felt so alone
it buries her that sadness swallows her whole
the only sound a voice
her voice echoing
through
an empty house —Where are you?— she goes looking for a pair of silver eyes but the rooms are all empty and then
she sees it the body in the hall the bullet hole a singed circle in its throat she crouches as his eyes drift open wide as moons holds
its gaze
as the house shudders
shatters
into—
—blood
everywhere
splashed like paint
over the ground
up the walls
the bodies
strewn
like shadows
their fire
all burned out
nothing now
but shells
in gray and green
and letters stamped
on bloody sleeves
F
T
F.
Kate pulled free.
She was back at the counter, gasping for air. The harsh white light blurred her vision, and blood dripped from her nose, and she could almost hear the shard throwing out fresh cracks, like the sound of splitting ice inside her skull.
It took her an instant to realize she wasn’t alone.
An older woman was at her side, one hand tight on her sleeve and a wet wad of paper towels in the other. Her lips were moving, but Kate’s good ear was ringing and the words came through broken and studded with static.
“I’m fine,” she said, painfully aware of the sunglasses sitting on the sink and the splinter of silver in her eye.
The white noise died just as the woman put a hand on Kate’s cheek. “Let me see, darling. I used to be a nurse—”
“No,” she gasped, jerking her head away.
Contagious. That was the word Malcolm had used. Kate was already sick—the last thing she needed was to infect anyone else, but when she tried to pull free, the woman caught her face in both hands and angled her chin up, tutting as if Kate were some disobedient child.
And then the woman stilled, her eyes going wide, and Kate’s chest lurched, because she’d obviously seen the silver.
But all she said was, “You’ve got a pair of eyes on you,” and pressed the damp towels to Kate’s nose, as if that was all there was to it.
“Thank you,” murmured Kate, trying to hide the tremor in her voice, the surprise, the relief. But the moment the woman was gone, she slumped against the counter, hands shaking.
Well, thought Kate grimly.
At least she wasn’t contagious.
NOW LEAVING PROSPERITY, announced the sign.
There was no guard tower, no armed checkpoint—no penalty for trying to get out—just an open gate. And then she was in the buffer zone, the mile-long stretch of neutral land between territories.
She came to the four-way stop, the same one she’d passed through before, and was hit by another moment of déjà vu. The base of her skull prickled as she pulled forward, taking the road toward Verity.
The signal on the radio failed.
The road ahead was empty.
Turn around, said a voice in her head. Turn around while you still can. But it was already being drowned out by the thought of her iron spikes, of her gun, of her bare hands sinking into—
Dammit, she thought, gripping the wheel. Keeping that voice out, it was like trying to keep your eyes open on the road at night, fatigue wearing you down a little more with every yawn, the slippery slope between a blink and something deadly.
She slowed as the Verity border came into sight.
The barricade was down and a soldier emerged from the patrol building as Kate adjusted her sunglasses and slowed to a stop. She shifted the car into neutral but didn’t turn the engine off, letting her fingers rest on the gearshift.
The guard wasn’t that old, maybe in his early twenties, a little on the squat side. A patch on his uniform marked him as a Prosperity citizen—the surrounding territories of Temperance, Fortune, and Prosperity took turns manning the Verity border. He had an assault rifle slung on a strap, but at the sight of Kate, he swung the weapon back over his shoulder. Oh, the perks of being perpetually underestimated.
Kate rolled the window down. “Hi there.”
“I’m sorry, miss. You’ve got to turn around.”
She opted for naive innocence, raising her eyebrows behind her glasses. “Why?”