No One to Save Her: The Walled Cities Chronicles, #1

By Iris Ng-Bakalar

Serycia Fade, a slave marked for death…

I run into the most impoverished level of our walled city, where poisons and toxins swirl in oily black puddles on the streets, and people are gathering in a square in line for food.

But they can’t be here.

I scream at them to get out, get away.

And the world explodes.

Soren Lost, a Level 1 nonentity…

She breaks into my life like a shard of sunlight shining in a squalid world just before the square explodes. Staggering out of the rubble, she offers me a pill that will give me a month of health in exchange for me getting her back out of Level 1.

Only thing is, a powerful man has her marked for death; she’s got city protectors on her tail; her former master has been mind-wiped and doesn’t remember she exists; and I have a sister to protect.

I should refuse, should leave her mired in her own troubles.

But there’s no one else to save her. So I take the month of health and do my damnedest to save her myself.

Good thing, too, because if I get her to the lab on Level 3, her research might be the key to finding the cure for the virus that dooms us all to die at twenty-six.

If I can keep her alive that long.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iris Ng-Bakalar
• Release date: Apr 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513005744

Book preview

ABOUT THe AUTHORS

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Born in Texas but somehow having escaped without the accent, Sonya Lano currently lives in Prague, Czech Republic with three cats and a bunch of dustballs, spiders and story manuscripts. Her full-time day job testing software pays the bills while her nights are (mostly) filled with living in other worlds where it’s just so much fun...

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Born in Hong Kong and raised in England, Iris Ng-Bakalar also lives in Prague and teaches English to little gremlins, also known as children, when she’s not writing. In general a culturally confused misfit, she enjoys time with her husband, cuddly toys (the rounder, the better), origami, and food. Lots and lots of food.

No One to Save Her

Sonya Lano & Iris Ng-Bakalar

Copyright © 2014 Sonya Lano and Iris Ng-Bakalar

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1503109356

ISBN-13: 978-1503109353

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Serycia written by Sonya Lano

Soren written by Iris Ng-Bakalar

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For writers, dreamers,

and readers everywhere

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks first and foremost to Iris’s nephew, Kaleb, without whom this book would never have been. A failed doughnut excursion led Iris to share her woes with Sonya with this sentence: We attempted to go out for a doughnut.... After a

whole day stuck in a house babysitting with her sister, Iris was very much looking forward to having that doughnut from Krispy Kremes. Her toddler nephew, however, thwarted her dreams by falling asleep in the car before they ever got there. Inspired by the aforementioned 'damned doughnut' and the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, a largely ungoverned settlement notorious for crime, prostitution and gambling and which was later torn down in the early 90s, we chose our characters and, some time later, No One to Save Her was born.

Secondly, huge thanks to our beta readers, Edward Leahy, Neil Murton, Laura Vickers, Rebekah Sramkova, Terri Negrete, Sara Tusek, Jean-Francois Adam, and Iris’s husband Jan Bakalar. Thanks also to Chris Weixelman for the final touches to the cover!

And, also, from our hearts, we thank you, our readers! We hope you have as much fun reading the story as much as we had writing it!

Serycia

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I

sprint through an underworld of steel.

The pavement jars my feet – stupid high heels wobbling, threatening to snap with every footfall.

Hurry!

A stitch stabs through my side and I stagger, flatten my palm against it, mutter a curse. I hunch over, loping, limping – stupid high heels, stupid pain. Suck it in. Breathe... Breathe in sick, stale air that hasn’t seen sun for centuries.

How much longer? Three minutes? One? Mere seconds?

Concrete gleams in the flickering light, wet and moist, but not with rain – never with rain down here. The tang of the rotting meat soured by toxins burns my throat with every breath.

Faster!

Rat corpses half-dissolved in acid lay strewn along reams of garbage shovelled to the side of the streets. My harsh pants echo in my ears in time to the thunk thunk of the heels –

The only shoes Cipher allows me, his cerulean eyes roving over me in soft strokes of admiration. You’re gorgeous in them, Sery. Beautiful...

Don’t stop.

The yellow silk gown he gave me flutters, useless, over my calves.

...Come make love to me, Sery. Now...

Don’t think. Keep going. Four more minutes to –

Stop madness.

Don’t look –

– at how the huddled low-level inhabs watch me from shadowed doorways, harboring churning hostility.

Run.

My ankle twists, knocking the side of my heel on the rain-wet pavement.

I stumble forward, gasping, then yank the heels off and toss them. They chink against a steel wall and tumble into the gaps made in funnels of rubbish where doors have shoved them outward.

My bare feet slap onwards over the grubby Level 1 street. I crunch over shards of glass that feel like mere indentations of pressure under the balls of my feet because I’m protected by Gezeva, the drug which makes our skin tougher and more resistant.

Gezeva saves lives here in the under-city, where poisons and toxins swirl like oily rainbows in black puddles on the streets. Where glass debris and rusted nails jut out from cracks in the pavement and corroded building frames.

Boots thud behind me.

Go back, Cipher. Cipher my lover. Cipher my master. Go back and stay safe. Don’t risk your life for my foolish heart.

Calling up the map in my head again, from memory, I swerve around the corner into a dark alleyway where old rags or sleeping people curl up in piles. Rats scuttle into unseen corners. The muffled snort of a blanket-doused vagrant emerges from concealed depths. A child’s whimper drifts into the night.

Serycia!

Loose, tumbled curls escape the elaborate braids now straggling down my shoulders. I’d had half of them undone for the night before Cipher had – I veer around the corner into the semidarkness of another street – before he’d tugged me to bed with him.

I drag my mind back to the grids and lines of the map he’d left open on his laptop for several successive nights in a row now, memorizing it because his father wanted him to.

It had to be for his father; Cipher could never have planned this.

He never knew I’d studied it, too, after he slept. I kept wondering what if? What if I ever need a map of Level 1?

But all it showed was the path to one square and I didn’t understand why –

Until now.

I hear his voice again, fainter.

I go right, my feet slapping over dry pavement this time, my way lit by lights on the underside of the second story road above. Some flicker, some don’t work at all, most are grubby and overgrown by spider webs or the accumulated dust and grime of decades.

People call out to me now, about my hair, my bare feet, my yellow silken gown rippling like honey about my legs. They gather around and stare, glittering eyes tinged by darkness. Flashes of light drain their haggard faces of colour and reflect the wars of misery and envy in their eyes. They crowd in, awed even as they hate, their hands reaching in wonder even as they curl in rage.

But they don’t dare touch. They don’t dare get near.

Not to a Level 7 inhab. No Level 1 inhab would dare lay a finger or even a breath on me and hope to live through the night.

And even if they dare, I have no fear. Cipher has forced me to carry around tiny tranquilizer pellets ever since an attack by a crazy Level 9. You’ve enough to knock out thirty of them, Cipher had told me, and had paid for lessons in throwing them.

I’m nearly at the market. I see Cipher’s father’s crest on the cart being pushed into an open square where people gather anticipating the treats piled high inside.

Don’t! I scream, waving my arms. Everyone get away! Run! It’s a trap!

Faces in the mass look up, look around, look at each other.

The man pushing the cart half turns.

Run! I scream, nearly there. The throng is a press of confusion staring at me in my honeyed gown running barefoot down the grubby street. "Run!"

I lurch past the cart and run at the crowd. They shriek, panic, and surge backward, eyes widening, faces cringing, bodies twisting and shoving wildly at those behind so I don’t accidentally touch them and condemn them to death.

I advance even more.

They run in earnest now.

Level 7, what’s going on?

I turn to face the cart driver and flap my hands at him, running back toward him now. You have to get out of here!

Serycia!

Cipher’s bloodless face and dyed, blue-streaked blonde hair appear behind the cart, bolting down the street toward me.

No, Cipher, get out of here! I shout.

He passes the cart, launches himself at me – and the world behind him explodes.

My eyes widen slowly, as if they have all the time in the world. They widen and widen, taking in the yellow-orange ball of flame curling outward from the cart, consuming the driver and those beyond him.

It billows outward, growing like a licking ball with a thousand reaching arms.

Cipher’s panicked face paints a stark silhouette against the brightness. His body hits mine – and time speeds up – I hit the ground, his weight on top of me –

A last brush of his lips against mine.

A breath.

And time ends.

Soren

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H

aggard men and women crowd in like hunched skeletons in sallow skin, every one gripping a plastic bowl. No bowl, no receiving, that’s the rule. Hungry, with eyes only for the coming silver carts, the mob waits with eerie patience at the double doors, which occupy most of the southern wall.

I’m near Street 534 by the entrance, waiting like everyone else. Megan never asks me for anything, but this time she’d begged and begged. They’re giving doughnuts away, Soren. Two per inhab! Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Doughnuts – a treat we haven’t had since the city’s last founding anniversary. She’d giggled, my baby sister drooling at the thought of sugar.

Megan’s only eleven; still a child. As her big brother, I’m the only family she’s got left, and her legal guardian. She’d gazed up at me – eyes shining with childish innocence. I’d always imagined they would glimmer with little flecks of gold in the sunlight.

Only we’ve never seen the sun.

Instead, her eyes are flat and dulled to the shade of dirt. Ringworm has eaten away patches of her hair; fresh scabs dotted black spots across her scalp in the sickly green-yellow light of our one-room unit. She’d stood trembling, hope clutched in her tiny fists. Congealed grime and old blood ran dark lines around her chipped fingernails.

How could I say no?

It’s just a doughnut. Such a simple thing. Only it isn’t, because those upper-level gluttons take everything, even though they already have everything. Then when they’re done gorging themselves and find they have too much, they throw it away. Throw it down the Shaft to the lower levels, where officials distribute the broken bits and leftovers. Each Level 1 inhab only got as much food as their bowl could hold. No more, no less. Unless the leftovers run out, which they always conveniently do within minutes of the Giving, even though I’d seen the piles of food – I’d sneaked into the Bread House one night and waited for the downpour, which normally happens in the early hours of the morning.

It was a freaking feast. Food so mouth-watering one would never have known it was grown and produced in food labs across the higher levels. Broken shards of meringue, mayonnaise-laden chicken shreds, corners of pastry with a half-bitten slice of strawberry still on it. Strawberry. I hadn’t seen a strawberry since that time when the collapse of the westside 3674x tunnel brought about one of the biggest riots of the under-city – protectors holding the elevator and threatening us with fire while the rioters pounded at the steel underside and clambered through the air ducts to go up-side. Maybe someone looted one of the upper levels, or sneaked into the ground guard chambers. Who knows? But, somehow, somewhere, Densy Drake managed to get hold of a basket of them juicy fruits and had hidden away with it. Of course, these things almost never go undiscovered for long. I guess who could resist the temptation of bragging? Twenty-three shining scarlet gems. In the end two men had died, trampled to death, their hands smeared crimson.

The ground guards didn’t take the bodies away until three days later. Which was how I found the strawberry. One had gone untouched, unblemished, hidden away an arm’s length away from the foot of one of the rotting bodies. It sat soaking up the toxic puddle it was in, plump and the colour of a nasty bruise in the flickering light, but recognizably a strawberry. I’d seen the pictures; now I had one right in front of me.

If it weren’t for the fact that even roaches and rats hadn’t dared touch it, I would’ve shoved it into my mouth there and then.

So when I’d heard about the doughnuts given as gifts from Level 8, and this not on the city’s founding anniversary, when such treats are normally given, I knew I shouldn’t have come.

The Giving is held at Saurvon Square, the central point of our level where all the streets lead in Section C. Four hours and the crowd’s showing no signs of fatigue, their minds too fixated on the promise of a rare treat to complain. I can’t lie. The mere thought of soft, fluffy buns; the heavenly smell of caramelized sugar; and licking jam from sticky fingers and lips almost made me giddy, too. Doughnuts. Would they be filled with apple jam or chocolate cream? Or perhaps ring-shaped and dusted with sugar? Is this for real? With the crowd gathered in front of me, I have to believe maybe it is. Could be. Stranger things have happened. Now the waiting’s driving me crazy, childish cravings winning out over suspicion.

That’s when she bursts through the door, a shimmering, flowing bolt of honeyed silk and ruffled strawberry-blonde hair, slender feet kicking out from the hem of her dress.

She stands out like a shard of citrine, pure and beautiful and ridiculously out of place, eyes wide in her smooth-featured face, lovely even in the sickly glow of under-city light. For a moment I think I have to be dreaming. A Level 7 inhab? Down here? What would possess her to-

Run!

The towers of doughnuts are in sight, fat with buttercream and glazed with sugar. Shamelessly decadent on silver platters, wheeled in by uniformed guards on five decorated carts. Everything happens as if in slow motion, understanding clicking into place with every disconnected image. The appointed ground guard approaching the woman, and she twisting towards him. Level 1s shrinking back, recoiling from the madwoman like oil from water, then scattering. But not all. I see it in their eyes, still shining with the haze of sugar. The decadent towers.

How could I have been so stupid?

Get out of here! she shrieks, now some way into the square.

The carts, still by the doors, the guards pushing them frozen in confusion.

The people around me converge towards them, an unstoppable tide.

I run in the opposite direction, straight for the sewer I know is mere meters from me. Something’s horribly, horribly wrong, and I’m not going to stay around to find out what.

Behind me, someone shouts, Serycia!

Dimly, I recognize the Level 8 accent.

No time.

I bend and yank out the drain cover.

Mould and stale air rush up at me.

Then everything explodes.

Serycia

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S

irens, screams, and pounding feet.

Pain crawls through my aching bones, tap-tapping on pulsing sores. It spreads outward into smarting muscles and I track its progress up my spine, through my shoulders, down my fingertips, down to my toes.

The back of my skull lies in a crack in – pavement? Jagged concrete edges dig into my scalp and my hair soaks in a puddle of acid. I hear its faint bubbling as it tries to eat away at the protective layers on the strands. Get up now! some panicked, distant part of my mind cries.

But I am depleted and hot and dry as if coated with a layer of ash. My parched throat cannot swallow; the skin on my lips makes them stick together. My body is too heavy, weighed down...

A moaning man sprawls on top of me, forearms garbed in fine silver silk cradling either side of my head, his overheated cheek mashed next to mine and his hair tangled over my mouth, smelling of lilacs and charred metal.

My eyes attempt to flicker open but resist. Light and dark war behind my eyelids in a battle that waxes and wanes. And in the background, sirens wail. Someone in the distance shouts.

What...

Serycia.

The name barely emerges on a pain-filled murmur against my ear, more felt than heard above the sirens – felt because the voice speaking it is one known in every beat of my existence, and the body that voice belongs to is one I’ve known intimately since my thirteenth year. It has grown and changed alongside mine for almost seven years.

Cipher, I gasp out, barely hearing my own voice above the sirens and inhabs – dozens – hundreds? – yelling from nearby tunnels but not daring to venture onto the square. I only feel the pressure of the word leave my lungs and puff over the blue-streaked hair veiling my vision. Steaming strands fall into my mouth, searing my tongue. Too hot. I choke on them and on smoke that I cannot see.

Cipher!

My hands try to move but they’re pinned, scrunched up between our chests.

Above the blaring sirens comes another sound. Shouts. The barely-heard stomping of feet...

Protectors.

In a burst of strength I shove Cipher off me, his body thudding to the pavement, and I sit up. My thoughts scatter, wrenched for one disorienting second into the centre of devastation. Everything rushes in at once as if every sense is fine-tuned to an acutely painful level.

Heat rolls off the cracked, scorched pavement around me, its puddles of acid now only black flaking circles – but it’s wet underneath me. Cold, prickling acid seeps through the seat of my dress. Sirens blare, making my skull throb. Shouts I still can’t decipher make my head ache. The scents of fresh-cooked meat and fried sugar bring to mind whimsical fairs and laughing children, but only raw red bodies surround me, fallen ragdolls tipped from a box, thrown on top of one another like so much refuse near the doughnut cart. Clothes singed to their skin. Some of them scorched black.

Beside me –

Cipher! My weak arms clutch his body and try to drag him close, but my hands feel like they’re attached to someone who isn’t quite me but someone sitting beside me and I can’t get the coordination right. Only tatters remain of the back half of his clothes, and his skin – not blistered like the others, but an angry scarlet even in the pallid lighting.

I pull him into my lap, unheeding of how his red skin must feel dragged over my thighs. My frantic hands push back his blue-streaked blond hair, exposing his wide mouth and sharp nose. His face and the hair around it are untouched by flame, but char from the explosion clings to the protected strands at the back of his head, turning it a sooty black. He’ll be okay – his skin protections are stronger than anyone else’s here; he’ll be okay.

I raise my head to the huge double doors we’d run through to get onto the square. The protectors in their gray-white reflective attire race toward us.

Here! I cry, waving my arms. We’re here! Come quick, come quick and save Cipher.

His body jerks on my lap, but I only smooth my hand over his hair and keep my eyes on the protectors, on the starburst flashes as the grisly Level 1 lighting captures the reflective folds on their uniforms.

The first ones are almost—

A muted explosion rocks the air right under my chin and pops my ringing eardrums. The nearest protector flies backward, eyes wide, gun flung from his grip by the impact, a huge cavity blasted in his chest. Two more blasts in quick succession knock back the two just behind him. Light flashes off their metal guns spinning into shadow.

What the—

Cipher aims the gun clenched in his hand straight at more oncoming protectors. His finger presses and holds, his eyes narrowed and his aim sure. Bam, bam, bam.

Three more protectors approaching the door hurtle back.

Cipher, what are you doing? I almost reach for the gun, but ingrained training stops me in time. I could never take action against a Level 8 inhab, no matter what insanity holds him.

My father marked you, Serycia! he cries above the sirens. They’ll kill you once I let them within range! You need to run!

What? My stomach roils and my voice emerges garbled, as if drowning in a vat of acid. If I’m marked, then you’re... He found a wife for you.

He takes aim again. He told me just before I came down here – he tried to stop me from coming but— Bam bam! Serycia, you need to run – now.

Shoving himself off my lap, he struggles to sit up on his burned skin and I see his legs must have been hit by the impact of the explosion because they’re twisted, keeping him even from standing up.

They’ll fix him, I tell myself. They’ll fix him.

He keeps his gaze trained on the alleyway. His free hand fumbles in his pocket and he pushes a packet of Gezeva pills into my palm.

Get out of here, Serycia, now!

Bam bam bam!

No, no! I fiddle with the packet – it’s useless now, can’t he see? My use is at an end and now I must be—

I stopped using the contraception. Bam!

I can’t breathe. Surely he didn’t say – What?

Three months ago. He risks a glance at me, and the way he can’t quite meet my eyes betrays more truth than any verbal assertion could. The damage is already done, Serycia, and you need to run, and live and— His blue eyes swing away, arm raised. Bam bam! I’ve only got ten more rounds – go!

The damage is already done.

My hands flutter just above my stomach. I can’t get my thoughts straight, can’t grasp... a second heartbeat inside me?

Being sick every morning a month ago. Cipher telling me it was just a flu. Me believing him because pregnancy was impossible, even after I missed my cycle I’d – I hadn’t even thought about it. I flatten my palms on the wet pavement.

Cipher’s fist tangles in the collar of my gown and drags me to him, his hot mouth searing seven years of passion onto mine in a single breathless instant, then his words brush over my cheek. I don’t care if they wipe my mind, Sery, I’ll find a way to remember you if you just survive.

Then he’s shoving me back and focused on the alleyway again, agony spasming just under the surface of his resolute expression.

I scramble to my feet, the package of pills clenched in one hand and the fingers of my other fisting and unfisting, my eyes darting around at the carnage, at the black maws of numbered tunnels circling the square, at the packed crowds of inhabs staring from them, watching the Level 7 inhab and the Level 8 inhab who has gone insane and shoots at his own level’s protectors.

What does Cipher expect me to do? I can’t live down here. I don’t know anyone, any place, the—

Bam, bam!

Run, Serycia!

I lurch into motion, my dazed stare drawn to a young man dragging himself upright next to a gutter just beyond the singed circle of the explosion. He’s not burned but looks to be in shock, his knees drawn up and his wrists resting on them, hands hanging limp. His bowed head has fewer bald patches than most down-siders – maybe from a family rich enough to get a higher yearly injection of Gezeva – and the black hair he does have curves round his features and obscures most of them.

An open, bleeding gash slants across his forehead, green bubbles frothing around its edges.

No wonder he’s not running. With toxin in his bloodstream, there’s nothing to do but wait and die.

Bam, bam! Run, Serycia! Now!

I tighten my fist around the Gezeva packet and shamble over to the dying guy, my fingers popping out one of the pills and pushing the rest into the pouch around my waist.

Bam, bam, bam!

Serycia! Cipher’s grief cuts over the sirens. Three more rounds left.

I kick the young man in his hip. Hey!

His dull eyes fall uncomprehending on the pill tucked between my thumb and forefinger. Incredulity flicks his dark eyes up to mine.

I thrust the pill closer to him, then pull it back, afraid he’ll just snatch it and run. Get me out of here and this is yours.

Bam bam bam.

Time’s up.

Soren

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B

ullets ricochet off the walls. Hollow, brittle sounds like alarms going off all down the tunnels, and all I can do is stare at the precious oval between her fingers. Everything is so simple when you’re a Level 7. Gezeva packed into a little round pill, to be carried around and taken at your leisure. No registers. No bribes. No waiting lines. No worries that the shard of glass you got caught in your palm might do more than just make you bleed. Gezeva, available just like that, as ordinary as steel in the tunnels.

And she’s offering it to me.

The gash in my forehead sears. Already the bite of the toxin is spreading, strengthening like a thousand tiny knifes pushed deep into bleeding flesh, and it’s only a matter of time before it burrows deep enough to kill me. I wipe the blood from my face.

The girl’s eyes flicker behind me. I don’t need to look; I can hear the protectors just fine, their reinforced Galza armour boots slamming against concrete, stomping between the corpses scattered like sleeping lumps of human flesh, charred and bloody, fat clumps of ashen doughnuts still in their hands as if they’re still dreaming of sugar.

Another bullet whizzes past my ear, a sharp shot of air brushing my skin. The girl ducks down, crouching right beside me, using me as her shield... and leaving the pill within reach, her attention turned elsewhere.

Instinct takes over and I snatch it from her.

You—! She lunges for my fist and I twist away, swallowing the pill.

Her knees hit the ground beside my feet and she freezes, watching me and waiting, every part of her wary and ready to bolt the instant I make a move to abandon her.

For a moment I think about leaving her here. The protectors clearly want her dead; standing in their way could see me dead, too.

And anyone left alive down here would know that. Without protection from the upside, she’s fair game. Even if the protectors didn’t catch her, she’d be as good as dead. She wouldn’t last an hour.

The thought of Megan falling prey to the same things tears at me, trying desperately to hold the folds of her clothes together as men hungry for more than food wait, cloudy eyes riddled with brown veins watching, licking their lips at the curves of her hips and-

I pull out a flash grenade. Close your eyes, I say.

The woman’s eyes widen rather than close.

I grab her arm, spinning her towards me. Her mouth opens and I wrap my arm around her, locking her down. Her face crushes into my chest, my fingers between her red-gold curls. Briefly I register how soft they are, sleek like I’ve always imagined feathers might be.

I hurl the grenade.

The world explodes with light: brilliant, scorching white that reflects off every steel surface, magnifying the effect a hundred times. Confused shrieks echo down, the protectors’ microphones crackling as they all shout over each other at once.

I whip away from the glare, arms tightening around the silken girl against my body. Just before I close my eyes, I see the twists of her braids. Smell something sweet that reminds me of dreams and pillows.

Then she is washed away, light rushing forth like a tide, and finally blocked out by red-tinged darkness as my lids shut tight over my eyes. I turn my face away and against the top of her head. Muffled against me, she tries to speak, her hands frantic around me, trying to tear away like a cat in water.

Blinking stars from my eyes, I clutch her arm and yank her towards the hole in the ground. Go!

She jerks out of my grip and simply obeys – she’s probably realised what I’m trying to do. I slide in after her and close the drain with a grunt. Darkness engulfs me and I switch on my night-vision. A bar of fluorescent green light passes over my eyes, like glasses, projected from the earpiece I wear on my right. The world turns olive, streaked with grey. Above me, boots thump. Angry and bewildered voices yell.

Fucking Level 7 slut. Twisted her lover’s brain – did you see him shooting at us like—

They already wiped him. He won’t be helping her now. Slut’s on her own.

Where did she go?

Can’t have gone far – there aren’t that many choices.

S’long as she doesn’t get too deep inside.

Swiftly I slap two fire poppers on the underside of the lid – that should slow them down some – and clamber down. One way to go. Well, let’s hope they think that for a little longer. Level 1 is the oldest and also one of the largest complexes in the city, many of its tunnels collapsed or fallen out of use and right off the map. Getting lost down here is not at all an unlikely possibility. Once we leave Section C, the protectors will have to retreat and another squad responsible for the next section called in.

From there, she’s on her own.

I hear a splash below me, followed by a hiss. Did she slip? Heart pumping, I look down and see her standing in the water, both hands pressed against her mouth, eyes turned upward towards the lid.

Footsteps slam over it and I freeze.

She’ll pay for this.

They echo down the tunnel, further down.

It won’t be long before they realise she must’ve found some other way of escape and turn around; then they’ll find the drain.

I get to the bottom and say, It’s only water. Nothing toxic.

She eyes me, her lips pressed tight with comments I probably don’t want to hear.

Can you see? I ask.

Of course. What do you take me for? she asks in her Level 7 ‘I have everything’ tone. Let’s just go.

I smack a hand over my face. Why did I even ask? My gaze flickers upwards briefly. Clock’s ticking. Fine. Let’s get out of here.

Serycia

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M

y bare feet slosh through ankle-deep water, the yellow gown lifted above my knees, its shimmering silk pale green in the night-vision. Beyond the corners of my eyes, the walls fade into shadows where the squeak and scurry of rats cavort unseen. Chill air cuts through every rip in my gown, its moist touch like the fingers of those dead from the explosion, caressing me and summoning me back to join them.

With every sloshing step, the stench of sulphur and rotten eggs swirls upward and makes my nose crinkle. My scalp still tingles with the feel of the Level 1’s hand lingering there. I can’t seem to shake it – the feeling of those fingers tangled in my hair, his arm locking me against him, my nose mashed against his chest, forced to breathe in the metallic, sweaty scent of the first man to touch me besides Cipher in seven years. The panic of it.

But I would rather think of that than of Cipher somewhere above us.

Nor of my being an escaped slave. An illegally pregnant one.

But some things cannot be ignored.

Where are we going? I ask, my own voice startling me in the quiet plash our passage makes in the canal.

The Level 1’s dark, gritty voice carries back to me. To the edge of Sector C. There we part ways.

I stop walking for an instant, then splash after him. Wait! For one mad moment my hand even reaches out to stop him – but I drag it back in time. "Please!" I add.

His gait pauses for the merest breath, then continues. I’m risking my life enough already.

And I saved that life! Twice over!

He whips around, the movement knocking me to a halt as surely as if he’d slapped me. My shocked hands nearly drop the gown, wanting to push him away because he’s too close. He leans even closer, anger twisting a mouth that might have been pretty if not for the blisters marring it. By tomorrow they’ll all be healed.

"Your people are the ones who put my life in danger."

They’re not my people. I’m just a slave. I flinch. Not even that anymore.

Oh, that changes everything. Shall I weep for you then?

The sneer in his words seems to falter, clouding instead with doubt, as if he regrets them. His eyes search my face, his sparse eyebrows drawing together.

I curl my fingers tight, my ears straining for the moment the protectors decide to try the drain. Keep calm. Tell him what you need and give him a price he can’t refuse.

I just need to get to Level 3. I know a man there. A scientist.

No. He swerves away.

There must be someone you want to get well! I throw after him, refusing to budge. "I can give them health for an entire year."

He freezes. Shoulders rigid, fingers forcibly relaxed at his side. When he turns around, my throat jumps and my fingers tremble, but my feet stand firm even swamped in Level 1 drainage.

His boots shove through the water, the ripples rolling in stroke after gentle stroke over my ankles. His dark eyes rake me up and down as he walks a slow circle around me. I keep my face straight ahead, my shoulders proud.

You have the Gezeva on you, don’t you? he says. What’s to stop me from just taking what I want?

Obviously yourself, or you’d have it by now. I lift my chin. "Why haven’t you taken it?"

He goes still again, then stretches his lips in something pained that’s not quite a smile but isn’t quite not one and leans in, making me feel cornered. Maybe I should.

But he doesn’t make a move, and just then somewhere behind me erupts a series of pops, metal crashing, and violent cursing. Shouts bounce off the walls in tinny pings.

Muttering a soft curse, he grabs my hand – catching both my fingers and the hem of the dress – and yanks me forward. Come on.

I shamble after him, everything I’ve been taught in the seven years since becoming Cipher’s lover clamouring for me to wrench my hand back. But I don’t. I can’t. The strength of the Level 1’s hand won’t let me and the roughness of the calluses on it fascinates the girl who has been denied everything but silk and softness.

I crane my neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what’s happening behind us, but we’ve made too many turns and the water echoing off the walls makes it impossible to tell how far or how close they are. The sounds seem right beside us, then far off.

Here! He lets me go, giving me the brief sensation of clammy air on my hand now damp from both his sweat and mine. He hops on another ladder and shimmies up it, tipping the lid up and peering out. Shoving it open all the way, he clambers out. Come on!

I climb out onto a street precisely like those I’d run through to reach the square. Flickering, weak lights. Refuse, puddles, doors hanging on crooked hinges or missing completely. Small windows trickling out the glow of private homes.

He closes the grate behind me with a soft clink and strides up to one of the buildings, pushes open the door and motions me to precede him inside a dim hallway. I pause in a grubby corner by a