Gaslighting: Deadland Lovers, #1

By EA Taylor

The day Dolls and Rose are tossed from Palantine, nothing could have prepared them for the dangers of the Deadlands, a place their home maintains does not exist. With their cyber-connections to Palantine severed, and on their own for the first time in their lives, the two are forced to navigate a wasteland in search of a home no one believes in.

When Dolls goes missing, Rose's search for her lands her in a ruthless world ruled by a Leap Zealot named Deacon and his twin sons, wall executioners known as the Twin Totems. Deacon's sons might be twins, but they couldn't be more different. Omad is dark, dangerous, and unpredictable while Omar is light, strong, and maybe even trustworthy. 

It's only when Rose learns of Deacon's part in Dolls' disappearance, and after a failed rescue attempt, that Rose realizes how dangerous this new world truly is. Now Rose is on the run. Deacon wants her dead, and his sons are determined to hunt her down.

While on the run, trying to stay free from Deacon's evil intentions, Rose can't help but wonder if there isn't more to why she and Dolls were thrown out of Palantine with the trash. The two may look human, but they are more than what their looks suggest--they are what comes after a global catastrophe, the next step in bio-engineered evolution, and by default, are feared by wasteland locals.

Learning to accept who they are and for what purpose they exist takes trust but trust is a commodity few can afford, and out on the wastes, who Rose chooses to trust could cost her life...and her heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EA Taylor
• Release date: Nov 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781790132782

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

IF YOU KNOW ME, YOU knew about this endeavor, and you know what part you played, and as a writer I’m supposed to have all the words to express what it’s meant to have your support, your patience, your love and friendships. Mike and Abigail, I love you guys more than anything and couldn’t have done any of this without you. Sam, you’re the best man in the world. I love you with all my heart. My amigos, Greg V and Mary-Beth, for never giving up on me, you’re the best and I love you.

PREFACE

THIS IS A LOVE STORY.

In a future where the world has been transformed into unrecognizable, the dominate features are no longer mountains and oceans but a burned sky and scorched land dotted in defunct domes, endless pipelines and a massive wall that holds back a sea of death. After an apocalyptic event has reshaped the world and survivors think devastation is how it’s always been, something new will always emerge. The ‘what’s next’ event after the ‘world ending’ event. A new species will emerge on the leavings of a dead world, one better equipped for what comes next.

A constant of the universe, life is an unstoppable force no matter how much death precedes its awakening. No matter the obstacles or barriers, or how much time has passed.

Where there is life, there is love. It’s a stubborn bitch that refuses to exist without love. It believes, against all odds, and after all else has long since given up and withered away, that love is the only way we find our way out of the darkness.

DEDICATION

For Danger-prone Daphne,

the groove in my pavement between collisions.

All the best stories are your fault.

01 PALANTINE

DEATH PREFERRED SUBTLETIES to fanfare in Palantine, horrors of a cloistered existence hidden in tiny packages, dressed and coifed to perfection. Fresh and unspoiled, cute and giggling, angelic in their magnetism, that’s when we minded the least as they slit our throats, painting the walls and floors in our blood. On some level, perhaps deep in our primal brains, we understood we’d brought upon ourselves these horrors.

We should’ve heeded the warnings.

We should’ve heard the whispers.

Instead, we celebrated our persistence with birthdays for those who’d squeezed one more year from the rock of life.

Because birthdays were meant for children, it made them easy marks. No one expected no-name crashers, but plenty expected two girls claiming to be party sitters. Some even paid. Had they inquired with PAM, the Palan Apex Media, they’d have learned the truth within seconds. No one had bothered to consult PAM.

Just as no one expected crashers at a child’s party, no one expected the child of honor to go up in flames. They light the candles, blow them out, open gifts, eat lots of sugar, and no one dies. Easy as slicing cake, but kids are mean, complicated creatures. Ask Eli about the meanness of kids. Nasty-mean, and maybe just a little bit, we just didn’t give a shit. I’m sure he’d have plenty to say, if he could. If he had survived.

Out on the terrace, Eli hopped foot to foot, one hand cupping his pecker, the other pounding on the glass. The rest of his birthday party stood on the inside of the skybox unit, leering at him, laughing and eating his birthday cake.

Leave him out there. To each child, Dolls handed slices of confection–high-dollar white cake frosted to perfection and trimmed in a red bright as an emergency–and lined them up at the glass, cake in hands, giggling and pointing at Eli naked on the terrace.

Eat. Let him watch. Dolls egged them on, encouraging them to torment Eli. Oh look, it’s the last piece. She held it up. Who wants it?

Some of the kids shouted they wanted it, but Dolls took it to the glass where Eli stood crying on the terrace. You guys are a bunch of greedy heathens. Save some for the birthday boy, She slapped it onto the glass, smearing it down with her hand, laughing. The kids loved it and started throwing and smearing their own cake on the glass.

Dolls hopped up and down, cheering them on, the biggest monster in the room in the prettiest package and nobody ever slapped the shit out of her, but I hadn’t been any better. I hung out with her, and besides, nobody had died. I’d laughed along long enough. Let the kid in, Dolls. He’s scared.

It’s not that we didn’t like Eli, we stuck him on the terrace as a joke to stoke his phobias–heights, heat, sol-glass, living. Seemed his mother put the little heathen in a skybox along the dome’s spine to torture the child. Dolls and I enjoyed poking him here and there, watch him freak out, laugh about it and be on our way. No real harm.

You’ll be cured when we’re done, Eli, Dolls licked frosting from the glass then wrote her name in it with a smiley face around Eli’s head. Clownish and freaky with him out there looking in. That’s better already. Maybe we let him keep that face. What do you guys think? New birthday face?

The kids cheered, enthusiastic.

Fucking little maniacs. We’re so doomed.

When the glass wall sealed and initiated a sol-glass burn cycle, I didn’t know what to do. I took a step and froze. No one else moved as the nozzle jets sprayed an accelerant before firing. It’s not like a burn cycle can be interrupted. That’s why the glass seals.

The children pressed their faces to the glass, some in shock, some laughing and making faces at Eli as his skin bubbled from white to pink to red to brilliant blood red, his little hands cupped around his pecker and balls, bare feet dancing back and forth on a searing hot deck.

Look. Watch, Dolls laughed, clapping her hands as the children lost their minds, Dolls told them, her voice soft but even and commanding. Let this be a lesson to you little brats.

Use real ingredients in your cake recipe? A girl, her face and hands red and sticky with frosting.

Tears evaporated from Eli’s cheeks in a mist, his gaping mouth an upward waterfall. The more he freaked out, the more his body performed mystical transformations for their delight, and the longer the show went on, the longer their voices cheered on the exhibit.

No, Dolls smiled, her hand reaching out to stroke the girl’s hair. Don’t go onto the terrace during a burn cycle.

The girl sucked on her fingers, smacking. This cake’s shit.

I stood transfixed, horrified. They feasted on cake while their friend roasted just outside the glass, chatting away as if he’d been a potted plant.

Fucking little psychopaths, all of them.

Eli didn’t just die on his birthday, at his own party, he’d gone up in flames as the kindling of his own bonfire, dancing like the star of his own sideshow, his party guests huddled at the glass wall, stuffing cake in their faces watching as his face slid from his skull and into his hands.

Dolls tapped the back of the girl’s ear. Watch your mouth.

Fuck you, the girl glared at Dolls, whoever you are, you can’t tell me what to do. She then opened her mouth wide and screamed–that pitch which draws the adults, our Apex screens lighting up in alerts and warnings, images and clips, a flood of expressions, horror and remorse and condolences, and within moments, the whole of Palantine had experienced Eli’s death in all its flaming glory, his mother’s response, the slack-faced children priming the water-works once they realized the world watched, everyone gasping, asking, How could this happen? What went wrong?

Normally, our Apex connections would’ve alerted nearby adults long before things reached a critical point, but Palan children deployed defensive measures in either background noise or personal ‘theme music,’ an oft-used tactic to force parents to tune out or listen to their choice of ‘stay-the-fuck-out-of-my-business’ cover jam. It worked, and when adults knew where their kids were, they’d tune away, go somewhere else, as they had at the party, leaving the kids to entertain themselves in another area of the skybox. Typical, and dumb as shit, but then again, Dolls and I were the ‘party-sitters’ and I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be drinking. Just a guess.

In a parade of feet, Eli’s mother stormed the room, her body thrust against the glass in agony as the last of her child evaporated, her wail the sound of nightmares, animalistic like that of the sheeg on the white wastes.

The ‘Fuck You’ girl pointed and screamed, her hands and mouth stained crimson, all the more poignant under the circumstances, as if she’d feasted on Eli’s flesh, sucked up his blood, and wore the evidence.

If Dolls is the knife that wounds, I am the infection that festers.

No apology existed for incinerating someone’s kid at their own birthday party. I suppose kids could’ve been forgiven their pack mentality, only Dolls and I weren’t kids, and what we’d done, participating in the roasting of a little boy, even one performed in ignorance, should’ve done more to disrupt our lives than a few sleepless nights.

02 THE SHALE

GIGGLING, MY BRAIN sloppy from the beating I’d taken outside the detention facility, and oh, yes, the friendly game of kickass administered inside the building. Lucky for them, my Apex had been taken offline. Had they done that? Probably. Didn’t matter. I’d become the truth tossed with the refuse.

Rose?

What a fucked-up name for prison. Some parents simply deserved slapping, like naming is some inside joke. Ask Dolls about her time in detention, awaiting sentencing, how funny that must’ve been. Or Faucet or Rumor or Target. I mean, why not shoot the kid-

Rose!

More urgent. I wanted to ignore it and stay asleep, to not face what might not have been just a nightmare, but a hand shook me, Rose, it’s me.

The voice, etched forth from the darkness, hushed and raspy, atonement from either crying or screaming, waxed familiar, and even whispered, the ‘it’s me’ nailed it: Dolls Madder. More giggles followed the revelation.

Dolls. Madder. Seriously Parents, stop naming your kids on your own.

My eyes flew open, aware in the darkness. Darkness. Complete darkness, my Apex lens offline, the steady stream of information and updates and contacts gone. I blinked my eyes, trying to boot it. I even went into adjuncts. All connections down, the silence deafening. Don’t call me Rose.

"Sorry Thorne." She said it with mockery, as if using my last name made me tougher. More than Rose, Rosie, Rosetta ever had.

It smells like shit in here.

It’s a garbage barge.

Garbage barge? What...why?

Don’t freak out.

Don’t freak out? I imagined only the worst creeping on me from the darkness. My imagination ran wild as I tried to rein it in, but my gag-reflex kicked into high-gear and I dry-heaved, overwhelmed in the ambiance of rotting food, dirty bodies, puke, piss, and...and...something wet on my face, soft and squishy between my fingers. I gagged again, and freaked out with a yelp, Ohmygod...ohmygod...ohmygod!

As I melted down, Dolls came at me cool and calm, ignoring my garbage barge freak-out, Do you know how to boot offline?

What? I shook my hand, frantic to dislodge a foul clinger, and squealed, high-pitched like a child.

Boot offline, she repeated. My Apex is down.

When Dolls climbed beside me, my refuse refuge teetered back and forth beneath us. Like surfing, but on garbage. Covering my nose, my voice nasal, How would I know that?

She sniffled, Because you know stuff like this.

I ‘know stuff like this?’ Like what exactly? Stuff like hacking and running adjunct protocols? Or stuff like being stabbed in the back, unlawful arrest and assault, or maybe she meant stuff like the injustice of conviction without trial? Fuck it, it’d blow her mind. My voice rose in irritation as much as fear. I don’t know shit, Dolls.

When I took my next breath, I coughed, choking on a stench thick as smoke, the air moist and heavy. All around me, the shifting movement of garbage entangled in a sea of rot and decay.

I gagged again, heaving and choking between my legs. Nothing came up, but I tasted it at the back of my throat, and I shuddered with disgust as I swallowed back another dry-heave. Everywhere I touched, my hands landed upon putrescence—moist and sticky, warm and slimy, foul and goopy.

When something squirmed between my fingers, I bit my own tongue to save myself from a horror I wiped away rather than fling it, afraid if I didn’t, it’d end up in my mouth. Going into full meltdown, I’d had all I could take and began to cry myself. Something was alive in here with us. I screamed as I wiped and scraped.

Dolls’ hand clamped over my mouth, shushing me, You gotta be quiet, Rose.

What could live in here? I didn’t want to know. I could smell why. The stench, ohmygod, that stench.

I pushed her away. This doesn’t freak you out?

I’m too scared to think about it.

Too scared. Dolls. Too scared. She’s probably the deadliest thing in here and she’s scared. Fuck her. Pulling my shirt over my nose, I gulped for untainted air. Trying to sort it out, my memories, but my brain felt beaten and bruised, fried and scrambled. What the fuck, why the fuck...how...the fuck...did I...get here? I’m...I’m...

On repeat, apparently, on the verge of panic. Dolls kept grabbing my hands and I kept pulling them away. I wanted to tell her to stop, but each attempt resulted in coughs and gags. Her hands gripped mine; I slapped them away, loud angry slaps. When I finally got my mouth working, my words spat into the void, Let go of me!

Relentless, she grabbed for me again, frantic and terrified, her voice little more than a roaring whisper, Stop! You have to stop! They’ll hear you!

Good. Maybe they’ll come kick her ass.

Her hands found me again and clamped around my wrists. When I tried to pull away, her nails bit into my skin. Stop, Thorne, and listen to me!

I stilled, aware just how much clang and clamor I made moving my legs and arms about. She let up on my wrists, my skin aware of the jagged nature of her nails. Broken nails. That’s new for Dolls. Then I laughed, the only other emotion working besides sheer terror.

This isn’t funny, Thorne!

No, it wasn’t, but when I imagined her perfect nails dirty, broken and torn, rivers of tears scoring a filthy face, still perfect, I couldn’t stop my laughter, and at the same time, I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. She must be hating life, and a part of me reveled in her misery, delighted in it. She deserved this, and I enjoyed it, smug and in her face. If she got her ass kicked, it’s because she’s a bitch not because I’m loud.

Shut up, Thorne, she whisper-yelled, her voice replete with fear and annoyance. They’ll hear you!

They who?

She leaned in, her breath on my ear, her voice quiet, Others.

I scoffed–what a fucking child–pushed her off me. So what?

You don’t un-un-understand. Fresh tears choked her voice, and her face fell into my shoulder, her body shaking. Instead of explaining the ‘others,’ she sobbed quietly, and ventured into dangerous territory with her next words, This is all my fault.

Damn right it is. I shrugged her off, cold and angry, and after a second thought, gave her shove. Now get off my safe-space.

Ignoring my rebuff, she scooted closer, her arm curled around mine, her fingers searching for my hand, now balled into a fist. I wanted to hit her in the face and make her cry.

She sobbed, her voice diminutive, You think we’re going to prison?

Prison? In a garbage transport? No. Palantine doesn’t have prisons. Doubtful.

Where else would we be sent?

If she couldn’t figure that one out, I had nothing left to offer. Why are you here, Dolls?

She shrugged, Why are you here?

Answer me, I repeated myself, speaking like an asshole communicating with an impairment, Why-yuh...are you...he-year?

This is all my fault, she repeated, sobbing, her tone confessional.

I know, but why? I wanted to hear her admit she named me.

I used adjuncts to disable the biosensors.

You...did...what? I yanked my hand away from her, shoved my fist inside my mouth and screamed, stifling an urge to strangle her.

Didn’t matter, she continued. PAM captured everything.

My body stiffened, and my spine straightened, Then why the fuck am I here?

Dolls sniffled, Failure to Report.

Failure to Report? I swallowed back my rage, my hands again balled into fists wanting to beat at her face, Then why didn’t PAM report it?

I asked the same question.

And?

She doesn’t report, she observes. She’s an archive; she doesn’t make judgments.

Could’ve fooled me. I felt confident PAM had put us out with the garbage. Literally. I wanted to hit Dolls.

What? Rage returned, and my mouth opened, fist lodged between teeth, and I bit down, releasing another stifled scream, the sound like a deflating balloon. It smothered the desire to beat her face to a pulp.

Stop, she leaned closer, her body pressed into mine, her breath tickling my ear, an intimate if not arousing sensation under different circumstances, but the desperation in the grip of her hands belied the fleetest of eroticism. Her hands found mine, and battling with stone fists, managed to pull my fingers free enough to interlace our hands.

Don’t! I yanked my hands away and gave her a shove. She squealed, falling back, my hands scraping along the front of her body. I gasped, shocked, sobered by what I hadn’t found there. Where the fuck are your clothes?

The others, she bounced back with a sob, her hands immediately scrabbling for mine. I held them out of her reach; her hands settled for clinging to my shirtsleeve.

Fearing I might rip her head off, I shoved my hands beneath my thighs, enraged. What do you mean...the others? Why are you naked, Dolls? Tell me.

She sniffled, her whole body shaking, teeth clattering, her answer unspoken, a sheet of fear and horror shaking her body, quiet tears filling in any blanks. My heart broke, along with my tough bravado. Dolls hadn’t made it out of detention unmolested, and worse, she headed to...to wherever...naked. They took your clothes, but NTW?

NTW, she repeated, nodding. Not To Wear.

Our code. It was simple, and it worked. Any bad behavior was categorized and acronymed as NTW, ‘Not To Wear,’ as in ‘He’s likes your jeans, but NTW,’ meant he’s checking out your ass in a creepy-sort of way.

We also had ‘He’s checking your pockets, but NTW,’ which meant he’s staring down your vag in a creepy-sorta way, and ‘He’s checking for spots, but NTW,’ meant his eyes had marooned upon your tits, in a creepy sort-of way.

Whatever she’d done, it couldn’t have deserved what she evidenced. A nice pop to her perfect little face, or maybe a swift kick to the head, but not...not that.

I’m scared, Rose, her voice choked with tears, her chest hitching.

My heart sank, and when her face fell into my shoulder, I let it rest there, and did the unthinkable from an hour ago. I removed my coat and wrapped it around her bare shoulders. I was, after all, the last thread of humanity she knew, and hell, might ever know. The girl I hated this morning became my new best, and possibly only, friend.

03 THE SHALE

VIBRATION BREACHED the stillness, overtaking the soft wheezing of breath. Dolls had nodded off, wrapped in the protection of my coat, and I’d sat watch, unable to sleep.

Metal squealed on metal, and Dolls jerked awake, alert, her arms wrapped around me. What is that?

I shook my head, but she couldn’t see me in the dark, I don’t know.

The vibration intensified, the sound rising, resonating from the walls, percolating throughout the garbage, until it permeated bone and clattered teeth. The garbage shifted, releasing fresh plumes of rot. Pulling up my shirt collar, I sucked in a breath dense with particulates and coughed up a slurry of filth—oil, rust, fuel—my senses infused, dunked and drowned in an oil-slicked sandstorm, my skin and clothes covered in a fine grit.

Others awakened also.

Disembodied and unseen through layers of darkness–a muffled moan from my right, a stifled cough from my left, a rustle of garbage, the soft whispers of fabric on fabric.

Alone, but not alone.

I wanted to call out to them, to ask if any of them knew where they’d taken us, but I feared what Dolls had gone through happening to me.

In that moment, I felt grateful for Dolls then, she too my anchor to a life I felt certain never to see again; my life-preserver in an ocean of refuse, my island paradise in a fucked world. She clung to me, her arm coiled in mine, What’s happening?

The darkness answered, screeching the hollowed bellow of a quartered beast, and listed violently, tumbling us through garbage, my shoulder and face crammed into a right-angled object, Dolls tangled beneath me amidst the trash. I rolled away and got to my knees, tugging Dolls with me, Are you okay?

Our prison interjected, groaning and squealing, leaning and dragging Dolls and I into a downward slide, too steep an angle with nothing to grab, my hand seized upon Dolls, but it jerked free, swept into an onslaught of body-laden debris. She called out to me, her voice muffled, swallowed in a piling.

My body rolled into the same wedge of grunting, sweat-slicked bodies, fighting against arms and legs tangled in trash and slime. I called out to Dolls over and over, but she didn’t answer, and I couldn’t find her, or I couldn’t hear her, but I kept shoving my way past bodies and pushing trash away from where I thought she’d fallen.

My hands plunged into the mix, again and again, searching for her and grabbing for something familiar.

Thorne, small and panting, desperate beneath a tangle of arms, legs and torsos.

Oh my God, they’re crushing her!

Get off her! I shoved and pulled, rolling bodies left and right, allowing Doll’s cries to guide me. I’m here, Dolls, I’m here!

Someone grabbed my legs, pulling me away. I fought, kicking and twisting my body, my boot connecting with a shin, my elbow with a face. I scrambled on hands and knees feeling through the darkness for Dolls, out of breath, panicked they’d taken her.

A gasp of breath, and then I felt her hand in mine-

Bang!

Our world exploded.

Beneath us, a gaping maw yawned, sucking trash and bodies into a downward pull. Air popped and snapped. Unseen hands snatched at tangles of bodies, yanked them apart and spat them upon a hellish landscape, their screams cracked and broke, stolen in a deafening roar of air.

The transport shuddered, shaking its contents toward the hole. Screaming, panicked, everyone surged at once, fleeing the downward flow of garbage in the only direction left to go—into the avalanche of trash on its way down. Pulling Dolls with me, I climbed over people, pushing debris out of my way.

We all fought to get higher, through trash and over each other, but it did no good. Every time the transport shuddered, we slipped closer and closer to the hole. No amount of climbing did a damned thing to help save us, and we slid into the mouth of the vortex.

Captured in a rush of air, weightless in a whirlpool of trash and people, we hung there, fruit suspended in a gelatin mold before being shot out the bottom.

Flung from darkness out into nothingness, our bodies floated for the fleetest of moments, all sound evaporating upon the effortless lofting of air. Then we missiled toward the ground, through black and flame.

The sky burned, bruised clouds crawled with electric fingers of dry-lightning. Trash and people burst into flames, some exploding like bombs, chasing us, or racing us to the ground. 

In those seconds when our eyes met, a myriad of emotions flashed between us, the last two always the same: accusation—as if I had a magic rope hidden up my ass—and condemnation, when I neither produced nor offered it up.

Such fuckers, the dying, always wanting something.

I’d seen enough; I’d die before I died if I kept looking, yet like  the sickness that is any disease, I couldn't look away, my brain stuck on watching a train wreck, the passengers’ faces at the windows, terrified and frantic, knowing I shouldn't witness their last moments in the same way others consume pornography—detached from responsibility, removed from any real ability to affect the outcome—aside from pause or replay.

Breathtaking, when realized, that nothing can stop the one constant: that the train will wreck.

Or you’ll get your rocks off.

Compassion or perversion, whatever that human flaw, we look, and we watch, and through that lens we face earth-shattering moments, witnessing death, life, sex, triumph and defeat, and feel connected across time and space. Being there, being the carnage that is life raining from the sky, that’s a whole other flaming ball of trash altogether.

04 THE STRAND

SPRINTING UP THE HALL, I took a corner into a wall of cloth and flesh that knocked me onto my ass. The ensuing shock burst my bladder and I peed my pants. Dammit!

The wall of flesh and fabric turned, noticed me on the floor, and smiled. It infuriated me because I liked that smile and had I not been sitting in a puddle of piss, I’d have smiled back.

Clutching my wet crotch, I felt glad for pants that were black and covered in filth. Yes, please stare. It’s not at all your fault I’m down here.

Taking a step back, he chuckled, but declined to offer his assistance, I'm not on the floor.

I'm only down here because you're blocking the hall.

You could ask for help.

In a glut of self-pity, I managed to swallow back, I need help. Please. 

Wow, manners, he extended his hand to me, and accepting it, he hoisted me to my feet. Where’d you find those? 

Inside the heart of a dead man, smoothing my clothes, trying to hide the pee stain on my pants. I felt grateful for black pants covered in grime. When I ate it. 

Huh, a chuckle in his throat, lips widening into a grin. Without another word, he straightened and pivoted away from me. You’re cute.

Wait, I followed him, half walking-half hopping, his strides almost twice mine, I need dry pants.

Really? He laughed. Is that my fault?

Yes, it is, um... I fumbled for want of a name. I knew I should know but I hadn’t paid attention to half of what Stonna rattled on about.

He caught me. You don’t know my name, do you?

At a loss for an answer, I kept my eyes on the wall, admitted nothing.

Now that’s a new one, he said.

Intrigued, What?

Well, he grinned again, informing the uninformed newbie. I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl that didn’t already know my name.

Must be hard.

His brow rose, challenging my words.

That Rockstar life. Did he know what a Rockstar was? When he huffed, I changed the subject before he could say more. Who won?

Who won...what?

The fight earlier.

Did you bet?

No. Just curious.

A bang and a pop.

I hadn't gotten used to their language yet. A bang and what?

Angel took a knife to Leeka.

Is that allowed?

What do you care? You don’t know these people. 

How’d he known that? Just making noise with my face-hole.

Laughing, he paused in the corridor, Face-hole?

His laughter was infectious, and I couldn’t help but join him. Pointing to my mouth, This hole.

Not gathering names?

Again, I’m intrigued. Names?

Isn't that what the Stealer of Hearts does?

My turn to laugh. He'd mixed it up, I think you meant ‘Eater of Hearts.’

Smiling, and perhaps a bit embarrassed, he rubbed at the back of his neck, fingers pulling at skin marked with patterns, deep black lines of tattoos that continued up and behind his ears. His other hand fell to the back of my neck and my heart raced. His fingers on my skin, more caress than grip, flashed a shiver across my body. I imagined his mouth on mine, our bodies naked and crushed together in the dark.

Dammit. He noticed me staring. Dammit. Dammit. My face flushed with heat, and I had to look away.

Pausing at the next intersection, he turned to face me as a small boy darted around the corner. The boy slapped his hands three times on the wall then waited, breathless. 

It seemed to mean something to my escort. Biting his bottom lip, he snapped his fingers before pointing to me, Saved by the annoying little boy who can't even talk. He moved his hand like a mouth. I’ll catch you later. 

Pilot’s neck craned back until his head rested between his shoulder blades, his brows furrowed, imploring Tall with Tattoos, his hands cycling through a sequence of gestures and hand signs.

Giving the kid's head a push, Tall with Tattoos said, I heard you the first time, Pilot. I heard you. 

The child, Pilot, nodded, then shuffled after Tall with Tattoos, until I called after him, Psst, Pilot. 

Pilot's head popped back around the corner; I beckoned him to me. I need a bathroom.

He giggled, pointed to the ceiling, my eyes following his finger. Above us the symbol for boys and girls stenciled on the ceiling. Smart, since I doubted the ceilings got much traction.  Nice heads-up, Pilot. Thanks. 

My new friend had taken me where I needed to go after all, and my other new friend had shown me how to not get so lost.

05 THE STRAND

INSIDE THE BATHROOM, a group of women huddled around another woman who wailed, inconsolable. The encircling group had their hands pressed against her, their words indecipherable murmurs. Again, and again, the wailing woman cried out for a baby, but her arms hung at her sides, empty. While I was curious, I didn’t want to become embroiled in whatever hysteria they were dealing with, so I slid on past them to handle my own business.

Made of stone and tile like everything else inside the wall, the bathrooms came with the added functionality of running water. On one side of a long room, a row of toilets hid behind rock partitions while on the other side, a row of showers hid behind similar tiled partitions. Nothing could be labeled as technically ‘clean’ per se, but not near as laden with soot, wick, or bilge like everything outside the wall.

I’d found it damned impossible to get or stay clean since Palantine dumped me in the wastes. Everything was black on black on black. My skin. My hair. My clothes. Everything had lost its luster and color, the life sapped to a dull and dusty gray. I couldn’t imagine having grown up in the thick of it, much less raising a child in it.

Part of me felt