Dualed (15 page)

The blade spun from my fingers, a whirl of silver.

It missed by more than a hand span. Five inches, at least. More than wide enough to miss anything vital, which would be what I was aiming for.

I strode up and pulled the blade free before Aave could do it. Next time I would be better—because I had to be.

Snapping the blade shut, I tossed it to Luc. “Here—you’re up. I’ll take Ehm now.”

She was hunched over in the far corner of the lot, oblivious to us as she dissolved her chalk into colored dust on the concrete ground. This was her least favorite part, waiting for us to take turns at the row of targets Aave and Luc set up. She liked it best when we were on the move, exploring the nooks of the old, dank buildings and uncovering new, hidden spaces.

Luc put me to shame. Eight for ten.

“Suck-up,” I murmured under my breath.

Luc grinned as he came to sit next to me, and I almost managed to trip him with a well-placed foot. “I’m kicking your butt next time,” I said to him.

“Sure, sure.”

“Hey, Ehm,” Aave called out as he moved the fast-disintegrating target to a fresh spot on the bag. “Come on over. It’s your turn.”

She sighed before heading over. Her sticks of chalk were bunched in her fists, a bouquet of pinks and yellows and greens that stood out in the grayness of our surroundings: the old cement walls of the buildings, the damp pavement beneath our shoes, the drizzly afternoon air of a Kersh spring.

“Pick your poison, kid,” Aave said to her. He held out his oldest practice switchblades so they splayed from his fist, his own startling bouquet. Though the blades didn’t seem like much, I knew firsthand they were well made. Sturdy and reliable, wrought from strong base metals. They had to be, to last this long through each of us.

Three for ten. Not much better than any of her previous attempts. Not that Ehm cared too much. At seven, the reality of her assignment was light-years away.

Aave shrugged. “She’ll be okay,” he said to us. “Luc, you sucked pretty bad in the beginning, too. And West, you’re still not very good.”

Luc sat up. “Hey!”

I said nothing, just made a face at Aave as he turned to help Ehm get set up again.

“Three years left,” Luc said to me. “She’s got time on her side, I guess. But still … what if all this isn’t enough?”

I shook my head. No point in wishing for what wasn’t possible. “You know we can’t afford any outside training. Mom and Dad don’t have the money for that.”

He sighed, resigned. “I know. I guess it’s just waiting, then. Kinetics, combat, then weaponry.”

“It’s not that far off, Luc.”

“Far enough,” he muttered.

“What’s with the sucky attitude today?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’ll shut up now. Let’s just get on with it so we can get out of here.” Luc opened Aave’s knife roll and ran his fingers over the blades, neatly lined up like soldiers at attention. He slipped one free from its slot and passed me the roll. “First mark wins, two-minute cap.”

“You’re on,” I told him, picking out a blade for myself. First one to break skin before time was up would have to do the other’s chores until next week, when we’d be back at this all over again.

“I’ll give you a handicap, because you’re a girl,” Luc said, grinning. He put his right arm behind his back, held his blade with his weaker left arm.

I snorted and flicked the switchblade open. The drizzle had turned into a steady patter, and raindrops danced off the polished surface of the edge. I had to be careful not to cut him too badly again. The last time he’d come within millimeters of needing stitches. My own fault, for getting carried away. That was something else I needed to work on, besides my aim with a blade—reining in my immediate instinct to lash out. “Whatever. I don’t need a handicap. I just hope I don’t make you cry again.”

He laughed. “Just watch the jabbing. Try slashing—it won’t go as deep.”

And then we were off, one on one, dodging and weaving, circling each other as hunter and hunted. That was how the four of us spent that Sunday afternoon—and many others. In a back alley where the ground was hard and gray beneath our feet, the sky above just as unforgiving … playing, fighting, surviving.

Overhead a crow’s shrill caw pierces the air, making me look up even as I’m switching blades. The sky has turned from a cool, burnished steel to a near black.

It’s time to get moving.

I creep back up into civilization and with a practiced eye start my nightly search.

I used to hate trespassing. Even though Chord’s key code disrupter means not having to break any windows or work around a lock to get inside, it still felt wrong to be there. Like I was walking onto some sort of sacred ground, a place still breathing from the newly dead. But coming across an empty—a house freshly claimed by clearing after the death of its occupant, to be inherited by family or passed on to an agent to sell—kills all hesitation easily enough. Already difficult in the Grid with its honeycomb density of Alts living on their own, drawn to cheap rentals and entry-level shift jobs. Here in the suburbs, where most Alts who die leave behind families still living in their houses, discovering an empty is like striking oil.

Countless blocks of lit houses later, I’m cursing Chord again for driving me out here. For making me fully taste my own fear
as I keep running from her, unable to even think about seeing her, let alone how I’m going to fight her.

The white tag sways gently from the front doorknob, calling to me.

If the bushy boxwood on the landing had been moved over just another few inches, I would have missed it altogether. As it is, I know immediately it’s a claim tag from Jethro’s clearing division—and an empty house. The end unit of a row of town houses, the place is tall and skinny. Windows all dark, both upstairs and downstairs. One of the lightbulbs on the porch is burnt out.

I run across the street, climb the short, steep flight of stairs that takes me to the front door. I yank off the tag—stamped with the words
PROPERTY OF JETHRO WARD CLEARING DIV. DO NOT REMOVE
. Now the house gives nothing away. And it’s late enough to know I’ll be undisturbed here for the night—by family or an agent or anyone else.

Holding Chord’s disrupter around my wrist, I press the thin black strip against the faceplate of the lock. A series of tumbles and clicks, the lock gives, and I open the door and step inside.

In the few moments it takes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I hold still, breathing through my mouth so that I make absolutely no sound. When I can finally see the room, empty and silent, furniture like black humped animals in a jungle of gray, I dare to blink again. I hang the tag on the inside of the door so I won’t forget to put it back tomorrow before leaving. I flip the latch of the secondary lock—it’s flimsy, for backup purposes only—but without the key code to engage the primary lock, it will have to do.

It’s almost as cold indoors as it is out. I guess the heat’s been turned off, and I wonder how long the Alt has been dead. I walk across the front room. Run my finger along the surface of the coffee table—no sign of dust.

So it hasn’t been long, then. A few days at the most.

I grab a crystal vase off the fireplace mantel: the taller and more top-heavy the better, I’ve learned. Then spot another, short and fat. In the slatted moonlight, my eyes skim past a framed photo sitting alongside the vase, telling me the story. In it are a very old man and woman, standing next to a teenaged girl. Her grandparents, maybe; she might’ve been sent to live with them after her parents died, some kind of accident like Chord’s parents’. Then
they
die, leaving her behind with a house. And then she receives her assignment, draws the ultimate short straw, and now the house is an empty once and for all.

Would be, if it weren’t for this one intrusion.

Don’t worry, you won’t even know I was here
.

Returning to the front door, I stand the skinny vase flush up against the metal, then balance the fat one precariously on top. If anyone tries to come in, the sound of crystal falling onto hardwood should be loud enough to wake me from any sleep.

In the kitchen, I flip the light switch, ever hopeful. The room remains dark. I flip it again a few more times, even though I know it’s pointless. It’s the rare occasion when the power still works. But sometimes I’m lucky and clearing gets bogged down, and I catch an empty where they haven’t finished shut-down yet.

In the pantry, I toss the most nutritious of what I find into my bag. Vacuum-packed slips of tuna, salmon, chili. I stuff
trek bars into my pockets. Everything I pick is protein-heavy, calorie-dense. I have to be careful what I take. The weight has to be worth it. I’m okay with going a bit overboard this time, though, since a lot of the stuff is completes-only, final remnants of the grandparents’ last few trips to the grocery store.

I twist open a large jar of orange segments and use my fingers to eat them. My body shudders at the sudden spurt of sweetness—it’s been a while since I’ve tasted sugar, with most of Kersh’s supply being reserved for completes. Then I open a package of what Aave used to call squirrel crackers, so heavy with grains and seeds that they get stuck in my teeth as I crunch through them. A handful of multivitamins. A tin of salty ham washed down with tap water that tastes like rust. The uneven thump of the water splashing into my hand reminds me that it can’t be long before Gaslight—the ward in charge of Kersh’s water distribution—halts the supply to the house.

When I’m finally full, I head out of the kitchen, toward the stairs.

And stop.

There’s a draft coming down from upstairs. It washes over my cheeks and plays with strands of my hair.

Two thoughts burst into life in my head, quick as birds taking flight: First, someone must have left a window open—one of the clearing guys, an agent doing a quick appraisal, a family member looking for something—
someone
who had good reason to be here. Second, I’m not alone. Odds are it’s not my Alt, because it wouldn’t make sense for her to be here first. Someone else.

My hand falls to my jacket pocket, feeling for my gun. I start up the stairs, not bothering to stay quiet. If there’s someone on the second floor, she would have heard me in the kitchen.

In fact—

I point the gun to the side and fire a single shot into the wall. There. Now it’s obvious I’m armed. The question is whether she is.

It’s close to freezing up here. A shiver rolls down my back, and I don’t want to admit—even to myself—that it’s not entirely from the drop in temperature.

Two bedrooms. The draft is billowing out from the one on the left, spreading its way across the floor and down the stairs. I edge closer and peer inside the same way I would peer into a cave—braced for something to fly out at me.

A boy is straddling the sill of the open window. The outlines of thick tree branches behind him make it obvious that he climbed inside. A bag has been thrown over his shoulders, and his body is tensed as he gets ready to climb out. His eyes are wide and terrified, his assignment number black spirals against the lightness of his pupils. His cheeks puff in and out like a wheezing accordion.

I exhale and tuck my gun back into my jacket pocket.

If anyone’s got all the signs of being a new active, it’s this kid. The armor vest beneath his clothes is overly heavy and too bulky to move in easily. The bag over his shoulders is bursting at the seams. He’s not yet thin enough in the face to have been on the run long.

Before he faints and falls out the window, I say quickly,
“Don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m just an active. Like you.” Is this what it’s like talking someone off the ledge? I would have thought I’d feel like a hero, but instead I feel more than just a little guilty. Knowing I scared him as much as if I really were his Alt: the ominous sounds coming from below, the creaking of the stairs, the shot of the gun.

He can’t be any more than eleven, possibly twelve. Not much older than Ehm would have been today, had she completed.

My shoulders slump. Now that I know I’m in no danger, adrenaline leaves and exhaustion stays behind, swamping my head so it’s hard to think clearly. All I want is to find a bed and sleep.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say, and start backing away to show him. “Is it okay if I share this empty with you?” It won’t be the first time I’ve shared one with another active, and it won’t be the last. It can’t be as hard as sharing a ten-foot-by-ten-foot apartment with a thirteen-year-old active who wept the entire night, clutching a gun too big for her small hands. I slept on the floor, in the opposite direction from where the shaking barrel was pointed.

“So?” I stop in the doorway. “We’re okay?”

A slow nod, the still-wide eyes. This one’s not a talker. A part of me wonders if it’s because somehow he
knows
, even if he can’t see the marks hidden by my sleeves and the dark. He senses my striker status the way med dogs sniff out disease in the dying.

If it were Ehm in this boy’s position, in an empty with some other active, I’d want to think she had no reason to be afraid of him or her. Not when her own Alt would have been enough.

“Next time, if you don’t want to share with another active,
take the clearing tag off the door,” I say to him. “We all look for that, okay?”

Another nod. This time he carefully swings his leg back inside, and I’m relieved. At least
his
death won’t be on my conscience.

“One more thing.” I point at the windowsill, where he’s left the tool he used to pry open the window. “Pack that up now so you don’t leave it behind if you have to run.”

Without waiting for a response, I turn around and walk into the other bedroom. The large oak tree outside the window is perfect. The branches are thick enough, more than able to hold my weight if it comes to having to run.

I shut the bedroom door behind me and lock it, slip the straps of my bag off my shoulders, and lay the bag next to the pillow on the bed. Still fully clothed, I slide beneath the covers, not caring about the unwashed state of the sheets. What’s filth when I’m already filthy? I hate showering in the dark, anyway. I’ll do it in the morning, early. Then I’ll decide where to go next, see where my next strike is going to take me.