SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (7 page)

Bingo!            

Dry paper makes a great catalyst, and she snatches up two of them at random.

Hauling everything back into the upstairs apartment she discovers that, in her time away, some major renovations have been undertaken. The floor is swept and the bed has been leveled on bricks. All the kitchen counters are cleaned of debris, and an attempt has been made to fashion bed sheets out of the remains of the red velvet theatre curtains.

Beside all of it stands the naked woman, minus the Hunter Division jacket and pillowcase, both replaced by a length of sheer muslin cloth looted from the wardrobe department. Draped over her shoulders, criss-crossed around her breasts, then wrapped around her waist once and several times around her slender hips, she’s managed to fashion a dress, of sorts.

“You like?” she beams, and spins round in two brisk circles to give Silver the benefit of a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree tour. “It was either this, or a much less flattering animal suit.”

“Warmth wasn’t your first priority?”

“The best way to keep warm is by sharing body heat.”

“Yeah, well, come winter time you might get lucky.” Silver dumps the backpack down on one of the counter tops. “In the meantime, let’s eat.”

“Meat?”

“You betchya.”

Silver lets the muslin-clad woman inspect the contents of the backpack while she drags the trash can out onto the balcony and sets it in place. Once in position, she stuffs it half full with non-toxic garbage and levels it out before piling a thin layer of charcoal and wood on top.

Sourcing a grilling rack from the broken gas burning oven—broken, because gas hasn’t been used as a source of energy since the end of the Old World—she checks it for robustness and determines that the rusted piece of junk is acceptable.

It’ll do the job, at least.

She lays the rack over top of the trash can and tries to retrieve her catalysts, only to find that the old paper books have been sequestered by the nameless woman, now thumbing through them on the bed.

“You can read?” Silver enquires, not sure if she should be surprised to learn that or not.

“I guess.”

Silver positions herself on the edge of the bed, careful to keep her eyes from straying down toward the thin muslin. “Read to me.”

The woman glances down at the two books in her hands. One is a car maintenance manual, the other is Alice in Wonderland.

No contest.

She opens it to the first page and begins to read, sounding out words like a child, partially covering multi-syllable words with her thumb to make the deciphering of them easier. Her reading level, Silver assesses, is not indicative of a formal education. Self taught, perhaps. The kind of learning one might expect from a child raised in the slums; a child raised in the Fringe.

Silver cuts in on her reading. “You were born in the Fringe, weren’t you?”

The woman opens up her mouth to speak but no words come out. Instead, she ends up looking like a choking fish.

“You’re from here, and somehow escaped,” Silver persists. “That’s how I found you out in the middle of nowhere. You must’ve broken into the tunnel system before it was destroyed and gotten yourself lost in the Out District.”

Silver’s mind runs away with imaginings. If she were a prostitute—a Jade—broken free from her Handler, that would explain the lack of clothing. One last appointment with a client gone bad, mayhaps? She saw an opportunity to escape and took her chance with both hands, despite the danger.

Not to mention, if she were a Jade, being untagged wouldn’t be
that
unusual. Handlers keep their toys under close guard and will often forcibly rip their girls, for that very purpose. They’re easier to control that way. Poor, defenseless women, utterly and completely reliant upon their Handlers—their providers—for all that is life sustaining.

Moreover, although tagging is compulsory, even in the Fringe, many births in this District still go unrecorded. Untagged children are commonly sold into prostitution by their parents who are unable to care for them financially. This provides the Handlers with a continuous supply of fresh stock, and provides the struggling family with a small cash bonanza.

The more Silver thinks about it, the more she is convinced. It seems the flesh market can be the only explanation for this woman’s perfect, scar-less wrist. How she slipped free of the electronic collar is another matter, though, and one that Silver is much less certain of.

Jades are immediately identifiable by the metal collar clasped around their neck. This permanent collar has their unique employee number engraved on it, and if they attempt to remove or tamper with it in any way, they’ll receive a potentially lethal electric shock.

A shock capable of causing severe memory loss? Almost certainly.

Without words, Silver reaches forward and scoops her hand around the woman’s neck, moving aside her hair.

There’s not a mark on her.

At Silver’s touch, the woman becomes instantly rigid, her pale skin frozen at Silver’s fingertips.

Silence.

“I have to call you something,” Silver says at last, and retracts her hand. “Since you’re basically starting everything from scratch, how about a brand new name?”

“I can pick?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

Silver shrugs. “I don’t know. Anything you like.”

Deep in thought, the woman absently raps her fingertips against the book in her lap.

Alice in Wonderland.

Duh, obvious.

Alice.

Yes, Alice.

Light Bulb Moment

In the Fringe District, morning is often heralded by the wail of a Police Division siren, or a gun fight. After months or years of this routine, supposedly, you become immune to the racket.

Not today.

The dawn of day two.

Silver lies awake in bed, her heart thumping inside her tight, anxious chest. She had dreamt of the Sentinel District; dreamt of home and all of its familiarities. Clutching at the dog tags around her neck, she pushes those thoughts aside and becomes aware of an unusual warmth behind her.

Alice.

Curled up in the crook of Silver’s legs, Alice is peacefully oblivious to the sounds of destruction echoing in through the open window. She only stirs when Silver rolls away from her and gets to her feet, stretching out her joints with various snaps and pops.

Hungry again, Silver forces her body to ignore its pangs for food. She has enough money to buy more meat, for now, but that’s just a temporary measure. Something more permanent needs to be forged, so she elects to dip into that reserve fund only if it becomes absolutely vital. Consequently, the first thing on the menu for today is the search for employment.

“You’re leaving?” Alice enquires from the red velvet sheets.

“Get used to it. This is going to happen a lot.”

“I can’t come?”

“Not without the basics: proper clothes and a tag, for starters. Both of which come at a price, and neither of which are a priority. You understand?”

Silver runs her tongue over her filmy teeth.

Toothpaste.

Now,
that’s
a priority.

“I’ll be back before dark,” she promises, badly underestimating the task at hand.

Skip ahead five hours, and she’s already running out of ideas. Most of the bars are run by Handlers, and their girls take turns waiting tables and spreading their legs. Butcher shops need bouncers, but they’ll only hire men.

Silver wasn’t trained for this. For the first time in her life, she feels utterly inadequate.

Tired and angry, she finds herself in an Old World playground. Now just a collection of dangerously rusted metal poles, only one swing remains. Tenderly reconstructed by neighboring residents, it sways gently in the breeze, beckoning to Silver’s aching feet.

It creaks when she lowers her adult frame down upon it, but it bears her weight without further complaint. Winding the chains around her wrists, as she did when she was a child, the coarse metal scrapes against her stitches, tearing one of them open.

“Great …” she sighs.

Blood seeping back through the open wound, she looks around for anything that might help. All she can find nearby is a soiled pair of children’s panties, which isn’t quite the band-aid she was hoping for. Instead, she opts for something moderately more sanitary.

The Gunnera plant, though fragile in the winter months, has proven to be quite evolutionarily successful and is abundant all over the eastern coast of North America. Tearing a leaf in half, she wraps it around her wrist and ties it there with a thin strand of hemp twine. Hemp twine can be found anywhere; it’s a by-product of the textile industry. Inferior quality hemp is made into twine and can be used for almost anything: holding up your pants, tying a bow around a parcel, or fixing a Gunnera leaf to your bleeding wrist.

Across the street, a small explosion makes her jump, and she looks up to see a unit of Police Division Agents raiding a ramshackle old school building. Eternally drawn to chaos, and with little else to do, she goes to investigate.

Sneaking in through a back doorway, Silver finds herself a safe vantage point on a small balcony overlooking the stage in the performance hall, where an arms deal has just been thoroughly busted.

Though she has to squint, she can just about make out the names on some of the Agents’ Kevlar vests, and a small spark of hope ignites within her.

Amidst the crowd, a friend.

Luka Kinsella.

The same age as Silver, they’d entered the Hunter Division Academy together and were teammates until he transferred into the Police Division at the end of their final year. Looking around for a distraction, Silver’s foot finds an old light bulb, dropped down from the rigging above.

Taking the Old World relic in her hand, she draws a deep breath and tries to steady her aim on the side of Luka Kinsella’s helmet. Her bullet can find the heart of a Chimera from several hundred yards away, but even at this relatively short distance, she knows she throws like a girl.

Velocity is the key, she’d been told. Generally speaking, girls lack the strength required to launch a projectile hard enough to maintain an accurate course through the air. A weaker throw will succumb to air resistance and fall short of its target, so Silver hucks the light bulb with all her might.