No. That wasn’t him. He wasn’t like that. Painter watched as the claws withdrew, settling into their housing beneath his intact fingernails. He was better than that. Better than them. In every way. It was his mercy that allowed them to live, not his weakness.
He pushed himself up to his feet, just as a well-dressed couple emerged from the Tea House. The woman gasped when she saw him, and for a moment Painter took it as a sign of her fear. But her eyes softened with concern as they came down the stairs towards him.
“Oh, Painter,” she said, “are you alright? Do you need help?”
“I’m fff-fff,” the word caught. Such a simple word. Say it! “I’m fine, ma’am. Took the stairs too fast is all.”
The man with her shook his head and produced a handkerchief from his fine coat pocket. The idea of anyone carrying a handkerchief struck Painter as supremely absurd.
“Here, son,” the man said, handing him the handkerchief. “You’ve got some… something, there.”
“Thank you,” Painter said. He wiped the spittle off his face and handed the handkerchief back. As the man took it, they both noticed a dark spot on it, and the man hesitated. “I’m sorry, I’ll cuh- cuh-, I’ll clean it.”
“No, no,” the man said, smiling graciously as he took the handkerchief. “It’s alright. That’s what they’re for after all. You sure you’re OK?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Mmmm- ma’am.”
“Alright. Well. You take care, Painter.”
“You too.”
They smiled again, a little sadly, and turned away towards their home. As they disappeared down the street, Painter reflected on Gap-tooth’s posse and the couple walking away from him now.
And he couldn’t decide which of them he hated more.
FIVE
Cass could feel the pressure building in the city, an emotional power grid straining under the load of fear, tension, and long-harbored mistrust never resolved. She looked out over Morningside in its troubled sleep, the night air around her almost brittle with cold. From her balcony she could see down the long, wide street, almost all the way to the western gate. The roadway was warmly lit by its innumerable lamp posts, though the walks were all deserted this deep in the night. It was still hard for her to sleep at any time, but most especially at night, the time for which her body had been rewired for optimal performance.
She had had great hopes once, in the early days of her Awakening. There had been horror from some, a hatred born of a lifetime of terror. That was to be expected. But kindness had surprised her, and compassion. And after she had taken to wearing the veil, she’d found more and more people were able to overcome their instinctive reactions and Cass had begun to believe that one day she might be accepted as human again.
And when Wren began rescuing others, a network of support had formed almost without any real effort; good, honest men and women of Morningside came forward and gave of their time and money to help the survivors build some sense of a new life, and maybe even come to terms with who they had become. People like Aron, and Mister Sun, and others throughout the city who’d offered places to stay, clothes to wear, jobs to do.
Of course it couldn’t have lasted. One or two, maybe the city could’ve absorbed them, thought of them as poor, wretched anomalies. But there were nearly thirty of them now. Too many to be ignored. Now, in some circles, they were seen more like wild animals that had strayed into civilization; no longer just a handful of damaged people looking for shelter.
Damaged. Rae had called them that once, in passing. Funny. Cass didn’t feel damaged. Different, certainly. But vibrant. Alive. Alive in a way she’d never felt before the change. Before the change, she’d relied on chems to speed her reaction times, to make herself faster, stronger. Now she felt all these things without needing the chemicals. Sometimes she wondered if the pathways that had been forged by her use of quint had been exploited by the Weir’s tampering.
There had been adjustments to be sure, new normals to learn, like how to see the world through her new eyes — or how to process the way Cass felt the presence of the people around her, sometimes even through walls — or how they exploded in light and… and something she didn’t even have a word for, whenever they accessed the digital. No, she didn’t feel damaged at all.
Out beyond the wall, Cass heard a Weir cry; a howl somewhere between a scream and a burst of static through organic vocal cords. At one time she would’ve been able to interpret it. Now it was just noise again. Even so, the sound had a different quality that she noticed but couldn’t quite identify. Another Weir answered the first, somewhere off to her left. But not far. And a third, closely following the second. Cass felt the hair on the back of her neck bristle, found herself alert. There was an attack coming. She knew it without knowing why.
As she turned back into the compound, her brain started peppering her with all the reasons she was wrong. There hadn’t been an organized attack in almost a year, not since they’d brought everyone inside the wall. The Weir had been scattered. Without Underdown’s control, they’d reverted back to their pack behavior; no longer a collaborative entity. They were more like scavengers than predators. They would never assault the city directly.
Except they would, and Cass knew it.
She streaked through her room and sprinted down the hallway towards the front entry, pimming Gamble, the captain of the governor’s Personal Guard, as she ran.
“Gamble,” Cass pimmed, sending the message through the digital directly to her, wherever Gamble was. “The Weir are at the west gate!”
She didn’t wait for a response. Cass saw Joris, one of the night guardsmen, flinch from down the hall as she approached. He raised a hand, but she couldn’t tell if it was to slow her down or to defend himself.
“Joris, the Weir are at the west gate!” she called. He still had his mouth open when Cass passed him. “Get the guard to the gate! The west gate!”
She called it over her shoulder, trusting that his training would kick in and Joris would know what to do. Out through the front doors, she leapt from the top stair and cleared the bottom one ten feet below without missing a step. Instinctively, she tried to boost before her brain reminded her she no longer had the implant, no longer needed the chemicals in her bloodstream. No longer had a bloodstream, for that matter.
Down the wide, empty street she sped, breathing quickly but easily. The cries of the Weir came more rapidly now, growing in number, converging to a single point. It was maybe six hundred yards from the governor’s compound to the western gate. Cass reached it in just under a minute.
There were stairs near the gate, leading up thirty feet above the ground to the top of the wall in a switchback. She took them two at a time and was almost halfway up when the first shockwave hit the gate. There was a sound like thunder, followed by scattered impacts, like rocks after a landslide. When Cass gained the top of the wall, she found one of the city’s watchmen staring down below, open-mouthed, frozen in fear.
“Hey!” she called, without thinking. The watchman’s head snapped around and, seeing her, his eyes went wide, and she saw him fumbling at his hip. “No, no, no, wait!”
But it was too late. He had the weapon up and pointed. It all seemed to happen in half-speed, but the distance was too great. As Cass closed the gap, she saw the leap of blue fire in the muzzle as she twisted her head and body, heard the snap of the round as it passed by. She spun, whipping a hand out and caught the watchman’s wrist as he fired the second time, sending another wild shot out into the night.