Something about the way my own cat moves makes me slow. He hops to my side, an angry howl in his throat. His eyes glow through the dark. Electric and wide. All his back hairs stand straight.
I look around, but there’s nothing. Just a crumpled plastic bag rolling down the street. It tumbles by rows of hurried, spray-painted characters. None of them dried before the red paint dripped down. The walls look as if they’re bleeding.
I walk closer to the mouth of my alley. Chma slides in front of my feet so fast I almost trip. He yowls again. Not a mine meow, but something more urgent. With more tooth and hiiiiiiiisssssss.
Something’s wrong. He never acts this way.
My fingers wrap tight around my knife.
Don’t be afraid, I tell myself. It’s nothing. Probably just a monster-size rat.
As soon as I round the corner, I know I’m wrong.
My camp lies in ruins. The tarp is destroyed. Its battered blue body scattered in pieces all over the alley. The cuts on the edges are jagged but clean. A knife did this.
My blanket. The melted half of a chocolate candy bar Dai gave me. The workbook of characters I was trying my hardest to learn. The set of hole-riddled slippers I snagged from a door stoop. My matchbook. All of it’s gone.
Wind barrels into my corner, whipping pieces of tarp all over. I shake, full of anger and chill. A deep breath reminds me of the envelope at my chest. Nothing I lost was important. I have my money and my knife. I have Chma.
“Nice boots you got there.”
I snap back around. My knuckles grow white against my blade.
Kuen stands at the alley’s entrance. His burly body blocks the streetlamp’s weak rays. He stands by himself, but I know he’s not alone. Kuen’s never alone.
My feet start a slow, sure retreat.
“They’ve been useful.” I hate how my voice shakes. Kuen leers at my willowy frame, focused on how thin my shoulders are. He doesn’t pay attention to where my feet take me. “You want them back?”
The smile on the street boy’s lips twists. Turns into something ugly. “You, Jin, have been a pain in my ass. Ever since you showed up from Beyond. I think it’s about time we took care of that.”
Shadows gather behind Kuen. First heads and then torsos. Other, slightly less hulking boys. Their bodies block the way out. Make sure I don’t run. Running is my biggest strength. Everyone knows that. Kuen planned this — used his brain for once.
Kuen’s hand slides to his hip, where I’m sure there’s a knife as sharp and nasty as mine. He’s stronger than me, no question. All the boys are.
I count my steps back. Three. Five. Eight. Each one makes Kuen’s lips curl wider. Shows more teeth. They’re yellow and sharp. Too many for his mouth.
Ten steps. I pause, my calves grow hard like rocks. I pray to the gods that I counted right. If I look up, Kuen will know.
I crouch close to the ground. Then, with all the energy in my screaming, cramped thighs, I jump.
I’ve practiced this move before. When sweltering summer nights wouldn’t let me sleep. But I always knew where the grip was. The exact spot on the jutting tin roof where my fingers could clasp and pull. Drag me, inch by painful inch, to safety. But that was when I was looking. When there wasn’t a seething boy and his army of knives just feet away.
But the gods and their spirits must be watching over me tonight, because somehow my hands find the rusted dip of metal. My fingers latch onto the tin edge. Pull.
It always feels like this when I’m running. As if I’m not in my body anymore. Some savage survivor takes over, does things I can’t. She can leap over ten-foot gaps and jump into a half-filled Dumpster from three stories up. She can squeeze through impossible, crushing spaces. And she can pull my full weight onto a slanting roof with only her arms.
I hear Kuen cursing, lunging forward. My body jerks. Strains under the weight that isn’t mine. A look over my shoulder shows Kuen, beet-faced and spitting, his hand wrapped around my right foot.
The sight is so terrifying that I might have let go, but the survivor holds tight to the roof. She lifts her free foot. Brings it down onto Kuen’s face with a gut-twisting crunch. If I hadn’t been wearing his boots, I might not have been able to break his nose.
The vagrant lets go, howling in pain. I don’t pause to watch his face run scarlet with blood. The other boys in Kuen’s gang are close, frozen by their leader’s animal wails. They won’t be still for long. And they, the survivor reminds me, can still climb.
I hoist myself onto the sheet of slanting, rippled metal. Climb as far as I can. For some reason, this section doesn’t connect with the other rooftops. It’s a forgotten, lonely stretch. A metal island jutting into a sea of cinder block walls. I have the high ground, but I’m still trapped.
“Ged ’im!” Kuen gasps under blood and broken face. “Someone ged ’im, dammit!”
The tin around me shudders as the first boy starts to climb. He’s smaller than the rest, even tinier than me. A skeletal wisp. One of the bigger boys has hoisted him up so he can reach the metal.
I stay close to the edge, where I can bottleneck them. Keep them away with quick swipes of my knife. I glare at the boy, flashing my blade. He pauses, his feet still digging into his pack member’s shoulders.
“Bon! Get your ass up there!” one of the other boys crows.
Bon. I know the name. I look closer and realize I know the boy. The last time I saw him he was just a kid. A kid kid. Not more than six or seven. Scrawny. Freshly orphaned. Begging for rice on a street corner. He looked so pitiful that I handed him one of the oozing mangosteens I’d filched from an ancestral shrine.
Not much has changed. He’s still scrawny. Long meals away from bright button eyes, cageless ribs. His face is the same — smudged in dirt, terrified.
But now he’s a part of Kuen’s pack. Now he’s dangerous.
Instead of sneaking him bruised fruits, I have to stab him if he keeps climbing. I don’t want to. I want him to let go of the roof’s edge. I want him to drop back to the ground and walk away.
I make my eyes hard and shake my head. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
For a moment I think my wordless pleas work. Bon hangs on bony arms, exaggerated joints. Looking as if he wants to fall. But the others keep calling under him. Their yells blend into a terrible chorus. It’s the threat, the courage of the pack. Bon takes all this in, licks his lips. Starts to pull.
I have to stab him. Kill this boy I once tried to save. I am so sorry, so scared. But the survivor doesn’t wait. She holds the weapon and jerks her arm back. Ready to slice.
There’s a noise so loud — so all over—it almost makes me drop my knife.
The pack shrinks back, one solid motion. Bon grips the tin’s edge, his face colorless with fear. Kuen is the only one who hasn’t moved. His hands keep clutching his bloody mess of a nose.
I look over toward the bone-shaking sound. Dai stands in the street, his arm raised so everyone can see the revolver. He points the gun straight into the alley. Kuen’s pack backs into the wall. Their feet trample all that’s left of my camp.
“I have a bullet for each of you, even with that one gone.” He looks straight at Kuen. “I thinks it’s best if you leave. Now.”
“This nud a yer bidness!” The pack leader snarls fury and tears. “Dat wat stoled from me—"