The other girls see it, too. Even Mama-san grows stiff beside me. There’s no way of knowing what lies inside that plastic tube. Pain. Disease. Death.
Sing fights and flails, her screams rising far beyond words. In the end, the men are too strong for her.
I can’t watch when the sharp metal plows into her veins. When her screams stop — when I finally look up again — the needle is gone and Sing is on the floor, crumpled and shuddering. The shadows of the lounge crowd around her curled form, make her look broken.
The master’s hands brush together. He turns to us. “The first dose of heroin is always the best. The second time, the rush isn’t as strong. But you still need it. You need more and more and more until it’s everything you want. Everything you are.”
Heroin. He means to make an addict of our smart and beautiful Sing. This thought twists inside me: hollow and hopeless.
“You are mine.” The master looks down our line of silken rainbow dresses. He’s smiling. “All of you. If you try to run, this is your fate.”
I close my eyes, try not to look at the broken-doll girl on the floor. Try not to remember the words the master spoke into the night so long ago. They reach out of time, bind me like ropes: There is no escape.
JIN LING
It’s been two years. Two years since the Reapers took my sister from me. Two years since I followed them to the Walled City to look for her. Over these years, I’ve learned how to move like a ghost, make the most of my senses. That’s the only way to survive here: become something more than you are, or be invisible altogether.
I was invisible a lot when I was younger. There were only three years between me and my older sister, but Mei Yee was the one people noticed. Her face was round and soft. Like a moon. Her hair hung straight, sleek as midnight.
But being beautiful did no good on a rice farm. It didn’t help you wade for hours in muddy water, back bent under the hot shine of the sun, cutting rows of whipping grass. I was always stronger than Mei Yee. I knew I wasn’t beautifuclass="underline" My feet were tough with calluses, my skin dark, my nose too large. Whenever our mother wound my hair back into a bun and sent me to the pond for wash water, I saw a boy’s face staring back at me.
Sometimes I wished it were true. Being a boy would be easier. I’d be stronger, able to overpower my father whenever the alcohol made him rabid. But most of the time I just wished for a brother. A brother to bend over the never-ending rice plants. A brother to stand up to my father’s drunken rages.
And, in my deepest heart, I wanted to be pretty. Just like Mei Yee. So I always tugged the bun out. Let my hair fall free.
My hair was the second thing I lost after my father sold Mei Yee to the Reapers. I knew from the stories that I wouldn’t survive in this city as a girl. The knife I used was dull. It was a bad haircut, full of awkward angles, one side slightly longer than the other. I looked just the way I wanted to: like a half-starved, dirt-streaked street boy.
And that’s what I’ve been ever since.
My elbows are raw, stinging by the time I reach my camp. I took the long way back, circling the same moldy, pipe-hemmed passages to make sure no one followed me. Long enough for the blood to scab over and split again. If I don’t put a bandage on it soon, the wounds will get red and puffy. Take weeks to heal.
I slide through the opening of my ratty tarp shelter, look through my belongings. It’s not much. A matchbook with a single flame left. A waterlogged, half-filled character workbook scavenged from a careless student’s satchel. Two oranges and a mangosteen snagged from an ancestral shrine. A blanket heavy with mildew and rat urine. One mangy gray cat that purrs and yowls. Does his best to make me feel less alone.
“Got lucky today, Chma.” I set the boots down. The cat slinks across the tent. Rubs his whiskers across the worn leather. Plops his downy body on the laces with a mine meow.
I reach out for the blanket. It’ll have to do. I tug my knife from my tunic, start to cut the blanket into strips. Try to ignore the stench and damp of the fabric.
Mei Yee always tied my bandages. Before. She looked over the cuts my father made, eyes soft. Sad. Her fingers were feather-gentle when they wrapped the fabric. She had to use the strips so many times they were stained the color of rust. But she always made sure they were clean. Always tied them well. Always took care of me.
But I’m alone now. And it’s a lot harder to tie your own bandages. I end up using my teeth, gagging on the taste of rat and rank. Mei Yee would be horrified that I’m using this rotten blanket to cover my wounds. Horrified I’m here at all.
Going after Mei Yee was never a choice for me. She was all I had. Without her, I had no reason to stay on the farm, taking my father’s blows. Watching my mother wither like our rice crops.
I don’t know why I thought finding my sister would be easy. I wasn’t really thinking at all when I jumped onto that rusted bike and pedaled after the big white van. I didn’t think when I sliced off my hair. Or when I first reached City Beyond and asked questions in my slow, country speech.
Now I know how young and stupid I was, thinking that I could just walk into this place and find her.
The Walled City doesn’t cover much land — it’s only as big as three or four rice paddies — but it makes up for all that with its height. Its shanties stack on top of one another like sloppy bricks, crowded so high they blot out the sunlight. Streets that used to be filled with day and fresh air are now just cable-shrouded passages. Sometimes I feel like a worker ant, running these dark, winding tunnels in a never-ending loop. Always looking. Never finding.
But I won’t stop looking until I find her. And I will find her.
Chma stops nuzzling his new boot-bed. His yellow eyes snap to the entrance of my shelter — wide. Ears pricked high. Fur bristling. I hold my breath, listen through the Walled City’s eternal song: the distant rumbling of engines; a mother yelling at her children through thin walls; dogs howling in an alley far away; an airplane roaring over the city every five minutes.
There’s another noise. Softer, but closer. Footsteps.
I was followed.
My fingers wrap tight around my knife. I edge over to the tarp flap, fear rattling high in my throat. My thighs cramp tight as I wait. Listen. My knife hand is rice white, shaking.
The steps pause. A voice calls out, husky and doubtful, “Hello?”
Not Kuen, then. But that doesn’t mean I’m safe. These streets are crawling with thieves and drunks. People who would knife you in a heartbeat.
“Go away!” I try to make my voice as throaty as possible. All male. All threat.
Through the slit in my tarp, I glimpse my visitor. A boy, older. He’s leaning against the alley wall with his hands stuffed in his pockets. One knee up. The sheen of water that always glazes the city’s walls soaks the fabric of his sweatshirt. But he doesn’t seem to notice or care.
His stare lights straight on the flap of my tent. His eyes — they’re different from most people’s here in Hak Nam — they’re dark brown, yes. But they aren’t the same savage cruel as Kuen’s. Or the deadpan glaze of the grandmothers who squat on the corners, gutting fish after fish. Day after day.
No. This boy’s eyes are more like a fox’s. Sharp. Shining. Smart. Wanting something very, very badly.
I’d better be careful.
“It’s Jin, isn’t it?”
My name. He knows my name. It’s enough for me to push the flap back, teeth bared. Ready for a fight.
“Get out of here.” I raise my knife. Some far-off streetlight glints, echoes the blade back into the boy’s stare. He doesn’t flinch. “This is my last warning!”