As I feel the adrenaline leave me, I feel the cold sink in deeper. It sets root in my heart and freezes my blood until I can’t move, until my muscles atrophy. I’m paralyzed and eggshell fragile. I’m a statue. A porcelain figurine. A killer.
“Kitten.”
Vin’s weak voice calls to me from far off. I try to ignore it but he won’t shut up.
“Kitten.”
My eyes gain focus. I find myself staring at Caroline’s lifeless corpse. I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies in my day. A lot of them are actually ones I laid to their final rest. But they were all dead already, all on their way and lost in the confusing haze of being a Risen. I helped them find clarity. Finality.
This is different. This was a living, breathing, seething person until along came a spider who stabbed her in the neck and let her bleed out at her feet. This is ugly and hateful.
Is this me?
“Kitten!”
“What?!” I cry, turning to face him.
I’m actually surprised to find him still alive. I figured that despite the fact that Caroline was literally a backstabber, she was probably a finish the job kind of girl too. But there he lies, a pool of dark blood seeping out of his side. He’s breathing and cursing like any other day of the week.
“You okay?” I ask numbly.
He glares up at me. “Do I fucking look okay?!”
I fall to my knees beside him. “You’ve looked better.”
“What about you?” he wheezes, grasping his side and eyeing me. “Are you okay?”
“I fucking look okay?” I deadpan.
“Was it your first time?”
“Yeah.”
“It gets easier.”
I snort. “I doubt that.”
“Trust me, it does.”
“I don’t want it to.” I say weakly, my eyes stinging.
“It’s not really a choice.”
I move to glance over my shoulder. To look at Caroline. At my kill.
“Don’t.” Vin says firmly, gripping my hand with his blood smeared palm.
“What the hell happened?!” a voice cries from the doorway.
Vin and I both look over slowly to find Tim standing there in shock, looking from us to Caroline and back again.
“What?” is all he can muster.
“We ran into a little trouble with the plan.” Vin tells him with a grunt.
He keeps moving around. I assume he’s trying to ease the pain but it’s not going to happen. Not until he’s sewn together again. I grab his shirt at the front then yank hard. It rips down the center, tearing in two. I help him pull his arms out of it then ball it up and press it firmly against his wound.
“Vin needs a doctor.” I tell Tim. He’s staring at Caroline. “She doesn’t need anything. Not anymore.”
Tim looks at me for a long moment. His face is a mask and I wonder what he’s thinking. Can he see it on me that I did it? That I killed her? I feel like it’s marked on me somehow like a stink I’ll never be able to wash away.
“Here’s what happened.” he says quickly and quietly, moving to Caroline’s body. “Joss came out here for some fresh air. She saw Vin and Caroline… being intimate. She felt angry and jealous so she attacked Caroline with… what is this in her neck?”
“A trowel.” Vin and I say in unison monotone.
“Alright, Joss attacked her with a trowel. She killed Caroline and found the knife that she always kept on her for protection. Then she turned the knife on Vin, stabbed him, took Caroline’s keys to the fence and ran.”
“I’m leaving?” I ask, looking at him in surprise.
“Hell yes, you’re leaving.” He’s rooting around in Caroline’s pockets now, jostling her body back and forth. It flops lifelessly and I worry I’ll be sick. “Vin can’t go and you can’t stay here. You killed one of the leaders. And this is better than Vin escaping. That brings up questions of how and who helped and is there dissension in the ranks. This way it was a lover’s quarrel, something not uncommon in the Pods, though it usually ends in fist fights not…”
“Stabbings?” I ask.
“Exactly. Here.” Keys land beside my knees on the packed, frosty dirt. “Take those. Get out of here. Do what he was supposed to do.”
I shake my head, staring at the keys. At freedom. “The Hive doesn’t know me.” I protest weakly. “They’ll never listen to me. They’ll never even speak to me.”
“Take this.” Vin says. He pulls his ring off his finger and slips it on mine. On the ring finger of my left hand. He smirks through a grimace. “Don’t get excited, it’s just a loner.”
“Nothing would thrill me less.” I mutter, staring at the ring. It’s a dark metal full of dents, scratches and dark blue flecks. It’s beautiful.
“Yeah,” he grunts. “Act like I don’t know.”
“Will they recognize it?”
“Marlow will. He knows it was my old man’s. It’s the only thing that’s ever meant anything to me.”
I look in his eyes and feel like crying. He could die. I could die. We all might die no matter what I do but suddenly I feel so cold and bone tired I don’t even know which way is up anymore.
“They won’t listen to me, will they?” I whisper.
His lips form a grim line. He shakes his head sharply. “Probably not.”
I nod, looking at the ring and thinking it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Not if we never try.
“Alright, I’ll go.” I say, standing and quaking with cold and nerves.
“Hey.” Vin says. He’s staring up at me and in this light I can’t read his eyes. “You’ll get it done. You’re a better man than I am.”
I chuckle. “No shit.”
Two minutes later I’m wearing Tim’s sweater, carrying the knife and trowel and I’m running through the gates. I fumble in the dark, slipping on the wet boards of the dock. Finally I get my hands on a small rowboat and cast off, launching myself out over the cold, black water. If a guard sees me they don’t say anything and I wonder if some of them aren’t sick of the Colony after all. It’s a miracle I’ve made it out unseen and unhurt. It’ll be an even bigger miracle if I survive.
It’s icy cold out here and even with Tim’s sweater I’m still shivering violently. It’s not just the cold. It’s the lack of adrenaline after the fight, it’s the shock of having killed a woman, it’s the fear for Vin’s life, it’s the fear for my life and the fear of the Risen that surround this place in a thick wave that comes crashing in on me the second I take to shore.
I have to start running immediately and I can only hope I’m going the right way. Tim told me to head southeast. He said there are roads that are intentionally filled with debris and made impassible to force attacks from only one direction. Southeast.
I run as fast as I can, leaving a pocket of Risen behind and finding a blessed silent section of the city. I know the Risen are surrounding me on all sides, I can hear them everywhere, but I have to get it together. I slow my pace, slow my breathing and try to slow my mind. It’s racing ahead of me, running away from me. It’s already at The Hive. It’s already standing before Marlow, assuming I ever even make it that far without being killed or pimped, and it’s failing. It’s showing him the ring, he’s laughing in its face and he’s sending it to the stables. All my worst fears are running around me, after me, before me. I feel so boxed in and terrified that I stop moving entirely to lean over and vomit on the street.
A Risen stumbles in front of me from out of nowhere, though in this darkness everywhere is nowhere. It takes me a moment to get my bearings and it’s a moment I don’t have. I take an extra second too long to verify that it’s dead, that it’s not another Caroline and in that second it grabs me hard. I drop the knife to push on its forehead and keep its gnashing, drooling teeth from closing in on my face. I can smell the putrid breath of the thing rolling over me and I gag hard. I can’t get in a clean breath. I’m starting to see stars. I’m wondering what the hell is wrong with me when I finally get it together enough to jam the trowel into the Risen’s eye. It’s too large to go in far enough to damage the brain so I have to pull it out and try another tract. It will scar me further for the rest of my days, but I do what I know works. I start stabbing the trowel into the neck of the thing, front and back and sides, pushing harder and harder back until it finally does it job. The head falls forward useless as all of the muscles I’ve cut lose tension and give out. It’s drooling over its own chest now, unable to look anywhere but at its feet and as I back away it starts walking in circles looking for me.