Chapter 2
Quinn
There was nothing quite like seeing the city in the first few minutes after the sun dipped below the horizon. Enough of a glow still hazed the sky to catch on the details of the downtown buildings, but in the thickening darkness, the gleam of their lights outlined their walls with streaks of neon blue and yellow like some kind of cyberpunk landscape.
And there was nothing like seeing the view from the edge of a roof forty floors up.
I sat a couple of feet back from the narrow concrete lip, my legs braced in front of me, my sketchpad resting on my knees. This high up, the breeze held a bit of a chill despite the heat of the summer day that was just ending. I drank in the fresh air, totally free of the urban smells of downtown Jacksonville below me, and smiled at the sensation of goosebumps tickling over my arms. I’d brought a thin hoodie along, but I didn’t think I’d bother putting it on over my tank top.
This was my third time breaching the upper floors of the new office complex next to the river: sneaking up the emergency stairs, climbing the maintenance ladder, and shoving open the hatch that led out onto the roof. The thrill hadn’t worn off yet. The light was always a little different depending on the weather; the glowing patterns in the windows around me shifted evening by evening.
I liked to think that seeing the city and its buildings this way gave me a perspective that’d lend something special to my work—to the designs I was sketching of structures I hoped to see built from my own blueprints someday not too far away. I’d spent my first hour up here working on a project for one of the online summer courses I was taking to speed along my architecture degree, and the rest of the time I’d given to my dream designs.
I traced my fingers over the lines of the spiraling high rise I’d drawn last. I didn’t know how much time I had left in this world, but I was damn well going to leave some kind of mark on it if I possibly could. Something that people would look at and get the same sweeping sense of exhilaration I felt gazing out over downtown right now.
If I could manage that… well, maybe it wouldn’t matter that I’d get a whole lot less time than the average person did.
The sketchpad was just for initial concepts. When I got back to my computer, I’d need to figure out all the logistics of scale and exact proportions. But there’d be nothing to construct in that digital landscape without doing some dreaming first.
Biting into the apple I’d brought, I watched the sky dim from hazy blue to the near-black shade of dusk. The sweet juice trickling down my throat made my stomach gurgle with a pang of deeper hunger. I’d told my parents I’d be home late and not to hold up dinner on my behalf, but Mom would have set aside a plate in the fridge for me to warm up when I got in.
I stuffed my sketchpad into the messenger bag I kept slung crossbody so there was no chance of losing it and stood up. Walking the few steps back to the open hatch with the breeze buffeting me set all my nerves jangling giddily. Death might be lurking in the near future, waiting for a second chance to sink its claws into me, but I defied it on a weekly basis.
No one would be able to say I hadn’t lived in the time I’d gotten.
I eased down the ladder, tugged the hatch into place above me, and padded down the maintenance stairs at a brisk but careful pace, my hand following the railing in the dark. I’d taken the elevator up—I wasn’t a glutton for punishment—but now the offices were closed for the night. Going down took a lot less energy than going up, and it kept me out of the security guards’ notice.
At least, it normally did. I was turning the corner on a landing when my foot skidded on a slick spot where someone must have spilled a drink. I caught my balance against the wall, and my shoulder thumped on the door.
A distant voice filtered through from the other side. “Hey! Is someone there?”
Shit. Just my luck that a guard would have happened to be patrolling on this floor right when I slipped.
My pulse hiccupped, and I dashed for the next flight of stairs. I ran as hard as I could, whipping around one landing and then another, until the squeak of hinges reached my ears from above. Then I tensed and slowed, still moving but setting my sneakers as softly as possible on the steps.
The darkness wavered as the guard must have swept the beam of a flashlight over the stairs a couple of flights above me. My heart hammered at my ribs. I’d managed not to get caught in my urban exploring since a couple of careless moments when I’d started up the hobby in high school. Somehow I figured the authorities would be a little harsher on a twenty-one year old than a reckless teen.
I kept slinking onward as the guard’s feet thudded across two landings to the next floor, which I’d already passed. The glow of the flashlight beamed brighter with his approach. But he stopped there, let out a sigh, and pushed past the door back into the hall.
A grin stretched across my face. Another challenge conquered.
I left the building via the back entrance and trotted around to the street, rubbing sanitizer from my ever-present bottle over my hands in a gesture that was automatic after all these years. Cars rumbled by beneath the streetlamps. The familiar humid air filled my lungs. After a rooftop trek, the sights on the ground felt painfully mundane.
If I’d had the money, I’d have gotten an apartment downtown so my favorite haunts would have been close at hand. Thankfully, Mom and Dad’s house was less than a half hour’s walk from the river at my usual swift pace. And having me home for the summer eased their minds and cut down on the worried comments about whether I was pushing myself too hard in my studies.
They were pretty good about giving me space. After some frank discussions in family therapy about not going too heavy on the coddling or protectiveness, we’d found a good balance. They allowed me plenty of independence, I didn’t feel like I was leaning too much on them, and we got in our little bonding moments like our Sunday board game nights.
And if every now and then I wanted to throw myself into Mom’s embrace and bawl like I was a little kid again, I stuffed down that urge and put on the same impervious front I’d been perfecting for the past nine years. They’d already been through enough because of me.
It was easier for them if they didn’t think I worried all that much. And easier for me too, shoving aside those worries instead of giving in to them. Freaking out about the inevitable would only slow me down and get in the way of my actually enjoying however many years I had left.
As the park came into view up ahead, my phone vibrated in my pocket with its silent alarm, programmed to go off twice a day. My hands moved automatically, unzipping the side pocket on my bag, flicking open the right flap on the pill organizer I’d recently filled for the week, dropping the three evening tablets into my palm, and popping them into my throat. I chased them with a gulp from my water bottle, ingesting them in three quick swallows. Then it was done, like it’d been nothing at all.
Totally normal, nothing to see here. Just a gal making sure her body didn’t wake up and realize the transplanted heart stitched into her chest didn’t really belong to her.
When I’d been dependent on what was technically an alien creature inhabiting my body since I was twelve, the darkness cloaking the park wasn’t all that scary. The shortcut along the paths, quiet and still in the deepening night, cut several minutes off my journey. What had all those self-defense classes been for if I let my life be dictated by vague fears? I’d walked through here dozens of times and never been accosted.
If anything, striding along the paved strip that cut through the grass with the tree branches rustling overhead gave me a pleasant jolt of adrenaline. Any time I got away with thumbing my nose at my fears, I won a little victory.
Of course, I didn’t throw caution totally to the wind. I let one hand rest on my hip, on the lump in my pocket—my ever-present multitool, which included a knife I wouldn’t want jabbed into me.
My gaze skimmed over my surroundings, dim in the intermittent glow of the security lights that stood far apart along the path. One of the benches farther off by the dog park had a crooked slat on the back. I squinted at it, my fingers itching with the desire to see if I could screw it back into place—my multitool had plenty of other uses, after all—but I’d be better off waiting until I had better light to examine it by anyway.
Besides, it might need a whole new screw. I couldn’t tell for sure in the dark. But a #10 or #12 would usually do the trick for something like that. I could bring a few possibilities when I passed through here next.
Fixing things someone else had designed wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as seeing a design all my own brought to life, but I had the basic engineering knowledge, and using it in tiny ways here and there was a chance to make a small impact right now. It reminded me that I was leaving my mark already, even if no one really noticed.
I was halfway through the park, just passing the pond, when a strange wobbly sensation passed through my chest. It was faint but unignorable, as if the blood coursing through my heart had rippled with a puff of breath like the surface of the pond in the breeze.
My strides faltered. A flicker of panic shot through me.
I’d never felt anything like that before. What if it was a sign—the muscles of the organ starting to fail?—?
Normally, I’d have shaken off the twinge of anxiety and walked on. When you had to monitor your bodily reactions as closely as I did, you got to realize that there were all kinds of random sensations that’d pop up that meant nothing at all.
This time, I didn’t get the chance.
All at once, the shadows draping the landscape… thickened. Here and there across the grassy terrain around me, several patches of darkness condensed into solid forms. Forms with what looked like legs and tails and flashes of red and yellow eyes.
Some were as small as a cat and others nearly as tall as me. I’d swear… that one had spikes jutting all over its body. Another opened a gaping maw hung with fangs longer than my hand.
What the hell? A cold sweat broke over my skin. Plenty of weirdness went on here in Florida, but nightmare beasts were a completely different level even for us.
I blinked hard, making sure the sight before me wasn’t just a trick of my mind. As my fingers closed around the handle of my multitool, the nearest path light shattered. In the dim wash of moonlight that remained, the shadowy creatures charged at me.
A shriek burst from my throat. I flicked out the knife and jerked backward toward the pond, which was the only place I hadn’t seen any of the impossible things emerge.
I hadn’t been trained in fending off nightmarish fiends, but my self-defense practice kicked in all the same. I punted one of the little creatures away with a swipe of my foot, trying not to think about the fact that I’d swear sparks burst from its mouth as I did.
A lumbering furry thing with an absurd alligator-like snout sprang at me, and I lashed out with the knife. The blade sank into flesh, but the beast bowled me over without flinching. Its claws raked across my forearm with a flare of pain that lanced all the way to my shoulder.
My chest—I had to protect my chest above all else. A blow to the tissue that guarded my replacement heart could be a death sentence right there. I shoved at the thing as hard as I could, terrified adrenaline spiking through my veins.
The creature’s head reared back, its paws still pinning me down. Snaps and hisses careened from what seemed like all around me as the other beasts closed in. Oh, God, if even more of them pounced on me?—
Another figure leapt out of the night, barreling straight into the alligator-thing and knocking it off me. The forms rolled over the path with gnashes of teeth and guttural snarls.
Pulse thundering and arm throbbing, I scrambled to my feet. More of the shadowy creatures raced toward me, little more than denser streaks in the darkness and flashes of eyes. They seemed to weave through the night from all across the park—how many of them were there now? How could there be so many?
How could these creatures exist at all?
I had nowhere to go except the pond. Normally I wouldn’t consider stepping into stagnant water with an open wound that was just begging for an infection, but if these vicious things devoured me tonight, my suppressed immune system would be a moot point. Even if a normal gator had stopped by, I’d take my chances with it over the shadowy fiends.
I clutched my knife, more pain lancing through my forearm. I was just about to step backward into the shallow water in the hopes that the beasts wouldn’t follow me there when two more figures wavered into being between me and the oncoming horde.
One of the newcomers stood only a little taller than me. The other was a shape so hulking and bulky it made my breath stop in my lungs.
The first raised his hands toward the charging horde—hands that looked at least somewhat human to my straining eyes.
“You don’t want to do that,” he announced to the streaks of darkness in a curt, hollow-sounding voice. “Back off. She’s ours.”