3. Vesper
VESPER
We lose them in the chaos quickly. People are scrambling for the fruit we toss into the street and the Union can’t get through the crazed desperation fast enough to follow. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t still in danger. It actually makes things worse.
The Black Spur Union has eyes everywhere and Orion is a slippery fucker. He’s going to be downright obsessive over my location. I’d challenged him in front of everyone, his people, the people he rules over. He won’t take that lightly. He won’t allow it to slide this time.
“He’s gonna have every fucking gang after us,” I groan, tipping my head back against the cracked wall behind me. My lungs burn from more than just the toxic air now as my breaths saw in and out of my chest.
Dox snorts. “Yeah, well . . . one of us made the decision to challenge the fucker and it wasn’t me.” She meets my eyes. “I told you it was a bad idea to sleep with him, but noooo. You like bad boys.”
I roll my eyes. “You act like Trig isn’t also part of a rival gang.”
“Everyone is these days,” she shrugs. “But he’s not the leader.”
We hadn’t stopped for hours, running until we were out of breath, pausing long enough to catch it, before running again.
We made it to twenty-one before Dox suggested we stop to actually rest. Then again, we had to slow down anyways.
Twenty-one hasn’t been truly habitable in as long as I can remember.
Around us, tall buildings are crumbling, some of them leaning against each other, some of them downed entirely.
In one part of the district, it looks like something big struck it, leaving a crater behind with all the damage.
There isn’t much here. Anything of worth has been picked clean by the Spine Jackers long ago, but it’s shelter at least.
And we have a bag of fruit.
“They’re gonna be pissed that they paid us this haul and didn’t get what we promised,” Dox says as she digs out an apple and tosses it my way.
I catch it, holding it to me like it’s fragile.
I suppose it is. There’s a bruise where it must have banged against one of the other fruits in the backpack as we ran, but damn if I care.
I’ll eat every bite of it. I know I’ll be sucking on it at the very least until I finally crack and eat the core, too, only leaving behind the withered seeds.
If we weren’t on the run, I’d try to plant them, but I never had a green thumb.
They likely wouldn’t grow even if I did.
“Yeah, they will be,” Dox nods. “They’ll find us, too. If we go anywhere there are people. And we can’t live in the abandoned districts forever.”
I look around. “I don’t know. It’s not half bad. It’s quiet.”
The silence that echoes around us is eerie.
But while there’s not the normal overcrowded hustle of people, there are still sounds that echo out every now and then.
Metal grinding and settling. The sound of some sort of small creature scrambling over stone.
The gentle rasp of a Breather who’d come here to die rattling out their last breath.
It all makes it creepier, but I don’t want Dox to know that.
She levels me with her gaze and points behind her.
We’re leaning against a building now. It hadn’t seemed wise to enter it on account of how damaged it is.
I certainly don’t need the floors to collapse down on us.
I’ve seen what happens when a building falls.
The people inside don’t often make it out alive.
There’s only so much human hands can lift to dig you out.
But that isn’t what Dox is pointing at. She pointing at the remnants of an archway, the pieces sort of scattered, but still together enough to see the arch that once stood.
It’s made up of old bits and pieces, metal and machines, like someone stacked them up in some intricate pattern. Problem is, no hands made that.
“What about it?” I ask. “It’s an old Harrow Gate.”
Dox tips her head back and closes her eyes.
With the buildings leaning here, more of the heat gets through, which is the main reason we can’t live here.
We’re both sweating just from sitting here, cooking beneath the red star.
The heat is unbearable, making the air in front of us writhe with it.
We’re gonna have to figure something else out.
“I’m tired of this heat,” Dox murmurs, her voice thick. “This suffocating air. I’m tired of fighting to survive like rats.” She opens her eyes and meets mine. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” I reply, looking up at the red sky. “But that’s just life right—”
“We can do something about it,” Dox interrupts. “Now, we have more reason than ever.”
The sigh that peels from my lips carries all the weight of the conversations we’d had before. “The Harrow is dangerous.”
“So is Dross,” Dox rasps before gesturing at the crumbling city. “Look around, Hyena. We fight for our lives every single day. Why not at least make that fight worth it?”
I sit up and point at her. “That’s the propaganda talking.”
“Yeah, but it ain’t wrong.” She shakes her head. “We could fight for something better. Hell, we could make those assholes up top pay for doing this shit to us in the first place.” When I still hesitate, she touches her hand to mine. “I know you wanna make him pay, Ves.”
She has a point. If we were ever going to go through those gates, I’d want to make the ones in Luxe pay for what they’ve done to us, for how they treat us, for the scraps they magnanimously toss our way.
I’d like to murder the person who invented the Harrow Bars, the disgusting granola anything but appetizing.
But mostly, I’d like to look the man in the eyes that tossed my mother into Dross and condemned her to die here.
I’d really like to stab him right between those eyes when he offers an explanation that’s not good enough.
My fingers clench together. It’s a bad idea.
The Harrow isn’t an easy place to survive.
Of all the people that enter, they say only ten percent make it out alive.
But Dox is right. We can’t stay here in Dross anymore.
I’d just shit the bed in a big way. Orion will never stop now, not until he’s dead, and we don’t have the power to fight a whole gang here.
We’re resourceful, sure. But against the most powerful gang in all of Dross?
Probably not. We’ll make it a month, tops. We really don’t have much of a choice.
I sigh, looking down at my hands where they’re covered in the sticky juice of the apple.
I’m tempted to start licking them clean and after I take a second to think about it, I do just that.
My tongue runs over my fingers as I continue the conversation.
“We don’t even know where the Harrow Gates will open this time—”
“We’re within the five kilometers prediction right now.”
I narrow my eyes on her. “Let me guess. You’ve been tracking it?”
She grins sheepishly. “I paid an Astronomer.”
“With what?” I ask, frowning. Astronomers are expensive. Like, this whole basket of fruit expensive. There’s no way Dox has had that kind of equity saved up—
My eyes fall to her throat and widen.
I have my mother’s journal. Dox though? She had her mother’s golden necklace. An heirloom she’d had to fight to keep over the years. Shit, we’ve fought at least a dozen fights over someone trying to take it from her. But now? Her throat is bare. The necklace is gone.
“Oh, Dox,” I say, my chest tightening. I’m not sure I could have ever done it, parted with my mother’s journal. So, I know it must have hurt to hand that necklace over.
“See,” Dox said softly. “You have to do it now. To make the sacrifice worth it.” My breath rattles out of my chest. “What reason is there to stay?” Dox asks, thinking my sigh is hesitation. “You’re my only reason, Hyena. So come with me. Cause I know I’m you’re only reason, too.”
I stare at her, my head tipped back against the wall.
I could say no. We could try to survive here in this horrible fucking place, live like rats worse than we ever have.
We’d worked for years to get that apartment we’d had, and now, in a single day, we lost it all.
We won’t survive in the districts, not while the Black Spur Union is looking for us, and they’ll make sure no one ever hires us again.
We really don’t have a fucking choice, and Dox knows that.
Still, she gives me the chance to decline, to refuse to go into the Harrow where our chances of dying are ninety percent.
But it’s one hundred percent if we stay in Dross.
“What day—”
“Tomorrow,” she answers excitedly, as if she’d been waiting for my confirmation. “Sometime tomorrow. It’ll be open for about an hour supposedly.”
I lift my head and grab an orange. “You got a guess closer than five kilometers?”
She grins. “I may or may not have a meeting with my Astronomer in a few hours, just over in district twenty.” She holds up an orange.
“I think he’ll be swayed to give me better information this go around.
” But then she grabs my hand and squeezes it tight.
“If anyone can make it through the Harrow, Ves, it’s us. You know that.”
“I do,” I tell her. I don’t say that neither one of us truly knows what’s in the Harrow. Neither one of us know which of the propaganda is true and which isn’t. We don’t even know if it’s possible to get into Luxe, or if the posters showing it are full of shit.
But we know it exists. And if it does, then we can find a way.
I squeeze her hand back. “There’s no one I’d rather almost die beside.”
Dox snorts. “Asshole.”
But she smiles as she peels the orange and hands me a slice.