Chapter Seven — The First Lie
Chapter Five — House Moretti
Vinny left just before dawn.
Avery listened to his footsteps disappear down the apartment stairwell while exhaustion
dragged heavily at her bones.
He always left before daylight.
Before the city fully woke.
Before people recognized the Moretti heir slumming through Lower Vein like he had a
death wish.
Maybe he did.
That thought haunted her long after he was gone.
The flowers remained on the windowsill beside her bed, dark petals glowing softly beneath
the weak green light bleeding through the smog outside.
Poison flowers in cracked glass.
Beautiful things surviving somewhere they shouldn’t.
Avery hated how much they reminded her of him.
She barely slept.
When morning finally crawled over Poison City, the ventilation alarms began screaming
again.
Another Breath shortage warning.
The metallic voice echoed through district speakers outside her apartment building.
“MANDATORY CONSERVATION PROTOCOLS IN EFFECT.”
“LOWER VEIN DISTRIBUTION REDUCED TO TIER THREE ACCESS.”
“REPORT UNREGISTERED CONTAMINANTS TO LOCAL HOUSE AUTHORITIES.”
Avery closed her eyes briefly.
Contaminants.
Always contaminants.
She pulled gloves back on automatically before leaving the apartment.
The city looked worse in daylight.
Night hid things.
Morning exposed them.
People lined the streets outside the district distribution center already, wrapped in heavy
coats and filtration scarves despite the humidity. Some clutched empty pill canisters.
Others held ration cards so worn the edges had nearly dissolved.
Everyone looked tired.
Everyone looked angry.
Most of them had the look too — the Lower Vein look she’d grown up around without
having a name for it. A slight tightness around the eyes. Breathing that was functional but
effortful, the body working at something that shouldn’t require work. Some had the chronic
cough that came from years of irregular supply, lungs that had been asked to manage too
much unfiltered air over too long. They weren’t dying. Not today. But the city was taking
decades from them on an installment plan and calling it a public health system.
Above the crowd, giant screens mounted across old skyscrapers flickered alive one by one.
The Moretti serpent appeared first.
Black scales curling around a cathedral spire.
Then Don Luciano Moretti’s face filled the screen.
Silver-haired.
Elegant.
Cold.
The kind of man who looked born untouched by suffering.
“Poison City endures because we endure together,” he said smoothly through the district
speakers.
Avery almost laughed.
The crowd around her looked ready to riot.
“House Moretti continues working tirelessly to stabilize Breath production following recent
lower-sector contamination events—”
A bottle shattered somewhere nearby.
Nobody reacted.
“—citizens are reminded that hoarding Breath or assisting registered biohazards is
punishable under city authority mandate.”
Biohazards.
Again.
Avery tugged her hood lower instinctively.
On-screen, Luciano Moretti continued speaking calmly while people below him struggled to
breathe.
The disconnect felt obscene.
“You know,” a man muttered beside Avery in line, “if the old bastard spent less money
polishing towers maybe our lungs wouldn’t collapse every winter.”
“Shut up,” another whispered immediately. “You trying to disappear?”
Fear spread faster than anger in Poison City.
It always had.
Avery finally reached the front checkpoint nearly an hour later.
The worker behind reinforced glass barely looked at her.
“District ID.”
Avery slid the worn card beneath the scanner.
The machine flashed yellow instantly.
REGISTERED HEALTH RISK.
The worker’s eyes finally lifted.
There it was.
Recognition.
Disgust hidden behind professionalism.
“You’re restricted to one strip this cycle,” he said flatly.
“One? That’s barely enough for three days.”
“Talk to the Houses.”
Easy for him to say.
Harder for the people suffocating.
Avery swallowed her anger and took the small Breath packet through the tray slot
carefully.
One strip.
Six pills total.
Pathetic.
She turned to leave—
Then froze.
Black armored vehicles rolled slowly down the avenue outside the distribution center.
Moretti security.
The crowd immediately parted.
People lowered their heads instinctively as doors opened and armed House enforcers
stepped into the street.
Polished black armor.
Silver serpent insignias.
Filtered masks covering half their faces.
Predators.
Avery moved backward automatically toward the edge of the crowd.
One of the enforcers dragged a coughing man from the sidewalk by his collar.
“Please,” the man rasped. “I paid already—”
“Counterfeit ration tags,” the enforcer replied calmly.
The man looked barely old enough to shave.
Terrified.
Desperate.
Already sick from what came from too many days between allocations — the cough wet in
his chest, his breathing audible from where Avery stood, his body visibly working harder
than it should have been for a man his age.
“Please.”
The enforcer shot him anyway.
Once.
Directly through the chest.
The sound echoed brutally through the avenue.
Nobody screamed.
Nobody moved.
The body collapsed hard against rain-slick pavement while blood mixed slowly with runoff
beneath the green district lights.
Avery stopped breathing.
The enforcer looked calmly toward the crowd.
“House Moretti protects compliant citizens,” he announced mechanically.
Silence.
Pure silence.
Then the convoy continued moving.
Like nothing happened.
Avery’s stomach twisted violently.
This was Vinny’s family.
These were the people waiting for him every time he returned home.
That thought unsettled her more deeply than she wanted to admit.
Because Vinny wasn’t like them.
But poison spread.
And eventually everything touched by it changed.
Vinny showed up after midnight covered in blood that wasn’t his.
Avery opened the apartment door and immediately froze.
Not because of the blood.
Because of the look on his face.
Exhaustion sat beneath his skin like bruising tonight. His dark curls were damp from rain
again, jaw shadowed with stubble he normally kept trimmed, expensive black coat hanging
open like he’d stopped caring how he appeared hours ago.
Still beautiful.
Still dangerous.
Still terrifyingly alive.
“What happened?” Avery asked immediately.
Vinny glanced down at himself like he’d forgotten the blood existed.
“Oh.” He shrugged lightly. “Family dinner.”
“That isn’t funny anymore.”
“Wasn’t trying to be funny.”
Which somehow felt worse.
Avery stepped aside wordlessly.
Vinny entered the apartment slowly, shoulders tense in a way she rarely saw around her.
Usually he shed the city outside the moment he crossed her doorway.
Tonight it followed him in.
He stopped near the window, staring silently at the poisonous skyline beyond the glass.
Green fog drifted between cathedral towers in the distance while giant filtration vents
pulsed silver light through the smog overhead like artificial moons.
Poison City breathing.
Or suffocating.
Sometimes Avery couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“You’re bleeding through your shirt,” she said quietly.
“Not mine.”
“That also isn’t reassuring.”
Vinny exhaled softly through his nose.
Then:
“Do you want to see something beautiful?”
Avery blinked.
“What?”
“Come with me.”
“Vinny—”
“Please.”
The word stopped her.
Not because he sounded desperate.
Because he sounded tired.
Deeply tired.
Like something inside him was unraveling quietly beneath the surface.
Avery hesitated too long before finally grabbing her coat.
They traveled through the city mostly in silence.
Vinny avoided the major transit paths tonight, guiding her instead through abandoned rail
tunnels and narrow service bridges suspended high between ruined buildings. Rain had
finally stopped, leaving Poison City slick and gleaming beneath endless toxic haze.
The higher they climbed, the cleaner the air became.
Not clean.
Never clean.
But less rotten.
Less desperate.
Avery realized where they were heading only when cathedral spires finally emerged fully
through the fog.
Her stomach tightened immediately.
“No.”
Vinny glanced back.
“No?”
“You brought me to Cathedral District?”
“You say that like I’m taking you to execution.”
“This is worse.”
“Dramatic.”
“Vinny.”
The Cathedral District rose above Poison City like a graveyard pretending to be holy.
Massive gothic towers stretched endlessly into the smog, connected by suspended bridges
lined with candlelight and stained-glass ventilation chambers glowing poisonous gold from
within. Religious statues watched from rooftops blackened by decades of chemical rain
while incense smoke curled through filtration vents to hide the scent of decay beneath.
The rich worshipped here.
So did the dying.
Sometimes they were the same people.
“You shouldn’t even be seen with me here,” Avery muttered.
Vinny smirked slightly while leading her through a narrow archway.
“I’m seen with worse people regularly.”
“That was almost sweet.”
“It was definitely sweet.”
Avery rolled her eyes but stayed close behind him anyway.
The district felt wrong after Lower Vein.
Too quiet.
Too polished.
People here wore filtered silk masks decorated with silver embroidery while cathedral
bells echoed softly somewhere far overhead. Even the guards looked expensive.
Nobody looked hungry.
Avery hated it instantly.
Vinny noticed her expression.
“You’re glaring at architecture now.”
“The buildings feel judgmental.”
“That’s religion for you.”
Despite herself, Avery snorted softly.
Vinny smiled immediately at the sound.
Always watching for tiny victories.
He finally stopped beneath an enormous shattered rose window overlooking the lower city.
Avery stepped beside him slowly—
Then forgot how to breathe.
Poison City stretched endlessly beneath them.
Not just Lower Vein.
All of it.
Tower districts glowing silver through the fog.
Collapsed neighborhoods swallowed by darkness.
Green ventilation lines cutting across the city like glowing veins beneath dying skin.
Beautiful.
Horrifying.
Alive.
From up here the city looked less like civilization and more like a wounded organism