—Willa.
Stupid. All of us. Willa was stupid to send this thing. I was stupid to not burn it as soon as it came. The fucking Colonia are stupid for not seeing it’s the key to my entire operation. I tear it up and put the pieces in my pocket.
The entry to my apartment is open. There, too, I find no traps, but the furniture’s been shifted. Cabinets opened. A few dishes broken. Someone made a sandwich and left half of it behind.
No one shit on my pillow, but the sheets are half off the bed.
When I reach the wall I chainsawed open, I pause. There are tracks in the plaster dust. Some are shoes. Some are bare feet. They’re irregular. All directions. Sliding and half-stepping.
Sarah’s suite is on the opposite side of the open wall.
More tracks. They’re dark in the sprinkling of plaster in front of the wall, and white as they tracked the dust away.
There’s nothing unexpected here, but I have a profound sense of unease.
I observe every cranny and crack without moving. I listen for any sound out of the ordinary. There’s something. Not the traffic outside. Not the heating unit. Not water whistling through the pipes. Not the door to the stairway, way out in the hall, swinging open. Not the footsteps of Connor and two men with strong stomachs.
“Stop!” I bark, palm up to them.
Through the doorway, they’re frozen at the apartment’s entry. I put a finger to my lips, close my eyes, and listen.
Not the traffic outside. Not the heating unit. Not water whistling through the pipes. Not the men breathing. Not my heart beating.
But a scratching.
I know this scuttling scrape-tapping.
From a warehouse in Newark. And the tunnels under the subway. I know it from the storage room where I kept Don DeLillo’s body to prove I was the one who did him—and thus the one who should fill the power vacuum left behind.
Crossing over the broken wall in a heightened state of awareness, I see the winding plaster trails are from bare feet, and I smell the blood. The white powder rat tracks fade and disappear like ghosts.
When I get to the bedroom, the scratch-scrape-tapping is as loud as crumpling paper, and on the bed, a sea of gray fur undulates like shaking sewage.
“Connor!”
When I shout, the rats scurry away toward me, over my shoes, down the hall behind me.
“Fuck, what?” One of the guys, surprised by the flow of rodents.
“Damn.” Connor. Right behind me, looking over my shoulder.
There’s a body on Sarah’s bed, arms and legs tied to all four corners, face eaten away.
Dafne.
Her skirt’s over her waist, and the space between her legs is covered in a blood-soaked bandage. I grab a balled-up pillowcase from the floor and approach her with it. Her mouth is open. Four front teeth missing. Bruises on her neck that are so fresh they’re barely visible. The rats have started shitting on her. I cover her face.
“They did this?” Connor asks.
“It wasn’t Santa Claus.”
One of the guys excuses himself to throw up. So much for strong stomachs.
“They hollowed her.” Conner indicates the bandage between her legs.
It’s funny to me how easy it is to forget that no matter what you’ve seen or experienced, there’s always a new horror.
I’ve spent years hearing about the details of “hollowing.” It’s why so few women run from the oppressive life inside the Colonia. The carrot that keeps them there—besides brainwashing from birth—is a stable life, the promise of a good family, a stipend when it’s needed, free fucking healthcare with their nutbag doctors.
Hollowing is the stick, and it’s a horror reserved for traitors like Dafne.
“Probably did it in their clinic,” Connor says. “Then brought her back here.”
“Why?” Gingerly, I pull the bandage away. “Why do it if they were going to kill her?”
The blood stopped clotting, so the bandage comes away easily, revealing a flat area, shorn of labia and clitoris.
Hollowed.
“And why bring her back here?” I put the bandage back and notice the dress isn’t blood-soaked.
It’s red.
“Because she’s a message,” Connor mutters. “We have to kill them. All of them.”
We will. Every last one of them. But the path between my brain and my mouth is broken as I trace the lines of the gown. Its plunging neckline. The mass of red fabric gathered above the knees.
It’s Sarah’s dress from Armistice Night.
“Those fuckers,” I whisper.
Connor’s right. This is a message, and we have to kill all of them.
“Bury her proper first.” Connor. Sensible. Practical.
What they did to Dafne is reason enough to slaughter them.
The message they’re sending about Sarah…
“Those. Fucking. Mother. Fuckers!”
… is the blinding fire that’s going to burn this city.
“Dario?” Connor. Curious. Scared.
“Get me one of them.”
This is what they do to traitors.
“Who?”
Connor is red. This room is red. This building is red. The earth it’s built on is a smoldering pile of red so black, it’s white.
“Bring me a Colonia. A driver. A soldier. A fucking janitor. Get me a living body with a dick I can rip off. Do it!”
My voice is thunder. I draw it from the depths of the earth, where my need to protect Sarah sits uncomfortably with my horror.
CHAPTER 25
SARAH
The subway looks exactly like I thought it would. The stark lighting that’s somehow bright and dim at the same time. Posters advertising things in bright colors or plain black and white that catches the eye. But the track-rattling, horn-hooting, brake-squeaking is louder than I expected. Some people have voices that carry across the length of the entire car, but most voices fade into the forest of sounds.
“I didn’t think I could ever miss this,” Willa says as we’re jerked back by a sudden acceleration. Everyone in the car sways.
I tighten my grip on the pole to keep from falling. I feel a tap on my shoulder. A skinny man with brown skin and a goatee gets up from his seat and points toward it. I look at Willa.
“He’s giving you his seat.” She smiles at the man. “Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you,” I add, sitting between two passengers.
He nods and leans against the door, reading a magazine. Willa stands in front of me.
“Is that normal?” I ask.
“Sometimes.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Because you almost fell on your ass.” She chuckles. “And maybe being a woman has something to do with it. You never know.”
I can’t tell if he cares about me or not, but he’s not some outside demon Grandma was convinced would rape and murder me as soon as look at me.
“Can I ask him?”
“Oh, Lord, girl. Leave the man alone.”
She’s not afraid of him. That much I can tell.
The conductor rattles off something I can’t understand, and commuters gather their things and stand. Placements shuffle. Willa gets a seat next to me and tells me how to read a horizontal poster with a red line across it. It’s a map apparently, and like everything else I’ve learned today, it’s brutally simple once you know how it works.