SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (4 page)

There are no philanthropists here. No charity, no compassion, only merchants and consumers, and Silver knows precisely what to expect. For a time, she and her fellow Hunters ran a pit fight ring in the back room of a seedy little Fringe District bar.

A butcher shop.          

A place where Chimera are starved for days before being let loose in a ring and provoked to fight it out with others of their kind, in front of an audience. Bets are taken on the outcome, and the Hunters who bring in the animals are given a commission or free merchandise—whichever they prefer.

Making her way through streets of cracked tarmac, between rows of crumbling Old World buildings, Silver becomes aware of her own audience. Eyes watch her from windows and doorways, fascinated by the new arrival.

Her face may look familiar to some, but the lack of a Hunter Division uniform has many residents confused. No Hunter in their right mind would dare step foot in this District without wearing their emblems. The emblems command respect, even here. The Fringers rely on the Hunters, and vice versa. Police Division Agents fare less well, but only because it’s their job to patrol the District and punish those caught violating the terms of their banishment.

See, Omega will give you three chances. If you keep to yourself and don’t cause a fuss, you can live out your whole life here. You can meet someone, have a family, and raise your little ones in squalor and poverty. No controlled healthcare, no education system, just curbside lessons in how not to get yourself killed. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than dead, which is what you will be if you start dabbling in anything deemed overtly ‘subversive’ by Omega.

This includes—but is not limited to—the manufacture of explosives, trading in high velocity weapons, murder, theft, cannibalism, and not paying your bills on time. Apparently, rape is okay; it’s never been on the list.

If you’re arrested more than three times, you’ll be immediately enforced.

Say goodnight.

Your time is up.

No trial, no sentencing, simply taken to the enforcement bay and shot, like a rabid dog. A corpse on the street with a self-inflicted gunshot wound through his mouth, severing his brain stem, is a reminder to Silver of the only other way out of the Fringe District.

Suicide.

This man didn’t even wait it out. Banishment papers still in his hand, he didn’t even make it past the first block before he gave up on whatever dismal future he had left. Crouching beside his body, Silver reaches for the banishment papers.

Corporate fraud.

He looks like a banker, and Silver isn’t surprised; he wouldn’t have survived a day here anyway. Tossing the papers back onto the ground, she notices his left wrist—slit open. Fresh stitches have been ripped apart, and his prison tag removed.

Rippers.

The black market for these ‘borrowed’ tags is huge business, and Rippers find themselves in constant demand. Fringers with three strikes on their record, and a warrant out for their arrest and enforcement, will pay any price for a clean tag.

Silver hesitates before she checks the man’s pockets.

Nothing.

“You’re too late,” a voice growls at her from the street, laughing. “He was picked apart before he even hit the ground.”

Silver looks up to find she’s no longer alone. Whether it’s the lack of emblems or the dripping bandage around her wrist, the locals seem to have realized her altered status here. Having just caught her attempting to rob a corpse, their suspicions have been validated.

The voice belongs to a man in his mid-thirties, dirty and reeking of something rotten. He’s missing several teeth, and his pants are at least three inches too short. None of that, though, is as disturbing as the bloodstained butcher knife in his right hand.

Standing straight up, Silver matches his height and satisfies herself that he’s not much of a threat. He’s lean, weighing no more than a hundred and fifty-five pounds. Her five-ten frame has ten pounds of extra muscle on him and she has a gun, if she even needs it.  

Bursting her personal bubble of space, he squares right up to her, the stench of him almost making her eyes water.

“Hunter?” he asks for clarification.

“Not anymore.”

He pokes the tip of his butcher knife against her bandaged wrist, assuring himself of the facts.

“One of us, then,” he determines, with a cruel grin. “Nothing so special about you now.”

His attempt to provoke her fails, and she answers him in calm monotone.

“Believe me, there never was.”

Silence drifts in between them as he casts his eyes up and down her, rolling his discolored tongue over his lower lip. It’s slightly purple, and covered in a thick yellowy slime; a symptom of some chronic illness, no doubt.

Rape, Silver remembers, is not on the list.

“Don’t even think about it, asshole,” she warns him. “I may not wear the emblems anymore, but I’ve spent my entire life killing things. Adding a lousy little prick like you to the list would be no big deal.”

Though he doesn’t seem fazed by her threat, he takes a step back. Emblems or not, he knows better than to try and screw with a trained killer. He understands his place in this world, and is acutely aware that his survival depends upon making allies out of muscle like hers, and not forging yet more enemies.

Which is just as well, since Silver’s threat was nothing more than a well-sold bluff. She doesn’t kill humans. Hunters kill monsters to
protect
humans, and she’d never be able to pull the trigger on her own kind.

Giving her more space, the scummy Fringer backs away.

“Move on, then, Hunter.” He takes a step closer to the banker’s corpse, placing himself between it and Silver. “Find your own dinner.”

Silver opens her mouth to question him, but doesn’t get the chance to speak before he slams the butcher knife down into the chest of the corpse, tearing open a deep gash and cracking apart the ribs with his bare hands.

Mmm, dinner.

Silver suppresses her gag reflex and begins to move away, wanting no part in the twisted butchery about to take place. Chimera will eat their own kind if hunger drives them to it, but for a human to do the same …

It destroys Silver’s perfect view of the divide between human and animal, and she finds it deeply disturbing.

An hour or so later, after winding through alley ways and streets cluttered with debris and human filth, Silver finds herself facing a theatre. She’s been here before, though it’s been a while. All that secures the front entrance is a padlock, and she’s surprised to find it still intact. Looters have moved through this way before, countless times, and there’s nothing of value left here. Perhaps they sense that, so they leave well enough alone. Perhaps they recognize the Ella Cross
 etched onto the door, and they’d rather keep their distance.

The Fringe District is filled with runic code; a pictographic language used to convey simple messages to one another, without drawing the attention of the Police Division. A sign on a doorway, such as this, marks territory—and Silver’s no stranger to the District. Some Fringers will already be aware of her unique mark and should, therefore, have the good sense to keep their hands to themselves … or stand to face the consequences of their meddling.

She lets herself inside and bolts the door behind her. Without working electricity, this portion of the theatre, with its boarded up windows, is pitch black. Stumbling over rubble and litter, Silver makes her way toward the staircase and ascends to the first floor. Here, an old function room lies in tatters.

Bar stools are broken and discarded left, right and centre, and the bar itself is a shambles of shattered glass and empty bottles. A rat scurries past her toward the ‘kitchen’; a mess of battered appliances half beaten to shit.

Another staircase takes her further upward, toward a self-contained apartment above the theatre. She tries the handle and finds it locked, just as she’d left it. Digging in her back pocket she pulls out a key and turns it in the lock, jiggling it and wiggling it, until the rusty mechanism finally releases with a satisfying click and a snap.

Stepping inside, she barely has time to register anything about the room at all.

Smash!

An Old World vase crashes into the wall beside her head and explodes into a hundred tiny pieces of shrapnel.

Moments later, a metal fork.

Four steel prongs hit the wall at full speed and dig at least a centimeter into the crumbling drywall.

“What the … ?”

Silver turns into the room just in time to see a pillow, infested with rat feces and urine, flying toward her face. She deflects that with a swift right hand and throws it down onto the floor.

“Stop!” she yells, before any other missiles can be aimed in her direction.   

On the other side of the room, a petite and frail-looking woman backs herself away from Silver. Anorexically thin, the woman weighs no more than eighty-five pounds when she should easily weigh about forty more. Barefoot, she seems not to notice the sharp debris beneath her feet.

Atop skinny legs, a pillow case is torn lengthways and wrapped around her waist, fastened there with an old piece of rope. Her upper body is bare, except for a thick leather jacket, lined with Kevlar.

Silver’s jacket.

Embroidered on the breast pocket is her Hunter Division name and rank and, of course, the Omega emblems.

The woman is shivering and frightened. Her naturally platinum blonde hair is covered with dirt and leaves, matted almost into dreadlocks. Unable to control her shaking hands, she pulls the jacket—her only comfort—tight around herself, keeping her small breasts concealed.

Her mouth is covered in blood; fresh blood, dripping down her chin. At first, Silver is concerned. Is she hurt?

“What the hell happened?”

She doesn’t need to wait for an answer—it’s not the woman’s blood.

There’s a dead crow on the bed.

Mutilated beyond almost all recognition, the crow’s wings have been pulled off and its head is almost completely severed. Feathers are scattered everywhere, ripped from its flesh by eager fingers and teeth, tearing open the belly to consume the meat inside.

“Oh, fuck …” For the second time today, Silver suppresses a sudden urge to vomit. “It’s weird to say, but this is only the second most disturbing thing I’ve seen since I got here.”

The woman shrugs. “I was hungry.”

Silver didn’t expect that. Suddenly, the woman who’s never said a word not only understands English, but knows how to speak it.

“What did you say?”

The woman takes another step back, suddenly wary.