SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (6 page)

“We?” The woman looks up at her, hesitant.

“Or you’re free to fend for yourself, if you’d rather.” Silver looks down at the dead crow on the floor. “But that doesn’t seem like it was going too well.”

Someone’s stomach grumbles loudly, but neither of them is sure whose.

“Do you have food?” the woman hopes.

Silver shakes her head. “It’s on my list.”

She goes to leave, but the woman panics. Like a pet, fearing its owner may never again return, she leaps off the bed and bounds over an armchair in a single stride. At the doorway, she clutches onto Silver’s shirt.

“Where’re you going?”

Dumbstruck by this sudden display of athleticism, Silver struggles to formulate an answer. Chimera are fast. Their lack of common sense and tactical ability makes them a lousy predator, but they make up for their clumsy way of hunting with their brute strength and unbeatable speed. Despite their weight, they’re surprisingly agile. Now, imagine if their form were more streamlined. Lighter, perhaps. More … human.

Disturbed by her thoughts, Silver returns her mind to the more troublesome matter of her hunger.

“I have to find something for us to eat.”

“I’ll come with you.” Utterly desperate.

“No,” Silver shuts her down. “It’s pouring down rain and you’re …” She runs her eyes over the woman’s mostly naked self. “Not appropriately attired.”

Knowing Silver is right, the woman backs off.

“You’ll come back?”

As much as she wishes otherwise, Silver nods. “Victorious, I hope.”

She catches sight of a Hunter Division backpack in the corner of the room. Now empty, it once held a small store of food and water that she’d left there. These supplies had kept the naked woman alive all this time.

Silver had planned on frequent visits, hoping to learn more about the woman’s history. In particular, where she’s from and how she came to be naked in the middle of a war zone. Unfortunately, the Governor, Phaeden Rist, had other ideas. Just days after Silver had secreted her peculiar discovery away here, she’d been hauled into the detention corridor on charges of sexual misconduct.

After spending almost a month in a cell, she was put before the Banishment and Enforcement Council and sentenced.

That was this morning.

Silver snatches up the bag and leaves the apartment without even so much as a glance back over her shoulder. For the next three hours, she scours the Fringe streets. Sticking close by the butcher shops and the scummy Fringe bars, her hopes for finding a stray Chimera—escaped from the back room of a pit fight, or a guard animal cut loose—are quickly fading.

Now tired, as well as hungry, she can’t help but glance into the window of a meat shop as she passes by. It’s been hours, and she’s achieved nothing. Her survival depends upon her ability to fend for herself, and though she’s never stolen a single thing in her life, she’s surprised to find the thought already crossing her mind.

In seconds, she’s already mapped out an escape route. No stranger to physical exertion, she has military-grade stamina and an extensive catalogue of Olympian-quality precision gymnastic maneuvers at her disposal. Running at a wall, climbing up it and flipping herself over her own head to land perfectly back on her feet wouldn’t even be considered showing off—it’d just be the pre-show warm-up. She can dodge and dive and leap and tumble better and faster than the average Fringer, she’s sure. All she’d have to do is snatch herself a pound or two of meat and outrun the under-nourished, disease-ridden mob.

Another glance at the window and the prime steak dangling in the display has her salivating; it doesn’t even matter that it’s covered in flies. Beyond it, there’s a commotion and an exchange taking place amidst a crowd of people, each jostling to be the first in line. Forcing their way to the counter, two Hunters trade a fresh kill for an enormous bag of cannabis and make their exit with wide smiles and laughter, already reaching into their pockets for rolling papers and a lighter.

Carefree, just as she used to be.

Ducking back behind the corner of the building, Silver avoids being seen. She’s not ready for that—not yet. Not to be recognized by her peers or, worse, by the men who once served beneath her.

Once they’re at a safe distance, Silver emerges back into the street and slips inside the meat shop, its regular patrons all eagerly clamoring for the meat not yet sliced. Meat is kept in the back room, for obvious reasons. A single chunk of meat hangs in the window, speared on a meat hook, to let potential customers know the stock is available, albeit sight unseen. You take your turn and wait in line, and when your number’s up, you select a cut of meat from a list of options and name your weight.

Every part of the animal is for sale. Meat is everyone’s first choice, but if you’re too far back in the line you’ll never get a piece. Liver and kidneys are high in nutrients and come at a cheaper price. Brains can be boiled and eaten, and it doesn’t taste too bad if you ignore the rubbery texture and season it with plenty of salt. Eyeballs, tails and toes can all be thrown together to make soup. If you’re desperate, and plenty are, the intestines are also for sale.

Any fat not sold to the candle-makers is made into crackling and sold like candy. Sometimes the tails are even sold individually; they can be battered and fried and considered a delicacy. Tongue and heart are often sold together. Mashed up, they can be pummeled into patties and either fried or grilled. Most of the skin is sold to the tanneries, but any leftovers are cured and made into jerky.

The rest of the innards are ground up and made into sandwich paste. Bones are mostly traded to the local craftsmen who make all manner of cutlery and jewelry—anything that can be assigned a numerical value. Smaller bones are ground up and thrown into the meat pastes and combo-packs. The extra calcium is good for health but harsh on teeth, especially when there’s no licensed dentistry around.

Ideally, you want to be at the front of the line to get your pick of the offerings. After you’ve been charged accordingly and payment is approved, an armed and guarded stock boy will bring out your order. Wrapped in woven hemp cloth, tied up with a piece of Chimera tendon, it looks almost civilized.

There’s not much opportunity for thievery, but in the bustle and the madness of bartering and haggling over price, two rump steaks manage to find themselves abandoned on the countertop.

Silver thinks about it.

This is why she came here, after all.

Her heart pounding, a mental list of pros and cons begins to develop, but the lure of food is so strong she can find no downside great enough to outweigh the chance of a free meal. Not even the possibility of being beaten to death by an angry mob.

In any case, by the time she reaches for the meat, it’s already too late. Committed to the action, there’s no margin for error here. If she’s caught, even in the kerfuffle of the meat madness taking place before her, there will be no avoiding the consequences.

So focused is she on the two adults trying to keep order behind the counter, she doesn’t even notice the small child watching her from atop the broken vending machine by the doorway.

“Are you going to pay for that?” the little girl calls her out.

Silver freezes.

Should she run?

“Ma!” the girl screeches.

Silence.

Every pair of eyes in the room turns on Silver, and the large, toothless woman behind the counter thunders over to investigate.

She looks at Silver … and the meat … and back to Silver.

“New here, girl?”

Silver half nods, too scared to properly admit her fault. Instead, she opts for a shameful retraction of her attempted robbery and steps tentatively back up to the counter, laying the meat down carefully upon it. About to pull back her hands, the toothless woman doesn’t give her the chance. Before any objection can be made, the brutish woman’s chubby fingers are wrapped tightly around Silver’s left wrist, still aching from the earlier incision.

Silver bites her tongue, holding back a small squeal of discomfort.

She knows what will follow.

The woman pulls a portable device out of her apron pouch and waves it over Silver’s oozing wrist.

One second.

Two.

Silver closes her eyes and holds her breath, trying to recall the pre-planned escape route in her mind.

Three.

Four.

Then … beep!

Silver feels the grip on her wrist relax and she opens one eye to check.

The light on the device is green—not red.

A swell of relief.

Payment approved.

“There, was that so hard?” The toothless hag pushes the meat back across the counter toward Silver. “Now, get lost.”

Crisis averted, though Silver has no idea how, normality returns to the meat shop and the echoes of her pounding heart are drowned out in the cacophony of business once more. She shoves the meat into her backpack and skulks away, confused but thankful.

Rounding a street corner, eager to get away from the scene of her embarrassment, Silver spots a U-Check machine. Similar to an Old World bank machine, the U-Check allows you to scan your wrist to check your account balance—and Silver makes a beeline for it.

Shoving her wrist through the scan zone, she waits impatiently for the results to display on the cracked and stained screen. Under usual circumstances, any money in your personal account at the time of your banishment immediately becomes the property of Omega. It’s transferred into a government account, and added to the Governor’s annual budget.

A clerical error, perhaps?

The U-Check calculates her request for information …

… … …

The result, a balance of: 348.57.

Silver’s brow furrows into a frown. How can that be?

She selects ‘display transaction history’.

Most recently, a debit for 151.43—MacIntyre Meats.

Before that, a credit.

500.00.

Gabriel Maydevine.

She almost smiles.

Alone, but not forgotten.

“Thanks, Papa,” she whispers into the dark, night air.

Another stomach rumble.

She may have meat, but now she needs to find a way to cook it. As a teenager, she spent many nights out on the streets with her friends. In the dead of night, they would strike fire with the powder from a bullet and toast marshmallows over flaming trash cans.

Easy peasy.

There are trash cans in the theatre, she already knows that. All she needs is a catalyst and some fuel to keep the fire going once she gets a flame. Charcoal or dry wood works best, and there’s an ample supply of both here. A building burns to the ground here on an almost daily basis, and within just a few hundred yards, she finds one.

From the internal remains of what was once an old squat, she fills the rest of her backpack with as much charcoal and wood as she can—what little of it she can find that wasn’t touched by the recent rainfall. Already adding to her knowledge of the intricate layout of the Fringe streets, she locates a shortcut back to the theatre and wastes no time in rolling another trash can out from behind the stage.

In doing so, she knocks over a stack of old books.