A dark blue sky. A blue-black sky. A bruised sky on the night of a battle. It’s a blanket over the children. They sit outside on the paved steps outside the old school building, throwing small bits of rubble over the fence. They're trying to hit the broken bottles on the other side because they like the sound when it breaks.

“Aren’t you going to throw?” Catalyst asks Forge.

“He’s watching you,” says Aster.

“How are you gonna learn by watching me? You gotta do it.”

Aster hits a piece of glass, but it doesn’t break.

“You need to throw it higher.”

Eukary throws a rock through the links of the fence and shatters a whole bottle. She throws another, but this one doesn’t make it through the fence.

Ishtar tried, but she just hits dirt.

“Do you hear that?” asks Catalyst. They hear sirens. They’re quiet at first, faint and in the distance, but they get louder over time.

“Who cares?” says Ishtar. She throws a rock. It hits some glass, but just a flat piece. The rock glances off.

“This is stupid,” she says, standing. She skips down the stairs and stops, looking at the fence. Ten thousand volts, the adults warned. They all seem preoccupied with fences, doors and locks. And bells. They like bells too, except for at night. And they all tell Ishtar not to let men from outside the shelter get close to her. They make comments that fail to hide what they’re talking about; her breasts, her butt, her legs. She has a more womanly shape than the other girls, the women say. “You’ve matured at a younger age,” the men say. They’re obsessed, and it makes her wonder if the men outside are actually any worse? But then she thinks about how uncomfortable the adults at the shelter are when they talk to her about it, so she thinks they’re probably sincere, that it’s not the topic of her body that makes them uncomfortable, but what the men outside want to do to her because of how her body looks. It makes her hate her body. She wishes she looked long and scrappy like Eukary, or thin and bony like Aster. Or, maybe, it would be better if she didn’t have a body at all.

Catalyst keeps throwing rocks, and soon there’s only fragments of glass left, and those fragments cannot be broken by him or by rocks. He would have to cross the fence to break the fragments even smaller, but they warned him about the fence, that it would hurt to touch, so when he goes down the stairs and stands next to Ishtar, he can only get so close the touching the fence.

“We should go around,” says Aster.

“It’s too long,” says Eukary. She tests it with a stick. Nothing happens.

“It has to have an electric current for it to shock,” says Aster.

Eukary swings the stick hard, then swings it again. She looks around for a bigger stick to hit the fence with, and sees Forge, still sitting on the steps, watching. Catalyst yelps. Eukary turns around and sees him sitting on the ground. Aster is kneeling down by his side, afraid to touch him. Ishtar’s looking, curious. Aster touches Cat’s hand and he pushes her away. She cries. Ishtar steps a little closer. Eukary throws a rock between Ishtar and Aster, and Ishtar gets angry and throws a rock back. Eukary walks towards her.

“Stop it!” screams Aster. “He’s hurt. Get help.”

Cat’s hands are burned. He tested the fence. Do they trust the adults now?

Ishtar screams. There’s a man on the other side of the fence, and he’s looking at her. His eyes are hungry. She backs away, covering her breasts with her arms. She wishes she didn’t have breasts, or a body at all. More men are there now, further away, but they see Ms. Mandana with a revolver shaking in her hand. The men leave, and Ms. Mandana follows them. They help Catalyst back up the steps and sit near Forge. They sit and wait, and Aster is next to Catalyst who is quietly trying not to cry.

He stares at his hands and wonder why they’re burnt, who would do this to a child? Is that what children are for? All around him they’re hurting, working, dying. Is it only the strongest that survive? It’s what he’s seen in the dirt. Spiders eat ants. Unless the ants gather together, which they don’t do often enough. He wonders why they don’t gather together to kill more spiders, all the while watching the foreman and his guard.

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Now Aster is crying and she doesn’t know why.

They see Ms. Mandana pointing her revolver, but they don’t see who at.

Eukary looks down at a dead boy whose friends left behind. They didn’t realize he was in danger.

Catalyst’s hands are not in as much pain, so he goes to a puddle to cool them in the water, but the water is filled with blood and piss. He sits back down by Forge, who is quietly thinking.

“Who’s that?” asks Ishtar.

Ms. Mandana is standing a ways south. She’s talking to a tall man. He looks old, very old, and is angry. She keeps talking to him, pointing at the shelter, but he’s looking in every direction and waving his arms. He hits her. He hits her and she falls. She falls and he stoops over her, poking her like he’s checking to see if she’s alive. He’s very tall, so tall her whole head fits inside his palm. They can tell that she’s awake, but she looks too scared to move. The old man leans down to her face and screams at her, the stands and wanders around, crushing small things under his glossy black shoes. They notice then that while his suit is of a very fine make, it’s faded and frayed, and his shoes are glossy from the oily water he keeps sloshing through. If the puddle Cat almost cooled his hands in is any indicator, then the old man’s shoes are shiny from blood. His skin too is worn, hanging limp from chin and jowl.

The children are afraid, so they keep still. Eventually the old man wanders away, shouting at anything that moves and striking at things that don’t. Ms. Mandana waits a while after he’s gone from view, then comes to the children.

“I’m sorry you had to see that. Mr. Barrus has been through a great deal. His wife left him years ago, and she keeps visiting him, and he still hopes to win her back, even though she’s happy being single and just wants to be friends. It’s really very sad. He was very devoted to her, but some women are too damaged or too selfish to appreciate that.”

“It sounds like you love him, Ms. Mandana,” says Forge, suddenly vocal.

She blushes, and her red cheeks look redder in the bruised blue-black sky. The cold white of a streetlamp flickers over her feet, and her shadow blocks their view of yesterday.

Ishtar shudders.

Eukary is holding a bloodstained brick in her hand. Her knuckles are scarred, and she has a cut over her eye. Her lip is cut and swollen. Her knees are shredded. Her palms sting from flecks of pavement crushed so far into her skin they’re biting into bone.

Aster is crying and no one knows why.

Catalyst has the other children rallied now. He's one of the taller boys, and the smartest and meanest of the girls is infatuated with him. He puts his anger into his words, and later feels the trauma of having taken a life. He feels it several times over. After dealing with the adults, some of the younger children feel guilty and they threaten to call the guards and turn everyone in. Catalyst didn’t cry over killing the foreman. He cries after silencing the dissenters.

Mr. Hal took pity on them in another life, another world, and he took those children and he gave them special clothes to wear to keep their spirits warm. They were then indoctrinated slowly over a geologic hour.

“I don’t know Mr. Barrus well enough to love him,” Ms. Mandana says. “But I know him well enough to trust him. He’s the one who keeps the border safe.”

They see him again. Now he’s running and they’re afraid of him.

Ishtar screams. She was by the others on the steps, so why is she standing so close to the fence while a train of men pace back and forth on the other side.

Aster is crying and someone knows why.

Eukary is running from a group of boys.

The men are Isthar’s brothers, so why do they prowl the other side of the fence?

Forge is quiet, always watching.

Eukary is on the ground screaming, trying to stop the pain but she can’t find her knife. The first boy stole it before the others grabbed her by the arms. She’s looking at Ishtar now and thinking of a girl she knew, and wondering why it wasn’t her. She looked grown up like Ishtar does. Why didn’t the boys want her? Why did the adults only protect her while Eukary was left alone?

Catalyst is digging small graves.

Wolves are running after Ishtar’s brothers.

Mr. Barrus is taking off his clothes and screaming while he runs. He trips over a wheel hub and holds his ankle. He stands and dances. He is naked and shriveled and disgusting and he thinks he is robed and sitting on a throne.

Mr. Hal taught the children lessons about free speech, and then he taught them the virtues of war. They wait for the day he comes out of retirement to teach again.

Aster is crying and everyone knows why.

The wolves are close, but an angel wind sweeps them away and teases them for not simply walking through the fence.

Forge stands and runs to it. He goes to the wheel hub that tripped Mr. Barrus and brings it back, then he throws it at the fence, knocking down one of the thin posts holding it up. Sparks fly as the fence collapses to the ground, and Forge runs through it. The others follow, with the wolves and Ms. Netz and the whisperers and the embryonic ifreet who are still hidden and from somewhere a very old Shadow Child leaps for joy.

“Guys!” Reev and Ru shouted together.