Gut-wrenching sadness overwhelmed Zuri as she walked along the canal away from the three bodies lying in puddles of blood and water. The barrage of rain had subsided, now replaced by a strange mist of drizzle that was impossibly occupying every shred of space in the air.

“What have I done?” she whimpered, voice cracking, tears rolling.

For two months, she had been seeing Jude, walking through the city with him, laughing and playing carelessly. They had been the best times of her life. Yes, he was naïve. He was away in the clouds, a dreamer. But that was what made him so endearing. A bright light in her cynical, bleak world. He was her hope.

For as long as she could remember, she had been miserable. Free but captive. Like a tiger in a zoo. Her mother used to take her to the zoo before The Panic, and they would watch the tiger together, awestruck. Regal and stoic, prowling her massive pen. Only looking back, it wasn’t so massive at all. It was small and it confined the tiger, stifled her, and pacified her. Zuri was a tiger. Locked in Dawson’s Shanty. Free to roam its confines as a queen, but never to escape and never to take back her wild heart.

Ever since her mother had passed away, her confinement had felt infinitely worse. It would be one year this month that she’d been alone, locked away without her. Though, at least, she was free of her mother's vile husband. There was little love between Zuri and Dawson. He had been an absent father at the best of times and aggressive, intimidating, and controlling at the worst. The passing of her mother hardened him further, and Zuri had been the one to suffer. He became possessive and made her feel like a pawn or a plaything rather than a daughter. God forbid a rival shanty owner got hold of her – Arnero, or maybe Little Caesar at the Apollo Fighting Pits. They might hold some leverage over him then, and that would be bad for business.

An on-and-off war between him and Arnero had made her life impossible to enjoy, and she’d been unable to leave the dark and lonely shanty for as long as she could remember. The only joy she had was looking out of the windows, imagining herself walking free. Or she’d stare out at the tall buildings in the skyline and imagine herself working in one of them. In a suit with one of those mobile phones that the ladies in the old magazines held like some priceless treasure.

Fortunately, the war had come to a tentative end late last year. The two Shanty Lords reached an agreement that they would remain on their own turf when pushing Croc. Still, it had taken months of begging before Dawson allowed her to leave, and only then with Jenko and two guards as her shadow. Now the tiger roamed outside her pen, but with neck collared and freedom leashed.

Then Jude appeared. The boy who personified freedom. Running and twirling, loosing arrows and hunting hand to mouth. He intrigued her beyond her control. He besotted her with the idea that she could live this way, that she could run and run and never look back.

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A week later was her eighteenth birthday, and she had demanded her freedom. Reluctantly, he agreed. Whether he'd been worn down with her irritating persistence or his guilty conscience, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. Now the tiger was out of her pen, no zookeeper holding her leash. Yes, she knew tigers didn’t adhere to curfews, but she would try to ignore that and enjoy her first slice of true freedom.

Now all her begging and pleading had counted for nothing. She was on her way home, way after dark and without Jude. Her dad would never let her see daylight again, and Jude was in grave danger. That’s what he gets for loving a caged tiger. She scoffed. Only her dad could hunt down and execute a boy for being late. He’d be face down in the corpse marshes come this time tomorrow. Her heart began to flutter and spin. He’d have the sense to run, surely he would. But no, she didn’t believe that. The boy’s a dreamer, an optimist to his detriment. He’d be as likely to turn up at Dawson’s of his own will as he would to run away.

“Stupid boy!”

The tears poured, lost in the rain. She had planned to ask him to run away with her. They could leave the city, sneak through the perimeter guard, and never look back. Sure, everyone had heard the stories of the wild country, the outlands. Marauding cannibals. Roaming packs of starving dogs. The Roadmen plaguing the deserted motorways. All stories to keep people from dreaming – to keep tigers caged, she was sure.

It would have been an adventure, the two of them running away. He’d hunt their meals with his bow. She’d prepare the fires and lead the way. Perhaps they’d find an abandoned cottage in the depths of nowhere and call it home. She cursed herself for her temper, though she couldn’t help but hold on to her feelings towards the Crocheads. They were devious reptiles who would sell their soul, rob, murder, pillage, anything – just for a pin of Croc.

On she walked, sadness and anger battling away for centre stage in her theatre of tragic thoughts. Suddenly, she was aware of footsteps behind her, though she dared not look back. Her stride lengthened and pace quickened, she pulled up her hood against the drizzle and pushed on.

The footsteps matched her splash for splash in the puddled cobbles. The rumble of a distant engine seemed to draw closer and closer. A blur of black zipped past on her left as she drew level with an alleyway. Something was off. She could sense it. Breaking into a run, she powered along the canal, flashes of black mirroring her. Every time she passed an entry into an alleyway, it was there. She was being paralleled.

As she reached the end of the road, the screech of tyres deafened her. White spotlights blasted her in the eyes. A shadowed shape loomed over her. Smoke and fumes in the air, thick and black. She tasted the smog in her throat. A truck boxed her in.

“What’s happening?” Her voice broke as panic set in. The truck rolled towards her, its growl low and aggressive. The lights blinded her sick and dizzy. She turned with a flash to the left to make a break for an alleyway, when a hulking figure burst from the darkness and crunched into her, spinning her to the floor. Her head rattled against the ground, and she battled confusion when she tried to stand, the lights and noise compounding it. The hulking figure closed in on her. She opened her mouth to plead, and then – a whoosh of air followed by blackness. A canvass bag pulled over her head, powerful arms locking it in place. She struggled for breath, panic mounting, her precious air wasting away. Her strength waned, and her flailing arms dropped to her side as she gasped and gurgled for breath, folding limp into her captor's clutch.