Something soft against my back, soothing. I burrow into it. The familiar shapes of Ryz’s hut swim into place but I can’t raise my head.

“Shh.” Leela’s hand on my forehead. “You fainted. Take it slow.”

I groan because a freight train is making its way through my skull.

Leela pushes a glass into my hands. “Drink this.”

I take a sip of the bitter liquid and try to speak. “What was that? Who is she?”

“Her name is Emi,” Leela says, sitting back on her haunches. “New girl around here. She was captured in the Borderlands.”

“The Borderlands,” I say, my heart constricting. The no-person zone at the eastern edges of the country is high desert and baking heat, visc-hounds salivating across its desolate miles. Some migrants are killed on the spot. Others are taken to camps. A lucky few slip into the capital and disappear in the crowd. Emi is clearly not one of the lucky few.

“Hm,” Leela says with a grimace. “Hungry and desperate. Her powers clashed with yours in some way, maybe combined, and you couldn’t handle it.”

I shiver. Power amplifications are common but this has never happened to me before, the magnitude of what I felt, the girl’s presence almost inside me.

[12/16/22, 6:11 PM To be answered — the potion is aimed at changing people into host creatures but with some Kild, it starts malfunctioning and gives them mind-control abilities. Osiris will realize this and start using.]

“I’ll take you home,” Ryz says.

Summoning every ounce of strength, I get to my feet. “I’m fine now.”

“Why are you so stubborn?” Leela says. “Her head is a mess and she’s shy for some reason,” she tells Ryz.

I want to kick Leela. With both feet. If I had more than two feet, I would kick her with all of them.

“Kick me when you can stand without swaying. Ryz will drive you back in your car.”

“—don’t read my thoughts,” I mutter. It’s pointless. Leela has the obedience of an untrained chihuahua.

“But first—,” Leela says. “I heard the girl. She’s plotting something—I don’t know what, I couldn’t get that, but it’s not good. Speak to the chief, tell her to get her out of here.”

I stare at Leela, baffled. “You know it doesn’t work like that. They have raids. At specific times. And—,”

“You know I wanted to be a painter when I was a kid? I spent hours, covering paper with doodles and scribblings. I was quite good, I think. Who knows where I could have got, with the right training. One day, I stopped. Gone. The dream. Pfft.”

I have no idea where she is going with this.

“Emi is young. She still has a chance to become whatever she wants to be. Just speak to Eniad. I’m sure you can do it.”

Leela imagines all problems can be solved with a little determination and a strong pack of ganja. She underestimates Eniad who is famous across four zones of Trièste for being as strong-willed as the entire extinguished race of warlords she comes from.

There is silence in the car as we drive back. For some reason, Ryz is eyeing me like a rat someone left at his doorstep. I am confused, still unsteady, the girl’s energy a beast at my shoulder. The gates of my schufon have never looked as appealing.

He finally speaks as I’m getting out and his voice is a shard of ice “Whatever your problem is, don’t drag Leela into it.”

“She’s an informant,” I say. “It’s part of her job.”

“Your lack of control is not part of her job.”

Ignoring him, I climb the stairs to my apartment. As I wash up, my mind is on the girl. She was afraid. Her fear is what created the energy pulsing between us.

Strobe lights at a cafe flicker as a toddler bounces on the sand-colored couch, his face scrunched, mouthing half-formed words. The lights flicker. A hummingbird flits on the leaves of a plant nearby. Tingles scurry up my neck; strange energy in the vicinity. The source is a woman silhouetted at the door, nearly seven feet tall with arresting features and a beaklike nose. She is surveying the place. Black robes cover most of her body. Her features are foreign, bolder and stronger than most people in Trièste but I can’t place where she’s from. Two other women stride in behind her, similarly dressed. They could be sisters.

The Concilium will have a say in the control and manipulation of Kild impulses.

If a Kild is not able to control their powers, the Concilium may detain or imprison them.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Even after leaving service, a Kild may be called on at any time if there is an emergency where their powers are required.

They must adhere strictly to the list of jobs. For a full list, turn to page—.

I am trying to cram for the tests that will be part of my review. To win my freedom, I have to prove I know all the rules.

The women settle at the counter and one of them points upwards and laughs, a brassy sound. On the blackboard above the bar counter, scrawled in white chalk are the words: We believe that if we foster a culture of inclusivity, success and longevity will prevail. People like thinking of themselves as inclusive everywhere in Trièste. It’s part of the national image, a lie maintained despite the camps lining the eastern edges, the refugees in brothels. Neighboring countries like Omeira and Plieisa are closed-gate. At least we allow them in, some people say when the subject comes up.

The toddler has stopped bouncing and is beaming at me, cheeks flushed, hands reaching up. I ask his parents and pick him up, resting his solid warmth in my lap. It’s been a while since I touched anyone without feeling singed. Children are easy. Something about the kid reminds me of Emi again. I can’t get invested in every girl who looks pitiful. There are thousands of them in this city.

A screen in the center of the room is nattering on about the next time-spill and what we should do to prepare for it. 318 years left. Trièsti think of time-spills as neither good nor bad but as a force. Each time lasts 700 years. Knowing their progeny will only last about eight or nine generations, many choose not to procreate. We have a shortage of people so we don’t close the gates but there are opinions on who is desirable and who isn’t. People with certain genotypes aren’t wanted, nobody with disabilities, nobody outside productive age. Beings or entities from certain lands are banned. Visc-hounds, guards and the underground prisons make sure only the most desirable inhabit Raia, and the most grateful.

I turn my eyes back to the text and feel a sudden desire to give up. The Review is excruciating, I’ve heard. The tests take place behind closed doors and there are secrecy pledges that forbid anyone from revealing what they entail. I grind on.

On my way back to HQ, I run into Eniad standing outside the building, her eyes on a silver car [12/5/23, 9:00 PM Indicate later that it’s Osiris’s car] that’s pulling away. Something is different about her. She looks….emotional. It’s so unlike her that I almost stop in my tracks. Her expression shifts when she notices me. “What is it, Officer Sol?”

It’s probably the wrong time but I take the plunge anyway. “One of the girls in Sector 5. She’s Kild. She shouldn’t be there. We should draft her, seeing as she’s Kild.” It comes out in a rush. Not how I planned it. In the past year, Eniad has ensured safer working conditions for sex workers and closed 400 under-age windows but now her tone sharpens.

“You and I don’t have to like sex work. It’s irrelevant because there is a market. Is that what this is about? Are you being a prude?” A wave of ineffable negativity comes off her but I can’t place what it means. Eniad is practiced at blocking Kild powers.

“She could be useful to the force,” I say. “I saw her powers, felt them. They were—formidable.”

“Formidable?”

“Yes, telekinesis, levitation…and something else possibly. Something I felt.”

“I’ll have someone look into it. Maybe we’ll pick her up at the next raid.”

“She looked under-age,” I mumble despite the lack of encouragement. “I was thinking we could do it sooner. I could take care of it.”

“My. You’ve taken quite the interest.” Eniad snaps her fingers, “—speaking of Leela, I heard from our sources in Omeira. They’ve heard of this shape-shifting potion there too. Organize more raids. We have to smoke these pests out before it gets to the notice of the Concilium.”

“Yes chief. And the girl—,”

“Zaria. Forget about the girl. She’d be in a hound’s stomach if she wasn’t in the brothels. We can’t save everyone.”

I wish I could find some wellspring of courage. A brief urge to hit Eniad besets me. Mother always said I have a temper.

Eniad touches the pendant at her neck, a silver snake. Unlike my salamander, it is not embedded because nobody is allowed to track her movements. Regulars have certain privileges; they are not interfered with. They have bodily autonomy. Anger rises inside me at the thought. I tamp it down.

Disheartened, I head to the gym and do the float before the salamander buzzes. Leela’s panicked voice fills my head. Come now. Emi.

I get there to find chaos. The cold hits my face like a wet sheet. Inside her glass box, Emi is floating, dress flying, objects swirling around her head. A hair brush, a syringe, a scarf. Behind Emi, two men, the managers of the house, lie on the floor, unconscious or dead. The look on the girl’s face is exultant and frightened, full of disbelief at what she’s done. The undersides of her feet are sticky with blood. It rivers the floor.

Leela is watching, terrified. “She turned on them and injected them with the shots they came to give her. If they contained compliance drugs at Kild dosage, these guys will be out for a few days at least. I called you as soon as I heard what she was planning—,”

The noise in the air is louder today. A reckoning.

I am frozen, uncertain.

A man yells. “The little devil is going to escape!” Others are shouting too, excited, anxious to avert danger, to prevent trouble, to get involved or not; some schadenfreude mixed in. A woman on the sidewalk slaps her child in shock. He begins to cry. Kites circling overhead. The other girls of the house burst into the display window.

“They will kill her,” Leela says. “The owners of this brothel—,”

Emi is focusing on the chair now, moving it toward the window.

“What is she doing? The glass is unbreakable. Doesn’t she know that? Zaria, go in, stop her—,”

“I’d have to arrest her.”

“What?”

“I would have to arrest her. She’s assaulted those men, used her powers for harm. The punishment for that is—,” I can’t finish. Leela knows. Ten years or more in the Underground.

“So we just stand by?” Leela asks, her antennae whirring and frenetic but I have no time to answer because the wail of sirens assaults us. A van screeches. Four officers and a hound, its devilish face upturned. Storming the lock on the door of the brothel, they go in.

“No…oh no no no,” Leela whispers as they overpower Emi. One of them smashes her head into the floor. Her eyes hold a piteous terror so great, I can hardly breathe. The officers start tying Emi’s feet together. Tears on the girl’s face in rivulets. She looks up at me and our eyes lock. Something passes between us, what has passed before but more. Greater. Some knowledge or power or devastation. Something cracks. Like a dam or a held torrent. I don’t know why I do it. I raise my hand.

The officer holding Emi falls with a howl of confusion and rage. Only I can see the disc-shaped blister on his forehead. My aim never fails. Then, the glass shatters.

A crackling in my ears, a popping, heat, smoke, a balloon of it, thick and deep. I fall.