--XXX--

I was still occasionally coughing from the lingering effects of whatever spray was in that canister thingy.

I refused to show up at the interrogation. I wanted no part of it.

Tiana Ambervi waved at me, from across the road, her glasses gleaming back the gray silver of the Overwoods sun on an overcast Monday morning. It smelled like chopped wood and the mines- one of the many indicators that I was now walking even farther away from the Bay area, and towards Vicinity Four. Like rocks broken open and like the murders of lives that harmed no one. My phone buzzed for a fourth time and I ignored it.

Tiana had eyes seemingly gray, like the "wolf-in-winter" painting I made together with Caleb for his school project years ago. I was no painter. He was. But he needed my concepts.

I needed his company.

"What you doing here?" Tiana said, crossing the street and coming toward me. Her voice and accent both were relatively uncommon in the Overwoods- reminiscent of older Southeast Asian enunciation; tone patterns that were now all but nonexistent. "You need medicine?"

I probably did. But I didn't say that.

Up close her eyes were dark brown; very reflective- almost as shiny as the copper adornments and mineral beads she loved to put on her purple headdress.

She looked like she was getting married.

Like, every single day.

"No," I said. "I, uh. I buy bread here sometimes."

She frowned at me. Sometimes I just didn't know what to say. Or I didn't have anything amazing to say, at least.

"Yeah. I'm lying," I said.

Tiana and I ran into each other at school sometimes. Often at the library. Sometimes, we argued about who would take home which book for the night. Of course, if I knew I was "working" that night then I would just let her take whatever she wanted. She would thank me and I'd of course say nothing.

"White lie," she said. "No matter to me."

I smiled.

"Maybe," I said. "How are you, Tiana?"

I was able to "recruit" her into a technician-type job at the Webwork, she now rented a room away from her home in Vicinity Six for easy access to the building, given how unpredictable weather in the Overwoods was combined with the often precarious journey from V6 to V4. Her sister worked in the mines- like Malcolm- and ultimately was killed because of a fatal exposure to Vystir poisons. She died after a day, despite both their parents owning a small clinic for chemical contamination and drug poisoning in Vicinity Six. Her sister was seventeen.

"Oh, so happy." She hugged me and somehow I just wasn't there, so I wasn't able to really feel it. "So happy to be away from Six."

That's right. She told me about what happened one day, to her sister and how she couldn't stand treating all the drug addicts afterward anymore. So, of course, that night I broke into James's office top of the Webwork tower above the Coliseum and looked for secret job openings. I got her the spot the next day.

"Well," I said with some kind of twisted-by-trauma-and-sadness smile, "I helped one person."

She laughed.

"You always so humble," she said.

"Do you know where I can find Ember?" I said.

"Emberion?" said Tiana. "Myelantic? Why? What you need?"

"Some kind of painkiller. The nonaddictive kind," I replied. "It's not for me; it's for Sam."

We were somewhere between the center and south of V4. There was loud rustling as a train ran past us on its path in the center of McPhearson Avenue. It caught my attention but I wasn't sure why. I followed it with my eyes until it was out of sight.

"Why she need it?" said Tiana. "She not gonna sell that?"

"No," I said. "It's for her to take."

A combustifly landed on my hand to roast the mosquito- a mosquito I didn't even notice- that was just about to feast on my iron-deficit, low-sugar blood. It was a warm, tickling feeling. And then it flew away to go munch on its new toasted mosquito meal, or to bring it to its combustifly family.

"Thanks," I said to the combustifly.

"Why, who she is fight into this time? Her brother?"

"No, no. You don't want to know."

"I do, so I warn other people!"

"Doesn't matter," I said. Maybe a bit sharply.

"And how it not matter, Daniel?"

"Because Belinda Klein is in jail, and Wyatt and I are possibly, maybe, supposed to be interviewing her?" I said.

Yeah, except I wasn't there. Alone in a room with Shafer, and Klein, too? Bad enough, per se.

But combine that with all that's happened...

Another train sped past. Wasn't it a bit early for a train- now two, at that- to be running through V4 like this?

"So..." Tiana said, "On the airplane, that was...?"

"Yes, that was Sam and Belinda." I closed my eyes. "Look, Tiana, can you tell me where Ember is?"

"Sorry, yes. He in the Thornton building. Beside Douglas. 24th street."

I checked the time and hence also saw my number of unread notifications. Fourteen.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"So beside the-"

"Beside trap house, yes."

"I was going to say 'pharmacy,' but sure."

Tiana spoke her next words with either apparent humor, or apparent sarcasm, maybe both, I couldn't tell.

"They miss your business there."

I gave her a half smile. Mordantly.

"Right," I said.

--

The four walls were just like I remembered them. Baby blue. The single fixture hanging from the ceiling glowed a dim white which illuminated the small plastic drawers of pills and small bottles of different liquids.

I sniffed, partly because I was remembering how Crayon and I once ran down a mountainside, and down to a beach, to catch up with Skittles, who decided to make friends with a crab that ended up pinching her paw. I kicked the crab into the water where it probably drowned.

Do crabs swim?

...and partly because of the aftereffects of whatever gas poison it was, I was still feeling it.

"Do you have anything for..." I had to pause. "I don't know. Like, tear gas side effects?"

Emberion puffed his megacigarette smoke- thankfully- away from my face. There was little enough ventilation and what was there was a semi-working exhaust fan in a square hollow drilled through the wall.

"What'd ya do, fight Krasvya military?" he said.

"What?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Whatever the hoe used at ya it was probably made to make you forget, or unconscious. And we all know," he smirked at whatever face I was making, "Zapokavich don't even work on ya."

Zapokavich?

"You mean Zapryekavil?"

"Yeah that, whateva."

Bloodkill.

When you're one of two survivors from an experiment that took, quite possibly, hundreds of children from across the only island left in the entire continent, people talk about it.

"Okay, so," I said, still trying to keep my mind clear, "anything you have for it?"

"You'll be fine, Danny boy."

Sheesh. Why I spoke to these people, sometimes, I'll never know.

"I have people to arrest, Myelantic."

Emberion Myelantic: half human, half centaur. I think that made him one-fourth horse. The result of an experiment far different from what I and Kaylee lived through- though he was one of many more survivors.

I shook the bottle full of green pills in my left hand. Ember wagged his pure white tail, white like the suit he was wearing. He wore a tie that read, "Just For Today." On my left, posted on the wall, was a slogan with "Cocaine is better than megacigarettes!" written on it. This all made perfect sense.

I sighed.

"What's up with all the trains, Ember?"

He puffed his smoke away from my face.

"Mines," he said.

"They need more people?" I asked.

"Nah," Ember said. "People dead again. More..." he waved his free hand in the air- one of his nervous tells- "...more commotion."

His megacigarette was the Dark Plum flavor. It to me smelled like a Sharpie dipped in liquid sage, melted, and then puked on. By an alcoholic.

What wasn't he telling me?

"I'll get you miracle apples from Eight," I said, "If you tell me what exactly you've heard."

Overrated pink fruits that all the centaurs and half-centaurs, which were a small fraction of the population that lived, mostly, in the woods between Vicinity Four and The Port. But not Ember- he needed to do his... transactions.

His sky blue eyes lit up.

"Two of 'em?" he said.

"Five," I said.

He whinnied, albeit subtly, unable to contain his excitement. Horsefolk didn't go to Eight- Vicinity Eight was where their crow counterparts, the Talon, nested in their large and overly mutated evergreens, sugar pines, scots pines, red pines, sequoias, the occasional red maple.

"Just somethin' I heard."

"Now," I said. "Before I read your mind and you get no apples."

He made some kind of centaur-horse sound. Something between a nicker and a squeal.

"Juz'n drama 'tween the folk and someone being killed, okay?" He lit himself another Dark Plum. "A kidnapping."

Kidnapping?

"Elyza's?" I said, a familiar fear slowly making its way over me.

"Nah," Ember replid. "A new one."

A new one.

IF YOUR TEAM COMES FOR ME...

I think we did.

"What else did you hear?" I said.

"Some sort of struggle- a fire." Fiyah, it sounded like to me, his speech so heavily affected with that archetypal Four accent. "An inferno sumwyeh."

Sumwyeh was "somewhere" in Four accent.

...I'LL BREAK MORE THAN HIS BONES

I checked my phone.

Fourteen notifications...

"James wants to talk to you."

Gross.

"Awesome win at the SRA! Come have a drink with us, Midnight! Pacifico next weekend? Show us a signature cartwheel or whatever! How's that sound, buddy?"

Um, yeah, no.

"Do a front flip!"

With a full or without a full? Doesn't matter, no.

"Ur hot giv me sum brain"

What does that even mean?

"Blow me or I will hack your girlfriend's social media and all of your BirdCoin. And your social media."

No.

I wasn't even on any social media, this was pathetic. I was literally gay, still am. What's BirdCoin?

"U SUCK AT LEAGUE PLAY A SUPPORT NEXT TIME"

I did play a support, I only ever played supports, what an idiot-

I scrolled to the bottom. One message from Caleb.

"Danny, call me. Right now."

Twenty-five minutes ago.

...DAVENPORT WILL DIE

I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong.

I became aware of the water in my eyes. There was... no way, was there?

And the mines?

Malcolm wasn't supposed to be back there this soon, was he?

A new message buzzed in.

"Monday

7:34 AM

Sent via SecureWeb

I LET YOU LIVE TO HAVE YOU

AGAIN

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