Chapter 3

Sorin

We follow the excuse for a stream, a ribbon of what used to be an irrigation canal stretching through most of the city. It’s our best chance to find sustenance.

The streets of Vandal are equally pathetic. The air reeks of rusted metal, rot, and old oil permeating the concrete and foliage. The air is heavy, pressing on our lungs like an oppressive hand. Nothing is fresh or clean. Every half-collapsed building is a skeleton rotting with decay disguised in lush greenery.

“It’s ironic,” I say out loud, “that nature itself is a parasite, and yet it’s the ultimate form of reclamation.”

Our boots squelch on a thick layer of moss growing on the steep sides of the concrete canal under a surprisingly intact bridge. Cassius snorts and rips up a stretch of roots just because he can. Dirt sprays when he flings them aside, and the sound echoes down the canal.

“We are parasites,” he grumbles. “Parasites aren’t supposed to die off. Reclamation? No. Nature itself,” he mocks me bitterly, “is revenge.”

Selene’s foot slips on the moss-slick wall. She shrieks. I lunge to catch her, but Cassius is faster. He catches her by the torso, then both of them slide, with moss and grit grinding beneath them.

Selene screams again, clawing for purchase in the slime, her nails digging trails. Her feet attempt to climb uselessly. Cassius roars in rage as he slams knee-first into the concrete, then skids fast.

There’s nothing dangerous at the bottom, just the pathetic former canal, but panic is irrationality.

As Cassius hits the bottom, I reach for Selene, catching her wrist and hauling her up to a patch of concrete that is not layered with moss. I clutch her body against me even as the rank stench of the plant assaults my senses. It squelches between us where it covers her.

“It’s okay,” I tell her as she hyperventilates. “There is no danger. There’s nothing here that can harm….”

I trail off when I see something dark beneath Selene’s claw marks in the moss. It’s concrete, but there’s something painted on it.

Something slinks down my spine, something colder than slime. Memories crowd my mind like suffocating fog, and suddenly I feel the need to tear my throat open at the world for its unfairness. Darkness coils in my gut, replacing the hunger. My teeth ache. My fists clench. Rage and fear and resentment build so fast and hard.

“We slipped?!”

Cassius’s bellow breaks my turmoil as quickly as a finger snap. I’m still holding Selene while he stomps and splashes the ribbon of water.

“We’re hungry, thirsty, exhausted—and clumsy as whelps out of the womb! This is ridiculous. No grace! No strength! No—”

My friend rambles on. I know nothing he says will have substance, so I help Selene climb onto flat ground and sit her at the edge. She’s trembling like a leaf in a winter storm, her eyes bleary despite the simultaneous wild light in their pale depths.

I don’t have a blanket. It was ruined two days ago beyond being kept. Our clothes are disgusting. We have to find something new. I’m sure there are dead bodies somewhere to thieve from.

As usual, I know better than to ask Selene if she’s okay. I ensure that she won’t move, then skid slowly down the angle to the place she’d clawed up. My hands and feet threaten to slip and slide on the slime, but focus keeps me in place.

I swipe the green away, scratching chunks to reveal the marked concrete underneath. A metallic tang coats my tongue, and it has nothing to do with my current thirst. The sound of clinking instruments ghosts in my ears. My heart pounds into them like a drum, drowning out Cassius’s snarl.

“What the hell are you wasting your time on?”

His anger at the delay and my mindless digging are both justified. He doesn’t want to linger in any place that embarrasses him. I know when he sees the symbol, he will smash it into pieces.

Yet I dig until it is fully displayed.

So many emotions and memories flood me that I’m numb.

“Sorin?”

Selene’s murmur startles me more than any shout of Cassius. I look up, and she’s still sitting where I left her, but she leans forward, her eyes brighter, more intent. She recognizes the symbol of ruin, too.

My jaw clenches so hard it hurts. “Selene,” I growl with my own intent.

She shakes her head once. “It’s not worth it. Don’t let him see.”

“See what?”

Selene winces as Cassius storms up the hill, running his hands through his nape-long dark brown hair. I don’t have time to cover the symbol.

He stops short, staring at the immortalized paint, cracked and scratched. I brace for an outburst, but I get… nothing. There’s no reaction, not even a clenched fist. He’s just preternaturally still.

Somehow, that’s worse than lashing out.

Selene and I don’t dare breathe while we brace ourselves.

Cassius lifts his head and says flatly, “I’m hungry. Find clothes while I search. And shelter. Make a fire. Keep her warm.”

“I am warm,” Selene says, suddenly sharp. “We need to stay together.”

I nod to agree with her, and I block Cassius’s path up the canal wall. His expression is emotionless, but his eyes blaze hotter and fiercer than wildfire.

“She’s right, Cassius,” I say, more harshly than I intend. “We cannot afford to split up, get lost, or get into trouble. We need—”

“We need food,” Cassius snarls as he pushes me aside roughly. “Selene won’t last much longer.”

He storms down the street. I catch up, despite the pain it causes in all parts of my body, grabbing his arm and yanking him back. He whirls, his teeth bared, but I bare mine right back.

“You don’t scare me, Cassius,” I hiss, well aware of his dark side and what he will do and say because of it. “We are a team, and you will listen to the majority.”

Cassius barks a laugh so derisive it feels like a physical blow. Yet I don’t yield a single step. “Listen to you,” he sneers. “Leader through and through. Can’t change anyone. You’re becoming weak, Sorin. And I have no patience for politics and hierarchies and shit. Time’s running out. We reek like sewage. Move.”

I move. There is no point in arguing. It’s a waste of energy and breath. The last thing I warn is, “Don’t kill anyone.”

Cassius huffs noncommittally and storms off.

There’s no point watching him go, either. I turn to Selene, who manages to stand, though she looks as if the next breeze can tip her over. I rejoin her with a resigned sigh.

“He’s mostly right,” I say quietly, attempting a smile, but it only feels grim and defeated.

“We smell,” she agrees with an even smaller smile. “You are not weak, Sorin.”

“Thank you. Come on. I saw an apartment building back where we came.”

We walk at her pace. It does not disperse the smell, nor did it allow for the mind to wander beyond what was hyper fixating on.

Selene did not need the ability to read my mind. “That part of our lives is over, Sorin,” she says, half sympathetic, half berating. “None of us, not even Cassius, can change that. What’s done is done, and we can only move on.”

“I know that.” I sigh, defeated, observing the abandoned microcosm. Decades had eroded everything, both man-made and natural, and left behind only scraps. It was all so desolate compared to how it used to look. “But vengeance lives in our bones.”

“Vengeance is our bones.”

We find the apartment, a tall, rectangular block of crumbling brick. Like everything else in Downfall—that isn’t what it used to be called—I realize that now, after we saw the symbol of its ruination. It is overtaken by the ironically spectacular growth of vibrant greenery: moss, lichen, and weeds.

“There are sure to be rooms not entirely raided,” I tell Selene as I step through the archway where a door used to lead into a small lobby of dented mailboxes in the wall. Long gone was the security system of locks and keys and cameras in corners. The second entryway’s door was still hanging on by a single hinge.

I chuckle when I see the state of the stairs, but Selene shoots me a glare. “I will slip on moss,” she snaps, “but I will lose grace tripping on vines. And no, I will not be drinking from them again.”

I let her lead to the first floor, quietly amused by her carefulness, regardless of her snap, and relive the disgusting taste of vine water. It hadn’t been the worst, but we were as keen about retrying as we were about roasting skitter creatures.

We needed real food.

The floorboards creak under our feet as we wander down the dark hall. All four surfaces are moist, stained, and peppered with holes large and small, made by everything from critters to angry fists. Nothing smelled fresh. Only the plants thrive, drinking what we can’t.

It’s quite a disappointment that we have no desire to meet the roots thriving where we can’t.

We each take a separate room to search the closets.

Both apartments have enough clothes for the three of us to last a week—if we are mindful of our surroundings.

We change, and when Selene emerges, her face is what it used to be: fierce, confident, sharp, and elegant.

It was all in her attitude.

She flaunts the musty, critter-nibbled jacket and shirt, the ripped denim pants, the oversized boots.

“Far from my old style,” she muses, brushing her hair with a forgotten comb. “This moss—oh, interesting,” she adds, taking in the similar getup I’m wearing. “Far from yours as well.”

I snort, though it isn’t nearly derisive enough to come close to Cassius’s. “I can fare enough with this. I prefer it, actually.”

Selene’s smile is brief but genuine, memories sparking in her pale blue eyes. “It suits you far better.”

I feel an odd, severely human pang in my chest. We have all gone through all sorts of hells, but for me in particular… well, what Selene says means more than I’m ever willing to admit.

We take everything we can carry, stuff it all into our worn packs and into other satchels we find stuffed in closets.

But still there’s no food.

Cassius, as much as my instinct rebels against the very idea, is our last hope. His determination, though dark and bloody, may yield results.

Hopefully not too bloody.

Because there will be blood.

Selene and I leave the apartment behind and follow the corner Cassius turned down. It isn’t easy to track him with so many other scents and occasional dust clouds stirred by the breeze.

And then, in the near distance, we hear a female shout—and the painfully familiar sound of a crossbow let loose.