Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  “Ten laps.”

  Kate opened her mouth to say something, but the rest of the team was already heading for the track. Nobody argued or groaned, but she knew the moment they started running that whatever traction she’d earned that morning was officially gone. Boots appeared out of nowhere, clipping her ankles or heels.

  Kate stumbled once or twice, but didn’t fall, and soon the team gave up trying to trip her and focused on leaving her behind.

  “You came back.”

  It was Mony, her stride easy, as if she could do this all day.

  “I’m starting to regret it,” said Kate.

  As they circled the hall, Kate watched a dozen other teams practice the same maneuvers, watched as a pair toward the center scuffled, and went down in a tangle of limbs that ended with the “Fang” pinned, one arm behind his back. The soldier started to let him up when the “Fang” threw an elbow. It was a dirty move—but the message was clear. The Fangs wouldn’t fight fair.

  “What happens if you can’t subdue them?”

  “We don’t have a choice. It’s a crime to kill another person.”

  “Sure, but has it ever happened?”

  “Tanner,” said Colin, a stride or two behind them.

  “Alex Tanner,” said Mony, picking up speed. Colin yelped, but Kate lengthened her stride to keep up.

  “Go on.”

  “Alex was a North City guy in the first batch of converts. Never should have had a gun. The kind of man just looking for an excuse to shoot something, you know? Which is fine if all you’ve got to shoot are monsters.”

  Their shoes found a steady rhythm.

  “But his first time out, he empties his weapon into a group of Fangs. Didn’t even try to bring them in.”

  “What happened?”

  “His squad tried to cover for him,” called Colin, breathless.

  “Idiots,” muttered Mony. “Like that kind of thing just washes off. Sunai can smell it. So, the Council decided to make an example. They gathered all the squads here in the hall, and brought Tanner out, and made us watch while that one”—at this, she flicked her head toward the doors and Kate twisted to see Soro, straight-backed and chin high, surveying the hall—“reaped him. An object lesson in what happens to sinners.”

  Kate’s chest tightened. “Did it work?”

  “I’m telling you the story, aren’t I? Every now and then, someone messes up. Tensions get high, mistakes are made. They don’t make an example of those. When it happens, the soldier just disappears. There’s a saying in the ranks: Soro comes for the bad, but Ilsa comes for the sorry.”

  They ran a full lap before Kate spoke again.

  “What about August?”

  Colin panted. “What about him?”

  “Well, if Soro reaps the bad and Ilsa reaps the sorry, who does August reap?”

  Mony snorted. “Everyone else.”

  August made his way to the stage.

  The crowd parted, staggering out of his way as if he were a live coal.

  I’m willing to walk in darkness . . .

  He drew the violin from its case, kept his focus on the bow and the strings instead of the people beyond.

  I’m willing . . .

  He began to play.

  The song spiraled out, but for once, his limbs didn’t loosen, his mind didn’t clear. August wanted to lose himself in the music, to relish these rare moments of peace, but Kate’s words were lodged like a splinter in his skull.

  What happened to the August I knew?

  What happened?

  Things change.

  I’ve changed.

  He had changed.

  It was just—his brother wanted him to be like his violin, the one made of steel, but August felt like the first one, the one left shattered on the bathroom floor in Kate’s house beyond the Waste. An instrument of music reduced to slivers and sharp fragments.

  There was Leo, telling him to be the thing the monsters feared, and Soro, who made him feel selfish for wanting to want to be human, and Ilsa, who made him feel like a monster for not wanting it enough, and Henry who seemed to think he could be everything to everyone, and Kate, who wanted him to be someone he couldn’t be anymore.

  You’re lying.

  His fingers tightened on the bow.

  Focus, brother, chided Leo.

  You even sound like him.

  His song quickened.

  The August I knew—

  The bow slipped, and the note came out too sharp. He stopped playing, let the violin fall back to his side. He hadn’t finished the song, but it was enough. The crowd stared up at him, wide-eyed, complacent, souls shining on their skin.

  A sea of white, and in the center, a single bloom of red. A man, squat and unassuming, with a woman at his side, the two pressed together despite the space around them. Her soul shone white, but his burned red, and as August approached, he heard the man’s confession.

  “. . . but fear makes us do stupid things, doesn’t it? He could have been after me. I didn’t know . . .” His head was up, his eyes on August, but his gaze went straight through him. “I wasn’t a bad person, you know. It’s just a bad world. I was young, and I didn’t know any better.”

  Red light rose off the man’s skin like steam.

  “Can you blame me? Can you?”

  August didn’t blame him—it was a bad world—but that didn’t change anything. He pressed his palm to the man’s skin, and the confession faltered, the words trailing off as the man’s life rolled through him.

  The corpse crumpled to the floor, and August turned away as souls sank beneath skin, and the symphony hall twitched back into life around him.

  He heard the woman sob, but didn’t turn back. Harris and Ani tried to calm her as he forced himself to keep walking.

  Your job is done here.

  He was nearly to the door when the gun went off.

  August spun back as plaster rained from the ceiling, and people cowered, shielding their heads. The woman had Harris’s pistol in both hands, knuckles white as she leveled it at August. Ani and Jackson were already reaching for their tasers as he started down the aisle, hands raised. “Put it down.”

  “Crazy bitch,” growled Harris.

  “Drop the gun,” demanded Ani.

  But the woman had eyes only for August. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

  He took another step toward her. “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t know him,” she sobbed. “You didn’t know him at all.”

  “I know his soul was stained.” Another step, past Ani and Jackson. “He made his fate.”

  “He made a mistake,” she spat. “You can stand there, all righteous, but you don’t understand. You can’t understand. You’re not even human.”

  The blow landed, not sharp, but dull and aching and heavy.

  August was level with Harris now.

  “He chose—”

  “He changed. People change.” Tears streamed down her face. “Why doesn’t it matter?”

  Maybe it should, thought August, just before she shot him.

  The hall echoed with the deafening cracks as she emptied the gun into August’s chest. It hurt, the way everything hurt, but only for an instant. She continued squeezing the trigger long after the magazine was empty and all that left was the impotent click click click.

  He let her do it, because it didn’t change anything. Her husband was still gone and August was still standing, and when the chamber was empty, the last of the strength went out of her limbs and she sank to the floor beside his body, the gun falling from her fingers. August knelt in front of her, one hand resting on the empty weapon, the gun smoke still rising off his skin.

  “You’re very lucky I’m not human.”

  He jerked his head, and Ani and Jackson swept behind the woman, hauling her to her feet.

  The tower lobby hummed with energy.

  Corsai pooled in the corners, whispering to themselves, while the Malchai shifted and stirred, restless at being ga
thered together in one place.

  Sloan stood on the lowest landing and looked down at the sea of red eyes, reminding himself that this teeming mass, these filthy, feral things were nothing more than shades, foot soldiers, subjects.

  And he, their king.

  “There is an intruder in our midst,” he said. “A monster has seen fit to come into our city, and feast upon our food. It is a thing of darkness,” continued Sloan. “But we are all things of darkness. The Corsai claim they cannot catch it”—here the shadows chittered—“but we are not all Corsai.”

  A low growl, a snarl of agreement.

  “Sloan is right.” This came from Alice.

  She was perched on the rail of a balcony above. It looked as though she were wearing dark gloves—in truth, she simply hadn’t washed her hands after her latest feast. The sight repulsed him, but the other monsters stared at her in rapture, as she knew they would.

  “We are Malchai,” she said. “There is nothing we cannot hunt, no one we cannot kill.” She flashed a smile at Sloan, all teeth. “What would you have us do, Father?”

  He gripped the railing, but did not rise to that last bait. Instead, he looked down at the Malchai.

  “The intruder is drawn to live bait. Raid the fridges, take your prey into the streets. The first monster who kills this pest and brings me its corpse will find a place with Alice at my side.”

  “That is, of course,” Alice added, “if I don’t kill it first.”

  Sloan spread his hands, the picture of munificence. “Let the hunt begin.”

  The Compound changed after dark.

  Kate didn’t see the sun go down, but she could feel the shift all the same, the nervous energy coalescing, the tension drawing tight around her. The stream of soldiers thinned as some retreated to off-site barracks and others went on watch or on missions, and the number of guards on each door multiplied.

  The cafeteria was still full, but she sat at Twenty-Four’s table alone. Whatever invisible thread had bound the teams together during the day, it dissolved by dinner, freeing the soldiers to choose their own company. New divisions were drawn, between North and South, young and old, her exclusion yet another reminder that she didn’t belong.

  A huddle of twentysomethings played cards a few rows over, and Mony was perched on a tabletop, chatting with friends, while Colin sat against a wall, telling a story. He seemed engrossed, but every time Kate so much as glanced at the door, his face gave a nervous twitch, so she decided to wait him out. Make a game of it. And at some point, outlasting Colin became outlasting every other nervous glance or whispered word, each one designed to chip away at her.

  She drew the tablet from her pocket and booted it, surprised to discover someone had connected the device to the network.

  Her fingers danced over the screen as she booted the server, and typed in the address for the Wardens’ chat room.

  Page not found.

  She tried again.

  Page not found.

  Frustration welled inside her and she clicked over to the message drive and started a new email. She typed in Riley’s address, and wrote a single word—alive—before hitting SEND.

  It went nowhere.

  The message hung suspended, a grayed-out line in a sea of black text. Flynn had been telling the truth about the internal server. There was nothing here but memos, notices transmitted to everyone in the system.

  Kate tapped through the various drive folders and found mission logs, registers of targets, captures, casualties.

  The files were ordered by month, and Kate was skimming the most recent one when the tablet chimed, and a new message popped up.

  The subject line was AUGUST.

  The sender was ILSA FLYNN.

  There was no note, only a set of attachments. Kate knew exactly what they were. She’d seen her fair share of security footage in Prosperity, and a lifetime ago she’d sat in her room at Harker Hall and scoured her father’s database, watching every clip she could find of the monsters that lurked in her city.

  Callum had a wealth of footage on Leo, but when but when it came to August Flynn, there’d been nothing.

  Now she stared down at the footage Ilsa had sent her.

  One was shot from what looked like a symphony hall. Another from a cam on top of the Seam. A third, somewhere in the street. Six months’ worth of files, every one of them titled BROTHER.

  What happened to August? she’d asked his sister.

  And Ilsa had sent her an answer.

  Kate braced herself and hit PLAY.

  August’s hand kept drifting to the six small holes in the front of his shirt.

  “I should change,” he said as they walked down the hall.

  “Nah,” said Harris, cuffing him around the shoulders. August tensed—he’d never gotten used to being touched. “Show them you’re a man of steel.”

  Ani shook her head. “I can’t believe you let her go.”

  “She was upset,” said August.

  “She shot you six times!” said Harris.

  “With your gun,” snapped Jackson.

  “It wasn’t a crime,” said August.

  Only because you can’t be killed, said Leo.

  Or because I don’t count.

  “Way to let your guard down, Harris,” snorted Ani.

  “I didn’t expect a middle-aged lady to snatch a sidearm.”

  “Sexist.”

  Jackson raked a hand through his short hair. “I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” chimed Ani. “Canteen?”

  “Think they’ll have beef?” said Harris. “I dream of beef.”

  “Keep dreaming,” said Ani.

  Jackson shoved open the cafeteria doors and August was met by the din of metal and plastic, scraping chairs and rattling trays and a hundred layered voices. Between the noise, and the stuffy air, he didn’t understand why so many soldiers ate together instead of escaping to their rooms. Rez had been the one to explain it to him.

  “Sometimes it’s not about the food,” she’d said. “It’s about finding normal.”

  Harris was holding the door. “You coming?”

  This was a well-worn path—Harris always offered, and August usually said no, but the voices in his head were too loud tonight, so he headed into the crush of bodies and noise, hoping to smother them.

  And saw Kate.

  She was sitting alone near the edge of the room, head bowed over a tablet, and August didn’t know if it was déjà vu from their first day at Colton, or that she was the only spot of stillness at the center of a storm, or that she was Kate Harker, and everywhere she went, she brought her own gravity with her.

  Whatever the reason, he started toward her.

  Harris shot him a questioning look, and Ani’s gaze followed, but it was Jackson who spoke. “She shouldn’t be here.”

  “Now, now,” started Ani. “The FTF takes in—”

  “No,” snapped Jackson. “I don’t care if she’s got intel—she’s still a Harker.”

  “She saved my life,” said August, his voice low. His team went silent. Here it was, the chill, the spot of cold, right here. The Sunai were supposed to be invulnerable, but they weren’t. Unkillable, but they weren’t. The fact she’d saved his life meant he’d needed saving.

  Jackson crossed his arms. “She’s not one of us.”

  “Neither am I,” said August simply.

  He heard them stomp off toward the food line as he made his way to Kate’s table. She had looked up from her screen at some point and was watching him through her veil of blond hair.

  “Standing up for my honor?”

  August frowned. “You heard?”

  She shook her head. “Educated guess.”

  “What did you do with Colin?”

  “Oh, I set him free.” She nodded at the far corner. “Sheep and wolves have never been a good fit.” Her gaze flitted over the holes in his shirt. “Bad day?”

  “It could have gone worse.” He sank onto the bench opposite. “How
was yours?”

  “I’m holding my own,” she said. “Not big in the friend department yet, but the enemies are keeping their distance.”

  “Give it time, and they’ll—”

  “Stop,” she cut him off. “This isn’t one of those stories.”

  Silence fell between them, and August could hear the whispers under the din, the rise and fall of low voices, still all too clear to him.

  “Anything good?” Kate was staring at him intently. “I only have one decent ear, and you have two stellar ones. The least you can do is share.”

  His gaze fell to the tablet on the table, a vid file open on the screen. “What were you watching?”

  Kate slid the tablet toward him. “You tell me.”

  August looked down and saw the line of a steel bow streaked with blood. His stomach twisted. It was him. Walking back to the Compound the night he’d slaughtered Alice’s Malchai. The black tally marks stood out against his skin—at least, the patches of skin not covered in gore.

  He didn’t recognize the thing on that screen, and he did, and he didn’t know which was worse. He could feel Kate’s eyes on him. He’d never understood how some people had such heavy gazes.

  “August—”

  “Don’t,” he warned.

  “This isn’t you.”

  “It is now. Why is it so hard to understand, Kate? I’m doing what I have to. I . . .”

  You owe her nothing, warned his brother. In truth, part of him wanted to talk to Kate, to exorcise the voices in his head, make sense of the confusion, but he didn’t have the strength to argue. Not about this. His sleeves were rolled up, and he focused on the thin black marks that etched his skin.

  “I hated you,” she said out of nowhere.

  August’s head snapped up. “What?”

  “When we first met. I hated you. Do you know why?”

  “Because I was a monster?”

  “No. Because you wanted to be human. You had all this power, all this strength, and you wanted to throw it away—for what? A chance to be weak, helpless. I thought you were an idiot. But then I watched you burn alive for that dream. I watched you tear yourself apart to hold on to it, and I realized something. It’s not about what you are, August, it’s about who, and that stupid, dreaming boy—that wasn’t a mistake, or a delusion, or a waste of energy. It was you.”