Angel Of The City Read Free

Maybe it’s true.
    I ’d like to get clean and maybe pick up a change of clothes, but it’ll have to wait until I can get to another nest. My mouth tastes like the bottom of my feet feel so I take a swig from the flask; let it roll around for a while before I spit it out. Better.
    I wind my watch and check the tanks. I need to remember to refill the propane. Grabbing my coat, I head for the door, my movements waking Pen. She sees me and shrinks back into a corner, then relaxes as recognition sets in. But not completely. There ’s still a wariness, like she doesn’t quite trust me. I don’t blame her.
    “ Where are you going?”
    “ I need to check on a few things.”
    “ What should I do?”
    Go home. Go back to whatever shit-hole precinct you were born in. But of course, she can’t. She’s a shade like me—untagged. Was that her idea I wonder, or something Devon talked her into? There are always kids who think they can live outside the system. Most end up dead, shot by Counselors or overdosing on coal or dying of starvation when they realize they don’t have the skill set to survive. Once you remove your tags there’s no going back—you can’t buy; you can’t sell; you can’t work. You don’t exist.
    But all I say is, “Wait here. There’s more food in the box. Water too. Take all you want.”
    “ When do you think we’ll be able to get Abby out?”
    I stop with my hand on the door. I want to laugh, but I don ’t because it’s not funny even though it is. Anyway, she’s not in on the joke and it’s not my job to explain it to her. We’ll talk about it when I get back, I tell her.
    I leave through the tunnel and up the steps wondering how long she ’ll wait. There’s only enough food for a couple of days. Same for the propane. I hate to do it this way—just run out—but maybe it’s for the best. She’ll leave eventually, cursing me for the rest of her undoubtedly short life, but it might be worth it if she never has to learn the truth. Then she can go on believing her sister is out there somewhere, alive, even if she’ll never see her again.
    Being sent to any precinct house is bad enough; a windowless granite interrogation chamber where confessions are extracted and people are shipped off to work camps. But the One Twenty Seven isn ’t your typical precinct. The One Twenty Seven is a crematorium.
     

TWO

    I don’t like this time of day. There aren’t nearly enough people up and moving about yet. Crowds are what you look for when you’re a shade. The more tag signals around you, the better. Not that anyone’s sitting around a room full of monitors, matching every tag to every person in the city, but if you show up all alone and there’s no signal, well, that’s a little hard to explain.
    It ’s early enough that the scrap boys are still out, rawboned and emaciated, rooting through the newer trash piles, the older ones having been pilfered of anything worth taking long ago. They’ve been at it since before dawn: ashen-faced kids—bobbies—standing against a dark-colored mass of waste, some already showing the black nose. Their breath leaves them as a white fog in the cold air. Silhouetted against the dim light, they look almost surreal, like charcoal sketches.
    It ’s peaceful now, each gang digging through the debris in silence, but that will change in an instant if something valuable is found. Then they’ll turn on each other with a ferocity that’s shocking the first time you see it and only the strongest will get to keep what they find. It’s hard to imagine looking at them, small and vulnerable, but the fiercest and most brutal of these kids will get a chance at a different life. They’ll get a chance to be Counselors.
    The sun rises slowly as I make my way west. More people take to the streets: day laborers in grimy clothes, low-level office help in threadbare, wrinkled suits, cleaning women. No one speaks; nothing but the occasional cough breaks the silence of the