Midian Unmade Read Free

of computers at the back of the New Media room. Babette slips into a seat and presses the button to log herself on, marveling only a little as the machine swiftly responds to her command. Most of the Nightbreed have never touched a computer. The world is changing—the world is always changing—and this change is among the most dangerous of all, because she knows one day it will reveal them. Too many people are seeing too many things, and posting them to the Internet, where they wait like snares for someone to stumble into them and start seeing the patterns.
    She brings up a search engine, drags the mouse to the box at the top of the screen, and types a single word:
    MIDIAN
    Rachel would call it dangerous foolishness, but Rachel does not go out in the world as much as Babette does; she is older, and wiser, and has learned to mistrust too much freedom. Babette is learning different lessons. Thanks to the oh-so-public slaughter at the necropolis, Midian is urban legend and modern myth now, indelibly etched into the stories of the Naturals. They take her for another human teenager made curious by tales of monsters—and maybe a little bit wistful. What was it Peloquin said once, in Lori’s hearing (and hence Babette’s, for they have shared so many things since those dark days of fire and fear)? “Oz is over the rainbow and Midian is where the monsters go.”
    She has learned about Oz since then—more pretty lies for the Natural children—but more, she has found that many among the tribes of man yearn for Midian and its darkness as much as she does. Anyone who sees her screen will take her for one of those yearning children, and look no further.
    The results of her search are a tangled complication of narratives. Here is someone claiming to have been at Midian when it fell; here is someone else saying that monsters are real and planning to remake the world in their own image. Here is truth and here are lies, all of them tangled together until it becomes impossible to distinguish them without knowing the true story, absolute and clean and down to your bones. They are still safe. They are still undiscovered.
    â€œMidian again, huh?”
    The voice is male, cocky, human. Babette tenses and blanks her screen before she turns to find a Natural boy behind her, his clothes as oversized and mismatched as her own, his hair a shock of bleached-out blond that reminds her of the cornfields in Ohio. “Were you spying on me?”
    â€œNo,” he says, and then, “Maybe,” and then, “Yes,” with a grin that clearly aims to make all accusations dissolve into mist and forgiveness. “You come here once a week and do the same searches every time. A guy gets curious, you know? Wants to know what the mysterious girl with the curly hair is trying to find. You looking for monsters, Blondie?”
    Babette almost touches her own hair in reflexive response. Her curls are the color of moonlight on dead grass, a gold that is true and cold at the same time, unforgiving and fair. Instead, she says, “I don’t think I’d know what to do if I met a monster.”
    â€œScream and run away, if you know what’s good for you,” says the boy, offering her his hand. There is dirt beneath his nails. She doubts it came from digging graves. “Matt.”
    â€œBlondie,” she says. Her name is a treasure she will not give to any Natural. She slips her hand into his—refusal will only draw more questions—and watches his puzzled blink at the coolness of her skin. “It’s rude to look at other people’s screens.”
    â€œBut this is the library’s screen, and that makes it as much mine as yours,” he says, giving her hand a perfunctory shake before letting go. “Besides, if you’re looking for Midian, I can take you there.”
    Babette is too startled to hide her confusion. “You?” she asks, before caution tells her to be