Page 23 of The First Scar
The pain was not singular.
Dual-source signature detected.
Mine.
And not mine.
Light to shade. Thread to seam—
Output cut.
Old memory sector breached.
Abort command issued.
Pain on Mark increase.
Unauthorized question. Persistent.
Who is she.
AMARIA
We ran until we couldn't.
Three streets, then four, my legs making the decisions my mind couldn't, carrying us left, right, through a gap in a crumbling wall, under a collapsed awning that reeked of rotted fruit and old piss. The kind of place no one looked twice at because no one wanted to see it.
Serenya pulled me behind a stack of broken crates. Her grip bruised my arm. I let it. My body had finally presented the bill for what I'd done in that plaza, and the cost was steep.
I slid down the wall—gritty brick catching on my tunic, cold seeping through the fabric—and my boots suctioning into the sludge. I didn't look. Just rubbed my palms against my thighs. The shaking wouldn't stop. My fingers found the rhythm on their own—three taps against my thigh, quick and quiet. An old habit I couldn't remember learning. It never helped. I did it anyway.
My whole frame vibrated, as if a gear inside me had come loose. Both marks throbbed, pulsing out of sync with each other and with my heartbeat—three competing rhythms, none of them mine.
Blood crusted on my nose. I could taste it at the back of my tongue, tangy and metallic.
Serenya crouched beside me, her breath still ragged. She didn't speak. Just watched me with those ageless eyes, cataloging every crack in my composure. I hated when she did that. Hated more that she was right to.
Somewhere beyond our rotting alcove, the city was waking up to what I was.
A murmur first. Voices bleeding into voices, swelling through the streets until the sound had weight. Then a crier's bell cut through—sharp, deliberate—and the words that followed landed like a fist on every door.
"By decree of His Radiance—the dual-marked abomination known as The Rupture—twenty million marks for capture—"
Twenty million. The number hung in the air, obscene. I didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. Twenty million said the Crown was terrified. It also said I was worth more dead than every person in this quarter would earn breathing.
That was more than most people saw in ten lifetimes. Enough to make neighbors betray neighbors. Enough to make family forget what family meant.
"—armed and dangerous—approach with extreme caution—"
A child laughed nearby. The sound curdled in my gut.
Twenty million marks and I hadn't even had breakfast.
"—any information leading to her capture will be rewarded—"
Serenya grabbed my hand. I couldn't look at her. If I looked at her, I'd see what I already knew: that I'd just painted a target on both our backs. That every person we'd ever helped, everycontact we'd ever trusted, was now a potential executioner with twenty million reasons to sell us out.
"We can't stay here," I said. The words came out scraped.
