Sister Cities

Part 23: Vi

Step out the front door like a ghost into a fog

Where no one notices the contrast of white on white

In between the moon and you, the angels get a better view

Of the crumbling difference between wrong and right

'Round here, we talk just like lions, but we sacrifice like lambs

'Round here, she's slipping through my hands

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Caitlyn still isn't great at hoverboarding, and we have to go high up to avoid the enforcers on the top levels, so I keep hold of her hand and pull her with me to the Last Drop while she squeezes her eyes shut. She has her hair up and her scarf over the lower half of her face to make sure none of her ex-coworkers recognize her— not that I'd let any of them get a single glimpse. I'm hoping to death that Powder had the same discretion. She's never been caught by an enforcer, but I can see from a distance that the Last Drop's property and the whole rest of the street is completely swarmed.

Me and Caitlyn land on one of the roofs. I lean out over the edge to watch and try not to realize what the crowd obviously means: they got her. Not until she reached this place, though. Did they have spies? Or was it just a perfectly-timed raid?

"Is she dead?" I ask numbly.

Caitlyn scoots up to the edge too, even though she's still shivering from the ride. "The building isn't demolished," she says. "It probably would be if she had fought back. They must have caught her before she could."

"So is she dead?"

"If she wasn't a direct threat to their lives, I doubt it. Everyone wants to see her beaten down and punished and in pain, not just dead. At least— um— yet. They more likely brought her to Stillwater."

I jump to my feet. "Let's go."

"Soon," Caitlyn says, tugging on my wrist. "We should see if we can wait them out and search inside for clues ourselves. Anything that can better prepare us for what happens next."

"I can't just wait."

"Go up again and look for a boat headed toward Stillwater," she says. "Then you'll know for sure."

I get back on my hoverboard and rise until I can see the water, illuminated only by the bits of light that bounce over from the city and by the lanterns hanging on the bows of five boats: one in the middle, surrounded on all four sides. There's not any visible struggle. I can't make out individual people either, no matter how hard I squint. I could fly closer, but I don't want to leave Caitlyn.

"Jinx is probably unconscious or tied up," she says when I report back. "But she's alive. They wouldn't take her there if she wasn't."

"What would they do?"

Caitlyn bites her lip. "Hang her body in front of the capitol building, probably."

"I've never seen anything like that done." Pilties generally like to cover their brutality with cordiality, so that none of the high-class citizens need to feel uncomfortable. As if a death threat isn't a death threat as long as you smile while you deliver it.

"They're angry," says Caitlyn. "They keep getting angrier the longer this goes on. There's no grace left, just hatred."

"But you don't think they'll kill her if she behaves?"

"Not before we get her out."

"How the hell are we supposed to get her out of Stillwater? We should go get her right now, before she's in."