Kitabı oxu: «The Sign of One»

To Martin

who shares my DNA

and my dreams

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE PEACE FAIR

1 GIRL WITH DARK GREEN EYES

2 HIGH SLAYER

3 UNWRAPPING

4 THE ROAD BACK

5 AWAKENING

6 NEVER SAY THAT WORD

7 A BAD DECISION

8 I SAY SOME TERRIBLE THINGS

PART TWO ON THE RUN

9 WAITING

10 CAPTURED

11 IN THE SLAYER WARPLANE

12 HATCH CLOSED AND LOCKED

13 CUTTING LOOSE

14 CRASH

15 HEALING AND DEALING

16 MAKING TRACKS

17 CROSSING OVER

18 GOING HOBO

19 OLD FRIENDS

20 LEAP OF FAITH

21 DEBT PAID, TRADE MADE

22 HAGGLETOWN

23 PICKING UP THE PIECES

24 SANCTUARY

25 MAN BEHIND THE GRILLE

26 ANSWERMAN

27 TRUTH

28 CONSEQUENCES

29 DECISIONS

30 CHANGE OF PLAN

PART THREE ENDGAME

31 TRADE

32 IN THE PALACE

33 THE FACILITY

34 A TWIST OF FATE

35 ONE LAST EFFORT

36 A GAME CALLED SCREAM

37 PAYBACK

38 A FINAL RECKONING

39 WIND STILL BLOWS

Acknowledgements

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PART ONE

1
GIRL WITH DARK GREEN EYES

The Cutting was yesterday. We missed it. Soon as we hit the trail out of our valley, I knew we would. I’ve seen dirtworms slither faster than some of our lot walk. Three boggin’ days it’s taken us to get to Deep Six. On my own I could hike it in one, but that was never going to happen. Out here in the Barrenlands, you go mob-handed and in dayshine or you don’t go at all. Our wildlife’s too nasty and there’s always the chance of running into Reapers. It’s a curse, missing the Cutting, but at least we’ve made it to the Peace Fair in time for tomorrow’s Unwrapping.

‘C’mon, Kyle,’ Nash says to me. ‘You done yet?’

Our men have cleared off to do some catch-up drinking, the women and the girls to check out the merchants’ stalls. Nash and me, we’ve been left behind with the wagons, stuck with setting up camp and finding fodder for our fourhorns. Now we’re supposed to sit tight and look after everything. Don’t think so.

I hammer the last guy rope in. ‘All done.’

We head towards the roars of delight from the nearby fairground. I feel sick with excitement and sweat pours off me. See, this is my first Fair.

‘I’m going to tell them,’ says Nash.

He’s only a year older than me, but he’s been to loads of Fairs already. We both know I could be flogged for not attending sooner. Once you’re ten, the Saviour’s law says you must go, at least once every three years.

‘Give us a break, Nash.’

He sniggers. He’s such a gommer.

It’s Rona’s fault. She won’t say why, but she never attends the Fair. She gets away with it because she’s the only healer in Freshwater. Which is fine, I guess, and none of my business. Except every year she comes up with some excuse why I can’t go neither. Last year, I kicked up. Told her I was going, no matter what. Next thing I know, I’m flat on my back with swamp pox, the only dose in the three valleys. Rona denies it, course she does, but I swear she gave it to me deliberate. And you can die easy from the swamp pox. It’s a miracle I wasn’t scarred for life.

Well, she might be my mother, but I’m sixteen now.

At the gate, we hand over credits and flash our ID tags. I worry the gate man will figure out mine is fake, but this is the Barrenlands – he couldn’t care less.

Nash keeps his poisonous little mouth shut, for once.

We hurry through a dark tunnel to emerge blinking back into evenshine, halfway up some stone-built terraces, which curve round to form an immense arena. The size of the crowd rips the breath out of my lungs – I’d no idea there were this many people on Wrath, let alone in the Barrenlands. Stalls and show tents stand out like brightly painted islands in a boiling sea of bodies. It’s fierce loud. A madhouse of hoots and rough laughter and merchants yelling their wares.

‘Are those the idents in the cages?’ I ask.

‘What do you think?’ says Nash.

At the far side of the fairground is a stage, loads of cages stacked like crates around the back of it. Even from here I can see each cage has two child prisoners inside. So it’s true. We get to gawp at them between Cutting and Unwrapping. They can’t mess with their wounds without someone seeing.

Nash dives into the crowd. I follow him to a food stall.

Surprise, I end up paying for both of us. A credit buys a beer each and steaming bogbuck steaks wrapped in purple leaf. While I wolf the meat, I stare at the faces around me. Most are thick-fingered grubbers like us, but I see plenty of hunter and scavenger folk too. The locals are easy to spot, their pale miner faces scrunched up against the sun. Nearly as many women wander around as men, many with straw still plaited into their hair, to celebrate the recent harvest.

‘You don’t eat the leaf, you donk,’ says Nash.

‘Oh,’ I say. It was chewy.

I watch him as he takes a long pull from his beaker. His eyes water, but he doesn’t drop dead or anything, so I sip mine. It’s fierce strong beer and tastes foul, but he’s watching me back. I smack my lips and pretend to like it.

‘Rona’d kill me if she saw me drinking this.’

‘Rona ain’t here.’

After I finish it, I feel floaty. Can’t stop smiling, even at strangers. It’s like the hoots and yells and laughter get louder too. The crowd’s excitement is more catching than swamp pox. My heart starts pounding.

Why was Rona so worried about me coming here?

We bump into some girls from our valley then – Vijay, Mary and her little sister, Cassie. They tag along, which is no hardship. After a while, we end up near the stage and its wall of cages. Nash and the girls push on to watch jugglers, but I see two pale faces peering from the nearest cage and hang back.

Hairs stand up on the nape of my neck.

Both these girls have exactly the same long red hair, the same blue eyes, the same lips pulled down at the corners. One face two times. Twin sisters. Despite the muggy air, I shiver. I bet even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart.

Identical. But one is a monster.

I make the Sign of One. Our sign against evil.

‘Oh, come on,’ says Nash, back at my elbow. ‘Don’t go all pious on us.’

Mary and Vijay snigger, safe behind him.

I shake my head, feeling stupid. The cage looks solid enough and is covered in wire mesh. Both girls have iron leg shackles. They’re going nowhere.

And the thing is, neither looks evil to me, only scared.

‘Never seen idents before,’ I say. ‘That’s all.’

‘Not even baby ones?’ says Mary. ‘Doesn’t Rona heal them?’

I shrug. ‘She does, but always goes on her own. To spare the families.’

Even back in Freshwater, so tiny compared to this great big mining town, we have five families now cursed with ident babies. Rona’s helped deliver all of them, but won’t do the marking. Says chopping fingers off infants is no job for a healer. Sometimes I’ve heard these babies crying as I passed by, but I’ve never seen any of them. The shame is so great and guys like Nash would throw stones, so the unfortunate families raise them inside, behind bolted doors. Four long years of despair and misery before Slayers take them away to the ident camps.

What must it be like to be their parents? Just cruel.

And yet where would we be without the Saviour’s law to protect us?

‘Hey, see the bandages?’ says Nash, pointing.

Further along, two ident boys stand in their cage, gripping the bars. I see their forearms, bandaged from the Cutting. I see too that both bear the telltale mark of the ident, the little finger hacked from their left hand. Sick but clever that. Word is, back in the early days of the Saviour’s law, desperate parents would hide their ident offspring by splitting them up. No way to hide a missing finger though.

I look back at the redheads, but they see me staring.

Although I’ve paid good money to be here, I have to look away. Okay, so I know these girls are freaks, but it still feels wrong to gawp. Just does.

‘C’mon,’ says Nash, making to head off, ‘I’ll show you something better.’

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Those girls.’

Nash stops and stares, obviously not bothered in the slightest that they can see him looking. ‘Yeah. Cute, but not my type. What about them?’

‘Which do you think is the evil one?’

Nash frowns at me, like I’m some kind of drooling idiot.

‘Well, my money’s on the redhead. Oh wait – they’re both redheads!’ He slaps his forehead, and this sends Vijay and Mary into fits of laughter. ‘Look, we’ll find out tomorrow at the Unwrapping. Now are you coming or what?’

I let him drag me away.

But the look on those girls’ faces, it dents my mood.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still buzzing, but I’m not so dazzled now by everything I see. Maybe that’s why I start noticing faces in the crowd that aren’t red and shiny with having a good time. I nudge Mary and point out one such woman. She’s got a little boy by the hand. To look at her long, grey face, you’d think she was at a funeral, not a fair. Her brat looks fed up to the back teeth too.

‘You can’t please some people,’ I say.

Mary winces, surprising me. ‘The Saviour giveth, the Saviour taketh away,’ she says, quoting Freshwater’s preacher, old Fod. ‘Even idents have families.’

Cassie catches up and grabs my hand. She’s shaking.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ I ask her.

‘I’m glad there’s only one of me,’ she whispers.

‘You wait till you see this thing,’ says Nash, with a weird laugh.

‘Is it scary?’ squeaks Cassie, her brown eyes wide.

Nash leads us out of the crowd, towards an alcove set deep into the stone wall of the arena. As we get closer, I see wrist-thick iron bars sealing this space off and turning it into another cage. A torn canvas awning flaps above it, filling the alcove with scuttling shadows. Off to one side, a sun-scorched old man sits cross-legged on a mat, watching us. Sharp-eyed kids are hanging about.

‘Is it some wild animal?’ I ask Nash.

‘Wait and see.’

One brat is slow clearing out of our way. Nash shoves her aside. I expect screeching and swearing, but the girl hardly notices. She just keeps staring at the cage, her grubby face a muddle of fright and teeth-bared anticipation.

Weird. All I can see is a heap of rags and bones.

Until the rags and bones move.

The rags are rags, but those bones still have skin on them. As my eyes adjust, I see a mottled hand clutching the rags around a filthy wasted body.

A skull-like head slowly lifts to regard us.

‘Oh – my – Saviour!’ I make the Sign of One again.

I’ve never seen a real-live twist before and my guts tie themselves into cold knots. Idents I expected to see, wanted to see. But this monster with twisted blood – this I’m not ready for. I take several steps back despite myself.

Cassie pulls free, turns and runs. Don’t blame her.

Nash sneers, but I’m not fooled. He can act tough, but he’s eyeing those bars same as me, gauging their strength. He’s scared too. Who wouldn’t be?

The bane of Wrath, a devil in human form.

Those iron bars are the only reason we still have throats.

I force myself forward. A breeze shifts the awning and shadows scatter. I see the mad hatred in the creature’s bloodshot eyes as it watches me. I’m so close now its stink shoves up my nose. The twist’s skin is covered in muck and a rash of angry red scars, its waist-length hair filthy and matted. I thought I was a bit skinny, but this thing’s nothing but skin and bone. Male or female? Impossible to say. It hisses at me like a rock viper and shows me its teeth, all filed to sharp points.

Nash elbows me, scaring the crap out of me. ‘They always have one here.’

I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

Behave – or the twist will come in the night and get you!

It’s what grumpy old folk like to growl at naughty little children to scare them. Seeing this disgusting monster is like having my worst nightmares made flesh. It’s horrible to think one of those redhead ident girls will end up like this.

But that’s why we have the Cutting and Unwrapping.

‘You scared, boy?’ asks the twist’s keeper, the old bloke.

‘Not me,’ I say, grimacing.

‘Y’ought to be.’ He cackles, pulls a leather cosh from his belt and rasps it along the cage.

The twist lets out this blood-curdling scream, bounds to its feet and hurls itself at him. Its skeletal arm shoots out between the bars, bony fingers clawing for the man’s throat. Only just in time, he steps back out of range.

It happens so fast – inhumanly fast.

Behind me, I hear children’s delighted shrieks.

‘See what I mean?’ says the man. He spits into the dust at my feet, then looks at me, unblinking and seemingly uncaring, as the twist thrashes to reach him. ‘Some folks, they don’t believe in evil; they gotta see for themselves.’

Mary tugs my sleeve. ‘You got a credit?’

The man elbows her out of the way. His breath stinks as bad as the twist. ‘A credit and you can make it dance.’

‘Do what?’ I say.

‘Just pay the man,’ says Nash, shoving me.

They’re all sneering at me now, so I toss the man a credit.

He makes a big show of biting the coin, then fetches this long pole with an insulated grip at one end. A thick cable snakes away from it through the dirt, towards an ancient power pack. On the grip is a crude trigger.

‘Done this before?’

I’ve no idea what he’s on about and shake my head.

The twist sees the pole; it howls and flings itself to the back of the alcove. The man presses the trigger and I hear an electric whine. Casually, he touches the pole’s tip against one of the bars. BANG! There’s a blinding flash. Showers of yellow sparks make us all duck and I smell the familiar hot stench of arc welding.

The iron bar glows red where the tip touched it.

Oh my Saviour. The twist’s skin, all those wounds. I know why now.

‘Have fun,’ says the man, handing me the pole. ‘You got one minute. And don’t get too close. If the twist tags you, that’s your problem not mine.’

I think I’m going to puke, but Nash’s face is a mask, stretched taut with anticipation. He licks his lips and pushes me forward.

‘You heard him – make it dance.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I moan. ‘Somebody else do it.’

This is sick. In my head I see Rona’s I told you so face.

‘You big, soft gom,’ growls Nash. ‘The thing’s not human. Doesn’t matter how bad you burn it, it’ll be okay tomorrow. These monsters heal so fast.’

Not human. But it was once, wasn’t it?

I stare in horror at the twist as it grovels and whimpers at the back of its cage. Okay, so maybe it is a monster now, like they keep telling us. What do I know? I’m a nobody from the arse end of the Barrens. But it sounds human.

‘Come on,’ says Vijay. ‘Don’t be a wimp.’

I look at Mary, but her lip curls.

‘Stop wetting yourself. Get stuck in!’ shouts Nash.

The old man wants the business too. He thrusts his face real close.

‘Y’ain’t no stinking twist-lover, are ya?’

Faces in the crowd are staring now. My skin crawls, but what can I do? Nothing. I know – we all know – what happens to twist-lovers, those fools who preach the heresy that twists aren’t evil, just another human species. They end up hanging from trees, their eyes pecked out. I grit my teeth, step up to the bars.

Only for my legs to be kicked out from under me.

The ground leaps up and smashes into my back. For several seconds all I can do is lie there groaning, struggling to catch my breath. Too late I remember the pole I’m holding is a weapon, before a booted foot grinds that hand into the soil. I look up to see my attacker standing over me – a little guy with white dreads, shabby leather overalls, eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses. In each lens, I see my shocked face, gob open, gasping for air. Two me’s, like I’m an ident too.

He pushes the shades up into his dreads and he . . . is a girl.

A girl with death in her dark green eyes.

‘So you like torturing twists, do you?’ she hisses.

‘Drop dead,’ I say, wheezing.

Big mistake. I see now what she’s pointing at me – a snub-nosed flamer, a weapon so lethal it’s banned even on dump worlds.

She leans down and presses the flamer’s barrel into my forehead.

‘Wrong answer.’

The gun’s a blur, so I focus on the girl’s face. Pale, tough-looking, about my age. Black thumb-thick bars painted across her cheekbones. Teardrop tattoo dripping from her left eye. Those long, greasy dreads, bleached white.

And she looks mad as hell.

‘No, wait!’ I say. ‘I –’

A bald guy in matching leathers and face paint hauls the girl off me. He’s massive, double ugly and looks even meaner than she is. I like him already.

‘What the hell are you doing, Sky?’

He wrenches the flamer from the girl’s hand and shoves her away. She glares at him like she’ll argue, but settles for making a gun shape with her hand and pretend-shooting me.

She stalks off then, limping badly.

Baldy waves her flamer at us. ‘Anybody see what happened?’

Nobody wants to die so nobody answers.

The man grunts with obvious satisfaction. ‘Good. You keep it that way.’

He pockets the gun and follows the girl towards the exit. Our stunned silence is broken by a slow, leathery slapping sound. The twist is sitting up at the back of its cage now and it’s clapping.

Slowly, miserably, I pick myself up.

‘Wow, Kyle,’ says Nash, poking me with his finger. ‘You just got your head kicked in by some gimp windjammer girl.’

‘That right?’ I say.

He opens his mouth to make another smart-arse comment.

I don’t give him the chance.

All my life I’ve been scared of thugs like Nash, but it’s like I’m suddenly possessed by rage. Or maybe it’s shame. I snap his head back with a punch. He staggers and goes down. When he gets back up, he’s clutching his mouth and cursing me, blood dribbling thick and red between his fingers.

‘You so had that coming, Nash,’ I say.

2
HIGH SLAYER

It’s not like I want to go, after everything that happened. I volunteer to look after our campsite. But Clayton, who’s as close to a leader as we’ve got, and no fool, says I go to the Unwrapping and Nash stays as punishment for fighting. So here I am the next day, wedged inside the arena again, ten rows or so back from the stage. We’ve been here for hours already. Today’s another hot one, and I see storm clouds gathering out west on the horizon. The mood is serious now. Apart from a few stalls selling spiced meat snacks, the merchants are gone. The bars are all closed too.

Clayton says we’re here to witness, not be entertained. He’s warned us to be on our best behaviour.

I’m standing with the Reeve family, including a squirming Cassie. Since I took the girl’s hand yesterday, she’s attached herself to me like one of those nasty little suckerfish you get in our lakes. On the stage, men are covering an altar with crimson cloth. Suspended over the cages at the back, a massive vid-screen made from loads of little screens shows our glorious leader, the Saviour himself.

He stares down at us, magnified a thousand times.

Me, I’ve only seen him on faded posters before, where he looks old and severe. Here on the screen though I see he’s still barrel-chested, strong and vigorous for a man his age. A mane of thick grey hair falls over his broad shoulders and he’s got a mouthful of the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. We get to see a lot of them too, with him smiling as he does his famous ‘reaching out to the people’ pose that Rona hates so much. Like he’s a father figure, not the dictator she’s always saying he is.

It’d be confusing if I could be bothered thinking about it.

I stop watching him and look out instead for that scowling girl with the white dreads and the flamer. In this crowd it’d be easy for her to sneak up behind me and slide a knife between my ribs without anyone seeing.

Turns out Nash was right. The leathers and those marks on the girl’s face means she’s windjammer crew. Me, I’ve never seen a windjammer, but like all kids, I know about these ridge-running glider transports. Cobbled together from the scrapped orbit-to-surface dropships that dumped us here back in the day, they’re crude enough flying machines, but as hi-tech as it gets here. Worlds like Wrath are where whoever runs the galaxy disposes of criminals, and that’s a locked-down, marooned and forgotten kind of deal. We’re left to fend for ourselves.

So folk say anyway, but what do I know?

I’ve wanted to be a windjammer pilot since forever.

Down on sleep after a bad night, I yawn. Whenever I closed my eyes, I kept seeing that flamer. But that wasn’t the worst thing – I wish I’d had the guts to tell Nash and that old man to drop dead. I should never have picked up that pole thing. Okay, so the twist looked nasty, but – and I know this is heresy – wouldn’t being tortured and tormented, day in, day out, turn anyone into a monster?

A trumpet sounds. At least, I think it’s a trumpet. We don’t go in much for music in the Barrenlands – it’s nice, but you can’t eat it.

‘What’s happenin’?’ squeals Cassie.

People file on to the stage. I can tell straight off they’re important because they’re sleek and fat and wear rich-looking clothes. You have to be a big deal on Wrath to be fat. One by one they waddle along and crush their seats.

‘They look down, we look up,’ somebody hisses.

The crowd starts muttering now.

I’m twisted round, trying to hear what’s being said, when I hear gasps. I look back and have a gasp sucked out of me too. A raven-haired young woman stalks across the stage, swaying her hips, a long brown cloak draped over her shoulders. Under this she wears a fancy black-leather uniform, trimmed with shimmering nightrunner fur, cut tight and clinging to show off her figure. She stops at the altar, turns and faces us. Even from here I see her fingers clenching and unclenching. She reminds me of a spider – all long, spindly arms and legs, waiting to pounce. Trumpets blast, then fade away. Cassie kicks me in the shin.

‘All right!’ I hoist her on to my shoulders.

The people behind us moan, but I ignore them. Cassie’s thrilled. I’m not – she stinks. She also thinks it’s okay to hold on to my ears.

‘Who’s the tall skinny woman?’

‘A High Slayer.’

I’m pretty sure, seeing how much gilt she’s got on her uniform.

The only Slayers I’ve seen before are those who come for our idents, when it’s time to cart them off to the camps. Everybody always turns out to watch because, let’s face it, nothing else happens in Freshwater. Rona says they’re stone-cold killers, the Saviour’s special forces from the war. They’ve got some other fancy names too, like Preservers of Human Purity, but I like Slayer better.

‘What’s her name?’ Cassie asks me.

‘How should I know?’

‘Commandant Morana,’ whispers Mary, Cassie’s sister. ‘High Slayer for the Barrenlands.’

‘Nasty piece of work,’ adds Mary’s mother, quiet-like, out of the side of her mouth. ‘Eats babies for breakfast.’

I shudder, and try to imagine what babies might taste like. Disgusting, if Cassie is anything to go by.

The Saviour fades away and the big screen zooms in on the woman’s face. She is beautiful, but there’s a harshness stamped into her features no creams or powders can hide. Her eyes stare back at us, so cold and bleak I shiver, even though I’m hot. And when she starts talking, her voice is impossibly loud. Her words crash around the arena, like thunder echoes around our hills. I’m gobsmacked, until I see the microphone clipped to her collar and the speakers up on poles.

‘Good afternoon, citizens of the Barrenlands,’ she booms. ‘Welcome to Deep Six on this, the last day of this year’s Peace Fair. It is . . . gratifying to see how many of you have chosen to make the difficult journey here.’

I can’t help sniffing. Chosen? Okay, so I chose, but it’s the law.

‘I would like to begin,’ she continues, ‘by asking you all to show your appreciation for our hosts, the loyal and industrious mining community of Deep Six, who once again have made this year’s Fair such a success.’

The bigdeals haul themselves up from their chairs and the crowd starts clapping. Hardly deafening though – nobody will be going home with blisters on their hands. And this lack of enthusiasm isn’t lost on Morana. Magnified on the screen above her, she stiffens and her scowling face lifts to look behind us. Uh-oh. Turns out that she isn’t the only Slayer in Deep Six today. When I look, I see loads more have spread out behind us around the rear wall of the arena. Some are only carrying non-lethal shockers, but most are armed with pulse rifles.

The clapping gets louder – some creeps even cheer.

Deep Six’s Elder, a red-faced woman with a whiny voice, makes a speech. She thanks the High Slayer, then bangs on for boring ages about new productivity records for the iron-ore mines. It’s worse than studying maths, so I’m glad when she eventually sits down and Morana returns to the centre of the stage.

The crowd, which had started muttering again, quiets.

‘We are gathered here today,’ Morana announces, ‘to celebrate thirty years of the Saviour’s peace. A peace which has allowed us to rebuild our shattered world and raise new generations of pureblood singleton children. A peace which sees us looking forward from our dark past towards an ever brighter future.’

She pauses. The speakers blast out the first verse of ‘All Hail the Saviour’.

We chant it back, like good little citizens.

What follows is a history lesson from her that makes me sigh. I mean, as if I haven’t had this drummed into my head a thousand times already by our preacher, Fod, back in Freshwater. Anyway, Morana reminds us how the outbreak of ident births was first considered a blessing as we struggled to survive in those early days after being dumped here and needed all the strong hands we could get, to clear the fields and labour in them. Then the realisation that only one twin was pureblood human, the other a less-than-human twist. And yet still we tolerated them. Only for our generosity to be rewarded by the Twist War, when the twists showed their true monster faces by rising up against us purebloods and almost wiping us out, being faster and stronger and entirely without pity. How we purebloods survived only because one man among us would not be beaten: the glorious leader we are now pleased to call our Saviour, who saved us from our doom.

Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.

The whole time she’s talking, the screen shows grainy footage from the war. Seen that before too. Women and children torn limb from limb by half-naked soldiers, who look human, but aren’t. Slayers leading regular troops in devastating counterattacks. It looks staged to me. Why was somebody filming it instead of blasting away with a pulse rifle? But like I said before, what do I know?

Cassie buries her face in my hair. ‘It’s horrible.’

The crowd starts getting twitchy and excited now. Most people will have been to Fairs before. They will know what’s coming after the speeches.

‘Yet today is not only a celebration,’ Morana says, at last. ‘Today serves another, far more important purpose. We are gathered here . . . for the Unwrapping.’

‘Un-wrapping! ’ roars the crowd.

The screen cuts to Morana’s half-smile, half-sneer.

‘For we must never relax our guard against the bane of Wrath.’

‘The bane of Wrath! ’

She glares at us and I, like everyone else, stick my believer face on.

‘There are some who claim not to believe in the curse.’ Her voice becomes menacing now, a stern mother explaining something for the very last time to a witless child. ‘To those doubters I say – BEHOLD THE BANE OF WRATH!’

There’s a disturbance at the rear of the stage, where a gap in the stacked cages forms a tunnel. Using long chains attached to a collar around its neck, four muscular guards drag out the twist we saw yesterday. They fasten the chains to anchors in the stage floor then step back, panting and sweating.

And the crowd goes mental.

‘The bane of Wrath! The bane of Wrath! ’

The stark-naked twist raves and claws at its collar. It is a monster, I do see that now. Even so, I can hardly watch – it’s too cruel. But the effect it has on the crowd is as shocking. It’s like I blink and suddenly I’m drowning in a sea of contorted red faces, eyes bulging, mouths gaping as they bay for the twist’s blood.

Even Mary, always so precious, screams her head off.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ asks Cassie.

‘It’s possessed,’ I explain, wincing. ‘Taken over by demons.’

Morana strolls towards it. The creature screams and hurls itself to meet her, skeletal arms outstretched, fingers like talons – only for the chains to snap taut, jerking its head back. The High Slayer doesn’t flinch, but stands just out of reach at a red line painted on the floor. She shakes her head as if disgusted and holds up one black-gloved hand. A guard steps forward with a disruptor tube. There’s a blue-white flash and the twist freezes, mid-snarl. On the screen I see it’s still twitching, its mad eyes full of hate, but that’s all it can do now.

‘Hard to believe,’ booms Morana, ‘that this evil, this monster, could once have passed for human. Yet I assure you it did. This is why these foul caricatures of humanity are such an insidious enemy. Why we must always remain vigilant and work so tirelessly to preserve the blessed purity of our human bloodline.’

‘Un-wrapp-ing! ’ howls the crowd, growing impatient.

‘What’s insidyus mean?’ asks Cassie.

‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘Something bad. Shut up, will you?’

Morana raises her voice, so loud it hurts. ‘Let the Unwrapping begin!’

3
UNWRAPPING

More blaring trumpets. Morana takes her place on a seat behind the altar. A tall man in a cloak, nose and mouth hidden by a black mask, emerges from the cage-tunnel and stalks centre stage, his boots thumping the wood. I overhear someone behind me telling a buddy that this guy does the Unwrapping. The masked man fumbles under his cloak and a screech of feedback almost takes our heads off.

One fool laughs out loud – he must be drunk.

‘Bring forth the first subjects!’

Subjects. I wondered what he’d call them. We try not to say words like ‘double’, or ‘couple’, or ‘two’ here on Wrath. It’s bad luck. There’s a rhyme we’re taught as kids: One, three or four, that’s the score. More than four is greedy.

Now some more guards emerge from the tunnel.

Held between them, ankles shackled so they can only hobble, are the first idents to be unwrapped. Skinny brothers, stiff with fright, both wearing a sort of sleeveless white smock, which covers them down to their knees. Thick leather belts go round their waists. If they’re any older than ten, I’d be amazed.

Scared little boys, who happen to be spitting images.

‘The family Anderson,’ declares the man in the mask, and now he turns towards the steps at the front of the stage, as if he’s expecting something.

‘What’s he waiting for?’ I ask Mary.

‘The parents.’

Oh yeah. I see a man and a woman climbing the steps now, grubbers like us, from their round shoulders and farm clothes. They bow stiffly, before shuffling to the side of the stage, away from the still-frozen twist. A murmur spreads through the crowd, which sounds like sympathy. On the screen, the mother sobs. And I see now what the belts are for – each boy has his right arm, the unbandaged arm, bound behind his back to a loop in the leather. Nobody’s taking any chances.

One of these idents may be a lot stronger than he looks.

A man with a camera scurries forward to get close to the action as the guards force the boys to kneel facing each other, either side of the altar. The boys hold their bandaged arms out, palm down on the cloth. The big screen switches to a view looking down from above. It zooms in nice and tight so we can see the bloodstained dressings on their puny, hairless forearms, then tracks along to show us their hands.

Only four fingers, of course. Little finger gone.

Bile fills my mouth. Guess I see now why they use a red altar cloth.

‘My money’s on leftie,’ whispers Mary.

‘You what?’

Stunned, I hear whispered wagers and watch as credits change hands around me.

‘Five says it’s the left one. He looks meaner.’

‘I’ll take that. Check out the eyes of the one on the right.’

On the stage, the masked man steps up to the altar. He pulls a curved knife from his robes and brandishes it for our inspection. Steel glints in the bright dayshine. And the crowd roars, nearly deafening me. ‘Un-wrapp-ing! ’

The man turns, his cloak swirling, and bends over the altar. His back is to us, but the screen shows us what he’s doing. I watch, cringing, as he slips the blade under each boy’s bandage and slashes it loose. With a practised flourish, he rips both bandages off at the same time, then leans in and inspects. After he steps aside, the camera lingers, teasing, then zooms in. Both boys have a single bloody slit across their forearm. An ugly, still-open wound. No signs of any healing.

The crowd sighs with obvious disappointment.

Thank the Saviour, I think, biting my lip.

‘First-timers,’ says Mary. ‘They hardly ever manifest that young.’

‘What’s that mean?’ a voice says in my ear.

I’d almost forgotten Cassie who’s still on my shoulders; she’s been so quiet. ‘It means we can’t tell which one is evil yet.’

‘Why can’t we?’

Quick as I can, I tell her how twists are sneaky – exactly the same as us purebloods when they’re little, so impossible to tell apart, but how when they’re older they start to show signs of the monsters they will one day turn into.

‘Like being faster and stronger than us?’ says Cassie.

‘Yup. And they heal quicker too. Impossibly fast. That’s how we tell.’

She shuts up at last, seemingly satisfied.

I catch myself rubbing my forearm as the parents are led away, both sobbing. They aren’t allowed to visit their children in the camps, so this is the one time they get to see them every year. How must this feel? Relief that both their children are spared for another year, or regret they don’t get one son back today? Or just despair at the whole proceedings? Despair – it’s got to be.

‘Bo-ring!’ sings Cassie.

That does it – heartless little maggot. I yank her off my shoulders.

She complains loudly, like I care. I fend her off as she tries to clamber back up again. In the relative hush, this makes quite a commotion. When I look up, my heart pounds. I hold my breath and freeze. Morana is looking towards our section of the crowd. I can’t be sure, but it seems like she’s staring straight at me.

Cassie kicks me again, but I hardly notice.

The High Slayer looks away and I breathe again.

The guards drag both boys to the front of the stage. They parade them around together now, holding their arms up to the crowd, making sure we all get a solid look at their unhealed wounds before they pull them offstage, back through the tunnel, back to their cage and another year in the ident camps.

Next up, two much older boys are hauled out for their unwrapping.

‘The family Bachmann.’

I crane over the heads of the people in front of me, but this time there’s nothing to see. No slope-shouldered, sad-eyed parents haul themselves on to the stage. Which makes me wonder – do these idents have no parents, or have their parents chosen to stay away? I’ll never know. But, for some reason, it matters.

Me, I’d have thought it impossible to look defiant in leg irons, dragged along by four brute men to be tested for evil. I’m scared half to death just watching them, safe out here in the crowd. But these lads manage it. Where the Andersons were white-faced and petrified, these idents hold their heads high and meet the curious gaze of the crowd. I stare up at the expressions on their identical faces, magnified massively on the big screen. I shouldn’t be impressed, but I can’t help it. I see scorn and contempt, but not a flicker of fear.

‘One good, two e-vil, one good, two e-vil,’ chants the crowd.

The ident on the left, just before he’s forced on to his knees before the altar, pulls away from his guard and sends a big gob of spit into the front row of the crowd. The people there don’t appreciate it. They howl and throw stuff at him.

The guards drag him back to the altar.

Mary’s dad grins at me. ‘A credit says it’s the spitter.’

‘You’re on,’ I say. What else can I do? I can’t look like I feel sorry for twists.

The masked man wields his knife again. When he steps back, we have a winner. Or a loser, I should say. And I’m shiny, up a credit. The kid who spat has five scars and one open wound. His brother – or the twist pretending to be – only has five scars. A big yellow crust comes away, stuck to the bandage. Where the cut would have been is smooth, pink skin. A deep cut healed overnight.

Don’t need to be a healer’s son to know that’s unnatural.

The arena erupts. A thousand little fingers slash the air with the Sign of One. All around me, people jump up and down, emptying their lungs in an orgy of hysterical shouting and screaming. I scream too. I yell nonsense until my throat is raw from yelling. It’s impossible not to – fear needs a way out.

Suddenly, the crowd starts chanting something new.

‘Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Now what? This time, only the twist is paraded. On the screen, I see his brother watching, mouth turned down, as a guard removes his leg irons. They push him towards a fire basket, but he struggles so they have to force him.

‘If I was him,’ I say, ‘I’d be jumping for joy that my blood isn’t twisted.’

‘You don’t have a brother, do you?’ says Mary’s mother.

‘He’s not a real brother,’ says Mary.

Her father scowls and hands over my credit. Mary winks at me, obviously delighted, maybe hoping I’ll spend it on something for her later. She’ll be lucky. Up on the stage, one guard holds the innocent youth. Another, leather gloved and aproned, pulls an iron rod from the hot coals. Without any hesitation, he plants the glowing tip on to the boy’s left bicep. I wince, seeing smoke curl and hearing the amplified hiss. The boy staggers, but doesn’t cry out.

‘Scabb-er! ’ chants the crowd now.

Scab. That’s what we call the pureblood ident. The lucky one.

‘Why’d they burn him?’ asks Cassie, as guards haul the boy off the stage.

I let go a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. ‘Now they’re sure he’s pureblood, they brand him with a big P. Like your dad brands fourhorns.’

‘So they can tell who owns him?’

‘Nobody owns him.’ I sigh. ‘It’s so he can prove he’s pureblood. He gets his life back today, but if we didn’t mark him people would see his missing little finger and think maybe he’s an ident on the run. This way, he can just roll his sleeve up, show his brand and you know he’s all right. Now do you get it?’

‘But won’t the mark heal and go away?’

I scowl down at her. ‘It won’t, mud for brains. You saw him unwrapped. Only twists can heal a scar away. That mark’ll be on him till the day he dies.’

Cassie sucks her thumb doubtfully.

‘What will he do with no family to go to?’ I ask Mary.

‘Who cares?’ She laughs. ‘It’s what happens now that makes it worth dragging ourselves all this way. You get to see what the Peace Fair is all about!’

Even as she says this, a tall frame hisses up from the floor of the stage. I stop wondering when I see the noose hanging down from the cross member. It’s a gallows. The guards drag twist-boy over, both his hands bound behind his back now. He struggles, his bare feet hammering the stage, but they stand him up, slip the rope round his neck and give it a vicious tug to tighten it.

No way – I’m going to witness an execution.

‘Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Desperate to see, Cassie starts climbing up me, but I push her away.

Commandant Morana stands. She holds her fist out, palm down. The crowd shuts up in a heartbeat. After the uproar, the silence is so empty, I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff. A lammerjay caws high overhead.

She opens her hand.

Thunnkkk! A trapdoor opens in the stage.

The boy drops like a stone into the dark hole and out of sight. The rope jerks iron-bar taut, then twitches and swings as he kicks his life away. I want to look away, but I can’t. The crowd around me hoots and applauds.

Twists are fighters, I’ll say that. It’s a minute before the rope goes still.

In the Barrenlands nobody dies from old age, so I’ve seen plenty of death. Like that old guy gored by a bull blackbuck, who died screaming, still trying to shove his guts back in. Or my mate Keane, after they pulled his fish-gobbled body out of the lake. I thought I was used to death, but this is just so . . . cold-blooded. Sweat stings my eyes. I can’t stop my legs shaking.

This I did not see coming.

Maybe I should’ve done. Twists are the bane of Wrath. If we take our foot off their necks, they’ll gang up again to slaughter us. I do get that. That’s why the Saviour’s law demands we mark idents and cage them and test them when they’re old enough. All this, when the simplest thing would be to kill both. Proof of the Saviour’s infinite benevolence, Fod likes to preach. A system put in place to protect us, while sparing the innocent. Harsh and cruel perhaps, but merciful.

I knew all this before I handed over my credits.

But knowing is one thing; seeing the grim limits of the Saviour’s mercy another. I swallow hard, grateful at least for not having to watch the twist thrashing at the rope end. Why the hell hadn’t Rona told me about this Purification?

‘What’s with you?’ says Mary, eyeing me. ‘The thing was evil.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘Sure.’

My eyes stray to the back of the stage. The idents are making some kind of fingers-crossed salute to the dead kid through the bars of their cages. Slayer guards are rushing up and down, clubbing at them with their rifles to stop them.

The crowd sees and jeers even louder. All part of the fun.

But the screen shows none of this. It sticks with the bigdeals on stage clapping their delicate hands, then pans to Morana, hiding a yawn with her gloved hand. Over the next hour, twenty more pairs of idents are unwrapped. Seven more twists test positive and make the drop into the trapdoor, three of them girls. The youngest, a girl with a face full of freckles, looks about eleven. Even she gets a cheer from the crowd when she drops. The scabs are branded, but only four are claimed by their families. Mary, enjoying herself hugely, pulls my leg about my long face. Cassie stuffs her face with sweets and pesters me to try one as Maskman summons the Lynch family. The crowd has a big laugh at the unfortunate surname, but I can’t join in. The Lynches are those redhead ident girls I saw yesterday. A woman, an older image of the girls, hauls herself on to the stage, but collapses. Last time I saw these girls they were petrified, but now they look calm and resigned. It’s the loving look they give each other as they’re forced to kneel at the altar that undoes me. I can’t watch any more – just can’t. I’ve had it with the Unwrapping.

I peer round at the Slayers, wondering if they’ll blast me if I make a run for it back to camp. I don’t care what people think. I have to get out of here, away from this madness. And that’s when Cassie’s greed does me a favour.

She pukes her guts up, all down her front.

‘Oh, Cassie, no!’ says her mother.

‘No bother,’ I say, hastily. ‘I’ll take her back and clean her up.’

4
THE ROAD BACK

Such a nice young man. That’s what Cassie’s mother is telling everyone, ever since I hauled her puking daughter out of the arena for her. I reckon she’s got her eye on me as a match for her Mary. Well, one person who disagrees is Nash.

Surprise, surprise – he isn’t taking his split lip well.

It’s three days after the Peace Fair and we’re almost back to Freshwater. Five klicks back, we crested the pass through the foothills. Nash is still picking on me every chance he gets, which is loads. Thing is, the few men with enough spine to tell him to leave me be are out on the trail, scouting ahead for trouble.

I’m looking forward to seeing my girl Jude. Okay, she might not be quite so pretty as Mary, but she likes a good time and I can talk to her about anything. She’ll kill herself laughing when I tell her about the windjammer girl.

I wonder, does she miss me like I miss her?

The trail drops down, following the bank of a tumbling peaty river through forests of hash-willow. By midday, we’re less than ten klicks out. Even the fourhorns hauling our wagons – the dumbest animals on Wrath – sense this and pick their pace up without me prodding. Best of all, the sun comes out at last. These past days we’ve been battered by storms; now we can put our rain gear away.

I sniff the air. ‘Do you smell that?’ I ask the Zielinski woman.

She says she doesn’t.

A musky stink, but it’s gone now. Animal maybe?

Apart from this, the forest smells fresh after its scrubbing by hail and rain. There’s plenty of shade here too, so we don’t go from cold to boiling hot. The hash-willow leaves look incredibly yellow. Wildflowers sway in the ever-present breeze. Reds and pinks and whites and blues. I even recognise some of them too, the ones Rona grinds into her healing pastes. I don’t know their names, but they look so bright and cheerful you’d swear some kid’s been at them with a brush.

I’m not going to sing or anything, but I’m cheering up.

And I need to. I picture our isolated little shack, tucked away under the trees, and me walking through the door with a long face on. Soon as she sees this, Rona will launch straight into one of her I told you so routines. You won’t listen to me, what do you expect? On and on. I mean, as mothers go, Rona and I get along pretty well, way better than most, but still. I’ll never hear the bogging end of it.

That’s not what’s been dragging me down though.

I’ve always been a bit of a loner – I guess because of all that moving about we did when I was younger – but now I feel even more left out and alone than usual. It’s like I don’t know these guys any more, even the ones I’d almost call friends. I watch them as they walk or ride the trail, happy and laughing, teeth flashing as they chat away. Okay, so everyone’s keeping a wary eye out too, but it’s been like this ever since we left Deep Six. Even when the hail was rattling down, everyone was banging on about the Fair and how good this or that was. Hey, look, see what I bought? The food was crappy this year, wasn’t it?

Blah, blah, blah. And – I – just – don’t – get – it.

See, I couldn’t give a toss what the fishcakes were like, or what such-and-such might make from that reel of synth-cotton she bought. How can they laugh and joke so soon after seeing such horrors? Am I the only one here who wants to talk about what really happened? Am I the only one still feeling sick to my stomach?

I was freaked out by what I saw at the Fair, but they loved it.

Maybe Nash is right – maybe I’m the weirdo.

I know what he’d say. We live on a dump world. Life is hard, get over it.

And speak of the devil . . .

‘What’s the matter, Kyle?’ says Nash, sidling up to me where I’m leading the fourhorns hauling one of our wagons. ‘Missing your girlfriend?’

I ignore him. Best way with bullies, Rona says.

Tell the truth, I’m not so scared of Nash and his thug mates now, after the Fair. I know they’ll give me a kicking and I know it’ll hurt. But here’s the thing, I feel kind of numb about it. What’s a few bruises compared to a hanging?

‘Took you apart, didn’t she?’ he says.

Oh right – he means that psycho windjammer girl with the dreads. I taste bile again, remembering being sure I was going to die. I’ll be glad if I never see her again.

And there it is again on the breeze, that weird musky smell.

‘You wait,’ says Nash. ‘We’re going to give you such a beating. You’ll still be sucking your food through a straw when the snows come.’

I stare at the hash-willows by the trail. Did something move there?

‘You hear me?’ he says.

‘No,’ I say, distracted. ‘Something’s not right.’

That’s when I hear Clayton shout, his voice high and scared.

‘Rea-pers! ’

Next thing, I hear the thump, thump, thump of our scouts’ pulse rifles rapid-firing in the woods high to our left, and glimpse several bright acid-green flashes through the trees. A woman screams from somewhere up front.

Nash clutches my arm. Not such a tough guy now.

The Reapers leap up from hiding places in bushes and drop down from branches overhanging the trail. Everywhere I look I see more, loping towards us like human wolves, howling and shaking their spears and long knives. I’m rooted to the spot by the sight of their half-naked bodies, plastered in filth and twigs and swirling blue tattoos, their savage Reaper faces all twisted with bloodlust.

Too many – I see that straight away. We’re screwed.

‘Don’t run. Fight!’ roars Clayton.

I can’t do either. I can’t even breathe. It’s like I’ve been zapped by that Slayer muscle-lock. All I can do is stand here, gawping like a fool as Clayton leaps down from his wagon. He drops to one knee, aims his pulse rifle and snaps three thumping shots off before an arrow gets him in the throat, toppling him sideways into the mud. With a curse, Nash knocks me aside and sprints forward along the trail. He snatches up Clayton’s pulse rifle, throws himself down behind our leader’s crumpled body and starts shooting. Thump! Thump! One Reaper, almost on him, flies backwards, a huge hole in his chest.

‘Ammo!’ screams Nash.

He fires again and again into the charging Reapers. One goes down. Another spins round and screams, half his arm gone. Other men are firing now, but the Reapers are on top of us. My muscles unknot themselves. I gulp a huge, sobbing lungful of air. Every nerve in my body screams at me to run, but I swear and dash back to the wagon. If a gommer like Nash can fight, I have to help him. Spare pulse-rifle magazines should be in a box by the bench seat. I clamber up, straight-arming the panicking Zielinski woman out of my way. But I can’t open the box. Some idiot has padlocked it. I plant my feet and howl curses and pull like crazy, ignoring the pain in my fingers. The hasp gives way in a shower of splinters.

No mags in the box, only dirty grey bugwebs.

I look up, just in time, as a Reaper spear flashes towards me. How I twist myself out of the way I’ll never know, but it hisses past. I throw myself across the seat, drop down on the far side of the wagon and pull my hunting knife out. It looks so small in my hand – a child’s toy compared to that Reaper spear.

Sweat pours down my face and screws with my seeing.

The shouts and screams suddenly get louder. I can hear the desperate grunts and scuffles of hand-to-hand fighting now. Something else too, which makes me pant with disbelief – the bang and crackle of a blaster. I grovel in the dirt for a look under the wagon. Through the wheel spokes, I see a man’s boots staggering backwards, surrounded by bare Reaper feet. The boots lift and hang quivering in mid-air. I hear his death shriek, then his body falls to the ground.

It’s Nash I think – or what’s left of him.

The wagon bounces on its springs as something lands on it. A shadow flickers over me and I hear a splash as feet land in the mud behind. I whip round, wheezing with fear, and I’m face to face with a Reaper.

Once, I electrocuted myself. Got careless hooking up a live fuel cell. This feels like that as a jolt of pure terror rips through me. I stagger to my feet, meaning to run, only to find my legs are rubbery and useless.

‘Stay away from me!’ I shout.

This Reaper is short and scrawny, not much older than I am, although it’s hard to tell, he’s so plastered with mud and feathers. He comes at me, leading with his knife. I twist out of the way and he cuts my side, but not serious. I grab his wrist before he can have another go. We pant into each other and wrestle back and forth. He’s way stronger than he looks, however, and fights dirty too. When we end up face to face, he rocks back and headbutts me. I stagger and drop my hands.

What saves me is that Reaper boy’s a gloater.

He steps back, grinning from one filthy ear to the other. And I feel that terrible ferocity shudder through me again, same as when I punched Nash. When he struts back in to finish me, I’m not just ready – I’m looking forward to it.

If I die, then so does he!

I look into his bloodshot eyes and hurl myself at him.

Next thing I know, I’m shaking and down on my hands and knees. Reaper boy is on his back in front of me, legs kicking as he tries to slide further away. The bloody hilt of my knife is sticking out of his chest. Not a killing wound, but he looks as shocked as I am. His knife is beside me. I grab it, the handle slick and warm, and scramble up. His face goes rigid – he must think I’m going to finish him.

I should . . . but I can’t. It’s just not in me.

On the far side of the wagon, the fighting sounds almost over. I gulp air and try to think what to do. Behind me is the fast-flowing brawl of the river. I don’t swim too good, so that’s no use. But I’m the fastest runner in the three valleys. If I can get past their spears, I reckon no half-starved Reaper will catch me. The forest is their world, so it’s the trail or nothing.

But how to get past their spears?

I scramble to the front of the wagon. On the trail, I glimpse hell. Swarming Reapers. Bodies everywhere. A woman screams as she’s dragged away by her hair into the trees. Behind me, Reaper boy starts yelling. I hold my breath and dodge between the rearing, plunging fourhorns. Somehow, their lashing hooves miss me as I reach up and slash their trace ropes. I hack at their flanks. The stink of blood and Reaper does the rest. The maddened fourhorns, free from their harness, red-eyed and frantic with terror, stampede. Reapers scatter. I see one tossed into the air, but daren’t stop to watch. I slip along to the front of the leading wagon, pull my head down into my shoulders and take off running like I’ve never run before.

I make it past the spears, only to trip over a root.

Soon as I hit the ground, I know I’m hurt bad. I scramble up, but my ankle won’t take my weight and I cry out as Reapers come running. I limp backwards and they follow me. They’re in no great rush now, seeing I’m hurt.

It hits me then, like a knife in the guts.

I’m dead.

Something clobbers the back of my knees and sits me down hard. It’s a shelf of rock above the river. I haul myself backwards up on to it, sobbing, staring in horror at the red smears my hands leave on the limestone. My blood, or Reaper blood, or fourhorn blood? Guess I’ll never know.

I think about throwing myself into the water. But I can’t.

‘Not much meat on this one.’

I look into their hateful Reaper eyes. And I don’t know what shocks me more – that Reapers can speak, same as you and me, or that this is the end. Reaper boy struggles up to join them, grinning, my hunting knife in his hand.

At least I left my mark on him. That’s something.

I loved that knife. It’s about the only thing Rona ever gave me, apart from that dose of swamp pox. Slowly, painfully, I haul myself to my feet.

The sky’s so blue – not a cloud in it.

Biggest Reaper points a blaster at me and pulls the trigger.