The Zero Patient Trilogy (Book One): A Sci-Fi Dystopian Series
Date: 2016-03-25 19:34:11+00:00
Description: Sterling is a gambler with his family's lives at stake. Halo is a Goddess with a troubling secret. Hunter is a religious fanatic with an unquenchable thirst for human flesh. No questions asked, no answers questioned. The Book is the text that separates the people of the Canyon. It is the reason they fight in the War Zone, the reason they pray, the reason they live, the reason they die. It is the reason they never ask questions. From the writer of the Life is a Beautiful Thing and The Feedback Loop series comes a dystopian cyberpunk trilogy about humanity's greatest dividing factors. Religion,
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The Zero Patient Trilogy

((Book One))

Harmon Cooper

Edited by George C. Hopkins

Boycott Books

Copyright © 2016 by Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2016 Boycott Books

Cover by White Comma

Edited by George C. Hopkins (georgechopkins@yahoo.com)

ISBN-13: 978-1530749478

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

All rights reserved. All rights preserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

For Sor Ganbold

To face the faceless.

To touch the senseless.

To hear the voice.

To see the Goddess.

Author’s Note

Before you dive into the troubled world that is the Canyon, it is important to know a few of the terms used in the trilogy. I’ve put a list of vocabulary words at the back of the book, which is instantly accessed through the table of contents or by clicking here. If ever you stumble upon an unknown term, this is a great place to look.

Enjoy,

Harmon Cooper

.STERLING.

.1.

The stench of the dead is overwhelming.

In the back of the motocart, intermingled with the top layer of corpses, Sterling waits for the vehicle to power up when the itch strikes. He holds his breath, bides his time, hopes the urge to scratch will pass. It doesn’t.

Damn the itch.

Damn everything about inconvenient bodily functions and the urges they incite. The Canyon, Sterling’s home for almost thirty years now, isn’t a place to be taken lightly. If he blows his cover now, he blows his life. Reeducation or other forms of punishment await him on the other side of a rainbow that dips into a pot o’ shit. That’s not including the likely disappearance of his family if he doesn’t complete the task at hand.

Sterling swallows dust, ignores the dry mouth, dry throat, parched lips, gritty feel of the dust in his mouth. Focus on the task. Playing dead isn’t exactly his specialty, nor is riding in a motocart full of corpses, but all jobs require sacrifices and what Sterling plans to do is especially difficult.

“One … two … three!”

A muffled thud meets his ears as another body is tossed on top of the heap, on top of him. With a quick wiggle, he’s able to get to his itch using the fingernail of a dead man lying halfway on top of him and … and …

That’s the spot.

Gruesome, yes, but a corpse is a corpse, a fingernail a fingernail, and an itch must be scratched. The Book says that all things return to the state from whence they came, that breaking free of the mold is essential in becoming faceless.

The Book says many things and on most days, Sterling doesn’t question the sacred work.

“Just one more.” A man’s voice outside the motocart reaches Sterling’s ears.

“Let’s get this over with,” his companion says. A metalzip buzzes by, its wings whistling and whirring. “They’re out in force today, aren’t they?”

“That they are, that they are,” the first man grunts. “Ready? One … two … three!”

The Vultured Few continue discussing the most recent war for a moment. They relive a few of the battles they’ve witnessed, ramble on about the Southern man with the most kills. Another lifeless body is tossed into the cart and sprawls partly on top of Sterling, making it that much worse.

A mid-afternoon corpse run is one of the less salubrious ways to go south, but it’s also the most inconspicuous. He has given up breathing through his nostrils; the stench of unwashed, close-packed humanity and the ripe, feculent odor of decay only reminds him of how dire his situation has become. Blotted out orange sun, dusty cover, unwelcoming austerity – life in the Canyon.

The motocart starts up and not a moment too soon – Sterling coughs into the tangled hair of the man in front of him. Using his bottom lip as a chute, he tries to blow the sweat out of his eyes. He’s too stuck to use his shoulder to wipe the sweat away; there’s no way he’s going to wipe it on the man’s head in front of him. Even a man like Sterling has his standards.

“Think happy thoughts,” he whispers to himself and the corpses around him.

None respond; the motocart creaks as its tires spin on the pavement.

“You know, you guys aren’t so bad.”

***

Capture Halo, the Goddess of the South. Bring her to the North.

To save one’s own skin is a marvelous thing, and this is exactly what Sterling plans to do by capturing Halo. He can’t trust the man who tasked him with this fool’s errand, not one iota; then again, he can barely trust himself. Regardless, the Book says that a man’s debt follows him through time until it is repaid, that a man is nothing more than his debt, that even his skin is his debt.

“I’m aware of what the Book says,” Sterling whispers to the corpse partially on top of him. “You don’t have to remind me.”

“Are you talking to me, mister?”

The voice startles Sterling and he twists right, lodging his body in a position twice as uncomfortable as he was just moments ago. Blood oozes from someone’s nose onto his exposed arm.

“Who’s there?” he nearly shouts, still not able to see anything.

“Are you heading south?”

“No, I just fell asleep here.”

A finger presses into Sterling’s ear.

“Kid, I’m warning you … ”

“You’re alive, you’re really alive.”

The motocart hits a bump in the road and the corpses shift slightly and press more heavily onto Sterling. “What are you doing in here anyway? You’re too young to participate in the War Zone.” Someone’s shoulder is pressed into his stomach, making it difficult to clear his breath. He resorts to quick, short breaths that are hardly satisfying.

“Heading down, just like you,” the kid answers. “They were going to trim me, and my mom wants me to have kids, so she’s sending me to her sister in the South. You?”

“I have my reasons.”

The motocart rattles and the bodies on top of Sterling shift again. A large man’s moob puddles over his shoulder and presses into the side of his face. The rest of his girth is barely contained by the seersucker fabric keeping the man’s body contained.

Sterling asks, “How old are you?”

“Just turned thirteen.”

“A Lower?”

“Yes.”

“With family in the North and South?”

“My mom was twin born. They separated them. You’re an Upper?”

“I am,” says Sterling.

“Why are you traveling to the South?”

Sterling dodges the question with one of his own. “You’re not trimmed yet? How’d you get away with that? There have been at least two lotteries in the last six years.”

“By hiding on a motocart filled with corpses heading to the South,” the kid says. “If you aren’t going to tell me why you’re heading down, at least tell me your name.”

“Sterling. Yours?”

“Bold.”

“Appropriate.”

“For what?”

“You said, Bold, right?”

“Bolt,” he corrects. “Bolt. As in bolt of lightning. Ever seen the blue ones?”

“On occasion. And you’re from the South?”

The motocart creaks; gas discharges from a corpse near Sterling.

“In the name of the Goddess that reeks!” Bolt hisses.

“Language,” says Sterling. “She may not be here, but she can hear us.”

The kid laughs.

“What?”

“In the name of the Goddess isn’t a curse in the South.”

“It is in the North,” Sterling reminds him. “And that’s where I’m from.”

The motocart skids to a halt and the engine clicks off. The corpse pile shifts forward, putting pressure on Sterling’s back. It feels like someone’s knee is pressing into the small of his back but he can’t be sure. His only goal at this point is to keep the area in front of his mouth clear so he can breathe, which he tries to do by keeping his neck erect and his nose out.

“I’m going to sneeze … ”

“Don’t do it … ”

“I can’t stop it … ”

“Dammit, Bolt!” Sterling mouths as soon as the kid sneezes.

“Did you hear something?” one of the men driving the motocart asks.

“No, why’d you stop anyway?”

“The engine’s acting up. Can’t you feel it?”

“Just keep going; we’ll get it fixed after the drop off. We’ve only got a dozen more vestas to go.”

The motocart starts up again. Wheels tear into the gravel and Sterling finally breathes. “In the name of the Goddess that was close.”

“You said that was a curse word in the North,” says Bolt.

“We’re not in the North anymore.”

***

The two are quiet for a spell. Sterling continues to focus on a clear opening through which to breathe and tries to ignore the very human stenches that assail his nostrils. Shit, body odor, sweat, blood, vomit, piss – the stink of extinguished humanity comingles and festers in the bleak afternoon sun.

“What’s the plan?” Bolt asks, spearing the silence.

“What do you mean?”

“When we arrive at the gravesite.”

“What’s your plan?”

“My plan is to pretend I’m dead,” Bolt tells Sterling.

“That’s a bad plan, kid.”

“It worked last time.”

“They couldn’t tell when they touched your body?”

“They didn’t touch my body; they just dumped the cart. The people of the South are afraid to touch dead bodies because the bodies may transfer their facelessness; even the Vultures don’t do it any more than they have to. None of them wants to be deathborn.”

“That’s stupid. Deathborn only happens to those who die with a face.”

“Have you been to the South before?” Bolt asks.

“Nope.”

“Being faceless is a sin in the South; if you die faceless, you become deathborn. Everything is different down here, like it’s an opposite world or something.”

Sterling grunts. Going south wasn’t exactly his idea, wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the fact that he lost a bet to the richest man in the North, Zander Damien.

Capture Halo or your family dies to clear your markers. The terms to end all terms.

“So they’ll just dump us in?”

“That’s what they did to me last time.”

Sterling grins, uses his bottom lip to try to funnel more air onto his eyes. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day, kid.”

“Bolt.”

“So we just wait until nightfall then we crawl out of the gravesite?”

“Well it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“How so?” Sterling asks.

“They’ll start adding dirt as soon as we’re dropped inside.” Bolt seems closer now, inches away from Sterling’s ear.

“What do we do when they dump the dirt in?”

“We put ourselves in a position that makes it easier for us to dig our way out,” Bolt explains. “They don’t pack the dirt down until the following day; at least they didn’t last time. Keep your hands free when you fall. Try not to suffocate.”

“Then dig our way out?”

“Yup. What were you planning to do?”

.2.

“That should do it.” Sterling jams his shiv back in his boot. He’s used it before – twice – and he isn’t hesitant to use it again. What happens in the Canyon stays in the Canyon. All it takes is one glance up at the smoggy sky and the layer of dust and the absence of the stars to remember this. “You all right, kid?”

“I’ll … be fine.” Bolt wipes the spittle off his mouth. Watching Sterling kill the Vultured Few had been more unpleasant than the kid had expected. The first man died quickly, the second, not so much.

“Clothing … ” Sterling hops down into the hole, waves some flies away. His pants are fine, just a few stains, but he definitely needs a new shirt. Pulling his seersucker top over his head, careful of the face cover, he goes to work on the black war paint on his face. He smears it away from his eyes and uses his shirt to wipe up the mess. He doesn’t want to look like he’s just returned from the War Zone. “How are your clothes?” he calls up to Bolt.

“Fine. I wore two shirts.” Bolt tosses his outer layer into the hole.

“I should have thought of that,” Sterling says as he sorts through the bodies. It’s not pleasant, but he’s beyond pleasantries by this point. Finally, he finds a man with a clean enough shirt. There’s a bit of blood on the face cover, but that’s easily replaced.

Sterling grabs the man’s arms and pulls him up into a sitting position to make it easier to take off his shirt. He counts himself lucky that this one hasn’t stiffened up much yet, sees something twitch out of the corner of his eye, ignores it. Face covers are usually buttoned into the tops of the shirts men wear in the Canyon, which makes it pretty easy to take off. Sterling replaces the man’s face cover with his own and puts the shirt on. He bounces off someone’s back and catches the edge of the hole, where he quickly pulls himself to the top.

Once he’s dusted off his clothing, he moves over to the two motocart drivers. Known as the Vultured Few because of the dirty work they perform on either side of the Off Limits, Sterling almost feels sorry for killing the two men. No time to process his feelings, he lifts the first man’s legs and drags him over to the hole. He does the same to the second man, uses his foot to roll both men into the grave.

“I need to get to the Church of the South as soon as possible.” Sterling picks up a shovel and starts filling the grave.

“Why?” Bolt asks.

“I want to meet the Goddess.”

“Why?”

Sterling hesitates; he knows better than to explain to the kid the details of his suicide mission. “I have my reasons,” he finally says. “Any more questions?”

“You want my help?”

“No.” Sterling rests on the end of his shovel, thinks for a moment. “It’d be helpful if you point me in the right direction, though.”

“Why do you want to meet the Goddess?”

“You were raised in the North,” Sterling says, filling the grave once again. “The Southern Goddess is false. You know this, right?”

“I know it … but … ”

“But what?”

Sterling stops again, casts a weary glance at the kid. Killing Bolt now would make sure there were no witnesses. He swallows the thought – he’d rather not take the life of someone so young.

“I’ve seen them both,” Bolt says.

“The Goddess of the North and the South?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“The Goddess of the South is different. She’s blind.”

“So?” Sterling drops the shovel and takes a step towards the boy.

“Halo isn’t like the Goddess of the North.”

“A lizard’s a lizard.” A metalzip flutters by. It stops just above the two, its wings buzzing loudly. The quote from the Book comes to him: Zippers buzz and do what they must; metalzips aren’t to be touched. “Bolt, I’m going to be honest with you.”

“Yes?”

“There’s room in this grave for another.” The kid takes an epic step back but he doesn’t run, which Sterling admires. “But I need some help getting around. You’ve here been before and you can help me.”

“And if I help you?”

“I’ll help you.”

“How?” Bolt asks.

“There won’t be room in this grave for another. Are we clear here?”

Bolt gets the picture. “I’ll take you to the Church of the South, but I don’t know how you’ll get in there to see her.”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out, but tonight, I want you to help me find a fleshroom. It’s been a long, wearying day.”

***

Sterling starts the three-wheeled motocart. Bolt is next to him now, his eyes wide with a combination of excitement and fear. The two almost look like father and son, aside from the thin layer of youthful fat that softens the angles of Bolt’s face and his blonde hair, at odds with Sterling’s premature grayness, which gives silver highlights to his shaggy brown locks. Their eyes are similar, oval-shaped and tucked under a pair of thick brows; their narrow noses seem as if they’ve been cast from the same mold; their frames somewhere between malnourished and well-fed.

The South is different from the North, the houses made from the same materials yet shaped differently. While many of the dwellings and depots in the North are rounded and circular, everything in the South is all planes and right angles. There are a few Southerners out, but not many, which is also different from the northern side of the Off Limits. Northerners are much more free-spirited than the hyper-religious people of the South. The biggest issue between the two sides boils down to one doctrinal dispute: Northerners believe being faceless is a blessing; Southerners believe it is a curse.

Sterling lightly presses the acceleration pedal and they’re off, travelling down a narrow lane lined with oddly shaped stones separating the burial pit from the Southern dwellings. The street is lit by dim orange lights, powered by the Off Limits. Sterling has wondered where the power comes from before, but he knows better than to ask about it. The Book says that questions are what led humanity to nearly extincting itself.

A woman steps out of the shadows of a building, her pale cover cloths adding bulk to her form. Over her shoulders are bindrings. Worn on both sides of the Great Demarcator, another name for the Off Limits, bindrings cover an Upper woman’s breasts and shoulders and prevent her from moving her arms past a ninety-degree angle. They are worn exclusively by women who are not yet married.

If Sterling had a hat, he’d tip it. Instead, he gives the woman a nod and she hardly acknowledges his presence. No matter, he’ll have his chance later to have whatever he’d like at the fleshroom. Zander Damien, the man who sent him down here, said that he’d reimburse him for travel expenses. Sterling doesn’t believe him; regardless, lust unquenched can lead to greater aberrations.

“Eyes on the prize,” Sterling says as he slows down at an intersection. Obeying traffic laws is crucial in the Canyon; move with rules or move towards death.

“You familiar with The Book of the South?” he asks Bolt over the rumble of the engine.

“I’ve heard some. It’s different than The Book of the North.”

“Not what I’m getting at,” Sterling says as he continues on. “I want to know if there’s a passage that goes something like Move with rules or move towards death. Have you heard it?”

“Everyone in the Canyon knows that passage, North and South.”

“Right.”

“I’m hungry.”

Bolt flashes a grin and lets it fade from his face as soon as he sees Sterling’s cold, hard visage. Most people by the age of thirty have been adversely affected by the conditions of the Canyon. Craggy faces, dehydrated skin, crow’s feet, perma-parched lips, wispy hair, sunken eye sockets – Sterling didn’t have any of these things, aside from the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but he did usually carry an expression that would instantly make anyone who met his basilisk gaze break eye contact first.

A wind picks up, tornadoing tiny rocks and bits of sand. Sterling immediately pulls up his face cover. With his nose and mouth covered, he ducks and faces away from the incoming storm, clenches his eyes shut. “In the name of the Goddess, let the sand cease. In the name of the Goddess, let the sand cease,” he whispers.

Bolt has done the same thing with his face cover, but he’s chosen a different prayer. “Goddess come down, protect, come down, protect, come down, protect, come down. Goddess come down, protect, come down, protect, come down … ”

The sand stops blowing; the night calm returns.

“Close one,” Sterling says as he shakes the grit out of his hair. “That’s the last thing we need.”

Bolt doesn’t need to say anything – he’s seen firsthand the power of a sandstorm in the Canyon.

***

“Show me where there’s food and I’ll take you there,” Sterling says. “But after that, a fleshroom. I’d like … ” He glances at the kid, wonders if Bolt is too young to know about lovers. Surely the kid knows – he’s thirteen.

“To meet with a lover?”

“Yeah, a whore. Know what that is?”

“I know what lovers are.”

He starts up the motocart and passes around an old well. There used to be water in the Canyon, but most the wells dried up fifty years ago. There were rumors that some wells still had water, but if they did, people kept it a secret. Now water was distributed from the Off Limits in ration packets.

“How are we going to get food?” Bolt asked. “We’re not registered in the South.”

“How’d you do it last time?”

“Last time my aunt picked me up.”

“Why didn’t she pick you up this time?”

“We couldn’t get word to her.”

“It’s not easy.” Sterling notices a depot a few blocks away. Like the North, many homes come right up to the main streets. Aside from their shapes, another difference between the two parts of the Canyon is the fencing – the South seems to have more than Sterling thinks necessary.

Sterling stops in front of the depot. “You stay here and I’ll go in there and get us some food.” He steps off the motocart, stretches his arms above his head. A cough comes on and he goes at it for a moment and spits out a muddy combination of phlegm and dust. He’s a few paces away when Bolt calls out to him.

“What?” he asks, turning to the kid.

“Please, don’t … ” Bolt nods at the shiv in Sterling’s boot.

“I won’t, trust me. There’s more than one way to skin a lizard.”

***

“Can I help you?” the depot manager asks.

He’s a Southern Upper, a merchant, with Canyon-colored eyes and a triple chin, indicating that he has access to considerably more than the standard ration. His garb is similar to Sterling’s; similar to everybody’s – a flowing, long sleeve shirt with an attached face cover, loose pants and brand-new R Boots. His rounded shoulders and unmarked skin clearly show that he’s a man who spends most of his time indoors. Beard tails hang to his belly to complete his ensemble of wealth.

“Food,” Sterling says.

The man sets three R Boxes on the counter, each about the length and width of a large hand. He grins, shows a set of blood red teeth – the mark of a red root addict. Behind him are two pallets of prefab panels.

“Finger here,” the man says, holding out a registration unit.

“Are you a gambling man by any chance?” Sterling asks.

The depot manager drops his palms on the R Boxes. “I could be. You looking to wager?”

“Always am,” says Sterling. “Rocks?”

“For rations?”

He nods at the depot manager. “I’ve already hit up another depot today.”

“You’re hungry?”

“Who isn’t? So, rocks for R Boxes?”

“You have bits?”

“Of course.” Sterling jiggles a small cargo pocket. “I’ll put five down.”

“Hmmm … ” The depot manager places his hand in his pocket, sets his fist on the table. Sterling does the same. “Two out of three?”

“Fine by me. Your number?”

“Eight,” Sterling says. “Yours?”

“Six.”

Both men open their hands, dropping the pebbles on the counter. The man was holding two, Sterling six.

“Damn,” says the man. “I’ll get it next round.”

“Again.” Sterling returns his rocks to his pocket, makes some noise to indicate he’s figuring out a number. He palms four rocks and returns his fist to the counter. The depot manager’s fist is already waiting for him.

“Your number?” Sterling asks.

“Seven. Yours?”

“Eight.”

They open their hands to reveal five rocks in total.

“Draw.”

“Again,” says the depot manager.

They repeat the previous gesture, fishing around in their pockets and eying each other as they do so. Their fists land on the counter again.

“Eight,” says Sterling.

“Seven.”

Sterling opens his hand to reveal five rocks. The man, two. “You got it. All right, last round.”

The two men return their rocks to their pockets, jiggle the pebbles, and place their hands back onto the counter.

“Your number?” asks Sterling.

“Four. Yours?”

Sterling stares long and hard at the man’s hand. It’s a risky move, but he’s won plenty of games with what he’s about to do next. “Zero.”

The man raises an eyebrow.

“Well?”

Both open their hands to reveal zero rocks.

“Damn, how’d you know?” the depot manager asks.

“Didn’t. Lucky guess. Let me have water packets too.”

***

“This should get us through tomorrow.” Sterling approaches Bolt, who’s still sitting in the motocart.

“How’d you do it?”

“Lucky break.” He takes his seat and drops two of the three R Boxes in the attached cart, the same place where the corpses used to be. He opens a water packet, drinks half, gives the rest to Bolt. From there he moves to the R Box. “Here’s yours,” he says, splitting the dry bar in half.

“Thanks.” Bolt finishes the water, reluctantly takes the food.

Sterling takes his first bite and gets it down. He’s been eating food all his life – everyone in the Canyon has, North and South. There isn’t much variation. Food is a grainy nutrient bar that tastes about as bland as it looks. His mother can doctor it up a little, make a mush for breakfast. Some people make a semi-sweet syrup out of a certain cactus in the Canyon and trade it for extra rations. Others sit it in the sun and eat their food warm. Sterling usually just bites right into it; better to get it over with.

“Hurry up, eat,” he tells Bolt.

“It doesn’t taste like much by itself,” the kid says, examining the bar.

“Your mom’s not here to make mush.”

“She doesn’t make mush; she sugars it.”

“Where are you getting sugar?” Sterling asks. Talk about a hot commodity.

“My mom works for the Off Limits Distribution Channel. They get sugar sometimes.”

“Ever heard of Zander Damien?”

Bolt shrugs.

“Well, have you?”

“Maybe my mom mentioned him, maybe she didn’t. I don’t know.”

Sterling swallows a mouthful of food and takes another bite. Getting it down is the hardest part – the stuff is rough, flavorless and gritty. “That’s some serious connection right there. I have to be honest with you, Bolt.”

“Yeah?” The kid takes a bite, grimaces as he chews.

“I really can’t see why you’ve come down here. Your mom has a good job and she must have some connections with the Church of the North.”

“I told you,” he says, chewing. “They were going to trim me. My mom wants me to have kids, so I came to the South, disappeared as far as she’s concerned. They’re better about it down here. A lot less eunuching because the population is smaller.”

“It is?”

“Much smaller. You can’t really tell because it’s night and nobody’s out.”

Sterling finishes his food, starts the motocart. “Which way? I want to get as near to the Church of the South as possible, find a fleshroom for the night, and do what I have to do.”

“What do you have to do?”

He pulls back onto the road. “Which way?” he asks.

“The church is about fifty vestas from here.”

“And there’s always a fleshroom near a church.”

“Why’s that?” Bolt asks.

“Sin and repentance go hand in hand.”

“Is that something from the Book?” the kid calls over the whir of the engine.

“Nope,” Sterling shouts back, “it’s something I’ve observed.”

.3.

The fleshroom is marked by a single red light. Sterling remembers his father visiting one when he was a child and waiting outside while he ‘did what he needed to do’. A trip to a fleshroom was always followed by a trip to the Church of the North. It’s better to confess than be audited, and the church was canny enough to subtly light a path that connected the two institutions.

The Canyon worked this way.

For every sin there was sorrow, for every atonement another chance to succumb to temptation. It amazed Sterling how close these two things were, shame and the desire to err again. Bedfellows didn’t do the two concepts justice, they were one in the same, something he would say if he knew how to express it, and if he weren’t afraid of going against the Book.

He’d been to reeducation once – it wasn’t a place he’d like to go again. There were some who became perpetually trapped in the cycle of reeducation and re-entry into society. These were called Repeaters, and they were almost always trimmed after their second time in reeducation – that is, unless one of their parents or relatives was on the Council of the North. The sons and daughters of the well-connected lived very different lives from their parents’ constituents. Very different indeed.

Sterling drove the motocart into a shadowy alleyway.

He’d need to get rid of it soon; eventually the two drivers would be missed, but maybe not for a while. Unsanctioned killing wasn’t very common in the Canyon, but the families would worry and go asking at some point.

“All right, Bolt,” Sterling said, “I want you off the motocart and to never, ever look at it again. You’ve never seen it, never ridden on it, don’t know anything about it. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“We’ll leave the keys in the ignition. No questions asked, no answers questioned.”

“I know that quote.”

Most in the Canyon have memorized some or all of the Book. A collection of quotes and parables, the Book has no rhyme or reason to the way the chapters were arranged. It follows no timeline and can be read in any order.

“Where will I stay tonight?” asks Bolt.

“Here.”

“In the alley?”

“We all have to make sacrifices.”

“I can go to my aunt’s home.”

Sterling nods, “And I can make sure you don’t get to your aunt’s home.”

“If you go into the fleshroom, and I stay here, how will you know if I’ve left or not?”

“Will you?”

Bolt crosses his hands over his chest.

“Well?”

“No,” the kid finally says.

“Good. That’s how I know. Loyalty is faceless.”

“Not in the South,” Bolt protests.

“We’re not getting into a religious debate right now, kid.”

A man passes them, shuffles his feet as he makes his way to the fleshroom. He’s draped heavy cloths over his body to conceal his identity.

“Sit here,” Sterling finally says. “I’ll tell you when I’m done; you can share the room with me. How’s that?”

“Thanks.”

Bolt sits with his back against a wall.

“And put the food in your bag,” Sterling says. “We’re abandoning the motocart as of right now.”

***

“What’ll it be?” the flesh dealer asks. Sterling’s at the bar; another patron sits two stools down from him.

“I’m looking for a room for the night and anything that this entails.”

“Gotcha,” says the flesh dealer. He’s wearing outdoor wrappings, long and tangled, that extend to the floor. Like most clothing in the Canyon, the wrappings are a mixture of beige and gray with a subtle hint of pink. The man has the jaded look of a person who has seen much more than his fair share of debauchery. His nose is hooked, his teeth are crooked, his lips are obscured by a bushy, red-stained mustache, his skin brown and weathered. Women protect their skin, men don’t. “We’re booked for the next thirty minutes or so, and he’s first.”

The flesh dealer nods at the man sitting two stools down from Sterling.

“I’m next,” the man says as he fiddles with the glass of delixer. Sterling recognizes him immediately – he’s the same foot-shuffling, cloth-wrapped man from outside.

“I’ll wait,” Sterling says, “and I’ll have your best delixer.”

“How much?”

“Mil.”

The man sitting next to Sterling nearly spits his drink out. “Where’d you learn that word?” he asks.

“People don’t use that word down here,” the flesh dealer explains. He takes a deflatable plastic bottle from beneath the counter and fills a glass to its brim. “But I know what it means. A mil is a double shot down here.”

The man next to Sterling stands, takes the stool directly next to him. His clothing spells Lower – thin seersucker top that’s collarless, filthy pants covered in patches and crudely stitched repairs. Around his neck is a pair of oversized Leaks, the straps made of repurposed plastic and the glass lenses covered in a thin layer of dust and grit. The man has seen a few storms, survived them, and hasn’t cleaned up since.

“Where you from?” He snorts in his hand, wipes his runny nose on his sleeve. His eyes shine with delixer and belligerence, his face weathered and beaten by the fierce winds that routinely wreak havoc in the Canyon. Sterling has battled these winds himself – everyone has.

“Near the Off Limits,” Sterling lies.

“Your name?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” the man says. “It’s common courtesy to tell someone your name in these parts. Awful suspicious if you don’t.”

“Leave him alone, Clay.” The bartender sets the delixer in front of Sterling. Made from cactus and other ingredients, delixers are an underground staple in the Canyon, no matter which side you’re born on. “Two bits,” the bartender says.

“Put it on my tab,” says Sterling.

“There are no tabs here – everything up front. I don’t know how they do business where you’re from, but that’s the way business is done down here.”

“I got it.” Sterling dips his finger into his cargo pocket, finds a small pouch of bits. He’s been saving these for a special occasion, won them off a guy a week ago at a lizard race. “How much in total, the girl and the room for the night?”

“Five bits.”

“Done.” Sterling slaps the money on the table, aware that the man named Clay is watching his every move. “There a problem?” he asks as he returns the pouch to his pocket.

“Who was the boy outside?” Clay runs his tongue across his crooked front teeth.

“A relative, why?”

“He wasn’t dressed like a boy from the South.”

“How could you tell? It’s dark out.”

“I can tell … ” Clay finishes his delixer, taps it on the counter to indicate he’d like a refill. The flesh dealer ignores him. “I was in a war, you know, at the War Zone.”

“Wars aren’t held in any other places,” Sterling reminds him.

“Yeah, but I was in one, a real big one. You see this?” he whips his left fist over his body, stops it about a foot away from Sterling. Instinctively, Sterling’s hand drops to his leg, which will give him easier access to the shiv in his boot if the man tries anything funny.

“It’s a fist. I see it.”

“You see the scars?”

Sterling nods. The scars are mostly on the middlemost fingers, about two inches below the knuckles.

“Pounded a man’s face in.”

“Why?” he asks, just to keep the man talking so he can focus on his delixer. The first sip hits the back of his throat and burns. He swallows hard, tunes back in to what the strange man is saying.

“Faceless, I’ve always believed it, but I’ve never seen it,” Clay says. “One minute, this guy is running at me with a clubbing stick and the next, he turns faceless. In the name of the Goddess, I swear it’s true!”

“Faceless?” Sterling has never seen someone become faceless. Regardless, it’s a good thing where he’s from. The Goddess of the North, Time, appears in public with a mask on. Sterling has seen Time twice in her tower; he believes she’s faceless under that mask.

Clay says, “The filthy Northerners will pay the ultimate price when we finally break through the Off Limits.”

“Now Clay … ” the flesh dealer says.

“Don’t tell me it isn’t possible, dammit!” He moves closer to Sterling, starts breathing heavily through his nostrils. “What do you think about the North?”

“I don’t think much about it,” Sterling says as he takes another sip. “I’ve got my own problems.”

Clay slams his fist against the bar.

“Clay!” the flesh dealer shouts.

“You don’t think much about it? What in the hell is that supposed to mean? They’re the enemy, stranger. They’re the ones who did this to me!” He pulls up his shirt, shows Sterling a collection of scars and welts. “The whore bitch of the North is false!”

Sterling squeezes his glass at the mention of the Northern Goddess, Time. It’s Halo, the Southern Goddess, who is false. He knows it – his heart knows it – but he’s been around enough loudmouth drunks to keep his face straight and his delixer hole shut so as to better avoid confrontation.

A small light above the back door flickers on. “Clay,” the flesh dealer says, “you’re up. And try not to be too rough this time. Room five.”

“I’ll be however I want to be,” he says under his breath as he stands. “Nice to meet you.” Clay extends his gnarled paw, settles his gaze on a place just below Sterling’s neck.

“Same.”

The man’s hand is warm and sticky; Sterling wipes it on his leg as soon as he’s gone.

***

Sterling’s turn comes.

After finishing a second double shot of delixer, he makes his way out the back door of the rectangular building. There are six medium sized sheds in back, each with a number painted on the door. A primitive outhouse sits at the end of the row of sheds, its proximity the main reason for the flies buzzing in the air. A fence keeps those who pass by from observing what happens at the fleshroom; broken pieces of metal and glass have been plastered onto its top.

Buzzing in the air, a metalzip whooshes by, sees him, and stops. The tiny metal winged insect hovers in front of Sterling for a moment, circles around his head.

“Get outta here.” He waves his hand at the odd insect, careful not to actually touch it. This is considered a sin in both the North and the South: metalzips are not to be touched.

Sterling kicks open the door of the outhouse to find two thick pieces of prefab running parallel over a deep hole in the ground. He aims, pisses right through the opening they create, cringes as he hears his urine splatter against the shit pile down below. It feels good to piss, but the eye-watering stench keeps him from fully enjoying the experience.

Finished, Sterling wipes his hands on his trousers, finds the door labeled “2”, and knocks.

“Enter,” a sultry voice calls from inside.

.4.

A woman sits on the bed, her body covered in cloth. The wrappings twist around her, enclosed by a bindring over her shoulders that restrict her arm movement. Her eyes are wrapped tightly, her blonde hair pressed against her skull. She hums softly, rolls her head back and forth, moves herself in a manner that is seductively welcoming.

“Blinders?”

The woman’s arms extend, dropping swaths of cloth onto the bed. It seems as if she is whirling in a sea of material, the only edges demarcated by the sides of the bed. The cascading fabric moves as her body gyrates, washes over her. Hanging from her fingers are strips of fabric with tiny discs of mirror and small bells sewn onto them. She beckons Sterling forward, moves her fingers as if she’s playing an inverted ethereal keyboard and allows her finger grazers to waltz against the fabric covering her body. The sound is soft, excruciatingly beautiful.

Sterling sheds his R Boots, tugs his shirt off, pulls his pants down, leaves everything in a pile on the floor. He falls to his knees, crawls to the bed keeping his head down. His arms reach the edge of the bed and he presses them forward through the fabric. Her finger grazers dance over his arms, brushstroke feather light over the dark hairs protruding from his skin.

“You’re a Goddess,” he says, on the verge of tears. The feeling of ecstasy has triggered a response in him that he is all too familiar with, a merging of remorse and pure desire.

“I am your Goddess.”

He looks up at her through a blur of tears, rests his chin on the bed. She’s staring down at him now through her blinders, which are pulled so tightly across her face that he can see the indention of her eye sockets. Her skin is pure, translucent, blemish-free; her lips barely part as she speaks.

“Blinders,” he says as stilted reason returns to him. “My Goddess doesn’t wear blinders. Time doesn’t wear Blinders.”

“Time is the Goddess of the North,” she purrs. “You’re not from here.”

“I … um … ” Sterling runs his tongue against the inside of his cheeks – no one will believe a lover anyway. “It doesn’t matter where I’m from.”

“Is that so?” she asks. ‘then, I’ll remove the blinders.”

The flesh giver presses the cloth to the top of her head. Her eyes dilate slightly as she takes Sterling in. He’s seen this before – only those who work in fleshrooms can do this. They return to normal, one eye light blue and the other green. He feels like he has seen the same eyes before – knows he has.

“A Northern man, an Upper if I’m not mistaken,” she says, calmly. “How intriguing.”

Sterling backs away, squats onto his haunches at the edge of her bed.

“Halo, the Goddess of the South, wears blinders. All lovers replicate their Goddess, surely you know this.”

“Will you tell?” Sterling glances over his shoulder, catches his R boots with the shiv inside. They’re only a few feet away; he could easily get to them before she gets to the door.

“Why have you come here?” The only thing that has changed about her is the removal of the Blinders. She’s moved her hands in front of her body, dangling her finger grazers as she twists and gyrates.

“To escape,” he says. “To … ”

He wants to say, save my family, but bites his lip. He knows better than to tell a lover; the fact that she can read him so easily also has Sterling on edge.

“Then escape.” With one hand, she pulls down a large swath of cloth covering her chest, revealing her ample breasts. “Escape with me.”

“In the name of the Goddess … ” Sterling whispers.

“Come to me, Northern man of the Stayed. Give me everything you have, everything.”

***

Men of the Stayed are weak, all too prone to surrender to temptation. Sterling accepts this as he crawls from the floor to the bed like an animal, inhaling the flesh giver’s essence with each deep breath as if it were the remedy for his accumulated grief. The threat against his family; the knowledge that he’s in a foreign land so close yet so far; his death imminent in the coming days – the lover with her wrappings and her essence of femininity pares his worry, knifes his concern. He drops his head into a worshipful position, resting it on her crossed legs, waiting for her to run her finger grazers over his neck and back.

“The Canyon is your home,” she whisper-purrs, quoting the Book. “The Book is your vessel; the Goddess is your answer; the Stayed are your brethren. All things coexist in the Canyon. North meets South at the War Zone. Places have their names, people have their places, people have their names, more than one are faceless.”

Sterling stops kissing the tops of her thighs. “Do you think being faceless is … good or bad?” he asks, not making eye contact with her. Better to get an answer before plunging in.

“All that matters is what you think, Man of the North.”

Altruism is faceless; nature is faceless; love is faceless; loyalty is faceless. The words come to Sterling, stop behind his teeth. He knows what he believes, but a flesh giver from the South may think differently.

He uses his free hand to push himself back. Squinting at the lover, he tries to imagine her as faceless, something he’s done since he was a teenager. He sucks in her image, watches as it blurs at the edges and swirls into a vortex that has appeared on her glabella. Her image flattens, expands horizontally, snaps back into a sharp form that is clearly a face. She isn’t faceless.

He feels tears well in the corner of his eyes. He wipes at them, tries to come to grips as to why he’s experiencing such an intense emotion when he should be relieving himself of his sexual urges. The feeling washes over him; his breath quivers. The faces of the two men he’s killed that day materialize in the midst of all this passionate sentiment. He’d taken their lives as a matter of convenience, with no more thought than he’d give to crushing an insect; now he regretted ever lifting his shiv.

“What is it, Northern man of the Stayed?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles, “just … nothing. Forget it.”

The flesh giver moves her hands forward, her finger grazers gently clink and tinkle as they travel over the wrappings covering her body. She places her hands around his cheeks, pulls Sterling in and kisses him, lightly flicking her tongue against his lips.

“You are a troubled man,” she whispers on the tip of her breath.

“I am.”

“You have much on your mind.”

“I do.”

“You have a son.”

“I do not.”

“Who is this boy then?”

He whips around to find the door cracked.

“Dammit, kid!” Sterling rolls off the bed, tries to grab one of the flesh giver’s wrappings and falls to his knees. Bolt has already run off by the time Sterling can get his pants on. “You stay here,” he tells the flesh giver. “Don’t move a muscle!”

She gyrates slowly, sinuously. “As you wish.”

“The little fucker,” Sterling says under his breath as he searches for Bolt in a dark alleyway. He bangs his bare toe on a rock, curses, continues into the dark. The homes of the South are clumped together; the alleys connecting them are many and confusing. If he’s not careful, he could get lost, which would spell trouble for him as the rest of his clothing is back with the lover.

Think like an animal. A quote from the Book comes to him and Sterling stops, calms his breath. He listens as closely as he can to the sounds of the night, from the gentle breeze whistling over the rooftops to the buzzing wings of metalzips and other insects.

A whimpering meets his ears.

He turns to the darkened sound, takes a few steps towards it.

He finds Bolt in the shadow of a depot. The kid’s knees are to his chest; his sobbing increases as Sterling approaches.

“I’m sorry,” Bolt blurts out. “I was … scared. I’ve never … THAT WAS THE GODDESS!”

“What? Her?” Sterling lowers his fist.

“What were you doing to her?”

“Shit, kid, how old are you again?”

“Just turned thirteen.”

Sterling was thirteen when he first visited a flesh dealer, knew what sex was a few years before that. Could Bolt really be that guileless?

“That was a lover.” Sterling crouches down in front of the kid. “You know what that is, right?”

He nods. “Men go to become men again. That’s what my dad said.”

Sterling snorts a laugh. “Well, your dad wasn’t wrong, but that’s not exactly why men go. Look, I don’t know how much you know about the relations between a man and a woman, but that’s what happens in a fleshroom.”

“I saw you naked.”

“Yeah? Welcome to the club.”

“Why were you naked with the Goddess?”

“Are you dimwitted or something? That’s not the Goddess! You said you knew what a lover was … ”

“It looked like the Goddess!” Bolt locks eyes with Sterling; the kid’s fierce glare makes Sterling look away first, which surprises him.

“You’d better watch who you give that look to,” Sterling growls, his fist curling at his side.

“That looked exactly like Halo.”

“Who? Oh yeah, the Goddess of the South.”

“Yes!” Bolt whispers a quick prayer.

“Since when did you become so religious?”

“Since I saw you with the Goddess.”

“You really think that’s the Goddess, huh?” Sterling stands. “Get up. Let’s go back there and ask her exactly what she is. Come on, get up.”

“What?”

“You heard me, kid. Get up.”

***

“Tell him what you are,” Sterling says as soon as he’s cleared the doorway. Bolt stands behind him, reluctant to step inside.

“A child?” the flesh giver asks, not recoiling in the least bit.

“Get in here.” Sterling grabs Bolt’s arm and drags him in.

The kid stumbles into the room, skids to a halt just before the bed. The look on his face morphs from sheer panic to curiosity to shame. He takes a giant step back.

“What’s your name, child of the Stayed?”

“Drop the act, lady,” says Sterling. “Just tell him that you’re not the Goddess and be done with it.”

“My name is Bolt.”

“A bold name.”

It’s Bolt.”

The lover shifts her hips, causing her cloth wrappings to crease in and out.

“You look like the Goddess, like Halo,” Bolt says, his head hung in shame.

“I’m … ”

Sterling gives her the knock-that-shit-off look just in case she wants to get creative. Her eyes, one blue and one green, dart between their faces. Finally, she says, “I’m not the Goddess. I’m a flesh giver, a lover.”

“Why are you dressed like Halo?”

“All of us dress this way,” she explains. “Daft men give themselves to the Goddess and they want something in return. I give them what they want in return.”

“Daft?” Sterling thinks for a moment, can’t recall the definition of the word. Still, he doesn’t like her tone.

“What do you give them?” Bolt asks, genuinely.

Sterling is just about to comment when she says, “I give them whatever it is they want. Some men want to cry; others want to fornicate. Some want to be told they are strong and brave; others want to be told they are useless and poor. Many men build themselves up in their own heads. They believe who they say they are even though they know it’s a facade. As a lover, I open this door for them, I allow them to become children again – like you – and by doing so, they leave feeling touched in a way that is both sensual and metaphysical. I let them be whoever they need to be. It is the men who are in control, yet here in the Canyon, it is the Goddesses who run the men of the Stayed, in and over them, and the Goddesses are women.”

“Enough,” Sterling says.

“So, young man, it is my job to let a man feel both weak and powerful at the same time. This is true ecstasy for them; the best way to soothe intrinsic psychological encumbrances.”

“Enough with the big fancy words,” says Sterling. “You get the picture, kid? She’s a whore and men, including me, are idiots. Look, we spend nine months trying to get out and then the rest of our lives trying to get back in. I don’t know how long it’s been this way, but I’m betting that it’s been going on for about as long as we’ve existed. Sound about right?”

The flesh giver shrugs, lifts her arms to her lap and drags her finger grazers across her legs.

Sterling faux yawns. “It’s been a long day, so you can be on your way because the kid and I are sleeping in here tonight.”

“Very well.” She moves off the bed, palms her Blinders. After a glance around to make sure all her fabric is intact, she moves past Bolt and stops in front of Sterling. She cups his cheek in her hand, tilts her head and gives him a half smile. The circular mirrors attached to her finger grazers catch the dim light of the room. Her eyes flash black again.

“It was nice meeting you.”

Sterling gulps. Any animosity he felt towards the woman melts away. “Same to you.”

She steps out of the small room and drops her wrappings. They cascade to the ground, sending swirls of dust into the air. Like the train of a wedding dress, the fabric follows behind her as she walks to the flesh dealer’s main room. She looks over her shoulder; Sterling feels something twist in his stomach.

“Damn, that was some woman,” he says as he shuts the door. “Some woman.”

“Where will I sleep?” Bolt asks.

“The floor, near the door. Take a blanket if you’d like.”

.5.

Orange skies makes gray nights, dusty days come late plights. A war like fingers, rooted trees, a life well-lived is on one’s knees.

Sterling tarries in the dim, comfortable anteroom of sleep when Clay enters the room. Bolt awakens when the man’s calloused hand covers his mouth and stifles his scream.

Reactions are a funny thing. The well-trained can instantly come awake, aware, and ready to fight; others take longer to get their shit together. Sterling – having slept many a night in a fleshroom and accustomed to the scum that the place attracts – is on his feet faster than most.

No words are exchanged.

He leaps up and tackles Clay, tossing Bolt aside. Bolt screams full lung and hops backwards to watch the two men roll around on the floor.

Clay overpowers Sterling at first, flips him on his back and straddles him. He gets one solid punch in, but shrieks in pain and surprise when Sterling shivs him in the ass. Clay just wants to escape now; Sterling hooks him around the neck and puts the point of the shiv up under his jaw.

“In the name of the Goddess … ” Clay whispers as he realizes his personal extinction is nigh.

“That’s a curse where I’m from.” Sterling is just about to drive the shiv home when Bolt grabs his arm, pulls it back.

“Dammit, kid!”

The distraction is all Clay needs. He puts an elbow in Sterling’s ribs, twists away from the blade and scarpers out of the room, hand to his ass and limping as fast as he can. “Why the hell did you do that?” Sterling screams at Bolt.

Some commotion outside; the other guests are awake.

“You can’t … ”

“What’s happening?” The flesh dealer calls out from the main building.

“Shit, kid.” Sterling grabs him by the front of his shirt. “Hide the shiv.” He wraps the kid’s fingers around it, pushes him away. They hear a motocart start, the whine of its engine pierces the cool night.

“What’s going on?” the flesh dealer stands at the door now, a wary look on his face.

Sterling grunts. “Your tough-guy drunk regular tried to make off with my … nephew.”

“Clay did this?” The flesh dealer scratches the back of his head. “Damn, well … ” His eyes meet the blood on the stone floor. “What happened?”

Sterling shows the flesh dealer his fist, uses his other hand to point at a bruise forming on his cheekbone.

“Damn.” The flesh dealer glances at Bolt.

“You really need to get locks on these doors.”

“Can’t,” the flesh dealer says. He makes a gesture indicating his arms are tied. “The Southern Council has ruled against them.”

“Well.”

“Well, what?”

“Nothing.” Sterling shakes his head – the South and their nonsensical rules. “Good night. If I ever see that child-thieving bastard again, I’ll finish the job I started.”

“No qualms here,” says the flesh dealer.

***

Hard to sleep after Bolt’s almost-abduction. Sterling tries, lies in the bed thinking of how fucked the day has been, a day of violence and ecstasy. He’s had plenty, but none like her though. Although the rhetoric is always the same – the Book, the Goddess, the Stayed. But that’s the rhetoric of the Canyon; the absence of any sort of magniloquence keeps the place safe, simple, altruistic, as it should be. Never mind the few troubled souls trapped in the only inhabited hole on the entire planet.

The planet.

Sterling has thought about it before, but not much. It’s hard to think about the bigger picture when the smaller picture is besmirched with shit. Life in the Canyon, life of the Stayed is defined by classes – three to be exact – and passing the time until you die or you’re raptured.

Being raptured is the way Sterling wants to go. He’s an Upper, so his odds are a bit higher, but not much. There’s a ceremony at the furthermost port of entry at the Off Limits. You say your goodbyes, you enter, and something happens. No one knows what happens, but you are guaranteed facelessness by doing so. Guaranteed.

As he lies in bed staring at the ceiling, Sterling drops his hand to his member. He goes at it slowly, then quickly, trying to get his seed out as rapidly as possible so he can get some rest. Images of the flesh giver come to him, her breasts, her bindrings, her blinders. This triggers a response and he succeeds, covers his moan with a cough, wipes his seed on the bed sheets as soon as it’s all out. They’ll clean the room in the morning anyway, probably.

His urges extinguished, Sterling thinks of the Great Demarcator, colloquially referred to as Off Limits, which separates the North and South. The wall is a tremendous construct, at least three vestas wide and six vestas long. It is managed by OL Officers, who also police either side of the wall. The War Zone sits in the middle of the barrier, the only place people from the North and the South are allowed to go freely. Once they file into their side of the stadium, they’re able to watch war as it happens. The gates leading to either side of the War Zone have never been open more than twenty minutes.

The War Zone is probably the second most popular thing on either side of the Off Limits, next to religion. Participating in a war was how Sterling smuggled himself to the South. It was a risky move, but dire situations call for desperate actions.

Of course, there are other ways to move to the other side.

The ports of entry on either side of the War Zone allow a certain number of people through a day, but most of these are either council members or have quick business with the other side. The North has better soil, so there’s more cacti and other vegetation there. The South has better distilleries, so the delixers are higher quality, and this has created some trade between the two opposing sides.

In fact, Sterling feels the effects of the delixer as he lies in the bed. The stuff has turned his stomach sour; every breath he takes seems to draw the acidic liquid even higher. At some point in the night, he gets some water from the basin in the corner of the room (water given as a ration to the flesh dealer to run his business), but that doesn’t seem to help either. Sitting with his back against the wall, Sterling cleans his shiv, scrapes it against the bottom of his boot as he thinks about the next day.

There have been attempts to kidnap a Goddess before on both sides. Only one was successful, and that was at least thirty years ago. Getting an audience with the Goddess isn’t going to be easy and truthfully, Sterling hasn’t thought much about her abduction. His passage to the North has supposedly been secured by Zander Damien, but he still has to get her to the Off Limits first.

Bolt sniffs, turns to his other side. He now faces Sterling directly, his eyes closed and his skin pale in the darkness. The kid’s lips part and he says a few words, The Canyon is grand, the Canyon is home.

Sterling recognizes the phrase immediately. It’s a quote from the Book that has been adapted into a child’s prayer. The original version goes, The Canyon is grand, the Canyon is home. Do not lose your home to flames simply to test its inflammability. The nursery rhyme version expands upon the rhyming pattern to form something that all children understand. The Canyon is grand, the Canyon is home. The Goddess commands the Stayed alone.

An idea comes to Sterling as he watches the kid sleep. It might not work but it’s better than his original plan of simply waltzing into the Church of the South and taking her.

“Thank you, Goddess; thank you, Time,” he says, bowing his head to the North.

***

Hazy morning light spreads through the room. With the sun blocked out most days, the morning murk is something that Sterling is all too familiar with. Toxic miasma – life of the Stayed.

Sterling sits, reaches for the food on the nightstand and wolfs it down.

“Wake up, kid,” he says gruffly.

Bolt moans and stirs; the blanket rustles around him like the wind stirring.

“I don’t want to … ”

“Today is the big day.” Sterling blows his nose into his fingers, wipes his hands on the sheet.

Bolt sits up, keeps his blanket pulled over his head so it forms a hooded cloak. “You’ll try to take Halo?”

“Not just me,” says Sterling, “you too.”

“I won’t do it.” Bolt tosses the blanket off his body. His blonde hair is a mess; his eyes still puffy with sleep. “I’m going to my aunt’s today. It’s why I came down here.”

Sterling shakes his head. He’s been thinking about their relationship since the early morning. Time had already cast his rocks for him and the next step was logical. “The Goddess brought us together and she’s kept us together for this long. Now, I need your help to do what I plan to do next.”

“I don’t believe in the Goddess of the North.” Bolt pushes himself backwards, gets caught up in his blanket and falls again.

“Since when?”

“Since last night.”

“Since you saw a whore dressed as the Goddess?”

“It reminded me of her.”

“Dammit, kid it is supposed to remind you of her!”

“What are you going to do with her anyway, with Halo?” Bolt asks, settling on the floor.

“That’s not up to me. I just need to meet her and we’ll go from there.”

“I don’t know how you want me to help you.”

Sterling asks, “How good are you at playing sick?”

Bolt coughs.

“You can do better than that.”

Bolt coughs with more enthusiasm.

“Good, that’s what I needed to see. Here’s the backstory: We’ve been to the clinics near the Off Limits and you still aren’t getting any better. It’s your cough, hell, everyone has a cough so that should be an easy sell. Also, you’re getting dizzy from time to time, and sick to your stomach.”

“Okay … ”

“All I need is for you to get me into the Southern Goddess’ inner chamber. I’ll handle everything from there.”

“You won’t be able to,” Bolt says, “on your own at least.”

“Well, I kind of have to; otherwise … things get real hairy for me.”

“Halo is more powerful than the Time.”

“You’re getting ballsy, Bolt, and I don’t like it. You keep your mouth shut about the Goddess of the North.”

“I’ve seen them both,” he protests, “and I’m telling you, the Goddess of the North isn’t as powerful as Halo. She’s … different.”

Sterling is off the bed before Bolt can reach the door. He grabs the kid by the arm, raises his hand to slap him. “KEEP IT SHUT!”

Bolt tries to pull away; Sterling squeezes even harder.

“You owe me,” Sterling says through clenched teeth. “For last night. That man was going to take you and do you know what he would have done to you if he had?”

Crying now, Bolt shakes his head.

“He would have hurt you, used you like a lover and then if you were lucky – lucky mind you – killed you dead,” He lets go of his arm. “I need your help. The Goddess … she’s brought us together.”

“Why should I help you?”

“Because of my family, that’s why.” Sterling sits on the bed, rubs his hand over his beard stubble. “If I don’t bring … ” He gives the kid a funny look. “If I don’t bring Halo to the North, they’re going to kill my mother and my sister. Hell, they’ll kill me too. So my rocks are cast – you see what I’m getting at here? I’m not doing this by choice; I’m doing this because of what they will do if I don’t.”

“Who is?” Bolt asks.

“I’ve told you enough, kid,” he says, regaining his composure. “Regardless of what you believe, I need your help. If you help me, I’ll … ”

“What?”

“She’s powerful, right? Halo?”

Bolt wipes his tears away, nods.

“Why didn’t you say so before?”

“I didn’t know that I was going to help you.”

“Well, if she’s really the Goddess, she won’t let me kidnap her. Do you believe that?”

“I guess.”

“Then you’ll help me. If you get caught, you tell them the damn truth – I kidnapped you and forced you to help me. Got that? You even tried to kill me, that’s what this is.” Sterling points at the black eye given to him by Clay. “You’ll be a hero down here. If she isn’t the Goddess, well I’ll take her to Zander and that’s that. If she is, I’m as good as dead anyway. Deal?”

Handshakes aren’t given, but a nod will suffice for Sterling to trust Bolt – or more importantly, for Bolt to trust Sterling. Trust is a shiv today or a shiv tomorrow.

“No one’s ever done it before,” Bolt says. “No one has ever captured a Goddess.”

“You’re young and I’m old.” Sterling chews at the inside of his cheek for a moment. “And just so you know – it has been done, when I was a boy.”

.6.

Sterling is just about to step outside when Bolt stops him. “If you’re going to blend in down here, you need to make some changes.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might not think it, but your posture makes you look like an Upper from the North. Your shoulders aren’t right.” Bolt approaches him cautiously. “May I?”

“By all means.”

He reaches his hands up and tries to curl the older man’s shoulders over. At first Sterling stands rigid; eventually, he gives in to Bolt’s soft hands. “You also walk like a Northern Upper – proud.”

“To be confident is to be faceless.”

“That’s the North’s interpretation. They think that confidence leads to facelessness; the South thinks that facelessness is bad, so the passage you just quoted is actually a bad thing.”

“Damn,” Sterling says, a bit annoyed at being corrected. Bolt is several heads shorter than he is; looking down at the kid reminds him of how much power he holds over him.

“Slouch a bit, don’t show your confidence in your shoulders,” Bolt says.

“Got it, got it. Anything else?”

“We need to get some red root.”

“Red root?” Sterling remembers the depot manager’s teeth from last night. Northerners stay away from the stuff.

“You want to blend in, right? Well, most men about your age chew red root.”

“How does it taste?”

“It tastes like red root, I guess – how would I know? It’s supposed to keep you alert though.”

“Let’s get some.”

“The guy that runs the Fleshroom will let you have some, I’m sure.”

Sterling opens the door, steps out. The sun is brighter than normal today; the smog adds a light gray filter to the sky. It’s a good sign, good enough, anyway.

“Another thing,” Bolt says as he follows behind him.

“Yes?”

“Hide if you see any OL Officers.”

“Why’s that?” he asks, turning to the boy. Bolt has already adjusted his face cover over his mouth and not a second too soon. A wind blusters past, nearly knocking Sterling off his feet. He gets his mouth cover on too and curses the fact that he left his Leaks in the North. The wind screams like a million banshees and then it stops abruptly, almost as if it had never blown in the first place.

Once the wind settles, Sterling opens his eyes and gives the sky an angry glare. Everything has an orange tint to it with layers of pinks and purples. The smog and haze keeps sun away. All the Stayed can do is pray. There are a few days a year that the haze dissipates enough to see the sky, but those days are few and far between. They’re great days to get married though, if you can manage it on short notice.

“You were saying … ”

“Hide if you see OL Officers. They’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“They’ll know that you’re here illegally.”

“That’s hearsay.”

Bolt shakes his head. “They found me out last time, took me back to the North. They also put me through three months of reeducation in the Off Limits.”

“Damn, kid … ” Sterling can tell by the look on Bolt’s face that he isn’t exaggerating. His facial features, normally soft and naïve, have hardened into the phizog of a bitter old man.

Bolt points at a tattoo behind his ear indicating he’s done a stint in reeducation. Sterling has one too, behind his right ear.

“And you’re trying to come back again? You sure are brave.”

“No one wants to be trimmed,” he says.

The flesh dealer steps out of the main room of the establishment. He’s in the clothing of Southern Uppers: a long sleeve shirt with an elaborate face cover decorated with embroidery – loose pants, shirts, R Boots – and a fringe of beadwork. “I’m sorry about the troubles last night,” he says, “but I hope other than that, the stay was up to your standards.”

“It was fine,” says Sterling.

“That’s wonderful.”

The man is just about to turn away when Sterling calls out to him. “Say, I’m clean out of red root. Could I borrow a little?”

“Of course.” The flesh dealer takes long strides towards them, his boots kicking up tiny puffs of dust. He reaches under his arm, retrieves a small tin. One pinch later, and Sterling is palming one of the South’s favorite pastimes.

***

“Now we find a motopublic heading to the church.”

Sterling follows Bolt around the Fleshroom and onto a main road. A few motocarts rumble by them, trailed by single person motos, which are much more popular in the North than the South. Sterling has a moto back at his home; two wheels, 50cc, two seats and custom grips that he won in a game of lizard with a moto dealer.

“Where’s the motopublic?” Bolt asks a passing Upper woman. She’s in full outdoor garb, a head-to-toe cloth covering and bindrings over her shoulders. No words are exchanged between the two; she simply lifts her arm and points, revealing heavily be-ringed fingers – the wealthy seize every opportunity to showcase their wealth.

Bolt leads the way and Sterling follows. He places the red root in his mouth, chews once, almost gags.

“This stuff is terrible!”

“Don’t chew it,” Bolt explains, “put it between your cheek and your teeth and suck on it.”

Sterling’s tongue moves the mess to the side; it’s still bitter, but at least it isn’t quite so overpoweringly vile.

The two walk for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. They pass Depots, another fleshroom, a small worship center, Lowers’ residences and a single public bath. Sterling doesn’t have to ask Bolt to confirm that this is the poorer part of the South. He assumes the richer part is closer to the Off Limits, as it is in the North. Proximity to the Off Limits allows for easy access to the War Zone, the distribution points, the council halls and the various ports of entry. As to why the Upper lady was walking the streets moments ago – they do tend to get around. After all, Uppers are pretty much in charge of everything, aside from the Devout.

A group of Lower Southerners stands on the side of the gravel road in tattered clothes and dirty R-Boots. Lowers aren’t issued the same amount of cloth as the Uppers – same in the North. The women make up for this by decorating their faces in peculiar ways. One thing that’s popular right now on both sides of the Great Demarcator is a string of beige dots below each eye. Of the four women waiting for the motopublic, three have the beige dots atop their cheeks. The fourth has the Widow Mark on her forehead, a vertical tear made by pressing one’s finger into clay and dragging it from the top of the forehead to the glabella.

The Southern Lowers are fond of bandanas instead of the face coverings attached to a person’s clothing. From what Sterling has seen and what he can see now, they’re generally dirtier, scruffier and have their teeth more heavily discolored by red root than do their wealthier counterparts.

“Just do what I do,” Bolt says under his breath. A draft blows past, kicking sand into the air. He steps behind the group waiting for the motopublic, clasps his hands behind his back. Sterling does the same. No one speaks; most keep their heads down, staring at their feet.

A rumbling in the distance disturbs the silence. Motopublics are similar to motocarts, aside from the fact they have dual wheels on the rear axle. The sitting portion is larger, enough to fit ten to twelve people. It’s covered as well, which is different from all the other vehicles in the Canyon. The driver, however, rides uncovered, which can lead to some pretty comical things if a big enough dust storm hits the motopublic. Sterling once saw a driver swept off his seat by a big gust of wind. On his knees, the driver crawled over to the covered cabin and used it as a wind barrier. His hat blew off, revealing a bald head five shades whiter than his face. The cabin roared with laughter, much to his dismay.

***

It takes a little under an hour to reach the Church of the South.

Sterling sits with gritted teeth the entire way, listening to a pair of men talk about their recent trip to the War Zone. The men were discussing the best kill, how the Northerners were bloodier than the Southerners, how they hoped to one day kill a Northerner themselves.

“They deserve it. Everything about their lives is false. The faceless, evil bastards. All of them.”

“All of them,” the second man agrees. “The Northern Goddess is a false whore. I can’t wait for the next war; I’ll murder at least … at least three Northerners … going to stomp their faces in… “

“Rip their guts out.”

“Piss in their open mouths.”

“Smash all their teeth in with my clubbing stick!”

The motopublic stops, and not a second too soon. If the trip had lasted any longer, Sterling would have taken action. He knows not to, knows that blowing his cover is a bad idea at this point, but listening to the men talk shit about the North and the Goddess has really perturbed him.

“Ignore them,” Bolt says, poking Sterling’s arm.

The people unload, the women drape portions of their flowing garments over their arms. Some of their wrappings are stitched together poorly, frayed at the ends that frequently drag on the parched soil. Others wear the best clothing they have, freshly washed and covered in small beads made of bone, metal, food wrappers, R Boot buckles, peculiar rocks and mirror shards.

“It’s there,” Bolt says.

The Church of the South sits on a large rectangular plot. A wall made of stone protects the front of the structure. Broken glass – a rarity – and sharp metal pieces have been affixed to the top of the wall to prevent people from climbing over. A tower three times as tall as the church looms over the main building and casts a shadow across the courtyard. The gate in front of the church is the exact same type of gate that is used in the North, which strikes Sterling as odd.

Made of a blackened metal that no one has been able to reproduce, the gate is detailed in lattice work fashioned to resemble an old tree, its limbs stretching to the outermost rim of the gate and its roots stretching to the bottommost rim. Right now it’s closed, and is flanked on either side by two sentries in full ceremonial garb – pants, shirts and R Boots of much finer quality and finish than even the wealthiest Uppers can obtain, large conical hats, and all of it draped and festooned with more cloth than a Lower family gets in two years’ rations. This too mirrors the garb of the Devout in the North, the only difference being the shape of their hats – Northerners have square hats.

Sterling pulls Bolt aside. A crowd moves past, on their way to circumambulate the structure, something exclusive to the South. “We need two things.” He uses his fingers to illustrate the numbers, just in case Bolt is unable to visualize how many two actually is. “One, we need to get her. Two, we need to have a way to get away once we have her.

Bolt nods. Sterling can almost make out his reflection in the kid’s eyes.

“From what I remember, the Goddess usually sees children in the afternoon.”

“Good,” Sterling says, “That will give us time to arrange transportation.”

“I’ll check the time… ” Bolt merges into the crowd.

It only takes a moment for Sterling to feel completely alone. In a foreign land, surrounded by people similar to him but very different, the impossibility of his task looms large in his consciousness. He wasn’t lying when he told Bolt that someone had captured a Goddess before, when he was a child. The man had been swiftly captured and the Goddess returned to the Church of the North. They’d kept him alive for days under torture before he was finally given the release of death, and his family – from the graybeards right down to the babes in arms – had all been eunuched in the Off Limits.

The crowd swells around him.

Seeing so many Southerners ratchets up the fear he’s already experiencing. Their garb is similar to those of the North, but they wear things differently, move differently, speak differently. Many are lost in prayer as they billow past him.

The Devout are many but the true Devout are few. Which are you? The quote from the Book comes to him and he suppresses it with a gulp.

A hero in one land, a villain in another – that’s what he’ll become if he can pull off the monumental task he’s about to attempt. Getting here is one thing, but actually going forth and plucking the Goddess from her nest is something else entirely. The odds are stacked against him – he knew it was a suicide mission the moment Zander gave him the ultimatum. Still, there’s nothing he can do now.

“Escape vehicle,” Sterling whispers under his breath as he watches the crowd dissipate. His eye catches a few motocarts along the streets that lead to the church, all of which belong to Southern Uppers. A motocart would be the easiest to get, but what about the kid?

As if merely thinking the kid’s name actually summons him in fact, Bolt steps out in front of him, disrupting his thought pattern.

“It’s at five,” Bolt says.

“Don’t step in front of me like that.”

“I didn’t step in front of you. I approached you fair and square.”

“There’s nothing fair and square about the way you approached me. Suddenly and shockingly, sure, but not fair and square.”

“What’s got into you?” Bolt asks.

The immensity of the task that lay ahead, Sterling almost answers. Instead, “We need a way out.”

“After?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s always a moto in the lot, North or South.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone is going to be interested in playing a game of rocks in exchange for their vehicle … ” Sterling’s eyes dart left and right. “Although I suppose I could ask.”

“Who said anything about rocks? I have a unikey.”

“Damn, where did you get that?”

Bolt sucks his cheeks in, pops them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No questions asked, no questions answered?”

“Well, as long as you stole it fair and square.”

Dust sweeps through the streets without any warning. Swirling debris becomes projectile weaponry as the terrible gust kicks into high gear, blows off face covers and wrappings and knocks over motos and anything else that isn’t latched down. Sand sprays into Sterling’s face, into his eyes, his nostrils. He struggles to get his face cover up when he feels arms wrap around his waist. Sterling doesn’t have to look down to know that Bolt is holding onto him as tightly as possible, his face pressed into his chest.

***

Time to kill, time to slaughter.

The hours are passed in the shade. After they’ve traded someone half an R Box for some water, Sterling teaches Bolt some tricks he’s learned in the game of rocks, mostly ways to juke out the other player through sleight of hand as well as other things you can say to confuse and distract.

“One thing you can do,” Sterling tells him as they crouch in the shade provided by a depot, “is to mention numbers as you play. Nothing too blatant … keep it casual. Talk about what you did yesterday at a certain time; how many children your brother has; a way to prepare mush that includes portion amounts; the amount of times you prayed the previous day.”

Usually, a talk on the finer points of legerdemain would bore a kid to death. Not Bolt – he’s practically taking notes in the sand as Sterling relives his glory days through embellished stories of his wins and smoothed-over stories of his losses. He’s still not ready to explain to the kid the loss that led him to the South; no one wants to admit utter defeat. Besides, Bolt knows enough as it is.

The two chat for most of the afternoon, both skirting around their individual backstories and focusing more on things that have happened to the pair, such as Bolt’s almost kidnapping or the time Sterling won them three R Boxes through a game of rocks. Bolt nods off at some point; Sterling uses his face cover to protect Bolt’s face from the warm afternoon draught.

Time passes and what lies ahead isn’t completely forgotten, it’s merely overlooked for the time being. At some point Sterling takes his shiv from its sheath on the inside of his R Boot, and polishes it with his back turned to any people that may see it. He returns the piece of sharpened metal to its sheath, adjusts it so it’s tucked deep into his boot but not deep enough that he can’t reach it, and ruffles his pant legs around it.

.7.

The moment arrives for Sterling and Bolt to queue up. Halo waits in the innermost chamber of the Church of the South, ready to receive the line of sick children that have been gathering for the last few hours.

To the people of the Canyon, and especially those who reside in the South, medicine and faith are at odds with one another. Prayer has never helped as much as the advanced medicine available on the borders, but this fact is rarely mentioned. Even if it were, the words would be swiftly suppressed or, more likely, ignored by all but a few Uppers who have enough political power to question the bizarre confines in which they’ve all found themselves. Sick, or sick enough children await their chance to meet the Goddess of the South, as they have for as long as anyone can remember. This is the way things have been done since time immemorial – why question the innate logic of the past?

From bandaged eyes and broken arms to extreme sniffles and festering wounds, Lower Southerners champion youthful injury to the point where some mothers actually harm their offspring to hasten the opportunity to meet the Goddess. The first meeting is the most important, a rite of passage known as The First Blessing. Other instances of sickness aren’t usually treated with such reverence.

“Act sick,” Sterling says, giving Bolt a nudge with his elbow.

Bolt coughs.

“Sicker than that. Sell it.”

Bolt stoops over, clasps his hands over his stomach.

“Make it look real or I’ll take you back behind the depot and trim you myself,” Sterling hisses, fury racing across his face.

Bolt gets to coughing until he’s red in the face and spittle flies from his lips.

“Good.”

He barks and hacks and shakes with fits of violence. His eyes are bloodshot, tears carve runnels through the dust on his face; he’s created enough commotion that the sentry standing at the front moves a few of the less injured back to call Bolt forward.

“Name?” the sentry asks, staring down at Bolt through a slit in his cone-shaped headdress. His nose and mouth are covered by a dark perforated material, obscuring his face.

“Bolt Southrope,” Sterling says, averting his gaze. “I’m his uncle.”

The sentry looks over a few mothers’ heads to his counterpart, who stands guard on the other side of the gate. Both have clubbing sticks at their sides.

“Any weapons?”

“Nope,” says Sterling.

Bolt coughs again.

“Raise them.”

The guard touches his arms and is just about to move south when he stops.

“You’re good to go,” he says, his expression strangely neutral. Sterling can hardly believe his luck as he is sent to the front of the line alongside his newfound nephew. He doesn’t know what he would have done if they found his shiv. They make their way to the front, amidst the jealous glares and gimlet stares of waiting mothers. The two keep their heads down, something Bolt had instructed Sterling to do once they reached the gate.

“No one can be taller than anyone else,” Bolt explained earlier. “This is something different about the Church of the South. They do this because of the passage that reads, Heads held high incite eyes ablaze. Raise your face to become faceless.”

“And they think facelessness is bad … ”

“Yes.”

“Idiots.”

They pass through the gate and Sterling is instantly glad that he listened to Bolt’s advice – all the Southerners inside have lowered their heads and murmur incantations as they await their brief audience with the Goddess. Incense made from dried vegetation adds a smoky sour tinge to the air, masking the Canyon’s dry, dusty scent. A sentry signals for a woman to step aside, allowing Sterling and Bolt to move ahead of her. As soon as the sentry has returned to his position, the woman curses them under her breath.

Bolt glances up at Sterling, anticipating a response. He receives no such thing. Sterling is too focused on the task that lies ahead. He takes in the narrowness of the exit point and the number of sentries he’s seen – two at the main gate, four so far in the courtyard. Six clubbing sticks in total, six ways to see stars before sunset. The weight of impossibility returns and he suppresses it with a deep breath.

He’s made it this far.

The line moves in fits and starts. The faithful file up stairs of carven rock that are worn in the middle from the passage of countless feet, under a pergola adorned with rare flowering cacti and through an arched doorway. Sobbing meets Sterling’s ears as soon as he passes under the pergola. The Southerners inside weep; children, women and men alike. It’s at the threshold of the door that he gets his first glimpse of the Goddess.

Situated in the center of the room, atop a carven dais, Halo stands with a single hand stretched in front of her body, the cloth from her arm hanging freely in the air. She’s covered in a sea of dark gray cloth, her shoulders free of the binders that Sterling assumed she’d be wearing. Her short hair, a light blonde color, is held tightly to her skull by wrappings that cover her eyes – Blinders – similar to the way the lover was dressed.

“She’s really blind?” Sterling whispers to Bolt, just to cover the anxiety he’s feeling upon seeing her.

“I told you so.”

***

The wait drags on interminably. Sterling keeps his head down, watches her by turning his head to the right, training a single eye on the Southern Goddess. She never speaks, and for a goddess, she’s not particularly comforting or welcoming. A crying, fearful child is led to her dais. She extends her hands, the child prostrates itself and is then hustled away by the Goddess’ two sentries.

“Are you sure about this?” Bolt whispers.

“No question; do everything as normal. Follow me out if you’d like, or stay.”

Three people in line ahead of them now – Sterling feels an overwhelming sadness wash over him. The proximity to the Goddess is affecting him, he knows this, but he’d like not to give this thought any power. Her shoulders are bare; the expression on her face is indecipherable. There is a strange luminosity about her; she’s stunningly beautiful, unspeakably powerful, subtly frightening in a way Sterling has never seen or felt before.

A voice hits Sterling, whispered in his ear or bloomed from the epicenter of his mind – he’ll never know how to adequately describe its derivation.

You’ve come.

The voice is female, barely audible yet strikingly distinct; the voice seems to talk at him, from behind him, over him, through him, from leagues upon leagues beneath the troubled soil of the Canyon. Inside his bones, his veins, his heart. It is intoxicating. Aphrodisiactic. The nectar of life and of everything that is holy.

He gasps, almost falls to his knees, but stays strong and focused, amidst the sheer euphoria prickling the hairs on his skin and razoring through his nervous system.

You’re strong.

“Goddess?” he asks, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

Bolt’s turn.

The kid steps up. Sterling maneuvers around him fueled by a manic energy he’s never experienced before. The lapse in existence, a blip of reality, a stone cast into the center of a pool of dust, is enough time for him to arrive at a point behind the Goddess.

He crouches, grabs his shiv from his R Boot, springs up and snags the Goddess around the waist with his free arm. She falls back into him as he puts the point of his shiv up under her chin.

It is over in a heartbeat, executed with the perfect fluidity that flows from constant practice, yet this is the first and only time he’s ever done this. The gathered faithful shriek their shock, their horror, their utter, uncomprehending surprise at this egregious act of sacrilege.

His shiv dimples the Goddess’ throat and Sterling states his demands in clear, ringing, unmistakable tones:

“Clear a path or I will kill your Goddess! ”

.HUNTER.

.1.

Horizon approach and the sound of the Southern Goddess dares me forward, calls me onward, gives me life. Caged in by rock under a blotted-out sun, the Canyon is home to blood of all types.

--You must find Halo, before the Northerners reach the Off Limits.

Clothing torn in places unseen I’m left foot right foot moving discrete. Hands open, silent stride – all things alive must die. The Book says what the BOOK says and what the Book says is true because because …

Faceless.

(Repeat the Dusk Prayer one final time.)

“Let dusk settle and the Canyon rest, give thanks to the Goddess, the Stayed, the Devout and all the rest. Protect me in my moment of slumber; hold me to your breast. Grant me the faculty to become one of the blessed. Lead all those who stray away from deathborn. Heal the earth beneath the feet of the scorned. Mourn the passing of those faithful few, who have given their lives in devotion to you.”

My limbs on edge as I turn a corner, my limbs on edge as I etch my steps, a bead of sweat rolls down my head and I see her, or him, or it doesn’t matter because they are faceless.

(Kill, Hunter, kill.)

“Should I?” I whisper to the One Who Can Hear. No answer, no matter, I’ll be the judge. I’m on the man with fists beating and beating, muffling the screams of one who has fallen, who has sinned. “I AM HELPING YOU!”

Fresh soft flesh – blood on my lips. I’ve liberated another one doomed to be CURSED because the Book says …

(Face caved in, artery burst.)

I did it for you, Goddess! I did it for you, Halo!

The Book says we are stained by the wickedness of man who has blackened the sun through the War of the Untold. The Book says that to be faceless is a sin; to liberate the faceless is an ultimate triumph, to consume the flesh is to become pure.

(Shiv in hand. Shiv near chest. Stab stab stab. Disembowel – no not now. Saw saw saw, armpit down. Fresh soft flesh.)

“You took her!” I bellow into the opening I’ve cut into the man’s body. Everything shiny with blood, everything else in a state of no-life. Dead yellow human has been hunted, saved, hunted.

I’m left foot right foot in an alley, meat in my teeth. Cut the moon out and place it in my pocket. Cut the moon out and place it in my pocket! Listen to the voices, Hunter, but not those voices. The feeling. The sound. The fury. THE VOICES!

(Not those voices.)

I am the sound. The flesh is gummy, the taste metallic. My teeth are sharp, the taste metallic. I am the sound, the cry for help. The flesh is gummy, redeem the Blasph in the name of the Devout.

I catch my reflection in a window and I stifle a scream. Am I becoming faceless?

(Am I the sound?)

“No! Please … please NO not now!”

Hands to my blurred face – scratch nails out.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I whimper, spit out the man’s flesh, drop to my knees.

I have the notion to dig my fingers into my eye sockets and peel my own skin off the bone. I have the notion to end my life right here right now, end the life of Hunter, the humble Devout of the Devout, Halo’s redeemer, the Blasph-ridder of the South.

My shiv.

One glance down and I see Hunter defacing Hunter. Yes! Yes! The ultimate sacrifice. DO IT! Defacing myself to save myself!

Don’t do it, Hunter.

“Goddess? Am I to liberate myself?” I wipe the blood from my lips. “Please! Speak to me!”

The Book says All animals must be eaten. All animals are put in the Canyon to consume or be consumed. Be the consumer.

Tears. They fall and mix with the blood on my chin. My heart like a rat trembling its tail. The dead man’s flesh in a pile of filth. The air tinged with dust, our coffins nailed.

“What’s happening to you?” I sit, pull my knees to my chest as my vision blurs.

(A metalzip flies by, stops, examines me, disappears.)

Memorized passages cut into my arm. Carve to live, carve no harm.

A light turns on at the end of the alleyway. Orange like the walls of the Canyon, bright as a candle. Powered by the Off Limits.

“Someone there?”

The voice comes closer. A woman’s sound, cautious. She will receive.

“Hello? Can … can I help you?”

“No, but I can help you.” On top of her before she can react. My shiv in my hand, her face a blur. “YOU ARE FACELESS!” I scream.

“You are human.”

My shiv hits her arm. Metal meets … metal? I press harder, digging the blade into something solid, something not bone. THE GODDESS MOVES THROUGH ME! I spit in her faceless face, try to scare her with a blood-curdling scream.

She smiles a faceless smile, crashes her fist into my face. I see stars, land on my back.

“The Book says … the Book says … ”

The lights dim.

.2.

Woman took me down in a flash of light, my shiv powerless against her flight.

(Was I wrong?)

“You protected her. YOU saw the light within … and I … I failed you.”

No you didn’t.

“Goddess could it be? Halo are you there?”

To rise from bone and etch your name in the face of the Canyon is man’s only goal. To fall to earth and scrape your bones against the floor of the Canyon is man’s last stand. To stand strong in awe of it all is how mistakes are made. To be faceless is to beg for sudden extinction. The distinction is clear in the name of The Book, the name of the Goddess, the name of the Stayed, the heart of the Devout. Rise and forgive yourself of your inherent sins, my brother, my Hunter. Rescue me.

“Thank you, Halo.”

(Choke back a sob. Rub the dust out of your eyes.)

Left foot right foot, I move like a snake. Slither here, sip the night, pull my hair, rearrange my fate. Clear the nose, stub the toes. Daybreak approach – dust darkens the sun. I feel alive in my skin enough to backpedal to the body I’ve saved for another bite. I find him in a spark of time and dine and dine.

From flesh to flesh, protein to protein. Digest in the wake of things and awake on bird wings.

Fly, Hunter, fly to safety.

“I wish I could!” I laugh at the Goddess’ suggestion with respect. I flap my arms, fall to my knees, cry and pray. Eat more.

(Time passes this way.)

Musical death – time is the final trumpet. Musical death my feet upon the man’s chest, stomping and jumping until his ribs crack.

“YOU ARE DEAD!” I hiss into his lifeless eyes. His face has returned – cleft chin, nose like a rock formation, eyes closed, black teeth like the sun at night.

“I am and so are you,” I say, using my fingers to manipulate his jaw. “I am too, Hunter!”

Not the first I’ve saved and not the last. It is better to stay safe during the day, away from those who are less devout. To murder is a sin, says The Book, but one must do what one must do to save the Stayed.

“I agree,” I say wholeheartedly to the once alive. “I agree that you didn’t deserve this, but no one deserves what’s coming to them. That’s why it’s coming to them. If they deserved it, it wouldn’t come to them. Think about it. Reverse the verse until you get the reverse. Everyone deserves what’s coming to them.”

The man with his ribs stomped in would make a great travel companion. Alas I need to move fast and to entertain such sick thoughts could lead to a case of facelessness I’d soon not face.

(WHAT HAVE I DONE?)

That’s the voice you shouldn’t listen to.

“I know, Goddess,” I say, trembling. “I know.”

Remember why they let you out?

“To find you.”

Then find me, Hunter.

“I will, Halo.

You must.

“I must.”

Goodbye corpse from a different mother. Hello night leave daybreak approach. Hello pressure in my chest as I digest. Hello life in the sense of things, breath in the way it tastes, death in the way it wastes, iron in the sense of lying.

Move.

Move I do under the watchful night. The Canyon is full of crevices and cellars that one can disappear.

--You must not be seen, said Father Miscavige. You will be audited if you are seen, sent to the Hole, forced to repent. DARE I SAY KILLED?

--Do not dare!

--That’s good, Hunter. You were a good boy, so warm, so taut. I’ve taught you all I know, gave you all I had, ALL OF IT, and now look at you. You’ve become an animal; you’ve returned humanity to what it was meant to be. I’m so proud, the Goddess is proud. YOU FILTHY ANIMAL. You piss in the face of those who are faceless. You are the defender of the South, the one chosen to eradicate the North and their ever-present Blasph, the false Goddess, Time. Bravo, Hunter, Bravo! You are Death’s Reaper.

.3.

(Scream inside my head!)

Down in the stupor, down in the Hole. Downpour stupor downpour all. Memories knife me punishment and scorn. Shit and piss as penance remind us of the excrement from which we are born.

A memory. A daydream. A nightmare. All come to me in the flash of light. Fear a nutrient, fear a stimulant, fear a life force.

(Fear the near for they will come and when they come the night is done.)

The Hole – the thought of going back both frightens and inspires. What happened there transpired due to hunger, faith and desire. True desire, killing spree. The desire to free those closest to me.

--Silence the voices, Hunter. The Hole is the place where the Devout go to prove to the world that they are more than The Hole. To prove their strength, prove their devotion. A mountain of sand couldn’t quell your devotion. You are holy, Hunter, you are not faceless, but you must repent. YOU MUST REPENT.

Father Miscavige of the South. The Book is his vessel and the only one higher on the totem pole is Halo, the Goddess of the Stayed. Our Goddess.

In the Hole of filth and dark, the nights don’t shine and the lights are off. In the Hole for weeks on end, in the Hole my soul to mend. In the Hole to confess my sins, await the audit that signals a new beginning.

--Keep your secrets, Hunter, and accept the consequences. TELL ME your dirties, your filthies, your sickest and unpurest thoughts. Dirties. Tell me your dirties. Show me your dirties YOU FILTH!

(Father Miscavige tossed a bucket of piss in the Hole saturating my shoulders whole.)

--I’ll come down there you damn ANIMAL!

--I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!

--YOU ARE MY ANIMAL!

--I AM YOUR ANIMAL!

(His voice an echo, the piss warm, my chains clinking together, my body in prayer position, the faithful next to me dead killed – life in the Hole, death in the Hole.)

--Are they dead, Hunter? Did you do it? Men and women? The Devout? YOU FILTH! screamed Father Miscavige.

--I did it!

--Why Hunter why?

--They were FACELESS! I cried to the light above.

--And how?

--My fists, my claws, my teeth, stones, bones.

--Good, Hunter, good. I’ll have the lift lowered. Bathe and meet me in the auditing room. You’ve completed what you came here to do.

The auditing room is near the Hole but far enough away to avoid the inner cry of the diseased. Deceased. I went there after washing the blood away. I went there after changing into my black robes.

--You’ve done well, Hunter, said Father Miscavige. You’ve survived the Hole. You’ve killed many, but only because they were faceless. You’ve consumed them, you’ve done the Goddess a service and for that, I’ll allow you to meet Halo in her tower.

--When? I manage to ask, my voice a shiv over my parched throat. I broke down on my knees crying – many can see the Goddess at the top of her Rapunzel Tower but few will ever meet her there. Hands clasped together at the front of my robe, I dug my claws into my own flesh to punish myself for the excitement I felt.

--You will meet Halo tonight, after the ceremony. Return to your room, rest, bathe again. Though you are filth, you should not smell like it when you meet the Goddess.

.4.

Cellar dweller down for the day. Light outside stay away. In the name of the Goddess, the Book, the Stayed, the Devout. Scratch blood from finger tips, some in cuticle. Life is a death musical, a prolonged pout, a bout with brutal truisms and ever-present doubt.

(Not I – the champion of the Goddess, the protector of the Stayed, the liberator of the faceless, the pisser upon remains.)

The cellar isn’t stellar but the dark hiding will do. Dust of the Canyon, the grain of life. Lie in the Canyon, the life of the disdained. Hide until night. Hide from day because day is a breeding ground for deathborn.

--Find Halo, you’re the hunter.

--I am Hunter.

--You are, my child, you are, said Father Miscavige, his hand on my head. Now find her or face the consequences.

A metalzip outside the cellar door presses its body through a crack. It perches on a rotten piece of wood; its eyes spin as it takes me in.

“People say that wood comes from the Off Limits, from other Canyons. Is it true zippy?” I ask it. “Tell me what you know insect friend. Are there others like us? Like me?”

The metalzip’s eyes are glassy, pupils black, zoom in and zoom out, wings of metal hence the name. Zip the sound hence the name. They’ve been in the Canyon long before the Book, long before the Stayed.

Man killed man because of tech. New man doesn’t need tech. New man needs the Canyon. New man must recognize the sin of progress. The sky of orange and dust stems from the War of the Untold, the war that placed us here. To be pure is to be simple, to be simple is to truly live.

“I know what the Book says,” I tell the metalzip, laughing, baring my teeth, licking my chapped lips. Parched I am but faith in the Goddess I have. “What’s your name, zippy?”

The metalzip comes alive. Its wings hummingbird vroom vroom around the room. I duck, place my hands over my head. Metalzips are not to be touched, to do so is a sin.

Why is it a sin?

“Goddess?”

(She speaks to me!)

Why is it a sin?

“Is that really you? Speak to me Halo, grant me your guidance!”

(Thinking of the Goddess causes a quake within. Remembering her face stirs me in a way I’m ashamed to admit. Her face, her thin frame, her blindfold, her skin tight against her exposed throat.)

I touch myself in the place to be hidden. I touch myself and move my hand up and down, left and right. TOUCH! Grow like a rainbow, I curse my existence. I curse the blood rocketing to the unspeakable appendage. Erect derelicts are closer to deathborn than the Vultured Few promising lizard luck for a hearty tug of their beard tails. Salacious thoughts curtail!

(No. No. No. No.)

Yes.

“Goddess!” I whisper, staring directly at the metalzip. “I wasn’t thinking, I was thinking, I mean … I mean … please make it stop!”

--You must keep yours, said Father Miscavige. Yours is mine. The others can eunuch, must unsow, but yours is mine.

The metalzip presses out of the cellar.

“What does it mean, Goddess? Shall I repent? SHALL I CUT IT OFF!?”

(Yes, cut it off!)

No, you’ll bleed to death.

“I’ll die for you,” I whisper.

It is not time for you to die for me.

--It’s mine, be careful with it.

“Father Miscavige?”

Movement above causes me to shut my trap. On the floor like a cat my knees crushing my unspeakables as punishment.

“For you,” I whisper as I squeeze harder, as pain warms my thigh. “For you, Halo.”

Excruciating pain, blood drain.

.5.

Dream the dream, scream the scream. Scream the dream, dream the scream.

(INSIDE MY … )

My last encounter with her is more vivid in the darkness. Halo in all her splendor, the Goddess of the Stayed, alive to dispense blessings from the Tower of Rapunzel. Her eyes wrapped as she approached me; light filtering all around her catching specks of dust. Her frame that of a young boy’s, her chest flat against her ribs. Her arms mere bones, her fingers long, her nails perfect. Everything perfect, everything divine.

You are Hunter, she thought to me, caressing the top of my face with an outstretched hand. Her shoulders forced down by bindrings; her neck covered in layered cloth.

--I am, I told her, tears stinging.

Her tower – we met at the bottom, away from the crowd away from the sun. Kneeling, hardly able to look up at the Goddess, shivering with ecstasy I haven’t felt since, knowing that the moment would soon pass.

(Please let me feel that way again. Please.)

You’ve done much for the South, she thought to me. Her voice appeared in my head, her lips still frozen. Father Miscavige pressed his back against the wall, watching it all.

--In your name, I told her.

You’ve suffered in my name, in the name of the Book.

--I bear it willingly, gladly.

I’m sorry.

Halo’s fingers moved from my chin to my temples. They traced over my unkempt sideburns, against the tops of my ears, to the back of my head. An explosion of color painted over my closed eyelids. The universe spits inside my head and my brain splits.

In the Hole where only the holy go, I killed a dozen and ate their souls. In the Hole away from man and sin, I died twice and was born again. In the Hole I ate and ate, in the Hole life came late.

(LET THE MEMORIES GO!)

Episodic violence, fingers in eye sockets. The man’s hair in my clenched fist, I sank my knee into his throat. A knife made from sharpened rock found its way into my palm, my first bite triggering a numbing calm. He was one, but there were others. Eleven to be exact all equally dead or to be saved. Survival of the fittest is the plight for the Stayed, the goal of the Devout.

All faceless.

--I did what I had to do, to save the faceless, I finally told her, a sob roiling in my chest. I ate them. I squashed their skulls and … and …

Your hand was forced, dear Hunter. Your life leading up to this point has created something the Canyon has never seen.

--My hand was … forced? What do you mean?

--That’s plenty, said Father Miscavige, standing.

(Halo’s attendants walked into the room. Long-necked, cloths wrapped around their waists. Scepter hats, faces masked, eyes exposed.)

--Please! Please, I never want to leave the Goddess again! I screamed at Father Miscavige.

--You’ve sacrificed your humanity to become part of the inner circle, part of our inner world. You’ve done unspeakable things, Hunter; the Southern Council would surely send you to the War Zone. I, we, wish to have mercy on you, said Father Miscavige.

Go, Hunter, said Halo inside my head. This isn’t the last time we will meet.

--You mean it? DO YOU MEAN IT?

A dark sack was placed over my head. The chain of my cuffs scraped against my back as I tried to stand. Run I couldn’t, cry I did.

Life of the forsaken.

.6.

Awake in the cellar, wait for dusk. Night dies at daybreak always dust. The smell of soil and ash, the taste of the sins of the past, the sun and moon dim and dimmer, the Stayed growing thinner in the long months, the Book open in the churches, the Devout on their knees, praying for the facelessness of the Canyon to cease.

Stretch your arms in front of you Hunter and come alive.

To the Goddess I bow, to the east twice, the west twice, the north and the south. The North has taken Halo, the one true Goddess. The false Goddess of the North can press her face in my dirties! Suck my unspeakables! DAMN THE NORTH!

--You must get Halo before she reaches the Off Limits. You are her warrior, her guardian; the people can’t know that she’s been abducted. The people can’t know the truth. The truth is proof that the pudding is weak. The truth shall set no one free.

“Food,” I say, my hand on my muscled stomach. The meat of the faceless is lean. Not many consume human protein. Of course there is only one reason to eat and that is to save. I would eat myself if my reflection gave myself away.

“You’re funny!”

(A funny man in the North is a dead man in the South. A funny man in the South is food for fodder to a father. Ha!)

You’re funny.

“Halo, is that you?”

It is.

“I wish I were as funny as you!” I whisper to the Goddess. I may not see her but that doesn’t mean she isn’t there. Nothing is what it seems in the Canyon. Cliff rock layers upon layers, earth-made prisons don’t get much better. Shale, limestone, red iron layers. Shells from a place beyond our own prayers. Flows of black stone – the Canyon is home.

(Fall on your knees laughing alongside me, Goddess. Please, Halo! We laugh together! We celebrate life together! We champion the liberation of the faceless!)

Night comes, doors close, keep your voice inside your clothes. Seersucker black disguises the fact that I move through the night as the Goddess’ knight vanquishing those who appear in true form delivering them from being deathborn.

I AM ME.

Cellar open and I’m back on the scent. Whoever has taken the Goddess will pay. Sun black night face cover no bother. Everyone in a panic everywhere, no one can find her. The Off Limits vestas ahead, the hands of the North on the Goddess’ head.

Imagining the way they have mishandled her lights my innards, left foot right foot, move like ghosts. Crisscross a shadow, leap over the soil of sinners.

Are you coming?

“I’m coming!” My voice free from my throat scratchy tableau. Stop and pause and listen to movement. A depot in the distance surrounded by men. Listen to their voices, check for facelessness.

--It isn’t your job to liberate once you’ve been unleashed, Father Miscavige said. However, do what you must as long as you’re on your hunt. You must get to her before the Off Limits, otherwise I’ll treat you like the filth you are.

“I am filth!”

No you aren’t.

Voices up front – they speak of the Goddess and how she’s been taken towards the east. My ears awaken as the sound twists through the stale air like finger grazers upon the skin of a lesser man.

(I almost did it, almost went to a flesh dealer the first time I was out.)

“I’m sorry … ” I whisper with my hand over my mouth. “I can … I can punish myself for even thinking it!”

--I’m letting you out because you are the only one who can retrieve the Goddess before she gets to the Off Limits. Once she gets there, she’ll be property of the North, Father Miscavige told me.

--I understand.

--They can’t go a direct route; they’ll need to go to the outer rim of the Canyon, likely to the Eastern Caves, and work their way up. They may make some distance with the motocart they’ve stolen, but patrols are already out along the border. They’ll move at night.

--I move at night.

--Yes, you do, Hunter, and you will find them AND WHEN YOU DO…

(They will suffer for their sin; I will shear their flesh from their hides, squish their eyes, crush their lies with my R Boots until all that’s left is a pulp. The Goddess can watch. Halo will see how much she means to me.)

A moto.

A MOTO.

My eyes don’t fib. The man closest to me has his moto parked near a wall. Unikey in my pocket given to me by Father Miscavige, I creep creep move, shadow to the shadows, back against the wall, throat full of spittle too loud to swallow.

Metalzip vroom vroom by and I get the urge to shout goodbye. Shhhhhh. Silence is golden. Silence is knowledge; what lies in the Empyrean makes itself known through taciturnity. Eternity is a burning flame inside a darkened room on the edge of reality awash in stillness and peace. Become silence and speak only when necessary.

(What about the voices inside my head?)

“DON’T SAY ANYTHING!”

“Who’s there?” The men turn to me.

Cover blown, I straighten my robes and step out into the orange light provided by a lamp yards away. Twitchy smile gets the best of me; I’m stationary, silent, locked in pose. Shiv in hand, away from the light, silhouette clothing.

“Who are you?” one of the men asks. A Southern Lower, evident in is drab garb and the smudge marks on his face.

I clear my throat.

“Why are you covered in blood?” another asks.

The odds are slim that I’ll take all four, the moto is my target anyway. I’m closer, and the unikey will start it with the punch of a button. I’ve just turned when something rattles my patience. A hand lands on my shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

I spin on my heels and the man steps back. The owner of the moto I presume, I allow him his room and I look for the signs that will necessitate an attack.

“Please … ” I whisper as his face blurs.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks, mostly for show. His friends chuckle, step up.

Flash like lightning. No time to react, no time to step back. A fist comes my way and it connects with my jaw. I stumble backwards, spit blood in his direction once I’ve recovered and force him to the ground with a tackle.

“Please,” I scream at the faceless blur in front of me. “PLEASE!”

(I AM DOING THIS FOR YOU, HALO!)

Two of his friends scatter, one stays. No bother – the faceless are my prey. One glance at the approaching man and I see something I’m quite familiar with. Facelessness starts from the neck. It works its way up, swirls around the chin, begins again, vortexes at the nose, swells over the eyelids and reverse drips to the top of the skull.

The faceless are many, the Devout are few. The skewed, the Stayed are one in the same. Liberate your facelessness and the facelessness of those around you. Holy wars begin within. The struggle since the War of the Untold has created rules to be followed and new thresholds to be crossed. The enemy is many, the Devout are few. Which are you? Upper or Lower – the Book is the answer. Unfetter the deathborn, splinter the cancer.

My shiv and fury go to work on the faceless sucker puncher. The man approaching turns and runs.

.7.

(Stab stab stab. Finish the job. Feel my madness!)

The man is face up, blowing frothy bubbles through punctured lungs. Violence is an integral part of the Canyon; I merely perform my role as I roll the faceless man onto his stomach, stomp the back of his skull until I’ve planted his teeth.

(I did this for you.)

I didn’t ask for you to kill for me.

“HE WAS FACELESS!” I whisper-scream at what’s left of the moon.

You must find me, Hunter. The faceless can be liberated another day.

I drop to my knees and use my shiv to take a sliver of flesh. The man, not quite dead yet, gurgles and twitches until I silence him with a thrust and twist. I eat enough to suffice. Move I do, to the moto the unikey in hand.

--You will need a unikey, said Father Miscavige. Do you remember what I taught you when you were young?

--Which lessons, Father?

--To drive a moto.

--That was long ago.

--You’ve never failed me; you’ve never failed the Church of the South; you’ve never failed Halo the Goddess.

--I will never.

--Then you must take this, drive to the direction that they’re reported to have gone. The Eastern Caves. Destroy whoever has done this and do whatever you’d like with these faceless BLASPHS! Father Miscavige slammed his fist in his hand.

--I will. I WILL!

--And bring Halo back here. She can’t reach the border; we don’t want OL Officers involved.

Hurry, Hunter.

“Goddess, you speak?” I look around, grasping for any sign to prove that what I’ve heard, what I feel in my heart is right. “Are you there? Are you with me?”

I am always with you, you know that.

“I am coming for you.”

I am waiting for you.

“I am filth.”

You are more than filth.

“I love you, Halo.”

I love you too, Hunter.

On the moto I go.

Unikey activates and I kick my foot down. Wheels on gravel, roads unravel. Move east like a zephyr towards Halo’s whisper. The Book says what the Book says and I listen. Quotes come and I soak them in. To meet an old friend is to begin again. To become Devout is without a doubt the most powerful thing a person of the Stayed can do. What are you? What will you become? When extinction comes will you be the type to see the truth?

“I will see the truth!” I shout as I increase my speed.

Break through to break in. Move through to move out. Jump through to jump in. Remain Devout.

Wind, beat my face, forgive me for what I’ve shown you in the last few days. Wind, tear my eye, pull back my lips. Wind, pass over my finger tips and curl up my arms. Deliver me from harm, Goddess, deliver me from harm. I am not a killer; I am a liberator. I am your protector, Father Miscavige’s Goddess collector, the preserver of the Devout.

(You’ve become something else entirely.)

Silence that voice and hurry, dear Hunter, hurry east.

Wind blows the tears into the corners of my eyes and dries them before I can wipe them away. “Goddess I am coming for you! Guide me, Halo!”

.STERLING.

.1.

Somehow it worked.

As he sits in the mouth of a western cave, Sterling, a gambling Upper from the North, replays the capture of Halo in his mind.

Bolt had just stepped up to greet her when something took over. Sterling was suddenly behind her, his hand on her waist and his shiv at her throat. But how? When did he get the speed of a lizard? When had he ever moved in such a confident way?

He had no doubt about what happened next, but that didn’t make it any less bizarre. The sentries instantly sprinted for him, tangled their feet in their robes and fell flat on their faces. Every time they stood, they’d step, stumble on their robes and prostrate themselves full length. The noise of the crowd vanished; the mothers and fathers and the sick and injured children closed their mouths, dropped their arms to their sides, and formed an aisle from the dais to the exit.

Halo was weightless in his arms as he carried her out of the Church of the South through the mass of immobile humanity. Her clothing was mostly gone, something Sterling didn’t remember seeing happen and her skin was warm to the touch. Bolt took the lead, stepping quickly and confidently through the multitude. A motocart was conveniently parked directly outside the church. Bolt used his unikey, started it, and Sterling climbed into the back with Halo.

As they made their escape, a few motos gave chase, but they swerved and overturned whenever they got close. Sterling couldn’t believe his sheer luck. Something otherworldly had happened, something beyond him and the scope of anything he’d ever experienced.

“There’s just no way … ”

An entire day has passed and for all Sterling can tell, he’s been asleep most of it. He has tried speaking to the Goddess …

“Halo, she’s not the Goddess,” he reminds himself.

He has tried speaking to her, but every time he does, drowsiness washes over him, and this is why he currently stands outside the cave. Night is approaching and they’d better move soon. Orange dusk. The Canyon is quiet along its outer rim, much quieter than it should be.

“Are you all right?” Sterling turns to find Bolt.

“Fine. Were we … really asleep for a day?”

“I think so,” says Sterling. “Maybe it was a result of shock. What happened in the church … You know, I haven’t told you, but you did some good driving back there.”

“Really?” Bolt visibly swells with pride.

“Real good.”

“Why didn’t anyone chase us?”

“What do you mean?” Sterling asks. “They did, on their motos.”

“No, they didn’t,” says Bolt.

Sterling tries to recall what happened, but the events are faded and blurred and hover just beyond his grasp. “I thought they did. Didn’t they?”

“They went the other way,” Bolt explains, “To the east.”

“Some of them crashed their motos.”

“I didn’t see that happen.”

Sterling shrugs, kicks at a rock. “Well, it’s over; that’s all that matters. What’s she doing?”

“Sitting in the cave in the same position she’s been in for at least a day.”

“Why do we keep falling asleep?”

Bolt nods at the cave.

“She’s not the Goddess, dammit.”

***

“All right, Halo, it’s time to talk.” Sterling stands at the entrance of the cave, a good twenty feet away from the Southern Goddess. She sits cross-legged on a large rock, her legs covered by her torn dress. Her skin shines clear in the darkened cave; her face is still concealed by her Blinders.

“Drop the silent act,” Sterling says, taking a step closer to her.

Bolt appears behind him. “Is she saying anything yet?”

Halo lays her hands in her lap, cradles one palm with the other. She does so with a flowing, effortless grace that somehow makes Sterling feel that she’s mocking him.

“Enough.” He lifts his foot to take a step and encounters an invisible barrier. “Dammit.” He tries again, with the same result.

Halo’s lips curve into a smile.

“I told you she was powerful,” Bolt whispers, behind him.

Sterling turns. “Listen, kid, whatever she’s doing, it’s just some type of … some type of … ” He’s about to say magic, but that would mean he believed in the Southern Goddess and he doesn’t. “Trick. You try to approach her.”

With a single shove, he sends the kid stumbling forward, right through the invisible barrier. Bolt spins on his heels, moves back to Sterling’s side.

His shiv in his hand, Sterling approaches the invisible barrier carefully, stabs at thin air. He nearly loses his balance, catches himself just in time.

Bolt laughs.

“Not funny, kid.”

The barrier suddenly vanishes and Sterling takes a few steps closer to Halo. Everything about her seems perfect, chiseled, an expression of truly divine design. The smile has left her face and if it weren’t for the fact that her shoulders moved ever so slightly with each shallow breath she took, she’d resemble a statue.

Bolt yawns.

“See,” Sterling says, “she’s doing something. Listen, Halo, no more sleepy games.” He yawns as well. “Dammit, not again.”

Bolt sits with his back against the cave wall, slides down, curls onto his side and dozes off.

Sterling goes to one knee. “Dammit … ” His grip loosens and his shiv plinks against the rocky soil.

Halo’s demure expression boils his blood.

“Fuck you … ” He’s on hands and knees and just about to hit the ground for another involuntary nap as his hand brushes against a jagged, fist-sized rock. He underhands it; the stone spins off his fingers as he snaps his wrist.

Halo’s shriek of fear, surprise and pain is a silent thunderbolt that strikes him right between the ears, within his skull, at the epicenter of his psyche, and his first instinct after it’s stopped is to touch his ears to see if they’re bleeding. His second is to ensure that he hasn’t inadvertently soiled himself. He’s dizzy, nauseated, and unsure if he can rise to his feet.

“What … was that!?” Bolt is up now, hands over his ears and panic in his eyes.

Gone is the Southern Goddess’ meditative pose.

***

“You’ll be all right, Halo.” Sterling swallows hard. The Goddess is bent forward, clutching her shoulder. Her hand comes off her shoulder, a smear of blood on her palm.

What did you do to me!?

Sterling looks around, tries to pinpoint the voice.

“Who said that?”

I AM BLEEDING!

“Do you hear that?” he asks Bolt.

“Hear what?”

You threw a rock at me!

“Shit … it’s … it’s her!” Sterling backpedals away from her, runs himself into the cave wall next to Bolt. Neither he nor the kid seem able to get off the ground.

“What’s her?” the kid asks.

“You can talk.” Sterling’s eyes narrow in on Halo. “You can talk, can’t you?”

The Goddess wipes blood across her mouth, wipes more on her bare arm.

“What is she doing?” Bolt is frightened, on the edge of panic.

The Goddess smears blood more over the exposed parts of her body.

I’m bleeding! You’ve made me bleed!

Sudden pain and pressure behind his eyes; Sterling feels every heartbeat in his head like a blow from a clubbing stick. Faster and faster, his heart pounds against his chest as if it’s trying to hammer its way out; he fears that his heart may burst or his skull explode. With a moan, he falls to his side.

“Sterling?” Bolt reaches out to him, hesitantly touches him and whips his hand away. “What’s happening to you?”

“Fuck … ” His initial nausea doubles and redoubles and squeezes his guts in its fist. Sterling dry heaves repeatedly with a horrid, painful retching, his whole body is wracked with convulsions.

“Stop!” Bolt shouts. “Whatever you two are doing, stop!”

As if by magic, the pain and nausea vanish and his heart slows to its normal tempo. He uncurls as his muscles unlock, and he mostly just wants to breathe. His eyes narrow as they lock on Halo; his shiv rests on the cave floor within easy reach, if only he can …

Halo returns her hand to the wound, wipes more blood across her mouth.

“Goddess,” Bolt approaches her, closer than either of them have been since the abduction. “You’re bleeding.”

I’m bleeding.

“Stop talking in my head!” Sterling screams, slams his fist onto the ground. “Quit … quit wiping your blood everywhere!”

You did this to me.

“Bolt,” Sterling swivels to the entrance of the cave. “She’s in my head, kid. She’s in my head, dammit.”

“She’s the Goddess … ” Bolt whispers.

“Time is the Goddess! You hear me? TIME! That’s Halo, that’s a false goddess! All this is damned! DAMNED!”

Halo wipes more blood onto her lips.

“In the name of the Goddess stop … stop wiping blood on your lips!”

How do I return it to my body?

The naïveté of her question surprises him. She cocks her head to the side in genuine curiosity.

“You … you don’t know about blood?”

“Halo?” Bolt asks. “Can you hear us?”

Her head turns to Bolt; she licks her lips, takes in more of the blood.

You can hear me, can’t you?

“I can,” says Sterling. “And I’d be lying if I told you that this fact wasn’t troubling to me. Can you hear her, Bolt?”

He can’t hear me.

“Are you telling me that I’m the only one?”

You aren’t the only one. There are others, one in particular.

“What’s she saying?” Bolt asks excitedly.

“So you can’t talk?”

No, but I can hear.

“Can you see?”

Not like you.

.2.

Sterling approaches Halo. Bolt stays behind him now, leery about moving closer to the bleeding Goddess.

“We should get you cleaned off. It’s going to be tough enough to get to the border unnoticed; I can’t imagine having you covered in blood would make us any less noticeable. As the ringing in his head subsides, Sterling runs his hand through his hair and considers the impossibility of his situation yet again.

You did this.

“Yeah, I know I did it, but you were doing whatever it was that you were doing with your sleep trick.” He glances left and right. “Dammit. I didn’t bring anything, no clothes, no rags, nothing.”

I can tell.

“You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

She looks directly at Sterling; even though her eyes are covered by Blinders, he gets the feeling that she can actually see him.

“Don’t look at me like that … ”

Come closer.

“Bolt, did you see any depots or anything near here? Before we set off, we need to get some food and some water.” Sterling says this while keeping one eye trained on Halo. He still isn’t sure of how to feel about the ghastly, ghostly girl, her lower half concealed by smoke gray wrappings and her arms and face smeared with drying blood.

There is a depot a few vestas away from here.

“How do you know?” he asks her.

I saw it.

“You can’t see.”

I heard it.

“Why should we believe you?”

Because I don’t lie the same way as you.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Halo opens her mouth as if to speak, and closes it without doing so.

“Okay,” Sterling’s eyebrows draw together. “We’ll all go.”

No, Bolt will go. You and I will stay here.

“For someone who is technically a hostage, you sure are good at making demands.”

I could leave right now if I wanted to.

He says under his breath, “Bolt, do what the Goddess, I mean Halo says.”

“What did she say?” the kid asks.

“Sorry, I forgot you can’t … um … hear her. She said go to the depot and get some supplies.”

“How am I supposed to do that? I don’t have any bits.”

The supplies will be waiting outside the depot when he gets there.

“She says it’ll be waiting for you.”

Bolt glances from Sterling to Halo, who has since returned to her meditative pose.

“Are you sure?”

Sterling walks over to the kid, places his hand on his shoulder and leads him out of the cave. A quick glance at the ruby red sky confirms that night will be here soon. Dusk in the Canyon is always something to behold, dawn is generally dreaded. “Listen, Bolt, some weird stuff is going on here. I … I get the sense that she wanted us to free her. She’s speaking to me in my head.” He taps his finger against his skull. “I’ll be completely honest with you – I don’t know what to think.”

“So should I go?”

“You should go. I think she would have squashed our heads by this point if she wanted – just a hunch I have.”

“She’s magic?”

“Nonsense,” Sterling says. “Well, maybe, but that doesn’t mean anything. Okay, so it does mean something. Look – I’m still trying to process all this, that’s for damn sure.” He clears his throat. “Things may get hairy once we get near the Off Limits. You should … you should leave before then. I know that’s a ways off, but … ”

“I don’t want to go.”

Sterling’s eyes dart from the kid’s nose, to his hairline to his chin and back. He had the same color hair when he was a kid, brownish blonde. Now his is all brown with premature wisps of white sticking out of his sideburns, accenting his beard stubble. It’s amazing what gambling, stress, sex, and life in the Canyon will do. Sterling is a year from thirty and he already looks forty. Bolt will be the same, if he survives that long.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, “that this will be a grand adventure and that … ”

“That’s not what I think at all.”

“What do you think then?”

Send him to get food, before it gets too dark. I am hungry. There will be clothing there as well. You can discuss his future with him later.

Sterling’s head cocks left, waits for Halo to finish. He doesn’t like the fact that she can simply whisper in his head, but it does beat shouting.

“All right, Bolt, go. Come back as soon as possible. Halo will … um … watch over you, I promise. Take the motocart.”

***

Sterling doesn’t take the moment to collect his thoughts as he had originally planned to do. Instead, he stretches his arms over his head and makes his way back into the cave.

“I can’t see you anymore,” he tells her. “It’s getting too dark in here.”

Halo stands, goes to lift her absent wrappings out of habit, and walks to the entrance. Dusk darkens the blood smeared across her face and upper arms. She tip-toes around a few jagged stones on the floor of the cave, stopping just at the entrance, but not an inch past its threshold. Though blind, she moves with the assurance of the fully sighted.

“So you wanted to leave?” he asks. The mouth of the cave is far enough above the floor of the canyon to allow Sterling to see some of the homes and depots of the South. He can even make out Bolt, who’s now a rapidly moving dot heading towards the horizon.

What do you mean?

“I mean, if you can … control our minds, or scream inside my head or whatever it is you do, you could have stopped us back at the church.”

Halo barely registers Sterling’s overdue epiphany.

People are praying to me right now. The Dusk Prayer is something that is quite popular in the South. Is it the same in the North?

“You still aren’t answering my questions. You wanted to leave the church, didn’t you?”

A breeze rolls through, carrying with it the dry, dusty smell of the Canyon; Halo’s hair stirs and settles as the sudden gust dissipates and vanishes as quickly as it arose.

“Did you or did you not want to leave?”

I did.

“And that’s why your guards weren’t able to stop me. That’s why this suicide mission has somehow worked out so far.”

Correct. You’re smart for a Northern Upper.

“Yeah. Wait, what? Hey!”

Just an observation.

“Why would you do it then? You are …” Sterling doesn’t want to say what he’s going to say next, but the proof is there and even at an arm’s distance from her, he can feel an intangible something prickling his skin. “You are clearly a Goddess, or … something like one.”

No, I’m not.

Sterling still tries to place her voice. It is a gentle whisper, yet clear and distinct. It is the quintessence of femininity; the voice of sister, mother, lover, friend. It soothes even as it stirs faint flickers of desire. It is soft and motherly, soothing yet arousing.

“Halo … ” He waves his hand in front of her eyes to gauge her reaction; faster than the eye can track, she catches his wrist in an iron grip.

He yelps in surprise, twists his wrist away, takes a step back.

“You are … powerful,” he finally manages to say. “I don’t have a lot of experience with Goddesses, but … you are one.”

Goddesses don’t bleed.

“Anyone bleeds if you throw a sharp rock at them,” he says, rubbing his wrist.

They don’t bleed here.

She places one hand over her pudendum.

I am flawed.

“How old are you, exactly?”

Eighteen years, four months, three days and today, exactly.

“And you’ve never had your woman’s time of the moon?”

According to the people of the South, no.

“I see … ”

To say that this complicates everything is an understatement. Goddesses are no longer Goddesses after their first menstrual cycle. This rule comes directly from the Book. Purity leaves at the first flow of blood. Both the North and the South follow this guideline. Once a Goddess has her first menses, she becomes One of the Discarded, something even lower than the Vultured Few. Many take their own lives within the first few months of their expulsion. Strangely, their suicide is considered auspicious; anyone in the vicinity of a former Goddess’ death is all but guaranteed to be raptured.

“How were you able to hide it?”

The blood smeared across Halo’s face floats into the air forming tiny, tear-shaped droplets. The droplets explode into glitter, which fall to the cave floor like ash. Her Blinders unwrap, draping over her shoulders. Her hair starts to grow. Once it is long, the Blinders tie themselves around her hair while her dress lifts, transforming into a Northern Upper’s clothing complete with a translucent seersucker veil and tight binders around her shoulders. Her hair changes color, morphing from sunburst yellow into jet black.

Halo’s eyes blink open, one blue and one green. Sterling places his hand over his mouth in shock and surprise.

Suddenly, she’s her old self again – tattered wrappings and blood smeared across her arms and her face. He wipes his hand over his eyes, looks at her again. Everything is back to normal.

“You did that … in my mind?”

I did.

“And that’s how you hid it?”

Yes.

“So why … why did you spread the blood from your arm all over your body?”

Goddesses don’t bleed.

“But you said it yourself – you aren’t a Goddess.”

Halo turns to Sterling; he’s bombarded by a million images, all flinging past him in rapid-firesuccession. Enormous structures, metalzips, people with metal bones, an aerial view of the Canyon, an enormous moto whipping through empty plains, hillocks and barren wastelands growing in size as the Canyon diminishes. Finally, water, a huge body of it, shimmering and moving, lifting into the air and crashing down.

He stumbles backwards, tries to escape the images. They end immediately, but the ringing in his head returns.

***

Reality comes to a standstill. Sterling has more questions than he’s ever had in his life, but Halo has stopped talking altogether. She’s frozen in front of him now, hardly breathing. He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at her, but it’s now full night and he’s pretty sure he’s been in a trance for some time.

“I’ll be back.”

Heading left, Sterling walks along the Canyon wall, his hand lightly feathering against its jagged surface. The stone is cool; warmth leaves the valley at night, especially during certain times of year. He shifts his thoughts to the Canyon – anything to forget what he’s just witnessed in the cave.

Life of the Stayed is always rife with environmental turmoil, yet the people of the Canyon survive. Even with forced number reductions through trimming and a steady stream of events at the War Zone, humans survive as humans always have – somehow.

There’s a constant haze in the air and the sun and moon are always obscured. Windstorms rip into the valley frequently, killing many and blowing down structures that aren’t anchored properly. The worst are called Blackouts, rolling walls of dust and debris capable of lifting a full grown man. It has rained less than ten times in Sterling’s life. Luckily, large reserves of water are kept in the Off Limits, managed by OL Officers and a few Uppers employed there. Sterling has thought about the Off Limits before, from its name to the way it divides the Canyon into two distinct areas. What exists behind the walls separating the North and the South? From what he can tell, it’s at least several vestas thick. What’s in there? Why the secrecy?

Questions lead to answers lead to more questions. The Stayed who keep their heads down go a long way. The War of the Untold was a result of humankind’s curiosity. Listen more, speak less, ask less, pray.

It’s been a while since Sterling has spent time with the Book. He never really liked reading, and there isn’t much else to read in the Canyon. There have been a few smutty things he’s read from time to time, mostly distributed by Lowers in the shadows of fleshrooms, but the Book is more or less the Book because it is the only book.

“Blasph,” he says under his breath. He knows he shouldn’t think it, so he switches back to what Halo has just shown him. His mind can scarcely comprehend the image of the large body of water, let alone the colossal structure and the person with metal bones.

Movement at the corner of his eye.

Sterling freezes, holds his breath as something enters his peripheral vision. A lizard crawls onto one of the rocks jutting out of the Canyon’s sidewall. It extends its head into the air, elongates its neck, tastes the air with its forked tongue.

Normally, Sterling would try to catch the lizard. It may be a racer, something he’d definitely like to use in the North if given the chance. He’s had a few good racers, his favorite being a lizard he affectionately named Delix. He’d lost that one in a bet, too.

I want to talk to you.

“Dammit, get out of my head,” Sterling says. The lizard sprints away, merging into the shadows.

Please.

“Fine, fine.”

He makes his way back to the cave’s entrance, finds Halo inside, perched on the same flat stone.

Bolt will be here soon.

“Good, I’m hungry and thirsty.”

Your name is Sterling Northrope.

“How’d you know?” He touches his temple. “Oh, right, your mind … um … power.”

A question comes to him, something he hasn’t pondered before – if the Goddess of the South can read minds, what can Time, the Goddess of the North do?

She can’t do anything.

Sterling doesn’t doubt the Goddess of the North, never has. He’s just about to say something nasty to Halo when she interrupts him again.

There is no sense in defending your Goddess. Time isn’t like me; we are as similar as rocks and scorpions.

“You think you’re pretty high and mighty, don’t you? But you … ” He bares his crooked teeth at her. “You aren’t even a real Goddess. You’ve bled. You said so yourself.”

Halo’s lips droop, forming two small dimples on her cheeks.

“You’ve been bleeding,” Sterling says, “for several years now. Blasph. That’s what you are. No better than a Blasph.”

What about you?

“What about me?” He spreads his hands wide to indicate he has nothing to hide.

We all have things that we hide.

“I know, I’ve read that passage in the Book.”

I haven’t.

“Come again?”

How am I to read the book? I can’t see.

“Someone read it to you.”

No, but I am familiar with many of the passages. I’ve heard the songs, the chanting; I’ve experienced the psyche of the Devout in ways that are hard to explain. I don’t need to read the Book to know that we all have something we’re hiding.

“I’m not hiding anything.” Sterling turns away from her, faces the entrance to the cave. “Blasph … ”

I already know what you are hiding.

“Then why are you asking me?”

It is very cleansing to admit the truth, as long as one isn’t coerced.

“Well, if you know what I’m up to, then you know. No sense in talking about it here.”

When you’re ready.

“What about you? If you’re so quick to ask me questions, what if I ask you some?”

Go on.

“What’s under your Blinders?”

My eyes.

“Why do you wear it then?”

Because I am blind.

“Can I take it off?”

By all means.

When he’s within arm’s reach of Halo, Sterling again notices a slight tingling sensation coursing through his body.

“All right, I’m going to take it off.”

He unclips the Blinder at the back of her skull and unwraps it. Halo’s eyes are closed, her eyebrows the same blonde as her hair. The lower portion of her face – smeared in dried blood and dirty from their motocart ride – is at odds with the radiant white of her nose and upper cheeks. With her sharp bone structure and her short blonde hair, wisped at the ends and slightly compressed at the sides from her Blinders, Halo’s natural beauty is evident.

“Open your eyes,” Sterling whispers.

I won’t.

“Please, I want to see them.”

Bolt is here.

The sound of a motocart signals that once again, Halo is right.

“Should I put your Blinders back on?” he asks.

No, you’ll wash me now.

.3.

“You took her Blinders off?” Bolt quickly deposits a bag onto the ground.

“Easy with the supplies,” Sterling says. “And to answer your question, she asked me to.” He tries to sound as nonchalant as possible, but his recent interaction with the Southern Goddess has left him uncertain and disturbed.

No I didn’t.

“He doesn’t know that. Why can’t he communicate with you anyway?”

Some can’t.

“What’s she saying?”

“Nothing important.”

Bolt crouches and begins taking the items out of the cloth bag. He sets several R Boxes on the ground as well as two half gallon water packets. Next out of the bag are a series of wrappings – a full set of women’s clothing.

“You got all this?” Sterling asks.

“I didn’t get any of it – it was waiting for me in the bag.”

Sterling turns back to Halo. He can’t quite tell if she’s grinning, but her mouth has tightened a bit at the corners. With her eyes closed, and the way she breathes without really looking like she’s breathing, the Goddess of the South reminds Sterling of a drawing he saw as a child, distributed by an old woman outside one of the Northern churches attended by Uppers. The woman was gone by the time church was over.

I’m ready for you to wash my face and help me with my clothes.

“Um … ” He casts a tight grin at Bolt. “I’m going to help Halo with her clothes. You wait outside.”

Bolt leaves without protest, reminding Sterling that bigger forces are at work.

“Take off your clothes,” he tells Halo.

I can’t.

“You put them on, didn’t you?”

Someone always does it for me.

“Seriously?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Fine, um, lift your arms.”

She does, and Sterling unwraps the cloth that extends up her torso, over one shoulder and back around her body. A lighter colored binding pulled tightly across her chest catches his eyes.

“You bind them?”

Halo doesn’t respond and Sterling doesn’t pry. He sets her old cloth on the ground and works on the fabric covering her thighs. Soon, her legs are exposed, thin and long, as is her crotch, which is covered by more wrappings wound in a tight V-shape over her hip bones. His eyes naturally come to the spot between her legs and as soon as they lock on, Halo’s hand touches the bottom of his chin. She lifts his face up, stops it so that it’s looking directly at hers.

Stop staring.

“Got it, sorry.”

Naked aside from her chest binding, the Goddess stands, turns her back to him. Two small indentations directly above her ass are the only imperfections in her skin. There isn’t an ounce of excess fat on her.

He applies her body covering starting at her neck, giving her plenty to protect her lips from any sudden winds. Halo raises her arms in a way that reminds Sterling of a scorpion curling its tail. She swivels towards him. Again, his eyes narrow in on her sex and her small breasts. He swallows his animal instincts like they’re a jagged pill, moves the wrappings downwards, over her chest and sideways across her body. Once he’s finished, he clips the back with a large decorative pin. From there, he moves to her leg coverings, which sit at the waist and cascade into a long skirt.

She lowers her arms, adjusts the dark gray fabric around her waist as he ruffles out the bottom portion of her new wrappings. Sterling arrives at her feet, which are shielded by a pair of female R Boots. Seeing this seemingly normal piece of clothing reminds him that she’s human, regardless if she can read minds or not.

“Does it feel okay?”

You’ve done well for a man.

“Thanks?”

Sterling rips a piece off her old wrappings, folds it into a pad and moistens it sparingly with the water ration Bolt brought. He scrubs her arms and occasionally wrings the pad onto the floor. He’d prefer not to use so much water – any really – for something as non-essential as washing, but Halo will draw less attention clean than she would smeared with her own blood, and sometimes a man’s just gotta do what a man’s gotta do. He goes over the spot where his rock hit her shoulder; she flinches, relaxes.

“I just need to get your lips now,” he says.

Wiping the dried blood from her face creates a watercolor smear of redness from ear to ear. He dabs at it again, presses the wet cloth against her lips. “Almost done … ”

Wash my face too.

“You’re demanding.”

Once her face is as clean as it’s going to get, he wrings the blood out of the cloth and wets it again. Pressing the cloth against her face gives him a strange sense of euphoria. It’s as if an energy is being passed between the two, linking their life forces together. Sterling finishes before he can fully process the feeling.

“Better?” he asks, suddenly breathless.

My blinders.

“Ah, that thing … ” He wraps her blinder around her head and hooks the loose ends together at the back of her skull. Adjusting it over her nose, he notices that the bottom half of the blinders are dappled in a small amount of dried blood.

Don’t worry about that. Are you ready to go?

“As ready as …” Sterling feels his breath return to him as he steps away from her. “As ready as I’ll ever be. Should I carry you to the motocart?”

No, I’ll walk.

***

Dusk now a memory, the murkiness of another merciless night has settled over the denizens of the Canyon. Bolt leans against the motocart, nibbling on an R Box food bar. Sterling joins him, tears the wrapping off the bar and starts in on it. Both watch as Halo slowly makes her way out of the cave, glowing in her new wrappings.

“Hungry?” Sterling asks her.

I’ll eat in the motocart.

“What’d she say?”

“She’ll eat on the way.” Sterling turns to the Canyon proper, tries to gauge the distance between their current location and the Off Limits.

It will take two and a half hours if we go nonstop. Three if we stop.

“We’re three hours away. I’m driving; you’re in back with Halo.”

“I can sit next to … the Goddess?” Bolt mouths the last part.

“You sat next to her when we drove here, don’t you remember?”

“I did?”

“Is this your doing?” Sterling asks Halo.

I blanked out a part of his memory … by accident.

“By accident?”

Yes.

“Well … ” Sterling climbs onto the motocart instead. “Unikey,” he grunts with his hand over his shoulder. Sterling presses it in and starts the vehicle with the touch of the button on the unikey’s smooth surface. He jams the rest of the ration bar in his mouth. “Let’s go,” he says with his mouthful.

The motocart is similar to the cart he used to travel south, although the motocart that hauled the dead had an attached trailer, while this moto simply has a backward facing bench seat behind the driver.

Sterling heads them north, taking care to drive as though he has nothing to hide. The face cover over his nose and mouth filters out most of wind-blown dust and grit, but his unprotected eyes are dry and gritty and uncomfortable almost immediately. A pair of Leaks would be a genuine blessing, and he again wishes he’d brought a pair. He closes one eye and squints the other; it’s not great, but it’s all he’s got.

Not too fast.

Sterling increases his speed, just because. He slows down as they approach a bend, brakes halfway into it and then accelerates out. There’s just enough light coming from nearby dwellings to light his path, although the shadows painting the Canyon make driving a challenge.

A tap on his shoulder: “What do you want?” Sterling calls. He hears Bolt’s voice, but the wind carries the words away. A tap again.

He slows the motocart to a halt. “What is it?” Sterling swivels his body around to give Bolt and angry glare.

“The Goddess is asleep,” Bolt says.

“What?” he asks over the hum of the engine.

“She’s asleep!”

“Good. Maybe she’ll stay out of my head for a little while!”

.4.

Today has been a day of firsts for Sterling; in his most optimistic assessment of his chances, he never dreamed he’d make it this far. Indeed, he fully expected to die right there in The Church of the South. He expected to be relentlessly pursued, overtaken, captured and killed. He then expected to be discovered in the cave, captured and killed. He fully expects to be captured and killed right here and right now, and yet there are no barriers aside from the Great Demarcator that lies ahead. There is no one standing in their way, no one trailing behind him, no one trying to stop them.

He remembers a time in his youth when he’d walk along the wall and watch out for the OL Officers. When they weren’t observing him, he’d try to throw a rock up on top of the wall, a game many Northerners played to pass the time. He never did get a rock up on top, but he got one close once. This particular rock was still at his home, the home he shares with his mother and his sister.

Home. The concept evokes feelings that he can’t put words to, but he knows that he will do anything – anything – to protect what remains of his family. He had taken this assignment – was forced into this assignment – knowing he’d wind up dead. No one goes to the South and absconds with their Goddess. No one. The last person that tried hardly made it three vestas from the church and took days to die. Sterling’s fatalistic acceptance of the assignment’s non-viability and his own probable non-survival has somehow backfired into an unanticipated success. There never was a Plan B, and now that Plan A is moments away from achieving success, he has no idea what to do with the rest of his life once he delivers Halo.

Where most men gamble for small stakes, Zander Damien gambles for men’s lives. The North’s most powerful Upper had extended gambling credit to Sterling until he’d run up two lifetime’s worth of debt. Blame it on the loss of Delix, his best lizard, or a string of badly played rocks, or just sheer bad luck – there’s always something to blame.

Zander offered him a choice: two lives – his mother’s and sister’s – in payment for two lifetime’s worth of debt, or go South, grab their Goddess and bring her back.

Zander knew his weak spot – they had a history.

***

The wall separating the North and the South looms in the distance. Heavy smog sits at the top of the walls, masking their edges. Sterling can barely make out the moon, that lifeless globe that watches idly as the Stayed are born, eunuched, or die of Canyon-related illnesses. To be the moon or the sun and look down upon the Canyon from above – a view none will have the chance of savoring, a view he’d give anything to see just once.

Sterling comes to a stop a couple vestas away from the westernmost corner of the Off Limits. “This is where you get off, kid.”

Bolt swivels around. “I don’t want to get off!”

“Off.” Sterling kicks the motocart into park, and turns to get ahold of Bolt.

You can’t leave him.

“Ah, so you decide to join us,” he says as he dismounts. He’s in front of Bolt a few moments later, his fists on his hips. “You can’t come. It’s for your own good.”

“I don’t want to stay down here.”

“Yes you do … remember? You escaped from the North. They were going to trim you. Your aunt lives here.”

Tears well in Bolt’s eyes.

“Don’t … come on. No … no need for that.” He comes in close and places his hand on Bolt’s shoulder. “Get down from the motocart. Here, take the rest of the R Boxes with you, and the water that’s left too. That should be enough to tide you over for a few days.”

“I … ” Bolt gulps, sniffs. “I lied to you.”

“No harm done … wait, what do you mean?”

You both are liars.

Sterling shakes his head in Halo’s direction. She’s sitting with her hands on upper thighs, palms up, back in her rigid statue pose.

“Whatever,” he says through gritted teeth. “Look,” he hones back in on Bolt. “You’re getting off the motocart, now. And what’s this about lying?”

“I escaped to the South because I got caught stealing!” the kid blurts out. “I … they were going to send me to reeducation.”

“You what?”

“I don’t have an aunt in the South.”

Sterling nods and grimaces in sympathy. He spent a solid six months in reeducation. If he had known there was a way to escape to the South, he’d have tried it himself. “I can’t knock you for heading down,” he finally says, “but you’ll be better off down here than you will up there. Look, I’m not trying to be mean to you or anything like that.” He points his hand towards the Off Limits. “I don’t know what’s going to happen from here on out, but I didn’t expect to make it this far. This is still probably going to get me killed; it’d be stupid for you to get killed too.”

“I don’t want to stay here!”

“Halo, can you put him to sleep or make him do what I say or something?”

That would be ill-advised.

“Well, as the only adult here,” he says, clearing his throat in the Goddess’ direction, “I’m calling the shots. Bolt, welcome to your new home. Halo, stay right where you are and don’t do anything funny when we get to the gates.”

Sterling uses his hand on Bolt’s shoulder to persuade him to get off the motocart. Heartbroken, the kid stands there staring at the ground with his chin tucked to his chest and tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Here,” Sterling hands him the bag of R Boxes and the packet of water. “Figure things out. I taught you some of my best gambling tricks. That should help you get on your feet until you can do whatever it is you were put in this Canyon to do.”

“It’s not fair.”

Sterling weighs the first two responses that come to his head. He could go nice on the kid, make him feel better. Or he could give him a reason to want to stay in the South. Sterling chooses the latter when he says, “Look, I swear to the Goddess of the North,” he calls over his shoulder, “that if you come to the North, I’ll turn you in myself. Got that? You don’t want to go to reeducation again, trust me, but if you keep pestering me, that’s where you’re heading. By the Goddess Time, I’ll turn you in at the gate.”

Bolt takes a few steps backwards, shuffles his feet.

“That’s it, keep on going. You’ll realize one day that I just did you a favor.”

***

Sterling steers the moto towards the westernmost gate. Everything is dark aside from the beam of his headlamp and a few lights cutting through the gloomy fog that sits over the Canyon like a lazy cloud. If what Zander said is correct, he should see his contact flash a light at him – long, long, short, short. That’s his guy on the inside. Any other outcome will end poorly.

That was harsh.

“I don’t care what you think, and you know that.”

Bolt was a kind child.

“He was a criminal, you heard it yourself.”

He stole food for his family.

“And I’m stealing … ” he doesn’t finish the sentence. The agreed upon signal flashes up ahead, pauses for two heartbeats and repeats. You stole me for your family.

“Well,” Sterling says, coming to a stop. “You know the narrative, so there’s no point in me reiterating it. The kid will be fine; it’s us I’m worried about.”

What will you do with me?

He parks the motocart two hundred yards from the Off Limits and pockets the unikey. “Let’s go.”

What will you do with me?

Sterling is just about to take her off the motocart when he says, “You know exactly what I’m going to do with you. Let’s not pretend that you can’t tell what I’m thinking.”

You don’t have to.

“I don’t have a choice.”

The right side of Halo’s face is completely hidden in the shadows, the left illuminated by the lights in the distance. There’s just enough brightness for Sterling to see both of their shadows; one sitting, the other standing; one at ease, the other on edge. She’s beautiful, in the dark or in the light, tragic and majestic.

Still, only a fool would stop now.

You have a choice. The truth rests on the horizon.

“It’s not that simple.”

.HUNTER.

.1.

Horizon approach, moto moto. Fate encroach, lift the ropes and roast the Blasph. Laugh track mind attack smack whack wrack. Black fingers on death masks, blood seeping from bludgeoned pasts. Air through my knuckles, gripped and scarred. When on a roll discard the marred.

(Don’t lose control.)

(Par for the course, par for your soul.)

“I WON’T!” I scream as I stand-drive. Lies upon lies, the Stayed must be saved. All that exists, exists to…

(KEEP YOUR THOUGHTS TO YOURSELF, HUNTER!)

“No reason to yell.”

The wind a whip, whip up the wind, no time to care, no way to bear. Life a dare. Death a-coming pulse irreverent, I’m front wheel back wheel tearing east, pleased with my progress, pleased to please, return the Goddess and the Devout to their knees!

--Focus on your task, Hunter, distraction is for the weak.

“The least you could do is speak,” I whisper to the One Who Can Hear.

Thoughts of the Hole dagger stagger. Locked inside the earth for nights on end. Fear stink smeared from chest to ankle, a dozen bodies freshly mangled.

(I don’t want to go there again.)

You won’t, Hunter, if you hurry.

“You’re here! In the name of the Goddess … ha! In the name of … you!” Pleased to please I increase my speed for the lowliest of Lowers and the upperest of Uppers. I am an equal opportunity liberator!

“Halo my Halo, Halo my Halo!”

I say the Dusk Prayer a second time as I rumble ride down a darkened road. “Let dusk settle and the Canyon rest, give thanks to the Goddess, the Stayed, the Devout and all the rest. Protect me in my moment of slumber; hold me to your breast. Grant me the faculty to become one of the blessed. Lead all those who stray away from deathborn. Heal the earth beneath the feet of the scorned. Mourn the passing of those faithful few, who have given their lives in devotion to you.”

The thought of her face, pure and white, her blinders pulled tight, mushrooms dirties inside my mind. I can’t help but undress her with my mind’s eye.

(WHAT ARE YOU DOING?)

Hand to head, smash rock fist. Again and again; I hit until I feel a ringing in my jaw. Life defies all, pain stings my maw.

The Book says that the War of the Untold nearly ended life as we know it. If it weren’t for the Canyon, for the Off Limits, brittle bones and ash would be all that is left of man. We were saved by the first Goddess and the Goddesses to follow. In the Canyon life is hollow, dreams fallow, the Devout refined, a step above Uppers and two above Lowers, the unsowed and flesh givers swallowed whole.

Populations must be maintained – forget your mothers, strangle lovers.

“I’m not having any kids!” I shout as I increase the moto’s speed.

The Canyon a fury of light, my lips and throat dry, the path ahead barely perceptible. Misty mog, midnight fog. Hunger pangs palpable.

Are you coming?

(Stop and carve her name if the filthy thoughts return.)

“Tell me where, Goddess! Tell me where, and I’ll make sure they regret what they’ve done!”

--If they find you, they’ll return you to me. If you don’t succeed, you’ll go to the Hole, said Father Miscavige.

“Stupid, stupid,” I laugh as tears spill down my cheeks. “YOU ARE STUPID, HUNTER!”

I laugh until my vision blurs and my driving becomes erratic. Static life in the Canyon praying to the Goddess and now I’m free, and free me is twofold madness. Less is more and more is less; the Book didn’t say that, but it did say to live with less unless you want a mess!

“Confess your sins!” I say in the voice of Father Miscavige. “Audits, audits, audits. Admit your dirties to free room for more!”

(FORGET WHAT HE DID TO YOU!)

Never forget, Hunter.

“It wasn’t his fault!” I cry out. “It was mine!” Wipe tears, peel soil with moto tires vroom vroom. Who is the person in the room? Who is the man behind the curtain? Who exists for the future, mindful of time’s grasp?

“I am!”

Forgive yourself, Hunter.

“Never.”

.2.

Freedom a movement, freedom an expression, freedom from my cell, the Hole, Father…

(What are you saying, Hunter!?)

“NOTHING!”

Say it, say it, say it. Think it, think it, think it.

“Goddess? Can it be?”

(It can’t be.)

Drop thoughts in a bin and add fire. Stop the moto and punish. Something must give to be whole again. Beat the dirties out, those placeholders of sin.

CONTROL.

“A rock!” I shout as I scramble off the vehicle. Stone clutched, anger of the Devout swelling through me, I drive the sharp rock down onto my arm.

(Incipient harm, pain a nerve-dagger from the brain.)

The mark a reminder of the words I shouldn’t say, the thoughts I shouldn’t have, the feelings I shouldn’t feel. SWALLOW IT, HUNTER! Blood red, sting full body, all the things Father Miscavige has taught me.

All the things he has done to you.

(IGNORE!)

--There is only one Hunter. You are the defender of the South, the pinnacle of the Devout, the owner of the Stayed, the one who punishes himself for the sins of others, liberation’s brother, the champion of the Book.

--I AM FILTH!

--Yes, you are filth, my child, Father Miscavige said as he ran his hand along the contours of my skull. But filth is important. Through filth we understand cleanliness; through sin, righteousness; through falsities, truth; through hate, love. You hold within you all these things.

--I am nothing; I can’t possibly help the Stayed.

--You’ve already helped the Stayed, and you will do so much more. You must defend the Book, the Goddess of the South.

Shiv in hand, find some skin, carve, carve, carve, I AM FILTH. Carve it again. I AM FILTH. Bask in the pain, the curer of the insane. Bloody palm, back on the moto again.

(Vroom vroom Off Limits bloom.)

You must hurry, we are almost to the border.

“Halo!” Speed at full blast – life blares past. Mind numb to the voices, bad choices, past dirties, inner voices.

(I am me.)

“That’s right, you are you!” I laugh again, wipe blood against my seersucker top. Behold the fallen wind and the sallow soil. Days and nights spoiled, the Stayed’s lives foiled. Retold countless times, the Book provides guidance for the iniquitous and the righteous. Quell the riots inside your hearts – know the Book is where we meet and where we part!

Attention on the headlamp’s light. Shiv the night and become Halo’s knight.

Out of sight, out of mind, grow together out of time. Right along the line – is there any other way to exist? Sidestep to progress, forget the memories, the horrible things, the terrible THINGS HE DID TO ME. Carve to remember, carve to forget.

(FORGET!)

“I’m trying to. I’m trying to. I’m trying to.”

All things will be addressed, Hunter.

“Goddess! Speak to me, speak!”

I am near. Follow my voice – you are my shield.

“Anything!”

Truth is on the horizon, Hunter. You may not like it.

“I am your warrior!”

You must confront HIM.

“Who?”

Miscavige.

I slap myself across the face with my bloody hand. “Blasph! Blasph! Blasph! Falsities speak through me! Blasph!”

What he did …

“Halo, please! You are the Goddess, but he is the Shephard of the South. There is… PLEASE!”

(Don’t listen to her – what are you SAYING!?)

“She’s the Goddess, she’s the Goddess, she’s the Goddess.”

Tremble, shiver, kiss the flesh giver. Finger grazers dance over my unspeakables, delixer swims through my veins. Blinders pulled so tightly, too tightly, come to me, Hunter; come in me, Hunter.

“I can’t … ”

(I will!)

“BLASPH!”

The truth rests on the horizon at half-mast.

.3.

Silence voices, swallow choices. Halo is near. Turbine life, twisted nights of dirty thoughts. Those weren’t her words; she’s scared, impaired. Blasphs balloon in me, make them stop.

SILENCE THOSE THOUGHTS!

Twisted nights underground, eyes sky high to the slits in the ceiling. Peeling skin from the bones of another, healing others through liberation, mind vacations as shit and piss miss. Wicked trips into places unseen, left foot right foot circular scenes. Sense the nightfall, sense the daybreak, shout at the entrance to the Hole, “PLEASE, in the name of the Goddess, LET ME OUT!”

Do it for the deathborn, those born of scorn, those in face covers, Uppers and Lowers. Do it for the Stayed, the eunuched, the enslaved, the gamblers and their lizard games. Carve your skin, begin again once scabs form, skin torn is skin reborn. To life’s apparent motion – never lower your standards when it comes to devotion.

“FASTER!”

Closer than I thought, lost in thoughts, I see the lights of the Off Limits ahead. Little diamonds twinkle twinkle. Now is the time for faith to take its course, to prove my worth. Now is the time for the Devout to shout, scream as if the entire Canyon were the War Zone. North and South at each other’s throats. Take note! Kill and gloat!

(Voices cascade down my spine in real whisper-time.)

“Where?” I ask. “Where are you, Goddess?”

Here.

“I am here, too!”

I am near.

“Where?”

Follow the light.

“But those … those are at the top of the wall. The Great Demarcator … ”

Crash the moto, make your presence known.

The Goddess moves through me. I close my eyes and I see her kidnapper. A tall man, thin, with beard stubble and dirt-colored hair. He’s pulling her off a motocart, just about to hit a gate. Eyes blink blink and my perspective returns.

“HE’S TAKING YOU!”

Hurry, Hunter, hurry.

The wall two vestas away. Three. I speed and speed towards the spotlights that shiv the night. Crash-land imminent, I prep to leap when something strikes me in the shoulder.

(WHAT!?)

I scream. It feels like a metalzip burrowing into my skin, a thousand concentrated scorpion stings. My body off the moto, explosion a sea of red colors. Orange, hot against my face, but I’m too busy clutching my arm to pay heed.

No shiny blood, no open wound. I scream in agony, scramble away from the heat. Metalzips spray, pepper the ground, toss dirt in the air. Another hits the back of my calf; I’m down again, using my arm to pull me away from the combat zone.

“What’s happening?” I whimper. The pain is worse than a carving, worse than Father Miscavige’s punishments, worse than fists to the face, worse than anything I’ve ever experienced.

(I collapse.)

The sound of feet pattering on the soil awakens me. No one speaks as they approach. I play dead like a good boy, like a good Stayed. With my back to them, they can’t see the grin on my face.

.4.

The Hole. Man versus man versus woman versus woman versus man. Only one survivor can come out of the Hole. I was that survivor, the only one worthy of a true audit.

--Hide in the dark, Father Miscavige advised. It’s the only way. Let them kill each other first. The cell walls will come down at night. You’ll kill again in the morning. Play dead in your cell. Let them come to you and use the element of surprise to your advantage.

(Back to reality.)

A pair of feet stops directly in front of me – the knee high R Boots of an OL Officer. My hands, currently holding my stomach, shoot out and I pull the man down. The response is instant.

PAIN – the unadulterated type.

My back is shredded by more metalzips as I kick my feet out, try to get my hands on the man I’ve knocked over. His weight is off; he’s something else entirely. A bite in his leg and my teeth crack against metal.

(WHAT ARE YOU!?)

No time to vocalize, no time to contemplate. I’m reeling in pain, fear and adrenaline. The stinging sensation on my back makes my muscles impossible to use. No use. My arms loose, no longer functioning. Everything collapsing around me as the man moves away.

I’m sorry, Hunter.

“What are you doing!?” I scream as more metalzips smash rock my flesh. The pain defined by lumps, deranged, maniacal; my brain bumps against the inside of my skull as I struggle to stand tall, to fight back, to counterattack.

The voice lightning to the whirlwind of me. Inspire insanity, retire normalcy, kill indiscriminately in the name of the Book, of the Devout, the Stayed, pray or be preyed upon. The sounds erupt around me, popping, searing my flesh, hitting my chest, avoiding my neck, a fist comes down onto my back.

FIGHT BACK!

Another fist.

(I CANNOT!)

“I … will … save … you … Halo … ”

Blood spurts from my nose and mouth and I fall. I die kicking, praying, wishing that I hadn’t been caught.

.5.

Voices appear in my head. I listen, try to grasp what they’re saying.

“He has the mark. He’s property of the Church of the South.”

Light splits my head open. Eyes vertical mind contagious. I’m lifted, placed in another place. Moan emitted, flash of faces, no more words from those who have taken me. A hand runs over the scars covering my body. I tense, relax. My muscles feel ripped in half.

Gasp for breath.

(Ignore the call of death.)

Face meets cold metal. An engine rumbles my skull, chatters my teeth.

“Release … me … ” My words fall like flower petals. “You let this happen to me.”

I’m sorry, Hunter.

“Why, Goddess?”

The Book is false. You must fight back.

BLASPH!

Smash rock fist. I hit myself again and again. Another person’s hand tries to stop me.

“Blasph! Blasph!” Spittle flicks from my lips.

“Stop moving, Hunter,” says a man.

“How do you know my name?” I cry out. “How!?”

FIGHT BACK!

You must relax, let what happens next happen. We will meet again. I promise, Hunter.

“Lies! Lies!”

(It’s not Halo speaking to you Hunter, you fucking idiot, IT’s YOU!)

“Blasph!” My feet hit metal; the sound is hollow. Synapse fire – I’m ice to fire. “Blasph! Blasph! BLASPH!”

The Book says that those who are deathborn come into the world screaming, twisting, writhing in pain, longing for shelter inside the womb tomb. The Book says that we are all filth, born unholy, born of shit, unworthy of our petty lives. I recreate the fallen among us through my outpour of anger. I AM FILTH.

“RELEASE ME!”

My eyes spring open, catch the moving skyscape above me. Hues of gray and blue, the light from a dim moon. Mog thick as always, the air tainted and the Stayed wasted and wounded.

(You’re in a motocart. They’re taking you somewhere.)

“I KNOW WHERE I AM!” With my hands on the rim of the cart, I try to lift myself over. A clubbing stick meets my fingers, stinging. Driven by madness, called by the Goddess, the true Goddess, Halo, not the BLASPH whispering between my ears, I use the last of my strength to throw my body toward the driver all to no avail.

I wail at the strike on the back of my skull – night becomes true night.

.STERLING.

.1.

Sterling had a hunch Zander Damien wouldn’t uphold his end of their bargain. That being said, he had no idea that he’d be beaten and dumped, left to die in front of the entry point on the southern side of the Off Limits. Bloodied lips, a rib that feels out of place, a plangent pain berating his psyche – he’s bleeding and bruised in the South, lying on his back and wondering how it came to this. And what about his family? How will they fare? The thought of his mother and sister in the hands of Zander’s minions produces a throaty sob.

It’s been a while since Sterling has cried. The tears sting; the heavy feeling in his chest spreads to his shoulders and up his neck.

A ballsy move if there ever was one, he had gambled big and it had almost paid off. Almost. Nevertheless, his family was likely dead, or soon to be deceased, and he was more alone than he’d ever been before.

You deserve this.

“Not now, Halo.” He spits gritty blood out of his mouth, wipes his lips with his palm.

They’re taking me to Zander now. Once we get there, they’ll string me up.

“Not my problem … ” Sterling glares up at the blackened sky. He’d curse if cursing would do any good.

They’ll try to kill me.

“Use your mind tricks to control them, Goddess.”

It’s not that simple.

“Dammit, Halo, it is that simple!” Sterling slams his fist against his chest as he works on coughing up a lung. “Fuck … ” he mumbles, transfers more bloody spittle from his lips to his sleeve. “The fuckers hit me with something.”

They’re called bullets. The ones they hit you with are nonlethal.

“Bullets?” He sits up, paints his hands across the ground stirring up dust in the process. His fingers reach something small and cylindrical. “They … threw this?”

They’re used at night along the Off Limits.

Sterling tries to examine the small bullet; it’s too dark to really take a good look at it. He shoves it into his pocket. “Well, everything is done now, over, finished. I’m stuck in the South, and unless I want to do the dead body trick again, which may not work, this is my fate. I fucked up, royally. I shouldn’t have trusted … him. I should have died trying to shiv him to death after he gave me this useless assignment, I mean, punishment. Fuck Zander and fuck my life. This is all my fault.” Another sob reaches his throat. He attempts to gulp it down, but it’s useless – the emotions aren’t going anywhere, not with his family and his imminent doom looming large in his consciousness. Defeated and beaten, Sterling lies on his back. He turns to his side, cradles one of his knees with his forearms.

You lost a bet and paid your debt. There is nobility in this, even though it began as a form of iniquity.

“Yeah? Well how’s this for nobility?” Sterling uses a finger to snort dust and snot from his nostril onto the ground. “Cut the shit – you know very well how fucked I am now, regardless if my debt is paid or not.”

All isn’t lost. You must find Bolt.

“Why Bolt?” He almost laughs at her suggestion. What the hell is the kid going to do about his current dilemma? If anything, it’d be better for Bolt to stay missing, to confront his fate head-on like all of the Stayed will and must do at some point.

He’ll help you get to the North.

Sterling sighs bitterly. “That kid isn’t going to help me do anything!”

You can’t do this alone.

“Do what alone?”

Find Bolt. Return to the entry point not far from where you’re currently wallowing in self-pity.

“And then what?”

And then you storm the castle.

***

Storm the castle.

Sterling’s never even seen a castle, unless you count the Church of the North and South, which are about the closest things to a castle that the Canyon has to offer. Cast in the same cold stone material as the rest of the Canyon, the church walls are what set them apart from the surrounding structures. That and their Rapunzel towers, where Halo used to live and where Time resides in the North. The towers reach to the sky, three times taller than the tallest building on either side of the Off Limits. A parapet crowns their pinnacles, visited only by the most pious of the Devout.

Rumors abound on both sides of the Off Limits, carried on faint breaths and handed down from generation to generation. What lies beneath these churches? What is the Hole? What happens there? Who wrote the Book? Why is there a Book? Why is there a Goddess?

What is outside the Canyon?

The latter a cardinal sin in question form, the Stayed learn very early on to keep their curiosity to themselves when it comes to questioning the Canyon’s origins. Sure, the War of the Untold is widely known, and a few Uppers from either side even work in the Off Limits, but the origins of their shared situation are cloudy at best. There was a war and somehow, the people of the North and South survived. Some, especially Northern Forehead Drillers, claim that another war is fast approaching. These religious fanatics are well-known for their doomsday prophesies.

Better to have faith than question fate.

Sterling recalls the passage from the Book, that cryptic collection of parables and maxims that is stitched into the psyche of the Canyon. There are hundreds of sayings that more or less fit into the confines of his current situation, which gets him thinking about the nature of these sayings. He’s never actually seen a southern version of the Book. How different is it from the Northern interpretation?

They are as similar as they are dissimilar.

“Dammit, Halo, get out of my head.”

Sterling closes his eyes, wills himself to die. He’s close enough as it is; maybe Time will take mercy on him and extinguish his life. He whispers the Death Prayer, visualizing each word: “Open heart and open mouth, go the path of the Devout. Deathborn, not I, vultured soon. Rebirth comes at the next full moon. Deathborn, not I, Goddess forgive, grievances from the times I lived. Deathborn, not I, sins escape, give me the guidance of the Devout, the Stayed.”

Saying the prayer calms him some. He’s just about to whisper it again when a thin voice cuts through his thoughts.

Find Bolt.

“How? He … he could be halfway to the Church of the South by now.” He glowers in the direction of the Great Demarcator, the Off Limits, hopes Halo can at least sense how pissed he is.

He’s near.

“Then use your mind magic to call him over to me, Goddess.”

I already did.

“Bolt!” Sterling kicks his feet against the ground like a crying infant. “BOLT!” he shouts, his voice tearing from his body. The scream feels good. Animal instincts are intrinsic; crying at the top of his lungs, Sterling can taste more blood. He can feel his life force in the form of weighted breath springing free from his lips. It’s invigorating, primal, strangely human.

He screams the kid’s name again and again until his throat aches.

“What is it?”

His ears hone in on a voice several yards away. The voice is breathless, familiar, that of a child approaching manhood. He recognizes it immediately.

.2.

Bolt hasn’t been there for very long when they’re lit up by a blinding beam of light. Somewhere close by a moto engine whines into life, its sound a jagged dagger slashing through the calm after dusk. The harsh glare washes out the shadows, cuts off any avenue of escape.

Sterling scrambles to his feet, automatically closes one eye and squints the other against the glare. “Did someone follow you or something?”

“I don’t think so Bolt instinctively gets behind the bigger man.

The moto rushes up on them, its engine howls louder and louder, its headlight is unbelievably bright. Sterling tenses his muscles – he’s about to shove Bolt in one direction and leap in the other himself when the moto comes to a sliding stop as the driver kills the engine and snaps off the light.

Now Sterling pushes Bolt out of the way, drops, retrieves his shiv, and crouches, knife at the ready. “Back away!” he screams. With one eye, all he can see is a giant purple spot; the other – the one he closed – isn’t much better, but at least he can see the bulky shadow move towards them.

The shadow stops, hesitates and continues forward. “Where’s the Goddess?” a man hisses.

It takes Sterling a moment to register the voice. It’s Clay, the man who tried to kidnap Bolt that morning. The man takes a lumbering step forward, his silhouette menacing as he brandishes a clubbing stick. “Where is she?”

“How … how’d you know?” are the first words out of Sterling’s mouth.

“A hunch,” says Clay. “Every able bodied man in the South has gone east searching for the filthy fuck who stole … who took … I knew it was you! I knew it!” He kicks his feet against the ground as he recognizes Sterling. “One more time – where is she?”

“Keep behind me, kid,” Sterling whispers through the side of his mouth.

“I’ll kill you first … then … ” Clay points his clubbing stick in Bolt’s direction. “Then I’ll make the boy talk. I have my ways.”

“She’s not here!” shouts Bolt.

“Not here? What … do you mean?” Caught off guard, Clay hesitates.

“She’s done, finished,” says Sterling. “The North has her now. You’re too late.”

“LIAR! BLASPHING FUCK!”

“You heard me.” Sterling squeezes his hand around the grip of his shiv. “Now get the fuck out of here or in the name of the Goddess I will spill your guts right here and piss in your mouth before you die.”

Clay leaps forward, swings his clubbing stick like it’s a mallet and he’s driving a fence post. Sterling fakes left and dodges right, thrusts his shiv at Clay’s back as he passes. Clay put too much force into his swing and overbalances when it fails to connect, stumbles out of shiv range and instead advances on Bolt.

Eyes wide, mouth agape, paralyzed with fear, the boy is helpless before the clubbing stick wielding madman.

“Run, kid!” Sterling shouts. Fear becomes a catalyst, a true rotator of feet as Bolt backpedals to escape the imminent death dance.

Bolt’s exit distracts Clay long enough for Sterling to move. The clubbing stick has reach and power, but is slow and unwieldy; the shiv is faster and deadlier, but has to be in close – the falling boulder versus the viper’s strike. Clay bellows his righteous anger and swings his clubbing stick as Sterling ducks under it, drives his shoulder into Clay’s mid-section and thrusts his shiv one-two-three times up under Clay’s ribs.

Clay roars in pain and surprise, tries to push Sterling away so he can use his clubbing stick; Sterling holds on and stabs and stabs and stabs. Sudden, shocking pain blossoms in Sterling’s shoulder; the enraged Southerner has choked up on his clubbing stick and gets in an awkward but still damaging blow.

Sterling slams his head up under Clay’s chin and they separate. Sterling’s left arm dangles limp and useless; he can only hope that nothing’s broken. Clay tries to heft his clubbing stick, but it slips from his grasp and clatters to the ground. He’s suddenly aware of the damage he’s received, winces as he runs his hands over his wounds, and stares at the blood that slicks his palms.

He meets Sterling’s eyes; surprise and confusion is writ large on his face. He sinks to his knees, and makes no effort to catch himself as he falls on his face.

The clubbing stick has fallen beyond Clay’s reach, but Sterling warily approaches him with left arm tucked in against his side and shiv out ready to stab or slash. He rushes forward, lands with one knee on Clay’s neck, and drives his shiv into the juncture of neck and shoulder.

“Please don’t – please!” Bolt cries.

Sterling locks eyes with the boy, and stabs the fallen Southerner twice more without breaking eye contact. “Kid, if he got through me, what he’d have done to you would make getting trimmed seem like hugs and kisses from your momma.” He goes to use his left arm to lever himself up from the soon-to-be corpse, gasps as the pain overwhelms him, and falls forward across the Southerner as the blackness squeezes in on him like a fist.

Bolt is hovering above him, his face daubed in subfusc shadows and after-twilight blue as Sterling’s eyes flicker open. He gingerly moves his arm; it hurts like fury but it does move – maybe nothing’s broken after all.

“What do we do now?” says the boy as he looks from Sterling to the blood that’s pooled around Clay.

“We get to the North.”

“You’ll take me?”

“I wasn’t yelling your name for nothing,” Sterling finally says. He grimaces as Bolt helps him up. “Help me find my shiv, kid. I need to make sure he’s finished.”

Let him suffer.

“Sorry, Halo, that’s not how this works.”

Bolt watches as Sterling crouches over Clay.

“Is she speaking to you?” he asks, turning away instinctively. He cringes as he hears Clay’s final gasp as Sterling finishes the job.

“No, but we’ll speak to her soon enough. Let’s get to the entry point.” Sterling stands, still a little out of breath. He cleans his shiv on the Southerner’s cloth wrappings and re-sheathes his blade. The feeling returns to his left arm in an agony of cactus thorns, and robs his victory of any triumph he might have felt. He’s not getting any younger and the beating Zander’s knifemen gave him when they took Halo combined with Clay’s last kiss goodbye leaves him feeling like hammered lizard shit. Still, he has no regrets and no remorse – he’s made it this far and he’s not dead yet. Life is haphazardly given and taken in the Canyon; it is the way of the Stayed regardless of era or social status.

“Do we just leave him here?”

“No more questions,” Sterling says, as he stiffly moves away from Clay’s cooling corpse. “Just give me a moment to think this through.”

***

Bolt doesn’t give him that moment. As they move towards the Off Limits, the kid can’t get his mind off the fight that just took place. “Did you actually want to kill him?”

“I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“But you stabbed him.”

“He clubbed me and he was trying to get you. I did what I had to do.”

“Where did you learn to fight with a shiv like that?”

Sterling doesn’t feel like reminiscing about past battles and near death experiences with the pestering youth. He’s been lucky, that’s for sure, but he knows if he keeps it up, eventually he’ll be on the receiving end of fortune’s shiv.

“Just keep moving.”

“Are you going to be all right? You’re limping a little.”

“Yeah, no shit kid. In case you haven’t noticed, my day hasn’t been all luxury R Boxes, sweet delixer and lover’s kisses, and while I’m not particularly enjoying life at this particular moment, I’ll probably be okay.”

“You don’t look like you’ll be okay.”

“Great. Thanks for the encouragement. Now shut your trap for a while so I can think.”

His muscles loosen as he walks; the pain and stiffness recede from the forefront of his consciousness and allow him to clear his mind. They could have taken Clay’s moto, but they’ll be much quieter if they approach on foot. Besides, it will at least give him some time to sort things through. What Sterling wouldn’t give for an hour or two to lie down, relax, and worry about nothing.

“You murdered him,” Bolt says solemnly.

“Drop it.”

“The Book says–”

“–It doesn’t matter what the Book says, in the North or in the South. We’re going to … ” Sterling gulps and thinks again about what he’s about to say. “We’re going to rescue the Goddess.” He realizes how bizarre his statement must sound; in a single day they’ve gone from kidnappers to rescuers, a complete one eighty in a matter of less than a day. “That’s why I need your help. We will rescue the Goddess together, you and me, kid.”

“My help? You believe in the Southern Goddess now?” Bolt stops, waits for Sterling to turn to him, but it doesn’t happen. He keeps his back to the kid, his eyes trained on the horizon.

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

***

“What do we say?”

Bolt and Sterling are closing in on the entry point, which is lit up brighter than full day. Right now, there’s still enough shadow to conceal them, but the closer they get the more difficult it becomes to hide.

“Halo said to just … just approach the entry point.”

Bolt harrumphs. “Really?”

“Yeah, well it’s not like we haven’t broken all kinds of Northern and Southern laws today. Might as well test our lizard luck.”

No lizard luck necessary. Please hurry.

A brilliant shaft of light pins them in place; they’ve been noticed. Even with his eyes closed, the light is blinding, overwhelming.

“Halt!” The woman’s voice is stern, confident, akin to the voice of every other OL Officer. “Hands up!”

Sterling reluctantly raises his hands into the air and the spotlight snaps off. Two smaller lights appear and illuminate the two of them. The lights are bright, although with nowhere near the retina-searing intensity of the first one.

“What do we do now?” the kid says in half-whisper.

“No idea.”

The lights grow as two OL Officers approach. The officers wear the same seersucker clothing as Uppers, sand-colored, with no draping fabrics or mouth covers. Their pants are bloused over their form-fitting R Boots to keep sand and debris out.

“They’re the ones,” the woman says. She moves behind the pair with some type of weapon. Sterling recalls what Halo told him – this is the thing that flings bullets. Strange, he’d never heard of anything other than the common weapons of the Canyon: clubbing sticks, shivs, rocks, or a combination of the three, such as a clubbing stick sharpened at its opposite end.

“Move to the entry point.”

“What is that thing?” Bolt asks.

“No talking. Move,” the female OL Officer replies.

They oblige because there is really nothing else they can do at this point. Sterling figures that they’ll search him and find the shiv but they don’t do that either. The woman falls in behind them, her light illuminating the way forward. Without a word, the other OL Officer flanks them.

The entry point looms large before them; the Great Demarcator rises into the smoggy night. Sterling hasn’t been through an entry point before, and has no idea what to expect once they reach it. He’s sore and uncomfortable, he’s tired, and he’s nervous and on edge – so much so that he’s afraid he might puke on his R Boots.

The four pass through the Khomeis; a series of waist-high pillars arranged in a zigzag pattern to keep motos from directly approaching the Off Limits. Bolt traces his fingers across the tops of one of the pillars, receives a harsh glare from the officer to his left and returns his hand to his side. A green light blinks in the air, hovers over to them.

“A metalzip?” Bolt asks.

The light leaps over them, stops in front of the woman’s face. “Four-zero-zero-seven with two detainees,” she says as it scans her. It does the same for the guard on their left who says, “Four-zero-two-three.”

It moves to Bolt and Sterling.

“What is it?” Bolt whispers, his mouth agape as the green light moves over his face.

The OL Officers remain silent. The green light hovers away once it is done scanning Sterling.

“Move.”

They approach a featureless metal door that is several heads taller than Sterling. It makes a hissing sound from the inside, clicks open. The air that billows out smells metallic and stale. The officer on the left opens it wide enough to let Sterling and Bolt pass through. He places himself behind them, next to the female officer, and the four continue forward.

The corridor is large, cut down the middle by a walkway lit on either side. As they advance, something grinds overhead, stops directly above the four. A whirring sound fills the passageway, followed by three beeps and a subtle hiss.

~~You may proceed.~~

Sterling tilts his head up and tries to place the origin of the sound, but loses his concentration when the floor lifts slightly and begins moving forward.

Bolt grabs Sterling’s arm with both hands.

“Easy, kid,” Sterling says. He’s seen some mechanical automation, especially at a few of the newer depots, but nothing like this. Many speak of the advanced tech used at the Off Limits, but few have seen it firsthand.

The male officer breaks his silence. “Crouch down, place your hands on the floor to stabilize yourselves, duck your heads to shield your eyes.”

The platform picks up speed. It’s propelled by some force totally outside Sterling’s experience, and its sudden changes in speed and altitude disturb his inner ear and unsettle his stomach. Their forward velocity is such that the wind whips tears from his eyes, even with his head ducked, and what little he can see is just a blur of meaningless shapes and shadows.

With a series of quick beeps, the platform slows. Out of the corner of his eye, Sterling catches something moving within a glassed portion of the half cylindrical wall. It’s large, black, with multiple outward facing pipes on its exterior.

It settles in front of a hefty door, identical to the one they came in. For a disorienting moment, Sterling is convinced that they’re somehow back where they started.

“On your feet, step off the platform, and exit the through the portal,” the female officer instructs them.

***

“You’re free to go.”

The four now stand outside the Northern Entry Point, in the clear space between the Off Limits and the series of Khomei pillars. Simply being in the North eases Sterling’s mind considerably, but the proximity of the OL Officers is still a worrisome consideration.

“Free?” Bolt asks the female OL Officer. “Just like mmmpht?”

Sterling puts one arm around Bolt’s shoulder and slaps his other hand over the kid’s mouth as he hustles them both through the Khomeis. He hisses, “Kid – free, friendly advice: when they let you go, keep your hole closed and GO!”

“Halo did it,” Bolt says when Sterling takes his hand away. The kid tries to look over his shoulder at the officers, but Sterling’s hand on his neck keeps him eyes front and moving forward.

“Just keep going; our night isn’t over yet.” Sterling stops, takes another deep breath. The feeling of being home spreads through him, warms his soul. “Finally, a place I’m familiar with.”

“Where do you think Halo is?”

“Much of Zander’s wealth and influence comes from a series of depots he owns a few vestas away from the entrance to the War Zone.”

“Zander… Damien?”

Sterling nods. “The reason I was in the South was because Zander threatened to kill my family to collect on a debt I owed him if I didn’t bring Halo to the North.”

Bolt shakes his head. “But that’s impossible. Zander is a champion of the North!”

“A champion of the North who has never set a toe in the War Zone. Figure it out for yourself, kid – there’s power, and then there is true power. Who’s more powerful, the warrior that runs with his shiv at the enemy or the man who makes the warrior run?

“The man.”

“Exactly.”

“But why? Why would Zander tell you to do that? I mean, sure, he hates the South, but … all Northerners do.”

“Like I said, I owed him a debt. A bet gone sour.”

“You lost?”

“C’mon kid – seriously. Would I be here answering your damnfool questions if I’d won?”

Bolt processes all that’s just been said with a soft grunt, reminiscent of the grunt Sterling often gives when presented with a thorny situation. “So you know where she is?”

“I think I do.”

Bolt asks, “How is one kid and a guy like you supposed to get Halo? What are we supposed to do after?”

“You see, this is why the Book is against questioning. Sure, we can play this out, and figure out all the options, or we can go in as blind as Halo and let fate take its course. And what do you mean by saying a guy like me? Remember, I kidnapped Halo pretty much by myself – okay, okay, with a little help from you – and I managed to get us to the other side of the Great Demarcator while only getting my ass kicked twice. I guess that doesn’t sound as good as I wanted it to, but there it is. I have a feeling that everything will work out. It has so far.” Sterling says all this with faux confidence of the habitual gambler; he knows that the odds are stacked against them. Regardless, timidity is a dish best served swathed.

“I don’t have a weapon.”

“You don’t know how to use a weapon.”

“I can use a rock,” Bolt says.

“They’ll have clubbing sticks. They may have … um … bullet flingers.”

“Bullet flingers?”

“They shot me with one.” Sterling fishes around in his pocket and returns with the bullet. He drops it in Bolt’s hand; the kid rolls it in his palm, lifts it to his mouth and bites.

“That’s not food, kid.”

Bolt gives him a look. “They hit you with this little thing? It definitely isn’t metal.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. I was ambushed by several people.”

“OL Officers?”

“I didn’t get a good look at them. They … um … bullet-flinged? Flanged? Uh … flung bullets at me, I fell, they kicked me some and took Halo.”

“Why didn’t she stop them?”

Sterling thinks for a moment. “You know, that’s a damn good question. You hear that, Goddess?” he asks the sky. “The kid has a point.”

There are bigger forces at play.

Halo’s voice appears in his head, as if it had been there all along just waiting for Sterling to ask a question.

“You keep hinting at that.”

Hurry.

“We’re trying.” Sterling points to the east. “That way. Let’s make it quick. We don’t have to run, but take extra-large steps.”

“Right behind you,” says Bolt.

.3.

The North is laid out in several circular grids, which connect at various points forming a large loop around the Church of the North. Sterling has walked counter-clockwise around the Church numerous times, as is a custom in the North. To fully circumnavigate the Church takes nearly a day. Many wake up early on special occasions and begin the walk; in an ostentatious display of piety, some prostrate themselves around the entire loop, which takes about two days and results in bloodied hands, wrists and knees. This ritual circumnavigation graphically illustrates the fact that life is cyclical for the Stayed.

“There.” Sterling’s points to the outer rim of the settlement. Zander has the most depots of anyone in the North; being close to the Off Limits is one way to maintain control over the industry. His father had the most depots as did his father before him.

“How do you know?” Bolt asks.

“Is that where you are, Halo?” Sterling looks up at the sky.

Yes.

“Trust me, I know. Once we get closer, we’ll … ” Sterling bites his lip; he has no idea what they should do once they reach the string of depots.

“We’ll what?”

“Let me worry about that, kid,” he says with a grunt.

As they walk in silence, Sterling’s thoughts return to the War Zone and how he had smuggled himself to the South in a motocart full of corpses.

He recalled the start of the war, the roar of the crowd on either side of the stadium, their excitement and bloodlust almost a tangible thing. The North and the South both fielded three hundred combatants; some were professional warriors – well-muscled men with finely-finished, purpose made weaponry. Others were the crazy brave and the fearless foolish, armed with shivs, makeshift clubbing sticks and a surrealistic, delixer-fueled impression of their martial prowess. The religious zealots were well represented on both sides, and were often accoutered with nothing more than bare hands and righteous fury.

The metalzips were also well represented; they swarmed above the battleground thicker than flies on filth.

A ribbon of charred soil separated the opposing forces. The front-most combatants – the over-eager amateurs who usually sustained the highest casualties – screamed and growled and thumped their chests with weapons or fists as they prepared to charge. The professionals would usually hang back to direct a flanking maneuver or countercharge, or sometimes engage in single combat with the other side’s champions, but the initial charge was what frequently decided the engagement. Men leapt up and down behind the front lines like manic kangaroo rats, pumping themselves up, crying out for their Goddess. Some slammed their fists against the sides of their faces; others vomited, smeared their vomit across their chests. Still others quietly soiled themselves as the realization of their approaching extinction loosened bowels and bladder.

Sterling stood well back from the front line, his shiv in his hand and his whole body trembling. He’d gleaned enough information from various disreputable Lowers at various disreputable flesh depots and gambling clubs to know that there were only two ways to travel to the other side of the wall; either as part of the Northern or Southern Council or one of the handful of Upper employee representatives at the Off Limits, or by playing dead in a war and hoping that the other side’s Vultured Few picks you up and takes you through. Realistically, Sterling knew that the second option was the only one he’d have any chance to make work.

The war siren sounded and a thundering mass of two-legged protoplasm smashed together like two giant fists. The sound and the fury was unlike anything Sterling had ever known; a swirling chaos of violence and color; of cut and thrust; bellow, shriek and smash. He briefly wondered if it had been like this for his father when he’d died on this very battlefield, and then banished the thought with a single blink – he needed his full attention here and now.

Dust in the air, blood slick underfoot, the overpowering smell of shit and piss and fear thick in his nostrils, Sterling did exactly as he’d planned – he ducked down, covered up, steadily moved forward and avoided direct engagement until he’d pushed through the actual fighting and came out behind the Southerner’s front line.

He’d intended to lie down as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, smear himself with mud and blood and play dead until it was all over and the Vultured Few hauled him off, but a Southern zealot with a jagged rock in either hand noticed him almost immediately. “Death to the Northern Blasph Scum!” he roared as he came at Sterling full on.

Sterling spun out of his way, stuck out his foot and rammed his shiv in the Southerner’s kidney as he stumbled past. The man shrieked in pain and surprise; Sterling jumped on his back, grabbed a fistful of his lank, greasy hair, rode him to the ground and stabbed him the neck. He jerked his shiv forward as the man tried to jerk back away from the blade, severing his own throat. The Southerner coughed and gasped and kicked and spluttered his life out into the hard packed dirt of the arena as Sterling held him close and worked his way beneath him.

The man expired, Sterling moved the zealot’s face to the side so he wouldn’t have to look into his still open eyes. More screams, more acts of inhumane violence as the battle swirled around him in a series of disjointed vignettes; here a Northerner’s skull deformed as a clubbing stick smashed into his head from behind; there a Southerner shrieked and tripped over loops of his own intestines that spilled from his ruined abdomen. Sterling shielded himself with the zealot’s body as best he could, but this did little to protect him from being kicked and stepped on.

Gradually, the smashing, bashing, bellowing, hacking, stabbing, seething mass of maniacal humanity flowed away from him, and Sterling unobtrusively felt in his pocket for the small container of black grease paint – his only other possession that wasn’t his clothing or his shiv. Cautiously, so as to not draw attention, Sterling daubed the black paint across his eyes and nose, marking himself as a Southern warrior.

All that was left to do now was to wait.

There was little chance of anyone discovering Sterling’s charade – you either walked off the field and survived your wounds or you died where you lay. Neither side checked their fallen because of the Book. The North believed that those who die in the War Zone would never be faceless and the South believed the exact opposite – that those who die were indeed faceless. Only the Vultured Few were low enough to touch the bodies of those to be deathborn.

The war ended at the sound of a second siren; both sides withdrew to their respective starting points where the living were tallied and wagers paid out. Playing as dead as a bludgeoned rodent, Sterling waited until he felt a pair of hands on his ankles and another pair on his wrists. He held his breath, knowing all too well that if he showed signs of life, he’d be re-killed by the Vultured Few.

Not thirty seconds later, he was tossed onto the heap of bodies. Ten minutes after that, destiny struck like a scorpion’s stinger and he had his first encounter with Bolt.

Now in the North about to test fate yet again, Sterling glances at the kid and a plan flashes behind his eyes. “I know what we’ll do,” he finally says. It is as if the plan were placed there in its entirety by someone else.

***

Sterling and Bolt are huddled behind a tremendous tank of water. Pipes as thick as his torso dip into the ground, connecting the tank to the Off Limits. On the other side of the water tank is a series of pipes that feed into the main water distribution depot, where it will be rationed and packaged. The sky is taking on the hues of dawn; the Canyon will awaken soon.

“Halo,” Sterling whispers, “we’re ready. Two men, right?”

Yes, one at the door and one next to me. The others have left for another depot to play a game of rocks that I initiated. Is Bolt ready?

Sterling turns to the kid. “Are you sure you can do this?” He catches his bottom lip between his teeth. The plan is crazy, ballsy enough that it just may work. “I really should be the one doing this,” he says as an afterthought.

“No, you should be the one on the motocart,” Bolt says, clearing his throat. “It’s our only option.”

The way the kid tells him this is unsettling, almost as if someone else is speaking through him. Sterling ignores this thought and says, “Let’s go over it again.” He hands Bolt the shiv and the boy pockets it and takes a few steps away from the water tank.

“Hi, I’m here from the Windsor Distribution Center with a message for … ” Bolt doesn’t finish his sentence, and instead pulls out the shiv and jabs it directly in front of him.

“Remember to do it here.” Sterling presses his finger into Bolt’s sternum and drops it a few inches. He steps behind the boy, goes over the motion with him again by controlling the kid’s arms. “All your force, as hard as you can. You want to ram it all the way through him and have the blade come out his back. And step back once you’ve done it because he’s going to try to grab you. And don’t forget to pull the shiv out.”

“I won’t.”

“Drop it on the ground for a second.”

Bolt drops the blade on the ground and Sterling steps in front of him. “Let’s do it again, pretend I’m the man.”

He goes over the script, and knocks the wind out of Sterling with his thrust. He leaps back as soon as the invisible blade is in. Sterling’s maybe cracked rib screams, and he coughs, staggers, reaches his hands out for Bolt. “Ow, dammit! Good, kid – just like that; harder if you can. Swipe at the face, just like I showed you. The man should be bent over at this point. If not, wait to get a clear swipe.”

Bolt does as instructed, makes a swooshing sound as he does so.

“This isn’t fun and games, kid.”

“It’s scary … ” Bolt’s face twists with worry.

“As soon as you get the shiv in, I’ll start the motocart and crash it into the side of the depot, so be ready to jump out of the way. The other man will run out and I’ll jump him. Don’t get involved with our fight, just stand back – got it? Let me handle the second man. The first man may still not be dead yet, but a shiv in the gut will keep him somewhat distracted. Make sure you get his face if you can, get some blood in his eyes.” Sterling places both his hands on Bolt’s shoulders. “The Goddess will be with you; she’s told me this herself. She’ll protect you – she’ll protect us – you just need to cause the initial distraction.”

.4.

Sterling sits on a motocart about sixty feet away from the entrance to the depot, slightly off to the left. He watches as Bolt approaches the door, the kid’s shadow shrinking as he moves closer to the light.

“You can do it, kid … ” He says under his breath. Bolt turns to him, flashes a quick thumbs up. “Go on now,” Sterling hisses. “Don’t give yourself away.”

Bolt knocks and the door opens about ten seconds later. He delivers the script as per their plan, grips the shiv and thrusts it forward into the man’s stomach.

The world stops.

Sterling’s mouth drops open in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. Before Bolt can withdraw from his thrust, the man grabs the boy by the neck, lifts him one-handed, and with a simple flick of the wrist snaps the boy’s neck like a twig. The man tosses Bolt aside with no more thought than he’d give to a discarded Ration bar wrapper; the shiv plinks against the cold soil.

Without further thought, Sterling starts the motocart, stands on the accelerator and aims directly at the man who’d so easily taken the boy’s life. The man looks up from Bolt, registers the onrushing moto and tries to dodge just as Sterling leaps off. The motocart smashes the man into the depot wall; the breath woofs out of Sterling as he lands hard and sheds skin from knees and elbows as he slides into the depot. His ribs are seriously unhappy now, and he seriously considers just lying there instead of dragging himself to his feet, but Halo isn’t going to rescue herself and there’s still the second man to take care of.

“Dammit!” Sterling manages to shout as he attempts to shake off the third beating of the day. “I’m too old for this shit!”

The second man exits the depot. He’s well-built, thin, with broad shoulders. His eyes are cold, lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye, and he moves quickly and confidently toward Sterling. He’s unarmed, but holds his hands as if he’s sure that they’re more than enough weapon.

Sterling moves to meet him, feints with a high right and slams his left elbow into the man’s nose. It feels as though he’s hit the side of the depot; his arm goes numb, the man smiles, grips Sterling by the front of his shirt and with one hand throws him up against the depot. He slides down the depot wall and lands in a sitting position, legs outstretched. It feels good to just sit there for a moment, and if the second man from the depot wasn’t moving in to kill him, he probably wouldn’t even think about getting up.

He drags his eyes open and sees the man approach; he sees Bolt’s crumpled form and thinks how small and frail it looks; he sees …

The shiv.

Sterling reaches down deep and throws himself at the shiv as the man charges in. He lands on it, cuts his hand as he retrieves it and rolls to his feet. The man turns and swings; Sterling slips under it, tackles the man and carries him to the ground and thrusts the shiv at …

His eyes.

The blade slides into the man’s right eye and meets unexpected resistance. The man writhes, reaches up, gets his hand on Sterling’s throat and squeezes. Sterling throws all his weight onto the shiv and it breaks through and goes all the way in. The man’s grip tightens and his vision constricts and grays out; all he can do is keep pressure on the blade in the man’s eye socket.

… you there? Sterling, are you there? Sterling, are you there?

Over and over again, a nagging voice in the back of his mind sounds off as awareness comes slowly back. He’s lying on his side, the shiv still firmly in his grip and still firmly wedged in the man’s eye socket. The man is motionless, his arm still outstretched and his fingers curled as if they still gripped Sterling’s throat.

“Yeah, I’m here. I’ll be right there.” Sterling feels as if he’d been wrapped in binding cloths and beaten with a clubbing stick; even his hair hurts. “Just give me a moment.”

***

No time to think.

No time to process what has just happened, or to wonder why there’s no blood pooled around the man’s head. Slowly, painfully, Sterling drags himself to his feet and stumbles into the depot, past an unimaginable fortune of R Boxes stacked on pallets of prefab, packaged R Boots and other rationed goods. He reaches the backroom and finds Halo cocooned in wrappings and strung upside down from an overhead beam.

“Halo!” he says, dropping to his knees in front of her. With her blinders pulled tight across her face, Sterling can’t make out her expression.

Get me down. Undo the wrappings.

Sterling fusses with the knot for a moment before he grabs the rope, which is secured to a ring in the wall and takes some of Halo’s weight off the line. The knot easily comes undone and Halo is safely down moments later, her bonds a pile of cut cloth windings a moment after that. He helps her to sit up and then gathers her into his arms, lifts her as one would a child. She’s like a feather in his arms, lighter than air.

“You all right?”

Fine.

Before he can move to the doorway, a series of images flash behind his eyes – an inconceivably immense expanse of water, a giant dome structure made of glass, rapidly moving vehicles – and like the afterimage of a lightning strike, they’re gone.

They know something’s wrong; they’re on their way back and we have to leave now!

“Bolt is … ”

I know. We need to go north, you and I.

“North?”

To the Northern Servers. Soon, our disruption will begin.

“What about … ” Sterling takes a deep breath. It has little or no effect on his nerves. “What about Bolt?”

He’s gone. We have no time. Leave him.

“Are you serious?”

I am serious.

“I’m sorry, Goddess, I can’t do that. That kid out there died to save you.”

Her voice becomes louder. It rings in his skull, cripples his convictions.

LEAVE HIM!

“Dammit! You can’t do this!”

To the Northern Servers. Soon, our disruption will begin.

Sterling opens his arms, drops the Goddess onto the ground. He braces himself for the shriek inside his head and it comes, blaring and nerve-searing.

“Fuck you … ” he says, taking two staggering steps towards the door. “I’m not leaving Bolt.”

.HUNTER.

.1.

SCREAM INSIDE MY HEAD!

Down in the Hole where the guilty go and the sinful die and the liars lie and the breath is gaped and the dreams are raped and the night is dark and the dark is night and the souls are stripped and the Devout are whipped. Down in the Hole life takes its toll and the day don’t shine and the screams are mine and the plight is lost and the lost have died and the vermin bite and the Stayed aren’t ripe.

(Break through to me! YOU LIED!)

--You’ve failed, Hunter! You’ve failed Halo and the Church of the South. You are FILTH. You are nonexistent. I will personally make sure that you spend the rest of your starving days in fits and rage, said Father Miscavige.

(Break through … please … )

--Please! I was led astray I was … I was … tricked!

--Tricked?

--A false Goddess came to me, she lied. She lied! She said east, she said to go to the light, she said that it would be all right, that she was with me, moving through me, in charge. THE GODDESS LIED TO ME!

(Clubbing stick across the face – metal blood taste. My body sore as a whore.)

--Lies! Blasph!

--She said … in my head she said! In my head she said! Please not again, Father!

--You filth! YOU FUCKING FILTH! Show me your dirties now! Bend! SHOW ME!

--Please, please, please, no!

--You useless piece of filth, he said, shiv in hand, trembling, ready. The despising look in his eyes was one of vehemence and rage. Never had I seen him this beside himself, never had I seen his visage so pained, so misaligned.

(Cuts along the inside of my legs form bloody stripes leading up to my dirty. Something clamped on the foreskin made me scream out, but the cloth in my mouth kept my voice down.)

--You deserve this!

--MMMMmmmm! MMMMmmmm!

--And after I’ve finished here, there is only one place for you to go – THE HOLE.

.2.

The ghosts of those I’ve killed swirl around my skull. Their hearts distilled, their host’s skin peeled, my dirty sore of a life and my mouth full of dirt. Ghosts vaporous, lithe and free – come down to the Hole and forsake me. Lift me with your invisible paws; carry me to the cusp of the Canyon.

Words are words our words are wrong our words are wrong are false our loved are lost.

“Halo?”

Smash rock fist – she no longer exists! Lies beseech. Crusted blood along my heels reminds me of the falsities inherent in the hollow voices that smelter melter my broken psyche.

(You deserve this, Hunter. You will be deathborn. You will become faceless unless you repent. YOU WILL BE DEATHBORN!)

“TOSS ONE IN!” I scream to the top. Hunger a rolling boil panging and begging to be addressed.

“Quiet down there!” The guard’s voice is sharp as a shiv, a thorn in the throat of those who live. Those who give their hearts to the faith to avoid the loss of their faces find themselves in Holes and traps attacking the very idea of what it means to look back, what can be learned from free thought, what can be wrought from questioning answers. Cancerous dancers pamper the tempered – a life well-lived can leave one demented.

Please don’t stop believing.

“Leave me! Leave me!”

(SMASH ROCK FIST!)

The Goddess of Falsity that came to me when I needed her the most is nothing but a ghost of a ghost. Halo is lost, her heart to be tossed aside once it’s pried from her chest by the shit of the North. The foulness of those on the other side of the Great Demarcator, the sinners, the flesh takers, the Blasph, the deathborn.

Fist on earth, slam slam slam; curse the Canyon, damn damn damn.

(Make your presence known. Know your present moan.)

Please, Hunter, you must understand.

“QUIT TALKING TO ME!”

Left foot right foot, pace in place. Footsteps visible in the dust. Enough is enough, love’s a cuff. Death’s a wish, life’s saving grace, a ruffling of feathers to ward off bad weather that will never come in the first place.

To whom it may concern – let me be the one to burn, let me be the one to roast, let me rise above the scorn, let me be the one to toast, let me rise above deathborn, grant me the power to stay awake long enough to survive the quake. To whom it may concern – take me now without a doubt I’m gone to this world with hopes to be forsaken.

“LET ME OUT!”

“Quiet, down there!”

(Is the man up there faceless? I can’t tell from here.)

A long stick enters the space to poke and prod. I hit the corner, crouch to rock, avoid the prod. The stick returns to the surface and is replaced by a stream of piss followed by a bucket of watery shit. I bask in the excrement as a way to repent.

--YOU ARE FILTH!

You must set yourself free, Hunter, you must come for me.

“Halo?”

(Do not listen to that voice!)

I’m in the North, prisoner to a man. I implore you – you must come for me, for the Canyon, for the Stayed, for the Devout.

“You … misled me!”

Hand to head, smash rock fist. Blasph! Blasph! Blasph! She’s the GODDESS!

(Don’t talk back!)

I am yours, Hunter, brother, I am your Goddess, your Halo. I will never mislead you. Everything is for a purpose. The Book says that the Devout must follow their purpose, no matter how extreme, no matter the sacrifice. Break free, Hunter. Break free from the Hole and come to me.

“But how?”

I will help you, but you must trust me, you must never doubt me again.

Tears come, well in my ducts and fall down my rotten face. “I will do anything for you, Halo, anything.”

Prepare to kill.

“I am ready.”

Prepare to die.

“I was born to die.”

Prepare to know something that most of the Stayed could never truly grasp.

“I am … ” One big gulp and I say what’s on my mind. “Prove … prove to me that you’re the Goddess.”

Look up.

A golden metalzip flutters into the Hole, trailed by a string of glitter. It stops before me, inches away from my face. I reach out for it and my hand passes straight through. A tingling sensation meets my skin and blooms.

I am real.

“I will … I will come for you, Halo, Goddess of the Stayed.”

.3.

(Hold your breath until you pass out.)

“Why would I do that? Halo said … ”

(Don’t listen to her.)

“BLASPH!”

Smash rock fist – my head rings like a bell. The Hole is a pit for the most Devout to seek punishment for their sins. I am sin. I am the one who failed, the one who let the South down, the one who couldn’t get a grip on the situation before Halo reached the Off Limits.

“You are a crying shame,” I say, digging my nails into my arm. Pain blossom mushroom – add depth to the room. Harm no harm; feel good pain. Carve to remember.

Just wait.

“Halo?”

Her voice an echo between my ears. Fear stripped, I’m up and about playing the role of the Devout. The Book says that sacrifice is the route of true life, anguish the scruples of the South, the delixer of existence, better than a years’ worth of lizard luck.

(More piss – duck.)

“You filth!” a voice calls out from above.

Seething anger ripples through me. What I wouldn’t give to pull the man’s spine through his parched lips, eat his eyes one at a time, jab my finger in his ear until I can tickle his brain, wear his eyebrows like a mustache.

“I’ll KILL YOU!” I shout to the top.

“Ha!”

(The FUCK.)

You’ll get your chance.

“Halo?”

(Ignore that voice.)

--You will die in the Hole, said Father Miscavige.

“I’m sorry, Father!”

You will kill him.

Tears again. “Halo, what are you saying?”

You will kill Father Miscavige.

“Never, never, I won’t, I can’t.”

What he has done to you is despicable.

“Halo! Blasph! Please!”

SMASH rock fist.

(Stop hitting yourself!)

“I AM THE VOICE INSIDE MY HEAD!”

Trust me, Hunter, trust me.

“Goddess … Goddess … ”

The long prodding stick enters the Hole and I leap for it, wrap my arms and legs around it, slam the man’s body against the barred opening. He holds tight, again I yank on the long prodding stick, screaming loudly.

“Let go!”

“I WILL NEVER LET GO!” I scream to him.

Another guard rushes over, pulls at the prodding stick. One glance up and I see it, I know it, I feel it, I sense it, I taste it. THEY ARE FACELESS.

(Must kill, must kill, must liberate, must save.)

Do it, Hunter.

“For you, Halo!”

I climb the prodding stick, legs scoot scoot arms pull pull. The men hold strong, giving me a totem pole to climb. Reach the top in a flash – the guards won’t let go, one faceless on his knees the other tugging with his feet intact.

“OPEN THE DOOR!” I scream through the bars. Spittle flies, hits eyes.

You are almost there!

(Lies, lies, lies, lies.)

“SHUT UP!” I scream to the zipping between my ears.

“Let go of the prodder!” one shouts.

Too late.

My hand reaches one of the bars overhead. I quickly clamp down on another and dangle. Prodder dropped, clubbing sticks hit my knuckles. The pain enrages me. Left right, I move with hands like feet from one bar to the next to avoid the clubbing.

Use your weight. Do it, Hunter.

“Anything for you HALO!”

Knees up, I tug them down. Dust falls, settles below. Again I tug, clubbing stick ignored. The hinge comes loose and the TRAPDOOR OPENS! Swing down and back. One guard falls into the Hole, the other falls backwards.

I climb up and begin my attack. To my surprise it’s daylight out. Has it really only been one night?

No time to answer.

As worms wriggle under my skin I kill the man again and again. As snakes slither down my spine I bite and claw and eat and smile. Flesh to mouth – I am the consumer of those to be deathborn. Warm blood, chewy bites of skin dappled in stray hairs.

I am free.

Now come for me.

“I will, Halo.”

But first, you must kill Father Miscavige.

“I can’t … I WON’T!” I fall next to the man I’ve just extinguished, my bloody fingers pressed into my temples.

“Please, Goddess, please, I can’t, I can’t. He isn’t faceless.”

He is faceless.

“HE ISN’T!”

(The South is my shepherd, the North is my adversary).

Come to the North, you’ll see.

“How? HOW?”

The War Zone. The next war is in two days to celebrate Stayed Day. Be there. Smuggle yourself North. Come for me.

“Anything, Goddess, anything for you.”

.Book One: Epilogue.

“We’re here.”

Sterling parks the motocart behind his family’s home. It’s the same motocart he crashed into the man who killed Bolt at Zander’s depot, and while the front wheel is wobbly and the body is obviously dented, the machine still works well enough. He would tinker with it if he had a free day or two, but by the looks of things, he won’t have a free day or two for the foreseeable future.

“You wait here.”

He fears the worst as he heads inside, where he first slips into his sister’s bedroom. He holds his breath, waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He is just about to whisper her name when he hears her move, twisting from one side to the other. With the knowledge that his sister is safe, he moves to his mother’s room, where he hears her lightly snoring. On his way back out, Sterling passes his own bedroom and wishes he could rest, even for just a few minutes. He even stops in front of the door, cringes as he fights the weariness that has suddenly overcome him.

“Not now,” Sterling mumbles to himself.

He returns to Halo, and Bolt’s body. He shakes his head at the Goddess, who sits on the backward facing bench next to Bolt’s lifeless form. She’s in her meditative pose; a statue if there ever was one. Her face is trained forward, her chin tucked slightly and her hands are cupped in her lap – just seeing her so passively defiant infuriates him, makes him want to break things and hurt people. Exhaustion overwhelms his anger, snuffs it before it ever really takes hold, and he sighs. “Are you going to sit here until the sun comes up or are you coming inside?”

You dropped me. No one has ever dropped me.

“See! You can talk.” He gets the urge to clap her on the back but thinks otherwise – he’s heard enough screaming inside his head for a day. Plus, he knows she’s capable of much worse.

You dropped me. It hurt.

“It hurt? I got my ass kicked for you, got beaten with a club for you, fought some type of metal man for you. For you, for you, for you – do you see a trend here? I know you can’t actually see my face right now, but it’s covered in bruises and cuts. I’m as sore as I’ve ever been – I would trade my current pain level for your current pain level in a heartbeat, got that? So quit whining.”

Rigor mortis has stiffened Bolt in his sitting position; he looks like a statue too. Sterling tries to see him as faceless but cannot – the kid’s face is clearly intact.

All he really wants to do is rest, recover, and maybe have a jolt or two of delixer to numb the pain – the last thing he feels like doing is any kind of pick-and-shovel work, but the kid deserves a proper burial and he’s going to give it to him. He knows the perfect spot to inter the kid – the swath of rough earth that separates his home from their neighbors, the place he’d buried someone else dear to him five years ago.

He picks up the shovel and the pick mattock that are propped against the side of his family’s storage shed. The tools have been there for as long as he can remember, ready to be used whenever necessary.

Where are you going?

“To bury Bolt.”

Sterling sees a glimmer of light in the distance as it peeks over the top of the Canyon wall. Morning will come soon, signaling a new day and a new series of problems to be solved.

I’ll come with you.

“You want to help?”

No, but I will say a prayer.

“All right by me.”

Bolt’s corpse is awkward and unwieldy, and Sterling feels every one of his injuries, bruises and contusions as he carries the kid to his soon-to-be last resting place.

Halo joins him a few moments later, holding her wrappings. She moves swiftly, as if she already knows the direction of the proposed burial site. In front of Sterling now, she stops at a rock that reaches up to her knee and circles around it. She sits, brings her legs in and lets her wrappings drape over the rock.

This spot is fine.

Sterling rests the kid on the ground and yawns. He would comment on the fact that this was the exact spot he had been thinking of when he decided to bury Bolt, but he’s getting used to Halo’s ability to know his thoughts before he gives them voice and decides to save his breath.

He breaks the hard-pack with the pick mattock and shovels the rock and soil neatly to one side. Every time he swings the pick mattock or uses the shovel, the handle of the tool abrades the shiv cut on his hand, and soon both tools are sticky with his blood. Out of the corner of his eye he catches Halo gyrating on her rock perch. He recalls the flesh giver in the South, which triggers a whole string of memories, including the first time he met Bolt in the motocart. He looks at the kid’s lifeless body and sorrow and regret wash through him yet again.

The sun is well above the horizon before Sterling finishes and climbs out. He moves Bolt to the edge of the grave, then gets back in and lifts the boy in as gently as the cramped circumstances and his waning strength will allow. Filling a grave is always easier than digging one, Sterling reflects, even though he takes the time to do it right by shoveling a quarter of the dirt in at a time and stepping each layer down before he adds more.

He whispers the Northern Prayer for The Dead as he shovels in the last of the rocky soil, and wonders who will hear it and what good, if any, it will do for Bolt.

I hear it.

“What now?” he asks just to say something rather than in any expectation of a real answer.

Now we rest. Later we will make our way to the Northern Servers.

“Won’t they know we’re here?”

I’ll take care of that. Don’t you trust me?

Sterling’s eyes drop back to Bolt’s freshly filled grave. An uneasy feeling curdles in his stomach as he says, “Yeah, I trust you. Bolt trusted you, too. Just … no more killing, okay?”

I can’t promise that.

Sterling picks up his tools and turns towards his home. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

The End

.Back of the Book Shit.

You made it.

The Zero Patient Trilogy: Book Two is out now.

More is revealed as Sterling and Halo head to the Northern Servers and Hunter tries to come to grips with his role in the Canyon and the various forces (voices) controlling him. Sterling’s sister becomes a prominent player in this book, as does Zander Damien.

This series was inspired by a number of other works. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas was a huge inspiration for this book. If you’ve seen the movie, or read the reviews of the movie and decided to skip the book, I highly recommend the book. Mitchell weaves a variety of narratives together through the prose, getting about as creative with the English language as one can and still remain readable. There are, of course, other authors who have experimented, but Cloud Atlas is unique in its content and story arc, much better than the Italian book that inspired it.

I based the tone on a number of things, most notably Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Steinbeck’s East of Eden. From McCarthy, I borrowed the bleakness and from Steinbeck, an overall story that can be read on multiple layers. At least this was my intention – I was utterly moved by these two works and wanted a way to blend them into something more on the cyberpunk scale. American Psycho found its way into Hunter’s serial killer prose without the designer clothing (for designer anything, see my other series, Life is a Beautiful Thing). Towards the End of Time by John Updike was also an inspiration for this book, most notably through the metalzips. While not his most highly praised work, I took some inspiration from Chuck Klosterman’s I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined).

I worked for quite a while conceptualizing the costumes used in the Canyon. This wouldn’t have been possible without the help of my fiancé, wife if you are reading this in 2017, Sor Ganbold, a Mongolian fashion designer who worked with me on the clothing of the Canyon and painted Halo’s stunning picture in November 2015 after several early conceptual designs. Her skill is unmatched in any artist I’ve ever personally met. Further, she does her art without attachment, as if it were as simple as brushing one’s teeth before bed.

Location, location, location

I originally hoped to place the Zero Patient Trilogy in the Grand Canyon. Upon further research into the size and natural history, I decided it would be better to strip anything familiar from the book’s setting, allowing it to become universally familiar. The Canyon could be anywhere – the dividing factors of humanity unanimous.

This book was written in Texas, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Beijing Airport, Incheon Airport and Yokohama, Japan over the course of November and December 2015, with portions of Hunter’s parts written in October (more on this later). No mile high club here – I can’t write in the sky mainly due to the economical ways in which I travel, generally crammed into a seat near the bathrooms next to a crying baby, a drunken Chinese man (possibly snoring), a techie from San Francisco pecking away at his laptop in hopes of developing an algorithm that will curb bad airplane behavior, A German man giving me stern looks and grumbling every time I have to step over him to use the restroom. The list goes on. No writing in the sky for me.

I finished this book in a McDonald’s in Motosumiyoshi, Japan. Why McDonalds? McDonalds has the cheapest coffee in Japan at 100 yen (as of 2016). The price of a tall cup of Starbucks (McStarbucks for fans of my other books) is 320 yen. Yes, triple the price for burnt water. The Japanese competitor, Doutor, is 220 yen for a small cup of coffee, so do the math. I would love to work in local Japanese coffee shops, but many of these allow cigarette smoking inside. Imagine a pack of Japanese salarymen chain-smoking and sipping coffee loudly while reading their crinkly newspapers – unpleasant to say the least.

Sound Design

I develop soundtracks for my books and use these to ‘tune’ myself into the story. Strange, I know, but I am a former Austin musician with 200 recorded songs under his belt – of which only one is on an album you’ll be able to find – so music is important to me. My favorite collaboration was with the bass player of the metal band, The Sword, which we called Atxtasy (ATX = Austin, Texas). I think he uploaded one album to Soundcloud, so if you’re ever bored, and you need to listen to something that resembles elevator music mixed with the seedy music one might hear at a diner on the outskirts of Vegas at 3AM – Google.

Sterling’s parts were written to the Her movie soundtrack as well as a single song by a New York composer named Paul Damien Hogan, who is one of the most talented musicians you’ve never heard. I had the privilege of meeting him once in 2011 in Brooklyn. He won’t remember me, but I’ve since kept an eye on the songs he posts online. The song is called “Lonely Moon” and if you Google his name and the song, you’ll surely find it. Piano Solos Vol. 2 was also on heavy rotation during Sterling’s part. The album, by pianist Dustin O”Halloran, is one of my favorites for writing. You’ve likely heard Dustin O”Halloran before if you’ve watched the show Transparent – he wrote the theme after being contacted by a producer who loved his album Piano Solos Vol. 2.

Hunter

I began work on Hunter’s voice in the spring of 2015, hoping to combine rambling, hallucinating, general fervor, poetic verse (mostly inspired by Death Grips and Kendrick Lamar), fear and devotion in a single character’s perspective. I only seem to be able to write Hunter’s parts to jarring music, such as dubstep and extreme drum and bass. Somehow, this has a way of nullifying everything around me and letting me hone in on Hunter’s voice. Hunks of time have passed writing and rewriting this character. It doesn’t feel the same as when I write other things, mainly due to the channeling nature of writing in the first person present tense (which, if you’ve read anything else I’ve written, I’m quite fond of). My main goal with this character is for the barrage of voices coming through him to make sense in a cohesive way, as if we (yes, you and I) were existing inside his head and watching him perform his horrible deeds while catching a few passing phrases between his ears.

If at all possible, Hunter is supposed to read like the song “You Might Think He Loves You For Your Money But I Know What He Really Loves You For It’s Your Brand New Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” by Death Grips from the album Government Plates mixed with the song “Momma” by Kendrick Lamar from the album To Pimp a Butterfly sounds. If you are familiar with both songs, you know how jarring this would be.

Which brings me to tone.

Tone

If you’ve enjoyed the dark tone of this book, you will probably like my book Boy versus Self, which is a serious work about an artist struggling with hallucinations that may kill him. I write in a variety of styles, from humorous to hallucinatory metafiction, and try to reinvent my writing style with each series I release; that, or improve upon a style I’ve already delved in. Hunter, for example, is a more psychotic version of Meme, the lead character in Life is a Beautiful Thing. For those who have read both the Zero Patient Trilogy and Life is a Beautiful Thing, you’ll see similarities.

I believe that authors should challenge themselves to create something that surprises readers and at the same time, allows the author to stretch his or her imagination to the brink of what is readable. As a reader, you will come to expect certain types of things from me. Call it ‘weird’ or ‘strange’ or ‘different’ – what I do, and what I will continue to do, is figure out the best way to verbalize the stories that I’d like to tell to you in a medium that continues to hold sway over newer mediums such as television, video gaming, social media and cinema. Whether it be the perspective of a serial killing religious fanatic or a man trapped in a virtual reality world – like Quantum from my other series, The Feedback Loop – I am keen to break genre while visiting old tropes in ways that are unpredictable yet familiar. Further, I am interested in writing what I want to write. Don’t be surprised if I publish a nonfiction piece in the future, or if I pen another collection of political satire.

My work and its clarity wouldn’t be possible without my editor, George C. Hopkins, who always finds ways to improve the manuscript and ask tough questions that require answers and modifications, all for your satisfaction, reader. He is the best editor I have ever worked with and it is a pleasure to see a manuscript after he’s finished with it. Two beta readers also gave me their thoughts on this book. Kay, who was the first to see a preview of Hunter, never fails to amaze me with her keen eye. Ben, who has read enough of my work to be clinically insane, also gave him his time and mind-space to let this story unfold. Thank you, all.

Life is too short to fit into any box, including one that you’ve made for yourself. So grow with me, reader, and keep checking the space I’ve created for my work from time to time. Your patronage keeps me going and encourages me to reach further for the next book. Knowing that right now, someone is reading this somewhere in this beautifully flawed world of ours is why I write. Thank you for letting my stories exist in your mind.

Please review this book and anything else you’ve read by me. If you need more, Book Two will be released soon. For something serious, check out my standalone novel Boy versus Self. For something that will leave your mind reeling, the Life is a Beautiful Thing series is where you’ll want to go next. Of course, a standard sci-fi adventure series is always a good way to clear one’s palate. For that, check out The Feedback Loop series. More to come.

Keep reading happy people,

Harmon Cooper Jan 3rd 2016

.Canyon Vocabulary.

Beard tails – chin dreadlocks.

Bits – currency used for trade or gambling by the North and the South.

Blackout – a wall of windblown dust that blocks out the sun.

Blasph – blasphemous thought, person, act, word or deed.

Blinders – eye cover worn by Halo, the Goddess of the South.

Bullet flinger – Sterling’s word for a projectile weapon.

Clubbing stick – offensive striking weapon similar to a riot baton or baseball bat, usually constructed from field expedient materials.

Cover cloths –full body shawl with an attached hood. Usually worn by women.

Death Prayer – Prayer for those dying but not being raptured. Open heart and open mouth, soul take the path of the Devout. Deathborn, not I, vultured soon. Rebirth comes at the next full moon. Deathborn, not I, Goddess forgive, grievances from the times I lived. Deathborn, not I, sins escape, give me the guidance of the Devout, the Stayed.

Deathborn – one who is caught in the repeating cycle of death and re-birth.

Delixer – bootleg alcohol.

Depot – official distribution point for rations, water, R boots, and other commodities.

Devout – The Priest class; the highest Canyon social group.

Dirties – variously describes impure thoughts, words, deeds and the genitalia.

Double – to engage in procreative activities.

Dusk Prayer – An evening prayer popular in the South. Let dusk settle and the Canyon rest, give thanks to the Goddess, the Stayed, the Devout and all the rest. Protect me in my moment of slumber; hold me to your breast. Grant me the faculty to become one of the blessed. Lead all those who stray away from deathborn. Heal the earth beneath the feet of the scorned. Mourn the passing of those faithful few, who have given their lives in devotion to you.

Eunuched – Castrated.

Face cover – similar to a turtle neck. Covers the mouth and nose, used as a particulate filter.

Faceless – blurred facial features, a complete psychological phenomenon. Northerners believe that facelessness is a blessing; visible proof that one has broken the cycle of death and rebirth. Southerners believe that the faceless are accursed, and doomed to repeat the cycle. Some Southerners also believe that facelessness is contagious.

Finger grazers – part of a Flesh Giver’s costume: long strips of fabric attached to the fingers.

Fleshroom – a house of prostitution.

Flesh Dealer – one who manages a fleshroom.

Flesh Giver – prostitute, generally dressed in the fashion of the local Goddess. Also known as Lover.

Food – the nutrient-rich but monotonously bland ration bars distributed by the Off Limits through the various Depots.

Great Demarcator, The – slang for the Off Limits.

Khomei – from Khomeini barriers. Waist high stone pillars spaced to deny moto vehicles an unobstructed approach to the Off Limits.

Leaks – oversized goggles/glasses.

Lottery – nominally random selection process to determine who will be sterilized; one of three methods used for population control.

Lower – someone from the second lowest class.

Lizard – a gambling game in which two lizards race on an enclosed track.

Lizard luck – unexpected or unlooked-for good luck; from good luck in a game of lizard.

Metalzip – semi-holy metallic flying insect. About the size of Specius grandus (western cicada killer) approximately 1.5 inches in length.

Mil – 100 milliliters.

Mog – Midnight smog.

Moto – motorcycle less than 50cc. Fast enough, but not powerful.

Motocart – moto with an additional cart on back.

Motopublic – public transportation vehicle generally used by Lowers.

Mush – food that has been moistened, sweetened, and cooked to a porridge-like consistency.

Northern Council – ruling body that governs the North. Less extremist than the Southern Council.

Off Limits – the massive structure that separates the North from the South. Food and other goods are distributed through here. Also known as the Great Demarcator.

OL Officer – common name for law enforcement from the Off Limits. Professionally known as GDSF: Great Demarcator Security Forces.

Perma-parched – long term, chronic dehydration.

R Boots – Rationed Boots, worn by Uppers. Lowers usually wear sandals or cast-off R Boots.

R Box – Ration Box, contains approximately 1800 calories of food.

Rapture – the semi-mystical process by which Canyon dwellers above a certain age are euthanized. One of three methods used for population control.

Rapture Announcement – official notification from the Off Limits that one has reached vesting age and is scheduled to be raptured.

Red root – an addictive stimulant root, chewed in the South. Long-term use permanently discolors the teeth.

Registration box – fingerprint scanner.

Repeater – one who continually participates in the cycle of reeducation and reentry into society; a recidivist.

Seersucker – a type of fabric. Clothing distributed by the Off Limits is usually made of this fabric.

Shiv – any cutting or stabbing weapon, usually made from field expedient materials.

Southern Council – ruling body that governs the South, and uses a strict, fundamentalist interpretation of the Book as the foundation of its rule of law.

The First Blessing – A Southern child’s first meeting with the Goddess.

Trim – castrate.

Unikey – universal key that will start any vehicle, usually restricted to OL Officers.

Upper – someone from the high class.

Vesta – standard unit of distance equal to .66 of a mile.

Vesting Age – the age at which a person is called to be raptured. Generally falls between the ages of 48 and 50.

Vultured Few – those who handle the dead, lowest of the Lower class.

War of the Untold, The – euphemism for the war that almost extincted humankind.

War Zone – battlefield within the Off Limits where teams from the North and South fight to the death; one of three methods used for population control.

Widow Mark – tear shaped mark on a woman’s head denoting her status as a widow.

Wrappings – long, flowing coverings wrapped around the body. Nominally used for environmental protection, but are more an ostentatious display of wealth and conspicuous consumption. Not gender specific, but are most often worn women.

.Boy versus Self.

Sometimes art kills.

There are moments when a creation pushes its creator to the brink of their imagination, to the fine line between true ingenuity and blistering insanity. Boy is such an artist, an artist who can’t seem to shake the demon he has himself created – Glass Wings. With his career taking off, will Boy overcome the darkness within? Will he reconcile with his family, his sister, his demons? And the people surrounding him – his erotic novelist girlfriend with violent night terrors, his drug dealer friend, the married Irish woman who brings him to New York, the mysterious Japanese man financing his art – where do they fit in all this? Will he ever be able to tell them the truth? A serrated existence that runs from Texas to Mexico, New York to Tokyo, BOY Versus SELF is a disquieting journey into the mind of a penniless artist as he struggles with shocking hallucinations that could kill him.  True fear is easily created and rarely destroyed. True art is always the opposite.

Available exclusively on Amazon.

Table of Contents

- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Author’s Note

- .STERLING.

- .1.

- .2.

- .3.

- .4.

- .5.

- .6.

- .7.

- .HUNTER.

- .1.

- .2.

- .3.

- .4.

- .5.

- .6.

- .7.

- .STERLING.

- .1.

- .2.

- .3.

- .4.

- .HUNTER.

- .1.

- .2.

- .3.

- .4.

- .5.

- .STERLING.

- .1.

- .2.

- .3.

- .4.

- .HUNTER.

- .1.

- .2.

- .3.

- .Book One: Epilogue.

- .Back of the Book Shit.

- .Canyon Vocabulary.

- .Boy versus Self.