Go, I thought numbly, willing myself to move. Go.

My body didn't move.

I took a painful breath, and then imagined the voice that had once had a direct line into my head. The one that told us to get to work. That told us to find shelter. That had told me to "stop, stop your vehicle now." I imagined that voice saying, "Run." And I moved.

One step in front of the other. Around the gap where implants would see books, but where a human eye, my human eye—maybe the last human eye in existence—saw nothing but empty space. I tried not to look down, but I couldn't help it. I paused for a moment, feeling awful about just leaving her there, this woman who had tried to help me. Who had not sold me out. I remembered something from an old Ad, and I crouched and closed her eyes. They were stiff and cold; I felt repulsed and ashamed. My fingers came away dry, but they felt bloody. I looked down at her one more time, knowing the image was burning a home into my skull, and then I walked out of the University.

Somewhere, I hoped the security cameras clicked. I hoped they saw me leaving. That they would leave everyone else inside this building alone. I didn't dare look for Jake. I hadn't meant to kill anyone. I hadn't. I thought of Professor Cellowen, lying stiff and sprawled, the spray of her blood painting her books. I thought of Jake's face shaded that color of death, and then my mind shut down.

I moved. I didn't know where I was going. Just out. Away. I thought about bodies and groups of people, about my body, about Jake looking at me like I wasn't human. I thought about the world outside, the deserts and the poison lurking beyond the Wall, and maybe how nothing could be worse than the poison inside the city. If I could survive the river, maybe I'd survive the desert. Maybe. At least I'd have a better chance than here, where suited men who wore the brand of life on their chests shot a woman dead because she was in their way.

Images scrambled through my head, tumbling and chasing each other. The blood. The spatter. The patterns. It was a miracle I wasn't running, wasn't sprinting away from the city. This awful city. I moved like a drone instead, one foot after the other, desperate not to catch the eye of ANRON's suits or DRAYTH's mercs. I don't know how they didn't see me. I stumbled out of the city with the evening crowds, heading over the bridge, past the warehouses. The same trek I'd made this morning, only this time, I was going in the opposite direction.

Out. Away. I walked, both stronger than I had been and immeasurably weaker. I saw the Wall growing in the darkness, and instead of the vertigo that had always flipped my stomach at the idea of the great vastness outside, I felt a sudden wrenching desire to see the view from the top. To slide down the other side and disappear into the wilderness. To dissolve.

I passed the empty PERCO container that had shielded me from the mercs a lifetime ago. I walked toward the abandoned living blocks and the twisted streets. Corpless territory. I remembered being afraid of it once, but it was like trying to recall a half-forgotten nightmare. Sirens going off inside our heads. People clutching at their skulls and staggering away. It wasn't a clear memory—I was so young—but I remembered my mother grabbing my hand and us running, running out of the Promenade where we'd been shopping. She'd gone straight for safety. We'd huddled in ANRON's great foyer with what seemed like a hundred other frightened Experimentals and their families.

I'd started crying at some point. Tears smeared my cheeks and hands. My mother had smoothed my hair down. She'd said just one word: "Corpless." It had sounded bad, like a curse. Then she'd hugged me fiercely to her and hadn't let go.

The sirens had stopped shortly afterward, just long enough for the emergency announcement. "Shelter in place," they'd told us. "Unilox is under attack from an unknown city. We are closing down all non-emergency services until our forces prevail." The shutdown had lasted for a day. The war had lasted another two weeks. Throughout it all, despite all the announcements and the high-pitched whine of the vehicles carrying our soldiers through the streets, part of me had always remained convinced that my mother was right. That it was really the corpless. That I should always be afraid.

A siren wailed. For a moment, I was caught between memory and the real world; I stopped as suddenly as if I'd walked into a wall. And then my blinking eyes registered the flashing lights behind me and there was no time to think. My body moved before I did. I bolted, cutting through the streets like a knife. They were dark and decayed around me now, filthy and forgotten. I had no idea where I was going. Only the Wall was there to guide me, huge and immovable. I ran toward it, the whine of a hovercar behind me.

I took a moment to look back. A DRAYTH car—mercs. They must have been patrolling the corpless boundaries. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't been stopped in the city, or even by the warehouses. No. They'd found me now, when I was almost out. Nearly sobbing in frustration, I kept running. My muscles thrummed and ached around my bones. It felt like my heart might burst.

But I didn't know this area, didn't know where I was. And they did. I spun through the cramped alleys like a top, directionless and crazed. I felt them herding me, but I couldn't do anything to stop it, didn't know how. When I finally turned a corner, head down and sprinting hard, only to look up and see a dead end, I almost wasn't surprised.

I turned around. The hovercar had stopped. Two men got out. Not suits. Mercs. With hard eyes that didn't widen with recognition.

There was no room for hope or anything like it in my chest, only terror. "L-look," I stuttered, "I didn't do anything . . ."

It was as if I hadn't even spoken. One of them pointed a disk at me, and something leapt across the distance, a trick of the light. And then I was screaming, convulsing. I hit the ground, twitching. Their boots crunched and slurped over the alley floor as they walked toward me. They rolled me over with disgusted mutters and hard hands. One of them wrenched up my sleeve and then whistled in surprise.

"Hey, her UConn's off."

"Off? More like broken." Whoever it was spat it out like a curse. "Corpless."

Even as I rode out the last of the electricity, the sudden rush of relief was intoxicating. They really hadn't recognized me. They hadn't. The river had done its job; they didn't know who I was, even with my face beaming up through the screens. Their eyes were ringed underneath their helmets. They were tired.

"S-s-sorry," I stammered. It wasn't too hard to fake; relief and the electricity made my tongue thick. "I didn't mean . . ."

They weren't listening to me. It was as if I wasn't even there. Or maybe as if I wasn't human. Just broken. Unsalable. "Here, you hold her and I'll do the scan . . ."

I didn't think. I saw the UConn gleaming on his arm as he bent to scan me, to read the numbers on my machine that would tell him who I was. I panicked, flailing back. I felt my arm connect with his and the impact ripple through my skin, through my bone.

And I felt his crunch to powder beneath mine.

My world narrowed to a single point of shock. I tried to scramble to my feet, but the electricity had made my muscles sluggish. "Armed and dangerous," they'd said. "Be alert but not alarmed," they'd said. What if they hadn't been lying? What if the same trade secrets woven into my skin that had saved me from the river were also woven into my muscles, and I'd just never noticed because I'd never been scared enough to lash out with all my strength?

Distantly, I heard the man's pained cries. And then I saw the other merc, his face livid, his hand coming at me. I saw the long thick lines running like rope across his palm, the weathered fingers, the gnarled nails. Before I could process it any further my chin snapped back and my neck wrenched. I heard ringing for a moment, like a great, hollow bell, and then I was staggering back, falling. I looked up, saw his boot coming now, and tried to steel myself. But the moment it hit me, I realized I was wrong. There was no way to prepare against this. The kick caught me on the side of the ribs. I felt them shudder, felt the blow ripple through the rest of my chest. I folded myself around it, gasping for air, hugging the pain. Another second and the foot came back, slamming into me like I was a ball, lifting me into the air. I keened.

Fight back, my instincts said. Fight back. But I was frozen with shock, with terror. I hadn't meant to break the other merc's arm. Professor Cellowen's face flashed in front of my eyes. I hadn't meant to kill anyone.

I looked up, just in time to see that disk come down, and then I was screaming again, my entire body revolting against me. I rolled away, trying to shake off the charge in my core. When I turned over to face the ground I vomited, my body rejecting everything I'd eaten since the river. I heard the crunch of the boots that had torn into me coming closer. The world shifted in and out of focus, but the sound of those boots and the memory of the way they had sunk into me was enough to make me move, to shudder me out of my shock. I shifted slightly, settled my feet underneath me. I didn't think I was meant to be able to do that. I remembered seeing the disks in Ads. People hit by them twice stayed down. For a while.

Above me, I heard him spit. It landed on my shoulder; I felt the wetness of it slide off my destroyed clothes. He hadn't noticed me move. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to kill him. I didn't.

But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one boot lift from the ground. Readying to swing and cave in my ribs. The thought of being kicked again like that made me break. I moved. I dived desperately at his other leg and wrenched it away. He fell down with a surprised cry, cracked his head, and lay still. I got up shakily and looked at the other one, who was cradling his arm to his chest. I could see even from here that it was bent like the illusion in the Library, horrible and unnatural, hiding things that weren't meant to be. He stared at me in shock and then felt for his disk with his good arm. But he was too late. I'd closed the distance between us and wrenched it from his belt. And then, praying that it worked like in the Ads, I aimed what I thought was the tip at him and fired.

He fell with his mouth open, his breath gone, too choked to even scream. I fired again, just in case. The crackle of electricity burned through the air, eating it alive. My vision blurred, and I realized I was crying. I wiped it away with my other hand and looked back at the merc I'd downed. His eyes were open, glassy. Blood pooled from his skull.

The disk dropped from my nerveless fingers.

I hadn't meant to kill him.

His life for mine. Professor Cellowen's life for mine. When would it stop? I took a step back. And then another, and another. My ribs screamed; I felt the bruises blossoming deep and thick in me, bleeding. I wrapped my arm around my side, and then I ran. Out of Unilox and into its shadow, into the dark streets of the corpless—where I now belonged.