Endurance

“Me too,” he said quickly.

At that, the Hunter gave a satisfied nod. “I’m not surprised. You must’ve have noticed how unfair the rules are and how few lawbreakers actually did anything at all. Your best friend went on the long walk, didn’t she? Took the blame for you.”

The pain in his heart increased. He’d known what she was doing. Stone had pretended to believe in Deuce’s confession to settle any doubts the elders might have about him. He’d been thinking of the brat in his arms, the little one he wasn’t supposed to love. Unfortunately, he knew which one belonged to him, the little guy with his eyes and his smile, and it was impossible for him not to care. It just was. He would’ve said anything to keep his brat safe, and he had. Turned his back on his best friend and left her to die. The guilt of that moment would always haunt him. But maybe his moments were numbered, and it didn’t matter anymore.

Apparently he’d just joined the rebellion.

He went with the Hunter into battle, and only luck let him endure the massacre. Stone stuck close to his companion and slashed with desperate doubt at anything that came close. His size helped; it was rare for anyone to grow so tall. The Wordkeeper said he was a throwback, whatever that meant, a relic of a time when people ate better and grew larger. Stone only knew his long arms let him slam people away. He didn’t want to hurt them. The idea of using this blade on someone—his stomach turned. But he couldn’t help it. Stone tried, but they kept coming. Just shoving them away wasn’t enough, and the Hunter was staring at him.

Someone else lunged at him; and he reacted. With one thrust, he killed a girl, a Huntress, who’d come up in Deuce’s class. She wasn’t experienced, strong, or particularly skilled. Her throat yielded to his knife like the meat he cut for the brats, and hot blood poured over his fingers. The smell was coppery and sweet, and it made his tongue feel thick to breathe the heavy air. Her body plopped, and another Hunter rushed at him.

Why won’t they stop? What’s the point?

Stone wept as he fought until his arms were heavy and he smelled nothing but burnt meat and despair. His lungs burned raw; his eyes stung from the sweat trickling into them. His blade grew sticky, until it disgusted him to hold it. The Hunter beside him smiled, like they had done good work.

And then it was over.

Silk’s cohort encircled them. The blonde woman who commanded the Hunters strode forward, demanding, “Put down your weapons.”

The rebel Hunter rushed and died on her blade. With deceptive strength, she caught the young man she’d once led and laid him beside the other bodies. In someone else, Stone would’ve judged her expression as bleak and infinite grief.

But Silk firmed her chin, the look faded, and she leveled an icy stare on him. “Do you prefer death to the long walk, traitor?”

What will become of Boy23? That was his brat’s number. It seemed impossible and wrong that he would never learn the boy’s name or whether he survived. He’d betrayed Deuce for nothing. Maybe, he thought, some fates can’t be avoided

and I’ll always be banished for the crime of loving him.

The long walk had become a synonym for slow death. For those of the underground tribes, it meant exile, but there was no light at the end of the tunnels. Other settlements wouldn’t harbor lawbreakers, and everyone knew it was death to venture Topside. Might be better to take the blade in the gut. Faster, anyway.

But he couldn’t summon the courage to speak those words. Instead, others came out. “I’ll go, if I can beg one favor.”

“You’re in no position to bargain with me,” Silk snapped. “I don’t have time for this.”

She didn’t; it was true. The survivors had to clean up the bodies before plague set in. Dead meat attracted bad things. If they didn’t act fast, the enclave would be swarming with Freaks. That might happen anyway, if the smell got to the monsters and drove them to frenzy.

“Let me find Thimble to say good-bye. We were brat-mates.” That wasn’t the whole reason, of course. He meant to ask her to watch over Boy23 for him, but Silk wouldn’t get why. Farewell, she understood.

“Fine. Locate her and say what’s needed. You’d be given time to collect your personal items under normal circumstances anyway.”

Stone squared his shoulders, grateful he would be permitted this much. Living would be hard anyway, after the things he had done. Breeders gave life and preserved it; they didn’t kill.

“Wait.” She seemed to reconsider, taking stock of the ruined common area. “Look, I’m the last elder. Which means I’m in charge. And I didn’t always agree with how they ran things.”

They, meaning Copper, Whitewall, and the Wordkeeper? He waited to for her to go on.

“If you swear your loyalty, the enclave could use you. I’ll do the elections like Twist wanted and everything, though rebuilding has to be my priority. Frankly, right now, we don’t have the numbers left for me to send people Topside for the sake of old traditions.”

“I swear,” he said hoarsely. “I won’t fight you. I won’t plot anything.”

“Then find Thimble. Do a headcount and let me know how many people made it.”

“Including brats?”

“Yes.” With that, she turned to her remaining Hunters and snapped terse instructions regarding cleanup, but Stone didn’t wait to hear more.

He threw down the knife and sprinted with ever-increasing speed, hurdling bodies and smoldering piles of refuse. The neat organization of their enclave had vanished in a few, devastating hours. It would take weeks to restore order. When he passed Twist’s broken body, he paused. You got what you wanted, I guess, even if you didn’t live to see it. You changed things.

With each moment that he failed to find Boy23 or Thimble, his heart pressed up into his throat. It felt like it would split into two meaty pieces and come up in a hot gush of sickness, worsened by the stench of the dead and dying. This place no longer felt like home; there was no safety. Just wreckage.

If they’re gone, I will be too. I can’t survive this without them.

Then he came at last to the brat dorm, where he spotted movement within a makeshift shelter deep in the shadows. Stone flew across that distance, hardly daring to hope. When he opened the curtain and found Thimble there, safe and whole, surrounded by brats, he smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. He’s there, my little Boy23. She saved him. Oh, Thimble.

He dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around all of them. He might never let go.

Chapter 3

At first, relief wouldn’t let Thimble speak.

She clung to Stone, inhaling the smoky scent of him. He trembled against her, his heart hammering like it would pound through his chest and into hers. He touched her as he never had, his hands on her hair, her back, not casual touches, but fierce ones, like he couldn’t believe she’d survived, like it meant everything.

Don’t read into this, she told herself. You’re friends. Brat-mates. Nothing else is permissible between a Breeder and a Builder.

“How did you find him?” he asked, when he sat back, a hand resting on a brat’s head.

Thimble took a closer look and realized belatedly this was the Stone’s own brat. She should confess it had been accidental—that she hadn’t saved him through any special skill or effort. But she couldn’t lose the look in his eyes.

“Just luck,” she murmured.

“Thank you.” He pressed a kiss to the top of the brat’s head, and the boy went into his arms, nestling against Stone’s side as she’d seen so often. “I’m supposed to find out how many citizens made it and report back to Silk. Will you be all right here?”

Thimble scrambled to her feet and nearly fell when her ankle turned. He caught her as he’d done before, and her cheeks burned. She didn’t want to be weak and imperfect in his eyes.

“She’s in charge now, I take it?” She didn’t wait for confirmation.

Quickly, Thimble counted the brats, who whimpered with fear and hunger. They hadn’t been able to finish their meals. No bells tolled the time any longer, but it had been a while. But maybe all the food hadn’t been ruined. Cold, charred meat was better than nothing.

“Would you watch him for me?” Stone asked.

She took the brat without hesitation; the little one mattered to her friend, so she’d do her best. “I don’t know how safe it is,” he added quietly. “I’ll look for you later.”

She nodded. “I’ll try to find something for us to eat.”

To her astonishment, he leaned in and kissed her cheek. She’d seen such gestures exchanged between Breeders, who touched each other with a careless, lovely warmth, but Stone had never done more than sling his arm around her shoulders or steady her when she stumbled. With wondering fingers, she touched the warm spot on her skin and watched him stride away into the murky darkness.

“Well.” With some effort, she rallied for the sake of the brats. “Stay together. There must be dinner around here somewhere.”

“Miss Thimble,” a brat said timidly.

“Yes?”

“Why did the world end?”

It wasn’t a question about Topside; she realized that much. So he wanted to know about the recent fighting. Impossible to explain such things someone so young.

But she tried as she picked a careful path through the wreckage. “The elders had rules that weren’t fair. They punished people who didn’t do anything bad. Some other people got angry and wanted the elders to stop, but they wouldn’t, and so they fought.”

“Who won?” a girl piped.

“Nobody,” Thimble said softly.

“Everything’s broken and dirty and we didn’t get any breakfast,” another brat put in.

She couldn’t remember their numbers. That wasn’t uncommon in the enclave. Only fellow brat-mates bothered to learn the numerical designations for everyone in their dorm. To everyone else, the brats were underfoot and interchangeable, unless they proved strong enough to earn a name. Today, that saddened her.

The tallest brat asked, “Who will take care of us?”

“I will,” she replied.

“But you’re a Builder.”

“Once things are back to normal, the Breeders will take over.” If enough of them survived. “But until then, you’re with me.”

“Thank you.” The brat holding her free hand squeezed it.

Stone’s brat wrapped an arm around her neck and put his head on her shoulder. A dirty thumb went into his mouth. An odd softness radiated through her at the way he nestled there, such perfect trust. This brat was part of the boy she—well, her friend, Stone.

She spoke with more confidence than she felt. “Come on.”

Thimble averted her eyes from the worst of the carnage, guiding her charges away from the deceased. But one girl stood fast, her face sick and pale as she stared at a fallen female.

After endless moments, she lifted damp eyes in a thin and dirty face. “That was my dam. I wasn’t supposed to know, but she gave me extra meat at meals.”

Thimble would have felt better if the brat had cried, but the girl swallowed her tears like gravel and her gaze went flat and still, fixed on nothing in particular. She didn’t stare at the dead Breeder anymore. With a choked reassurance that even she didn’t believe, Thimble went on toward the kitchen area where the conflict had started. She found offal, blood, chunks of flesh, severed limbs, and corpses already attracting flies. The stench stole her breath.

We can’t eat in here.

“There must be stores somewhere,” she said aloud.

The brat who had asked about their welfare suggested, “The fish pools?”

“Let’s go see.”

Please let them be intact.

She moved as fast her bad foot could carry her. The fish pools were forbidden to any but Copper and Whitewall, but at this point the old rules didn’t matter. The brats constituted slim hope for the future, and she had to provide for them. To her vast relief, the dim tunnel where the forebears had broken holes in the rock remained untouched. No dead littered this part of the enclave; the fighting hadn’t spread this deep.