“Lumi,” Nazirah says, strangely calm. “You have to get out, now.”
“I won’t leave you!”
They’re running out of time. Lumi stands, glancing nervously at the door. “Lumi, go!” Nazirah cries, voice cracking. “We can’t defend ourselves with just one knife between us!” She hands Lumi the bloody dagger. “Find a train to Krush and warn everyone. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“Fuck your promises!” Lumi sobs, embracing her tightly. Their faces mirror blood smears. The footsteps are right outside now.
“Leave!”
“Thank you,” Lumi whispers. “Don’t let them break you.”
“I won’t,” she says softly. They exchange one final glance before Lumi hops off the ledge, down and out of sight. Nazirah is quite certain they will never see each other again. Lumi is gone for mere seconds before the compartment door slides open, revealing Grum wielding a pistol.
The look of total shock on Grum’s face is almost comical. He stalks around the compartment, taking in the massacre, kicking over a pile of logs. “Fucking Deathlanders,” he scoffs, toeing Ramses’ body. “Never trust one to get the job done right.” Grum bends down, running two scarred fingers along Ramses’ neck. Raising his hand, he watches the blood drip to the floor in morbid fascination. He grins up at her and Nazirah resists the urge to vomit. “Is this your work, Nation? Never knew you had it in you.”
“I seem to surprise you a lot,” she says, staring forward, unable to look at what she’s done.
Grum pats her down roughly. He takes longer than necessary, making sure to cop a feel here and there. Pulling out a key from his pocket, Grum unlocks the cuff from the pole, quickly handcuffing both of Nazirah’s hands behind her back. “That was my fault,” he says, “for letting you catch me off guard.” He pushes her forward towards the door. “Not because you have any fighting ability, get that straight.”
“Ramses might disagree,” Nazirah says, sounding braver than she feels.
He grips her hard. “In any case,” he growls, “I won’t be making that mistake again.” Grum recounts the bodies. Nazirah stares sadly at Taj, slumped on the floor, before she gets shoved out of the compartment. “Where’s Grigori, Nation? Did she leave you here to rot so she could make it home to her boyfriend? I doubt she’ll get far.”
Nazirah ignores him. “You were the one who leaked our trip to the slums?”
“Of course I did.” Grum chuckles behind her as they walk towards the front of the train. “Right before I left for Osen, I overheard a call between the Commander and Slome. It would have been rude to keep information like that all to myself.” He presses the pistol into Nazirah’s back. “I was very lucky,” Grum continues. “The Chancellor was getting a tad impatient before that. Your brother would never willingly tell me anything confidential. He doesn’t quite like me much … can’t imagine why.”
“Your plan backfired,” Nazirah hisses. “If anything, that fire made us stronger!”
“Even the best laid plans can go to shit,” he snaps. They’re in the first compartment now, near the train’s entrance. Nazirah hears muffled voices outside the door. “Like yesterday, for example. We waited weeks until we could safely get you, planned on kidnapping you after the bonfire. But we had to wait all night long.” He whispers in her ear. “It’s a pity the Chancellor forbade me from going after Morgen. I would have loved to join in on the fun last night.”
“Go to hell.”
Grum whirls Nazirah around so they face each other. His thick keloid bulges, knotted veins bursting in anger. “I’ve been there,” he growls, pointing at his scarred face. “I’m not anxious to return.”
He grabs Nazirah by the collar, kicking the door open and hauling her outside. She’s momentarily blinded by the bright lights, the cameras shuttering and flashing. The large crowd hisses and jeers, throwing stones. Nazirah holds a bloody hand up, shielding her face. Grum leads her off the train platform, sea of onlookers parting before them. A mother protects her young daughter. Someone screams. They stare at Nazirah like she is a caged animal, untamable, wild and dangerous. Everyone here knows her face, just like everywhere else in Renatus. But here, Nazirah is not the ally. She is not even the intermix.
She is the enemy.
Petite and filthy, completely terrified, Nazirah scares these Medis to the bone. She wants to scream at them! Can’t they see? They have all the power! And she has none! But as Grum drags her outside, into the smog and gasps and sobs, Nazirah isn’t so sure that’s true.
Perhaps isn’t true at all.
Nazirah hisses at one of them, a little boy, just to see his reaction, just to feel the control. He bursts into tears. Several onlookers step back. She feels disgusted with herself. This boy can’t be older than Cayu, than Caria. Nazirah turns to apologize, but Grum shoves her into the backseat of a police vehicle, a waiting motorcade of blaring sirens and horns. None of this is right. She can’t become the monster they believe her to be. Nazirah thinks of Ramses, lying in a pool of his own blood. She thinks of the moment when she slit his throat … that devastating satisfaction she felt.
She wonders if she’s too late.
Nazirah sits uncomfortably on the edge of her seat, fighting amazement as they ride through Mediah. A network of bullet trains and skyways paint the horizon. Fluorescent streets wind around the capital, stacked vertically and slicing through buildings. Cars jet across them, drivers indifferent to their doom, should they misjudge a turn and careen over an edge.
Shoppers flood the streets on every level, weighed down by bags and consumer addictions. Captured intermix are chained to storefront window displays, modeling clothes ironically, starvation chic. Many of them are being flogged.
Spectators abound and laugh. Children lick ice cream from dripping cones. Nazirah’s body jerks with every crack of the lashes, like she is under the whips herself. Steel and glass skytowers ascend through rock, air, smog, and cloud. Nazirah cranes her neck, unable to see where they end. When Nazirah was a child, she built sandcastles she thought could touch the heavens. And the Medis nearly did it.
But they are no closer to the gods.
“Disgusting, aren’t they?” Grum asks, as though reading her thoughts. “These parasites.”
“Parasites?”
“Listen up, Nation,” he says. “Because this is something no history book will ever teach you. Mediah is a ruse, a distraction designed to keep Medis entertained, fat and complacent on glut and lust and greed.”
“A ruse to hide what?”
“Look around and guess for yourself,” he answers. “It’s not hard to figure out.”
Nazirah does. All she sees are the flashing lights, the glitter and hyperintense color. But then, Nazirah realizes. It’s not what she sees, but what she does not see. Trees, wildlife, vegetation, water. “Life here isn’t sustainable,” she says.
“Completely obvious,” Grum agrees. “But still, no one really gets it.” He leans closer, inches away from her face. The stench of his rancid breath suffocates her. “The Medis hate intermix, Nation. Tell me why.”
Nazirah shrugs. “Because they forbid interracial breeding.”
“Why?”
“Because they want to maintain racial purity.”
“Wrong.”
“Because we threaten them.”
“You’re getting there.”
“I don’t understand where you’re going with this,” she snaps.
“Color me shocked,” he retorts. “The Medis, as a race, are dying! It may take a while, but they are dying nonetheless. They have no immunity to disease anymore, or famine, or hardship. Centuries of self-prescribed inbreeding have sullied their chromosomes, leaving them stale and fragile. Haven’t you ever wondered why their MEDIcine program is booming? Why they are all drug addicts and pill poppers?”
“What does that have to do with intermix?”
“Everything!” he cries passionately. “We are everything they are not! Everything they could never be! Do you think the majority of Medis could ever survive the slums, the Deathlands? Half of them would be dead within a week! Our genes are dominant, not theirs! Even in the most turbulent situations, intermix thrive. The Medis leech off our resources, suckling the teat of self-righteousness. They condemn and slaughter us, only to study our genetics! They isolate themselves in their homogenous skytowers … city … lives … all to hide from the simple truth that would collapse their entire dogma. Despite their purity, they are weak. And because of our impurity, we are strong.”