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NESS
I’m staying alive by posing as dead men.
One man was telekinetically shoved so hard into a wall that his neck snapped. I wore his puffy cheeks and shock white hair while limping past a trio hunting for me. I found another dead on the floor, strangled by his own stretched-out, supple arms, which coiled around his throat like a snake. I imagined his face not being so purple as I morphed into him to climb the stairs undetected. For the past ten minutes, I’ve been walking around as someone with thick eyebrows and a face shaped like a teardrop—before he was burnt unrecognizably by a wounded woman with electric hands.
&n
bsp; No disguise is safe for too long in the Bounds. I either run the risk of bumping into someone who knows the person I’m impersonating or drawing suspicion for being unrecognizable. Maintaining someone’s features I captured at a quick glance is growing more difficult as I keep face-swapping under the stresses of being literally hunted by unleashed convicts.
I find my way into a small room with sterile white floors and four octagonal cells with plexiglass walls. This is one of the rooms they use for holding when creating effective containment for new inmates. When Bishop gave me and the Senator a tour years ago there were security guards monitoring all of the celestials, using these special tablets that could manipulate the conditions if the celestial was acting out. There’s no one for the guards to supervise at the moment, which makes me wonder if they’ve been freed too so they can join the hunt.
For once, I have some peace to catch my breath.
I glow gray.
It shouldn’t feel like such a relief to be myself again, but not using my power is exactly that.
I pick up one of those tablets, scrolling through the features: temperature adjustments as high as one hundred and fifty degrees and as low as negative fifty, electrification between one hundred and three hundred volts, air decompression, and toxic gasses. I don’t know a single gleamcrafter that could survive all of these.
The prison system has always been flawed, even during my ignorant days of fantasizing with the Senator about how I would punish the celestial who killed my mother. The procedures in the Bounds are so inhumane because the architects and guards simply don’t see celestials and specters as humans. The Senator’s supporters don’t care, especially as Bishop keeps masking this disturbing reality as dominance and security.
If not Sunstar, maybe someone else will end this cruelty.
I’m not counting on it.
The door behind me bangs open, and I quickly morph back into the man with the teardrop face. Two women are too distracted fighting to notice me. I hang around long enough to see one breathe ice onto the other’s swinging fists, freezing and shattering them with one slam into the wall. The woman’s agonized scream follows me out back into the hall, and if I live long enough, her face will haunt my nightmares.
I run up the stairs, straight into more barbaric chaos.
I keep changing, gray light after gray light after gray light.
I round a corner and bump straight into someone with a firm back. I hope he doesn’t think I’m trying to start a fight. Then he turns and my heart races.
Stanton.
His dark green veins are popping more than usual through his pale skin. This is the weakest I’ve ever seen him—underfed, bruised, scarred across his face and arms. He shoves me to the floor, staring down at me with his furious yellow eyes. He sees nothing but a red-haired white man with a scar on his neck and I hope it stays that way.
“Watch where you’re going,” Stanton says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. A sign of weakness.
He’s walking off, dismissing a pathetic soul who isn’t worth his time when he sniffs the air. He stares at me menacingly as people fight behind him. “You can change your face, Ness, but you can’t change your scent.”
There’s no point denying the facts. But making some up could help. “The Spell Walkers got me thrown in here,” I lie. “Luna too. We got to find her; she can’t defend herself. I think she’s in solitary confinement.”
“Your heart is racing,” Stanton says.
“I have an entire prison hunting me. Didn’t you hear?”
“Your heart is racing because you’re a liar,” Stanton says.
The ice-breathing celestial from the holding room appears and I point at Stanton and shout, “That’s Eduardo Iron!” Her eyes immediately glow like snowflakes made of stars and her cold breath freezes Stanton’s feet to the floor.
I get up and run, shoving people out of the way, knowing that won’t hold Stanton for long. I keep an eye out for anything that could mask my scent, willing to douse myself in gasoline if it could throw Stanton off. I time my morphs in the seconds between brawls I pass, and even if I’ve caught more attention from other inmates, I trust I can fool them quickly in the way I can’t this basilisk specter. That’s only if I have the will to keep changing. I’m nearly out of breath and my wound is bleeding, and if my life is almost over, then I should die as me.
Fear drives me forward as I turn to find Stanton snapping the neck of someone in his way. He’s pursuing me like a basilisk set free from a cage. I don’t deserve the vicious end that he would give me. I look ahead and dark smoke is coming up from the balcony. I’m nervous running through it, thinking it might be some toxic power, but it gives me some great cover. I cough my way through, seeing a fire on the next level down.
The flames are gold and gray.
