Page 56 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“It’s our bar. The main one in the compound.” She stuffed a crinkling paper bag into her backpack and threw it over her shoulder, muttering about her sweaty back. “And the shows, well, you’ll have to see for yourself. I don’t want to take away the surprise. Please say you’ll come.Pleeeeeease. Everybody will be there, and I think you’ll like it. It’s a special occasion. I have so many things to finish in the next five days that I don’t know where to start.”

Five days.

I hadn’t planned to stay even for today. Gedeon would be back tomorrow and, somehow, I’d managed to stay free of Zion so far. Luck had teased me with its presence for longer than usual, and I knew it was a question of time before it drifted away.

I had to go back to the city. I couldn’t spend my days shopping and chatting, carefree and floating with the day’s pace. I couldn’t patiently wait for the fight we’d bring to Ilasall. I had to take it there myself. And I had a plan, a way to wipe out the higher-ups.

Except I’d kind of begun to want more.

And fighting with a group would be easier than by myself. We could do more. We could demolish the entire city instead of a dozen people in charge. I had ended up here against my will, but since when had my body mattered? So what if I used it to get what I wanted? It wouldn’t be the first time. And if I had Gedeonand Zion in my pocket, maybe I could get them to speed up their plans.

But that meant Alora and the rest would suffer while I lived in comfort.

I hid my fists in the pockets of my sweaty sweatpants and shoved the traitorous feelings of staying deep down as we strode along the sidewalk, as close to the buildings as possible, using the thin strip of shade as our shield against the sunlight baking us.

“Hey!” A young woman waved from the other side of the street. She shot quick glances to both sides and trudged over to us. Half of her blonde locks spilled from the loose bun atop her head, and her round belly peeked out from under the too-short, yellow t-shirt.

“Brea! How’s the baby?” Jayla hugged the heavily pregnant woman. Brea placed Jayla’s hands on her round belly, and Jayla beamed. “It kicked! I felt it! It’ssoooweird. Again! It kicked again! Holy shit. I can’t believe it.” She rocked on her heels, her excitement palpable.

I awkwardly hovered a few feet away, pretending not to listen to their conversation about the pregnancy, someone named Ali, and how they should meet next week so Jayla could tell her how the show at Vice had gone.

Definitely not intruding.

They exchanged goodbyes and Brea crossed the street, back to where she had originally emerged from.

Which made me wonder.

“Where are all the children?” I hadn’t seen any so far, and kids were the key to the survival of humankind.

“At schools. But they are on the other side of the compound from here and they’re teaching classes right now.” Jayla hooked an arm around my elbow and steered us left at yet another streetcorner. After suffering through the last two hours and endless turns, I was trotting alongside her like an obedient puppy.

“You have schools?” It couldn’t be. How could they smuggle citizens out of Ilasall, have no fertility measures in place, but have operational schools?

“Yes. Obviously, we don’t differentiate children based on their fertility, as we don’t test it. Here, we don’t base education on the status of your reproductive system. Also, some kids live at the schools, some with their families, so it’s kind of a whatever works situation.”

But if they didn’t run the tests, then how did they know who could grow their numbers, who had to be protected at all costs, like in the city, and who were expendable?

“How do you know if they’re fertile or not if you don’t test it?”

Jayla shrugged. “No one cares. It’s not like we have any fertility suppressants you could take. You get pregnant, you survive, you don’t get pregnant, then you don’t. We don’t really care about it. How does it feel when no one can tell what color you are?”

“What?”

She indicated my wrist. I’d been instinctively searching for the usual wristband I’d wear in the city like all dutiful citizens.

“I thought it was impossible to take off the wristbands. I’ve tried it once and almost electrocuted myself.”

“Not anymore. Sadira’s team figured it out and now we can easily remove them. It used to be difficult before since the green ones have trackers in them and it would set off an alarm if brought outside the city walls. Those days were messy,” she said as we navigated the labyrinth of streets, the withering grass peeking through the cracks in the roads as thirsty as us. My sweat plastered the white t-shirt to my back, and I dreamed of taking a dip in that giant bathtub back in my bedroom.

Tugging the cotton fabric away from my back, I asked, “How did you end up here? The compound, I mean.”

She sighed through her nose. “Originally, I’m from Ardaton. I wore the black band in the city, but you know that doesn’t mean you get to live a free life. You sell whatever you can, and one time, I sold too much. I couldn’t walk for a week. I could barely crawl to the bathroom from the pain. It was my fault because they warned me about what they’d do to me, a courtesy of sorts, and I still agreed. And no, it wasn’t only men. The women can be just as cruel, if not more. I think you’re as familiar with that as me.” She scratched the back of her head, right beneath the ponytail of her fiery hair, and tugged down her cropped, sleeveless, vivid red top. “I ran into Damia’s contacts in a grocery store a few weeks later and they helped me to get out. I couldn’t stand living near Ardaton. I could feel its walls trapping me even from afar, so I relocated here. Figured if Eislyn could make a life here, so could I.”

Without second-guessing the impulse, I pulled Jayla into an embrace and stiffened, not sure what to do. Awkwardness quickened my pulse. Hugs weren’t a part of my life. Not since my childhood years, not since Alora’s and my separation.

Hesitant at first, Jayla tightened her arms around me, and my rigidity dissipated. We held each other in the street full of colorfully dressed people, in the compound with no restrictions on freedom, in the continent where a place existed to live as you wished.

“Thank you,” Jayla murmured. “But my story is nothing compared to others.”