Meanwhile, in Shay's head:
((Takes place after the fight with Dr. Light.))
The door burst off its hinges, with a sharp crack like splintering bone. The air was sharp with anticipation and fear and the smell of sweat. His hands were tight on her shoulders, fighting her powerful instinct to run. He held her in front of him, a living shield against the invading wingmen.
But she was too small to be much of a shield. His body jerked as the guns found their mark above her head.
His hands on her shoulders. Tension and release and then he was dead, Shindat was dead and where in the world was she going to get food now? Not that that mattered because the wingmen with their helmets and guns were probably going to kill her. Shindat had taken away the gun she found on the body of a man who’d overdosed in the street. You’d just as soon shoot me, little whelp, he’d said. Smack.
Frozen in that moment of panic, she looked at the bloody flesh that used to be Shindat and was overtaken by blind, instinctive memory. Each moment was split in two. Shindat singing a ghetto lullaby; Shindat’s voice, ripped from his throat as the guns took apart his chest. Shindat smacking her face; Shindat’s hands gripping her shoulders.
Death is everywhere here. The streets are filled with it. It crowds the gutters and makes those little scratching noises in the walls. Her awareness of its presence has been all that kept it at bay. If you kept thinking about it, it would be satisfied. It would leave you alone. But as soon as it thought you weren’t watching, it could swoop in like those manhawks and catch you on one of their spears. Skin you alive and sew your face into a mask just like they did. Leave your body there, muscle and bone and tissue exposed, for people like her to pick over for food or money or weapons.
She memorized the haunted look in the eyes of the ensign with the smoking gun. (Years later she would learn his name. She would track him down. She would get to know him. She would come to trust him. Years later, she would call him Peacock and he would be her mate.) Something about his reluctance made her stare.
And without fully understanding why, she cried.
The door burst off its hinges, with a sharp crack like splintering bone. The air was sharp with anticipation and fear and the smell of sweat. His hands were tight on her shoulders, fighting her powerful instinct to run. He held her in front of him, a living shield against the invading wingmen.
But she was too small to be much of a shield. His body jerked as the guns found their mark above her head.
His hands on her shoulders. Tension and release and then he was dead, Shindat was dead and where in the world was she going to get food now? Not that that mattered because the wingmen with their helmets and guns were probably going to kill her. Shindat had taken away the gun she found on the body of a man who’d overdosed in the street. You’d just as soon shoot me, little whelp, he’d said. Smack.
Frozen in that moment of panic, she looked at the bloody flesh that used to be Shindat and was overtaken by blind, instinctive memory. Each moment was split in two. Shindat singing a ghetto lullaby; Shindat’s voice, ripped from his throat as the guns took apart his chest. Shindat smacking her face; Shindat’s hands gripping her shoulders.
Death is everywhere here. The streets are filled with it. It crowds the gutters and makes those little scratching noises in the walls. Her awareness of its presence has been all that kept it at bay. If you kept thinking about it, it would be satisfied. It would leave you alone. But as soon as it thought you weren’t watching, it could swoop in like those manhawks and catch you on one of their spears. Skin you alive and sew your face into a mask just like they did. Leave your body there, muscle and bone and tissue exposed, for people like her to pick over for food or money or weapons.
She memorized the haunted look in the eyes of the ensign with the smoking gun. (Years later she would learn his name. She would track him down. She would get to know him. She would come to trust him. Years later, she would call him Peacock and he would be her mate.) Something about his reluctance made her stare.
And without fully understanding why, she cried.