I climbed up on the roof ledge, looking down at the City of the Dead. Whatever my parents had intended, this was my city now.
Ridley was swirling in circles above me with a hurry-up expression in her eyes. Smiling at her, I threw back my poncho and extended my wings, almost groaning with pleasure at finally being able to stretch them out. The constant ache between my shoulder blades released with them. Tip to tip, they were almost four meters across, but I might grow some more.
I jumped off the roof and felt my wings fill with air. As always it was an amazing feeling—the feeling of being free and strong in a city where no one wanted you to be. Laughing, I swooped away from where the men struggled on the stairway, far below me. They might give up; they might make it to the roof to find that I was somehow just gone. They might assume that like so many others, I’d taken a long, last leap down to the pavement below. Anyway, I never needed to think about them again. I rose above the greasy mix of fog and clouds that blotted out the moon, breathing in cold, clean air. Ridley looped in big arcs around me as if I were slowing her down.
“Get stuffed, Ridley!” I yelled, laughing to feel so free above the City of the Dead. Even if it was just for a little while.
CHAPTER 7
I soared upward, moving my wings strongly, feeling their power as I worked out the kinks I got from keeping them hidden all day. This was—just so great. It was cool and dry and quiet up here. Down below was always warmish, always wettish, noisy, crowded, dangerous. Everything below was old and rotting; everything above fresh and new.
But up here—no one up here but us birds.
I flew higher and higher until the air thinned and it became harder to breathe. From up here I could barely see the City of the Dead—it was hidden by the ever-present mucky clouds. I couldn’t see anything else, either. For a good twenty, thirty kilometers, I saw land—bare, rocky, treeless land. No other cities, no other lights, no other clumps of clouds where another city might be hidden beneath. No escape.
Ridley matched me stroke for stroke, obviously enjoying stretching her wings, too. I called to her, “Better be getting home. The kids’ll be getting hungry.”
As if we were connected by a string, we coasted in a huge circle, curving downward. We closed our eyes as we went through the clouds, then saw that we were over the factory that made dope for the Opes. There was a line of them waiting now outside the door, but it was too late for them to get anything tonight. They would camp until morning, a long line of huddled, miserable people who would stand through falling rain, pelting snow, or blistering heat. Anything to get their next fix.
We headed north to the McCallum Complex. It was big, covering several city blocks and surrounded by three-and-a-half-meter cinder-block walls topped by razor wire. Which was nothing to me, of course. Ridley flitted down to clamp her talons around a streetlight—I usually didn’t take her indoors.
The McCallum Complex had even more vidscreens than the city did—everywhere I looked, he was onscreen, smiling or angry or teasing or silly. I didn’t know why he was everywhere, I didn’t know why his name was on everything—McCallum Incarceration, McCallum Laboratories, McCallum Children’s Home.
I waited till the yard outside the Children’s Home was empty, then gently let my wings slow till I came down in the deep shadows behind the trash dumpsters. Sighing, I folded them, hot from exercise, back under my poncho.
Even before I got to the double glass doors, the kids had pushed them open and were running to me.
“Hawk!” “Hawk!” “Hawk!”
“Hey, hey, hey, wait a sec,” I commanded, unhooking hands from my backpack. “This is it, and we have to share it. Let’s get inside.” These were the people I lived with. Not so much my friends as my kids. I was the only one of them who could leave, who could bring back food. I was the only one whose experiment had worked.
My wings. I’d guessed I was either a genetic freak, or that I’d been experimented on, had wings grafted on. It was probably why my parents had dumped me here. Who’d want a freak for a kid? Anyway, my wings worked great, and I was glad to have them. Some of the kids, my fellow lab rats, hadn’t been so lucky.
“Okay, Clete, this is for you,” I said, divvying up the bits of food I’d snagged during the day. Clete came forward slowly and awkwardly—in the last two years, he’d suddenly grown three-quarters of a meter and was now about two meters tall. Too bad his weight hadn’t kept up with him. He looked like a tall, camel-colored drinking straw.
He was my age but seemed younger and had come here when he was still an Ope. I’d seen him OD and almost die at least twice. Now, though, he was pretty okay. I mean, okay for him. I don’t know if the dope did it to him or if he was born that way, but he sort of had trouble dealing with people. Even us, sometimes. We’d all learned not to sneak up on him and to be patient while he talked because he had trouble getting words out sometimes. He got upset super easily and just wanted things to be the same all the time. On the other hand, you could give him any two numbers, no matter how big, and he could multiply them or subtract them or anything, like lightning. He knew how computers worked, more than any of us. He read stuff, like news and science books. “Thanks,” he said, shuffling off to eat it.
I looked at Moke, the only lab rat who was older than me. “He okay today?” I murmured, making sure Clete couldn’t hear.
Moke nodded and took the food I held out. Most people are shorter than me, but Moke and I saw eye to eye (and Clete was twelve centimeters taller). “Or as okay as that freak can be,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. Clete looked up but kept eating, slurping a bit.
Moke was pretty normal; he’d never been an Ope, and he didn’t have wings or anything else. It’s just—he was bluish. His skin was sort of blue, his hair sort of a dark brown-blue, the whites of his eyes were the blues of his eyes—you get the picture. Something about them trying to meld his DNA with silver? The metal? Why? Who would think that was a good idea? A moron! Anyway, Moke was kind of blue. So him calling Clete a freak was lame, at best.
Rain smiled one of her fast, distant smiles, holding out her hands. “We already ate in the cafeteria,” she said, pulling back so my hand wouldn’t touch hers. “It was gross.”
“Duh,” I said, and deliberately took her arm, sliding my hand down until I clasped hers firmly. Rain cringed as if it caused her pain. “Rain,” I said, and waited until her brown eyes looked into my black ones. “You are beautiful,” I said, and she jerked her hand away.
“Stop it,” she muttered, and grabbed her portion of my take. Stalking to one corner of the room, she sat with her back to me and everyone else.
I did think Rain was beautiful. She just—looked like rain. Once Clete had mumbled something about her getting caught outside in acid rain, but I didn’t know the whole story. She had puffy hair almost as dark as mine and dark skin that looked like a watercolor picture that had gotten rained on—kind of melty. There were long drips in some places and spots and flecks. She’d broken the only mirror we’d had and usually wore a gray hoodie pulled low over her face.
“Hi, Hawk,” Calypso said cheerfully, sitting on the table next to me.
“Hey, sweetie,” I said, and split the last of the food with her.