11 Fluke

Perhaps it had been my own mistake to expect more, something along the lines of base 'hospitality'. Perhaps the lines of that 'base hospitality' included a small meal, some water, or hell, just a chance to lie down and get some sleep, but I had to be honest with myself. Who am I kidding?

Even as Danev was undoing my ropes, I don't believe I had yet obtained an understanding of just what he had said. You're a Hornet now, were the words that had come out of his mouth, but the words that had entered my ears had been something else entirely, if anything at all. All I was capable of recognizing was that the ropes around my wrist were suddenly not as tight as they'd been before, in fact, gone entirely. All I was capable of understanding was that my upper body was no longer being suspended from the wall on account of ropes tethered to my wrists. All I was capable of perceiving, upon exiting the room that had been my cell, for spirits knew how long, was a blinding glow of the sun as it made its presence known to me once more after being without it for what'd felt like weeks, but in reality, had been no more than a day.

Nothing made sense to me in those moments, only that I was being dragged out of the stone box that'd been home for the last day, my eyes now having no option to look away, no choice but to meet the full brunt of the sun, too powerful for even shut eyes to expel.

Looking back on it now, I thought to myself, I really should have asked more. All I had really been focusing on was the fact that I wasn't going to die, and, in those moments, it'd been enough for me. Now, I felt absolutely lost, unsure of what my view of survival was, of what the future had in store for me, only that I was now a lookout for the Hornets.

It was a Hornet safe house, my first instinct to question if this was one I'd known about before, but no, nothing about it seemed familiar. The surrounding alleyways, the streets they connected to, those sure, but this structure itself, a defunct fabric shop, I'd never known to have been a Hornet stash house. Then again, I couldn't be too hard on myself. It was cozily tucked within one of the slums' more unpopular alleyways, not much activity ever really being attributed to it.

I almost found myself not even recognizing the alleyway, though I did have the fortune, or, rather, misfortune to have found the opposite to be true with the supposed 'muscle' of this stash house. I recognized them first by voice when Danev had hauled me over to get me situated to my new station. I already knew I was in for a hard time when Danev hadn't needed to make introductions. They knew who I was, and I knew who they were, the man, Saku, and the woman, if even she could be described as such by her appearance and disposition, referred only to by "Queenbee" for reasons that, thanks to me, now were known quite popularly across the slums.

Yeah, I thought to myself. This isn't going to be good.

"You caught that fuck and let him live?" I overheard her asking Danev as I was being dropped off and put in her custody like a child to daycare.

"You know he has value, Bee" So it's 'Bee' now, at least among the Hornets. Guess the queen lost her crown. "We took Rulih off of watch. We need the extra pair of eyes.

"I'd much rather his pulled from his fucking head." Now that was an image. She turned back to Danev, incredulous as to what he was suggesting. "Come on, Danev. This is a fucking joke, right?"

"I'm afraid not." Something in the way he said it, he wasn't trying to make it seem as though he was sharing in her frustration, perhaps a way of saving face, but, more than that, he was standing his ground, sticking by what he said.

"So you're telling me that Riu's fine with this?"

"Who do you think ordered it?"

She wasn't letting up, in spite of hearing that my presence here, apparently, came from the top. I wasn't sure if I was meant to think of it as an honor, or something to be terrified of. The latter was far more likely. They wouldn't be taking chances with me, that was certain. If I showed the slightest sign of slipping, trying to escape, they'd kill me on the spot, I knew that much. If I'm getting out of here, I'll only have one shot. And I need to make it count. Otherwise…

My memory trailed back Peacemakers, their rotting, hanging corpses acting as a feast for the crows as they picked at their remains, long-since having passed, ushering a new era for the slums, one that the Hornets still were trying desperately to hold on to. Needless to say, I'd seen what the Hornets were capable of, and I did not want to find myself on the receiving end any time soon.

"Fine," she spat out. "But if that piece of shit tries something like running, I'm killing him on the spot. That clear to you?"

"Why do you think I'm handing him off to you?" Danev responded in kind, earning a smirk from Queenbee who I think was now staking her bets on me acting up.

One shot, I reminded myself. I won't be getting any more than that.

Danev turned to leave, clearly not having much else to say save for, "I'll be back in the evening to relieve you."

Wait, I realized then, having realized the emptiness felt earlier, but only recalling now what it was. My knife wasn't on me.

"Wait!" I called out to Danev, endeavoring to catch up to him. "Danev!"

It was near the entrance going out into the alleyway, practically empty save a single drunk passed out in the gutter, not exactly somebody to be wary of, that he turned around to face me, eyeing me questioning with what seemed to be a degree of pity now being replaced with annoyance.

"My knife," I said. "Can I have it back?"

Are you kidding me? His eyes seemed to ask, as though appalled by the mere thought of the question. Shit, I scolded myself. Not subtle enough?

"I'll be holding on to that for you," he answered level-headedly, turning back around to end the discussion right there and then, but I persisted.

"I shouldn't be unarmed, right? I'm a Hornet. I should be able to fight any Rats if they try to attack us, right?"

What the fuck are you saying? I could heard my rationality yelling at my desperation, just a voice in the fog of my mind, far from the top of its game given the incapacitation, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. What a pitiable defense.

"You're a lookout," Danev scolded, his calm temperament fading in that moment, and reasonably so. I overstepped. "Not muscle. Just do what you're good at and use your eyes."

"Alright," I answered back. "Fine." I was loathe to leave my knife behind, but I could piece another one together. A shard of sandcrete, a thigh bone thrown over the wall by soldiers eating above, something.

It was as though Danev seemed to know precisely what I was thinking, and so he refrained from turning back to leave just yet, instead bending over to meet me eye to eye, and he spoke. "And I swear to the spirits, Fluke, forget about what you heard back there. I stuck my neck out for you to not have to kill you. If you try anything: stealing, running, squealing, then it won't be Bee that does it. She'll have her fun with you, sure, but you'll be wishing she finished the job. You know I killed Mahin, right? Just before visiting you yesterday, and he was one of us. Imagine what we'll do to you."

So that was the price of what I saw, I realized. Mahin was dead. He was dead because I'd seen him. I hadn't expected the sudden pit in my stomach. Tried convincing myself it was only the hunger, but no, his death was because of what I'd seen. My own policy, not revealing anything to get somebody killed, now out the window. No. I hadn't said anything. He got caught. He messed up. That wasn't on me. But the fact remained that what had happened there had been the cause of Mahin's death, and, soon perhaps, mine too.

"Remember your name, Fluke," he reminded me. "You get lucky once. That's it."

And that's what it came down to. I understood, watching him leave. Right back to the beginning, to the name I'd tried to make my own but always remained out of my realm of control.

But once is all I need.

I forced myself to not let his words get the better of me. I could get out of this. I've gotten out of worse, after all. Why should this be any different?

It was no later that Danev, my only lifeline, was gone, leaving me with one Hornet I had no tie to other than the basest knowledge of him name, and another who likely had more than enough reason to forego Danev's, hell, even Riu's orders just to cut my throat.

Just keep your best behavior, I tried to tell myself. Just do what they tell you to, and don't give them a reason. You'll get your chance."

"Fluke!" I heard Queenbee's, no, Bee's voice call out from behind me. "Fuck are you doing? You're watching for Rats, not our own people!"

Shot back into attention, I spun my head around, grasping for words before answering back, "Right! Yeah!"

I'd been doing this for years, looking, watching, so why should it have felt any different now? It was, in essence, supposed to be the exact same–just perch down somewhere a few dozen yards away from the safehouse, watch the alleyways, look for anything out of the ordinary, and that was it.

So why does it feel so different now?

Perhaps it was on account of the fact I was meant to be looking out for something in particular. Before, it was just whatever caught my notice. Now, it was as though it was more deliberate, looking specifically for, as far as the Hornets were concerned, 'the enemy.'

No. That's not it. Even before, I'd known what to look out, gangs being prime among them. This was no different from that.

I'm just hungry, I considered. Hungry, thirsty, sleepless. But that was as flimsy an answer as the one prior. Years ago though it was, I still remembered the food riots. It had been weeks there without a proper meal, the only food I could scrounge that which the archers atop the walls threw over to try and spare themselves the struggle of following orders and firing upon anybody who came too close. Unless, of course, they were of the variety that enjoyed the target practice, dropping food right by the foot of the great steel monolith they stood atop, playing a game with those desperate enough below to brave the hailstorm of arrows for the potential reward. The food was a game of life and death, the water contaminated by the blood of those who'd lost, sleep a devilish seductress whose submission to would mean never waking again. No, this isn't that.

This of course, left the only logical conclusion that it was that, much as I was watching for others, there were two very distinct pairs of eyes that were looking for me.

In truth, I did consider it–just running. I had a few yards' head start.

I run, turn my corners, slink into side-alleys, crawlspaces. I'm not strong, but I'm fast. I know these streets.

But they know them better.

I feel a hang clasp around my ankle, pulling me out from the crawlspace of a building I'd been hiding beneath.

My one shot.

Bee's glad, I am able to tell. She's happy that I made the attempt, that I tried to run, and she enjoys being the one to kill the person who made her life a living hell. Armed with whatever it is she chances upon, she brings her hands down on me, again, and again, and again until my world goes black.

I shook my head from side to side and forced myself not to think about it, tossing aside that likelihood should I try it. It was still on my mind, of course, the entire scene constructed by an over-imaginative, and over-worried mind. Or perhaps appropriately worried.

I turn my attention back to the alleyway, suddenly paranoid that in my doomful daydreaming, I may have missed a party of Rats passing by who now were laying siege to our safehouse, my failure just as sure to earn me a slow and painful death as trying to run.

Luckily, my paranoia proved to be unwarranted, and the day passed by, the sun's position in the sky refusing to change over the course of the hours that passed, or, at least seemed to.

It was an agonizing burn, waiting from one minute to next, feeling their eyes on the back of my neck while still forcing myself to look forward for fear of shirking my responsibilities. So on guard I was that I nearly found myself jumping out of my skin the moment I felt a single finger poke me in my back, thinking that was it, that I'd messed up, somehow they'd gotten around me, and I was done for.

Finding it to be Bee behind me did little to alleviate my fears, until I noticed that it wasn't a knife in her other hand, but a loaf of bread. Fucking finally, I felt to myself, hardly minding at all as she tossed it onto the ground in front of me with a dissatisfied grumble for herself, me not exactly imagining that feeding me was her idea.

If even it could be called feeding.

I wasn't a picky eater. One couldn't be such in Taisho, but this, I came to observe, picking up the stale, maggot-infested, moldy piece of black bread, was not food. Frankly, I had little doubt that it would hurt me more than help.

"Aw come on?" I asked Bee, deciding to push my luck. I wouldn't have under different circumstances, but now , not having eaten in days, only kept awake by fear rather than the nourishment of food and water, things were different. "You can't do any better than that?"

She had already turned to leave, but the comment seemed to have stopped her in her tracks, much to my fear, but if it meant even a remote chance, I would take it. "What?" she asked coldly, an appropriate shiver rising up my spine, my mind telling me to stop right there, but my body telling me to push. I needed more than this.

"Come on, Bee," I pleaded. "I've got to eat. I'm a Hornet now, right? They feed you guys better tha-"

"Let's get one thing clear," she interrupted, marching back towards me. "And let's get this clear right now. You…are not a Hornet. You're closer to dead right now than ever being one of us. The only reason you're alive is because Riu seems to think your eyes are more useful connected to your head than not, but listen to me, you piece of shit. If you push me any fucking more, I don't care if I have to turn traitor. I'll gut you. Now shut the hell up and eat your bread."

Don't ask. Do not ask.

"What about water?" I asked. "Bee, please. I need to drink."

"Why? You'll just piss it out anyway. You want water so bad, there's probably still some water in the gutter from the rain 3 days ago."

And that was that–my response. You're lucky to be alive, I tried telling myself, but I felt far from lucky, especially as I took one horrific bite after another, endeavoring between not to puke it out. You've eaten…well, you've eaten nearly as bad before. Just push through it.

And damnit, I tried, forcing myself to hold down one bite after another, my brain constantly reminding me, as though trying to reassure myself, just be thankful she didn't kill you.

And if anybody had a reason to want me dead in this city, it was her. I remembered how she'd been before, when, as far as anyone was concerned, she was still a 'he.' Her hair had been somewhat longer, sure, her face a bit prettier than most of us, apparently enough so that even Riu had seen fit to claim her as her own, not that anybody had known that latter detail, but as far as anybody knew, she was no different than any of the other boys in Taisho. She was flat as a board, her voice low, and she certainly didn't serve the role that most 'women' did in Taisho, meaning she wasn't a whore selling her body for every last copper it was worth.

The slums' disposition towards her, however, would not stay that way, no doubt on account of me having been the one to find out she was, in fact, different from the rest. She pissed squatting down, she flirted with Riu, and every month, she bled different from how the rest of us did. The information bought me food for a week from the Rats, and it bought her beatings, having her hair cut from her head, her face beat to a bruise, an end to her status as one of the Hornets' best, and a new life of needing to look around every corner to see if some roving gang of pricks would decide to beat on the 'Hornet's Queenbee."

I hadn't regretted it then. I did what I had to do in order to survive, and I didn't control how others used the information I provided. Had things not been the same with the Hornets after? Sure. Did I have my ways of making it back up to them, telling them about the location of one of the Rats' dens? Yes, I did.

I had my ways of surviving. I would do it again.

I could overhear them talking, Bee and Saku.

"Seems a bit paranoid, having 3 of us for this watch, and 2 shifts too," Saku complained.

"With the Rats we caught sniffing around yesterday? No. Not paranoid. Just a precaution."

"We chased 'em off. They aren't coming back."

"They know we're here. Yes they will. They'll just wait until they think we've forgotten about them."

Another idea, another chance.

The Rats come, I direct them inside, let them pass. They recognize me. Who doesn't? I tell them I want to join them. They know I'm not a Hornet. They let me.

They take this safe house. Food, water, maybe even some medicine if we're lucky, and they thank me for it. I'm safe with them, in the den. It's not freedom as an informant, but it's not living in fear either. It's not death breathing down my back at every moment.

But it is. Not from the Rats, no, but the Hornets are everywhere, and they keep true to their word.

As far as they're concerned, I'm not a Hornet, not a Rat either. I'm a refugee, and a loose end that needs to be cut. The Rats can't keep me in the Den forever. They put me out on the streets, probably a lookout, and the Hornets notice. How can't they?

They find me, drag me into an alley just like last time, but I'm not a prisoner this time, no. I'm a target. They hit me. Fists, rocks, bricks. They stab me. Sandcrete, glass, knives I don't make it out of there alive. It's only a matter of time.

But is it any different here?

The latter half of the day passed no quicker than the former, the sun's descent not at all an indicator of the day's trials being over. Not by a long shot. We went into the night, myself made all the more paranoid by the fact that I could hardly see more than a few yards in front of me, a distant torch lit by a lone shopkeep the only source of light for a good while.

I wondered if Mishi was still open, if he still lit the sconce outside of his store every night not because he was open, but to provide some form of safe refuge away from the night, always attracting the most desperate, sleeping beneath its light for safety and warmth. Relative, at least.

It was only the distant voice I recognized to be that which belonged to Danev that signaled things may have been coming to an end.

"He try running?" I heard the muffle of his voice ask in the distance.

No. I didn't. Tell him I didn't.

"Not yet." Good enough. "But he did complain about the food we gave him. Damnit, Bee! Was that necessary.

"He try stealing more?" No! That, I didn't.

"No," she answered, met with a sigh of relief from myself in seeing she wasn't about to lie to him just to get to me.

"Good. Keep an eye on him. You two can go for the night."

"We got relief?"

"Hmm. Laohi and Chote."

"Chote? Thought his leg was busted."

That natural instinct to take note, to jot it down in my mind, as though the potential of me somehow getting it out there still existed.

It sure as hell would buy me something better than the shit she fed me.

"He's better now," Danev assured her, as though there was something to prove in saying it. Sparing Chote from the block?

"Hmm. Good. And what're you going to do with him? Piece of shit better not be coming back to the Hive with us."

"Of course not. I'll take care of him. You two just get back home. Ladle's cooking up some bird we shot. Might be some stew left by the time you get back." I could already feel my mouth watering and my stomach grumbling, a festering resentment in knowing none of it was meant for me, just curious of how it was Danev planned to 'take care of me.'

"In that case," Saku interjected. "We'll be going. Come on, Bee."

I remained still, at my post, never moving. I'm doing my job. I'm doing what you asked me to do, I swear. I wanted Danev to see, wanted him to take notice as his footsteps drew closer. To see that I hadn't moved a muscle. "Come on," he said from right behind me. "Let's go."

It wasn't a long walk, nor an unfamiliar one. Even in the dark of the evening, I could make out the familiar alleyways and side streets, all of it feeling familiar, too familiar, especially as we pushed further west, towards the inner wall. No.

"Oh come on!" I complained against my better judgment upon having my suspicions concerned despite my every hope along the way that it wouldn't prove to be the case. But there we were, back at the abandoned meat locker, keys dangling in Danev's left hand, his right by his side where his knife was tucked beneath his pants. "I'm not running, I swear!"

"Get in," was all he deigned to say.

There was no arguing to be done, no fighting to be had. That was the reality, made all the more real by the familiar cold of the stone floors, the only consolation being that the room no longer stank of piss and shit. It's something at least.

But it seemed that wasn't all. A metallic clank of iron against stone, me turning instantly to find a small container, a canteen, resting on the ground, having been thrown by Danev, a faint splishing still able to be heard inside.

Is it?

"There's only about a fifth of it left," he confirmed, as though only just a fifth wasn't already a godsend given my desperation. Something, anything, I would take it. "Make it last."

And I would, all of 5 seconds as I chugged down whatever bit I could as soon as the freezer door came to a close, the click of a lock confirming my position there for the night.

I was thirsty once again as soon as the canteen was empty, not even a drop escaping as I turned it over.

The nightmare…it was far from over. Death was nowhere further away from me now than it was this morning.

At the very least, however, another day had passed, and I was still alive.

Don't do anything to mess that up.

And that's all there was at the end of the day–the resolution not to get myself killed. It had gotten me this far. I just needed it to take me a small bit farther.