Page 2 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
I turned and saw the cluster of girls across the way. The heads bent together, the smirks hidden behind hands, the contempt as blinding as sunlight on snow. The effect was that of a struck match tossed on a giant pile of dry kindling. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d shot to my feet, flexed open my gloveless hand, and pushed.
That’s what I call it. The “push.” It’s an outward-bound sensation, no more effortful than an exhalation of breath, but vastly more deadly.
The whole place was in flames in the space of a few seconds. I grabbed Cinder and ran.
I’m still not sure if Annika and her little coven made it out.
I’m not sure if I care.
12 September, 2030
2:19am IFST
Diary Entry #1069
It’s my birthday today. At least, the day Father and I celebrate it. I sometimes feel like the baby in that banned book, what was his name? Oh, right: Moses. Found in a basket, just like me. Father would probably be found in a basket chopped into little pieces if the Prefect ever found out we had banned books, but Father is as good at keeping secrets as I am. Better, maybe.
Eighteen years old (near as we can tell), and still never been kissed. Which is probably for the best. God only knows what would happen to the poor boy. Strike that, Thorne only knows. God is one of those words on the Suppression List that keeps making its way into my diary. Not that anyone will ever read this. I hope. If you are, it means something bad has happened. That thing I’ve lived in terror of since I was little:
Discovery.
I’ve been careful since that day I snapped in the market, though. I’ve been almost perfect. I’ve learned how to control all my tics. I don’t even vanish when I sneeze anymore.
Still having those dreams of Magnus, though. I won’t detail how explicit they’ve gotten, but my older dream self sure is . . . fierce. Just thinking about it makes my face hot.
He’s still calling me Hope. I wish he wouldn’t do that.
Oh—wait ’til you hear this! At Assignations today, I got Hospice Aid. How hilarious is that? I purposely ganked the aptitude tests so I’d be allowed to work with Father in the grow light fields, but the Administrator thought I showed “advanced intuitive capacity,” “highly honed observational skills,” and a “great propensity for compassion.”
Compassion. Ha! If only they knew about the market fire. Even though no one was killed, I was ecstatic about Annika’s hair burning off.
The joke’s on me, though, because now I’ll be spending the rest of my days tending to the condemned elderly.
I hate my life.
15 October, 2036
11:37pm IFST
Diary Entry #2553
For the first time in many, many years, I heard the Girl.
I was in Mr. Kirchmann’s room, reading to him from Essays on Enlightenment—the IF’s quarterly propaganda treatise about the glory and necessity of the global unified government—and trying not to grit my teeth too hard as the crusty old goat nodded in agreement to every word I spoke as he lay feebly wheezing in his bed, when suddenly I felt as if a door kicked open inside my head, and someone barged in.
Her presence is electric, and overwhelming. And, if I’m being honest, dark. She’s much stronger now than when I last heard her, as a child, and she’s much more . . .
Angry. In fact, this Girl is really tweaked. She started shouting straight off, the words tumbling over each other in her rush to get them out.
Hope for fuck’s SAKE wake UP get off your sorry ass we NEED you here come and—
And what? I don’t know, because I threw up a mental wall and shut her out. I’ve been cloaking my mind forever—nothing slips in, nothing slips out, it’s a simple matter of survival—but when I’m tired, overly emotional, or inattentive, sometimes the cloak gets loose. The doors come unlocked, and the world in all its terrible, greedy enormity comes rushing in.
She comes rushing in. The Girl, whose name I know, from many prior rush-ins, is Honor.
Even from behind the wall I hear her muffled, angry shouts. I retreat, turn the volume down to zero, then she’s gone. But the questions remain.
Who is she? What does she want from me? And why, like my dream lover Magnus, does she insist on calling me Hope?
