Kat walked through most of Waytown to get to Eastpoint. Initially anxious that her visa might expire before crossing the threshold of the gate, her fears were unfounded and her eyes took in every difference between the settlement for citizens and the slums she called home. The streets on her journey were mostly paved and the vehicle traffic heavy enough to force pedestrians to use available sidewalks. The central business district of Waytown stretched for three, short blocks. Four-story and five-story buildings constructed from alloys, transparent compounds and concrete lined the downtown. She walked past the Porter Mining Enterprises headquarters on her way home, making a mental note to estimate how long it took her to travel from its doors to Eastpoint.
The streets of Waytown felt clean and sterile, the trash and debris so common to her daily existence mostly absent. Beggars, thieves and drunks were also missing along the thoroughfares. For the first time in her memory, Kat felt truly safe. Judging by the way parents pulled their children close as she passed, she was the only hazard on the street.
The stroll through Waytown took fifty minutes, far too short for Kat’s liking. She entered the first exchange shop she saw at Eastpoint and once confident that she was receiving a fair rate, traded her credit stick for silver. Exiting the town was a simple affair. She simply surrendered her visa to the border officer and stepped back into the fetid squalor of Shantytown.
The silver in Kat’s shirt pocket jingled as she walked. She kept pressing her hand to her chest, worried that the coins would work their way free. She was also concerned that the clinking, even muted, might attract unwanted attention.
She ducked into the Beggar’s Market on her way home. It wasn’t far out of her way and her stomach was growling after the long, foodless day. She spent two small on punji sticks of murine, eating one as she strolled among the carts and shacks but saving the second for when she could wash down the stringy meat with water. When the sun set, the market closed and Kat headed for home.
She was only three blocks from her alley when she realized how relaxed she had become. Even though she was walking deeper into worse neighborhoods, she felt as though she was finally taming Shantytown’s dangers.
A subdued moan pulled her attention down a dark alley. She stopped, staring into the black while her eyes adjusted. The passage was darker than most because it was a true dead end. Only the blackening sky and the solar streetlamps dozens of meters away offered any sliver of light to the narrow lane. She heard the faint whimper again.
Suspicious, Kat waited stubbornly at the corner until her eyes could make out a small boy trapped under a fallen pile of rubbish. Debris covered him from his feet to his waist. He was on his back, issuing quiet, pathetic sobs with a skinny arm draped over his eyes. The alley was otherwise empty but there was no sense in entering a dark and unfamiliar dead end in Shantytown. She began to pivot again to the main street. The boy’s whimpers were quiet as a whisper, almost easy to ignore. After a half step she stopped, her own words carrying through her memories. I may not know who I am but I know who, and what, I want to be.
She turned reluctantly back toward the alley with a long sigh and padded quietly down to the child. As she approached, she estimated he was between eight and ten years old and she could tell he was shabbily dressed, even for Shantytown. He looked pinned. Kat reached the waif and knelt beside him. “Hey,” she soothed, “you’re going to be okay.” She placed her hands under the debris covering his legs and the hair on the back of her neck stood straight. There was a sizeable gap between the boy’s legs and the refuse.
“Sorry, Lady.” The boy quickly darted under the debris completely. She could hear him scrabbling deeper under the pile.
Kat spun immediately to face the alley’s entrance, still crouching low. Two men stood side by side, blocking her only escape.
“Ooh-wee, we got ourselves a looker,” exclaimed the shorter of the two thugs. A sharp nose resided over his thin smile.
“Hooked a fresh one,” the larger brute agreed. The second man’s neck was thicker than Kat’s thigh.
Both men began to walk slowly toward her brandishing long, hunting knives.
Kat gritted her teeth and cursed as reality set in. She cursed Shantytown. She cursed her luck. She cursed herself. You’re not leaving this alley alive, she grimly realized. Her mind quickly played out the events of her afternoon and the good she had done, the person she had met. Bitter tears began to well in her eyes as the truth of Shantytown took hold.
Both men trod closer. “I’m gonna take care of some personal business before we kill her, Pete,” the smaller man said. He reached toward his trousers as he spoke, practically shivering with excitement.
“I get to go after you,” the brute insisted.
I was starting to pull my life together, Kat thought in anguish. And now, these men are going to use me like a toy and kill me. She thought back to her first day and the preacher. A tiny ember of heat ignited in her chest. The sensation spurred a pressure behind her eyes.
The shorter man had closed to just meters away. He raised his knife at an angle toward Kat, its sharp point reflecting the weak light from the street beyond. “Gonna stick her a few times before I ride her. They bite and scream less that way.”
He’ll ride me like an animal and then put me out of my misery, Kat thought as her eyes burned. Their callous discussion of her rape and murder enraged her, causing the pressure building inside her to magnify with every step of her assailants. Although growing dizzy, she rose from her crouch in a symbolic act of defiance. The smaller man was almost within arm’s reach and had pulled his knife closer to his body, chambering a strike and eager to lash out.
The pressure in Kat’s head exploded outward as she screamed, “No!” She raised her hands in defense and curled her fingers into tight balls.
Both men stopped short and stood slack-jawed, gaping at their empty hands. In unison, they looked up at Kat.
“Where…? How did…?” the brute stuttered.
The shorter man began a backpedaling retreat, bumping into his accomplice. Both men jumped at the contact. “Get out of here, Pete! Run!”
The men turned and fled, disappearing around the alley’s corner. Their heavy footfalls became distant.
Kat stood in immobile disbelief. The dark lane drew preternaturally silent and Kat’s only stimulus was the trickle running down the side of her face to the line of her jaw. She expelled a breath she had not realized she was holding when her ears popped painfully.
Before Kat’s eyes, two hunting knives appeared in midair. The blades tumbled downward, thumping to the packed earth of the alley floor. Kat’s heart skipped a beat and her mind reeled at the impossible sight. She took an involuntary step away from the incomprehensible illusion and reflexively raised a hand to cover her gasp. She dabbed at the moisture on her chin and pulled her hand away to reveal bloody fingertips. Alarmed, she traced the thin line of blood around her jaw and up to her right ear. It felt like the minor bleeding had already stopped.
She carefully stepped to the mysterious knives. After several seconds of indecision, she timidly retrieved and inspected the weapons as if the secrets of the last minute might be revealed in the objects themselves. The handles were a combination of durable plastic and rubber. The lethal, fifteen-centimeter blades were a razor-sharp nonmetallic polymer.
“Where’d they go, Lady?” It was the young boy who had served as lure. His grubby face was sticking out from under the trash heap.
Kat glared sinisterly at the urchin from over her shoulder and her dark eyes narrowed. “Do you know what karma is, kid?” she asked in a malevolent voice.
The boy shook his head.
Kat tucked one knife into the waistband of her pants. The other dangled freely in her left hand. “You will. Someday,” she prophesied. Without another word, she turned toward the alley’s mouth and stalked home.
Kat skipped the fire crew that night, her appetite abandoning her. She gave Rat her second stick of murine and used the blue tarp reservoir to clean the blood from the side of her face.
As the muted banter of the fire crew mixed with the noise of the street, Kat sat against the crumbling brick wall. Slender arms tucked around her bent legs as her chin rested on her kneecaps. Her mind replayed the attack endlessly. Did my cry take them by surprise and cause them to simply drop their knives? she wondered. That didn’t explain the knives’ remarkable reappearance. Did I imagine it under the stress? She swallowed. Am I going crazy?
Two gunshots boomed from several blocks away. Kat didn’t flinch. Even though her mind was racing desperately for suitable answers, her body’s reserves had been drained. Her eyes kept closing against her will. Maybe it was my guardian angel, she thought as she shifted to lay on her side. She tucked her hands underneath her head and sighed sleepily. An angel that just got back from a very long vacation.