Page 151 of Priest and his Anarchist

I swallow, but my throat is so dry and the dirt beneath my nails is starting to set to clay. “Which is?”

“That this land is an island, the mother ground of our people. That between here and Riverside, this is where the Kings were birthed. Forged.”

“And this is another Riverside school thing?”

Nate nods, his eyes closing briefly. “Do you know the tale of Peter Pan?”

“Of course,” I whisper. I need water. With the lack of oxygen, my mouth feels as though I’ve sucked on cotton. “I much prefer Alice, but I am familiar with the tale….”

“The Lost Boys run this island, kind of true, but not really. They’re like security.”

“Security?” My patience is waning.

“Perdita is a prison island, Luna. The people who live up there,” he points with his finger, and like a lost girl, I look up. “Are prisoners.”

“But—families? Babies? Children?”

He holds my stare. “Their own. If you sin, it isn’t only you who it costs. They had choices. They chose to bring their own. We run by a very specific set of rules up there, and if they’re broken, they’re dealt with accordingly, but they have curfews. They have uniforms. They have shops that are run by other prisoners, and they have houses that are streetless, forged in the bushland.”

Information spins inside my head, but I remain quiet. I’m good like that.

“And down here?” I’m almost too afraid to ask.

“Well…” That smirk turns wide as he gestures once more to the front seat of the train. “Care to see for yourself?”

I slide into the driver’s side. Jesus. What the hell have I done. Maybe I should have taken my chances outside, running. Except that they’re all animals and they like the Hunt.

This is going to be bad.

A metal bar falls from above and onto my lap, causing me to drop my shoes.

“Try not to look at the walls. As we go through, you’re going to see a lot of weird shit before we get to the hive.”

My body jerks forward, and we start moving. Slower than I expected it to be, almost annoyingly so.

“They don’t like adrenaline down here?” I joke, staring up at Nate from beside me. I swear Priest is already the same height as his uncle.

Nate chuckles, the wrinkle on the side of his cheek probably used to be in the form of a dimple. “They do. Just a little different.”

He hasn’t even finished his sentence when the sounds start.

Screams.

Cries.

Sobbing.

My eyes fly to the wall behind him as a video plays out in first person, as if someone was recording it. He follows a girl, her eyes wide with tear stains down her cheeks before her hair whips her face and she runs. Blood spills from between her lips and her eyes glass over.

Oh shit.

We keep moving, screaming of metal replaced by those of dying victims.

I turn to my side, in time to see a hand buried in a nest of hair, as the line around her scalp fills with blood and the top of her head slowly slides in two, as if sliced cheese. The camera vantage point is the same. First person.

And the further we move in, the worse they become.

A girl’s smile fills the next concrete wall, black dress tight around her curves. She curls her fingers suggestively, gesturing to the bed beneath her.

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