Page 30 of Fable for the End of the World

There. Now I can run for hours.

The sun is up, and even though the dark is better, because I can see in it and my prey can’t, the light makes me feel hopeful. Or maybe it’s just the stimulants. Either way, I streak through the forest. I leap over rocks and roots, dodge tree trunks and bushes.

The red dot of the Lamb’s tracker is pulsing in front of me. She’s moving—but not fast enough. I’m gaining too much ground on her. The trees, the bushes, the rocks all blur as I run past them, just smudges of green-brown. There’s a faint crackle of thirst in my throat. I swallow hard to shove it down. I have to redeem myself with a swift kill, calculated and brutal. If I stop now, I’ll lose. I’ll lose the Gauntlet. And then I’ll lose myself—or whatever part of me I have left. She’ll vanish with the plunging of a syringe.

I keep running.

The forest opens onto a scraggly clearing, tree branches archingoverhead like a dome. The beat of the tracker is close now, so close. Yards, not miles. Just another few minutes. My mouth tastes like metal, the way it always does when I’m on the stimulants. The way it always does before a kill.

The tracker blares an alarm, and my vision burns red. I throw out my arm and grasp a nearby tree trunk to stop myself. I’ve built up so much momentum that my elbow joint nearly tears out of its socket.

I bend at the waist, gasping for air. Pain shudders from the wound in my shoulder and down my arm, but the stimulants keep it dull, at a distance. With this exertion, there’s a risk of the skin tearing open again. It’s a risk I’ll have to take, though. I need the Lamb dead. I’ll deal with the fallout later.

Still panting hard, I whip my head around the clearing. No movement.

My comms chip must be glitching. I exhale with annoyance. I tap my temple to reset the tracker, but then catch something out of the corner of my eye: a length of red fabric knotted around a tree trunk.

It’s a strange sight, here in the middle of the woods, miles away from civilization, and my curiosity is piqued enough to examine it. My comms chip buzzes, like a fly trapped in my ear. I tap my temple again and the nasally sound fades to a low whine. I’ll have to call Azrael; he can fix it.

I reach the tree and tug at the red fabric. It’s ratty and a little damp. When I touch it, my thumb comes away dirty. With something the color of rust.

I stagger backward, brushing my palms to try to get the blood off. It’s not that I have a weak stomach—but the breeze is carrying an even stranger scent toward me, one of rotting meat, and the stimulants are coursing through my body, making me feel sick with unspent adrenaline. My vision rocks. My hands are trembling.

Overhead, the sky darkens. I only notice because it happens so suddenly, the scattered light fading from gold to gray. My palms feel sticky. And the smell is getting stronger, thicker on the wind that blows my pale hair around my face.

I raise a shaking hand and tap my temple again. Once. Twice. There’s only the fuzzy sound of static. Panic surges up my throat, squeezing out my breath in short, quick gasps. I wish I hadn’t taken the stimulant, because now I can’t tell if the rocketing of my heart is because of the drugs, or because I’m really in danger. Caerus has ripped everything out of my brain and installed new wiring. But there are tangles and faulty connections, short circuits and cables with fizzing, frayed ends. My body and mind don’t quite work in sync anymore.

But the screaming I hear is real. So are the footsteps. I snap my head up, and my vision explodes with red.

The Lamb breaks through the trees, her brother right behind her. She skids to a halt when she sees me, letting out a choked sound.

The brother reaches for his rifle. But my muscles are coiled and taut with the effects of the stimulant, and my instincts are quicker. I unsheathe the knife from my boot and hurl it at him.

It spins through the air, catching the sleeve of his jacket just asI intended. I can’t kill him, but I can stop him. The blade sinks into a nearby tree trunk with athwack, pinning him there. The brother lets out a furious snarl of protest, straining and fumbling to free himself.

I’m across the clearing in seconds. I grab the rifle from his hand and toss it into the bushes, out of reach. The brother’s face is red with the flush of anger and his eyes are full of hate. He reaches for me with his free hand, but I take a quick step back, and his fingers just claw at the air.

“Fuck you,” he bites out.

I suppress the instinct to strike him. The rule is that I’m not allowed to kill anyone on my Gauntlets except the Lamb, but the guidelines are a bit fuzzy when it comes to how much “nonfatal” damage I can cause. But rage and temper don’t fit with my Angel persona, and torture isn’t part of my repertoire of skills. I’ll leave that to Lethe. My kills are cold, swift, precise. Bloodless, mostly.

“Bitch,” he hisses.

I hope the cameras don’t catch the slight clench of my jaw.

With the brother still stuck fast to the tree, I turn around to take my kill. But before I can, my rifle is snatched off my back. It’s so sudden and so forceful that I topple backward, onto the ground.

When I scramble to my feet, the Lamb is holding my rifle aloft. Her whole body is shaking. There are scratch marks across her nose and though her earth-colored eyes are bright, her gaze is unsteady.

“Don’t move,” she says, voice thick.

I still myself.

I’m not afraid of her. From the way she’s holding the gun, I can tell she doesn’t know how to use it. Moreover, I don’t think she really would. It took years of training before I could pull the trigger without flinching, knowing there was a person at the end of the barrel. Years to annihilate my conscience, my pity, my weak human heart. To become the frigid killing creature I am now.

By contrast, the Lamb’s humanity suddenly overwhelms me. It’s the dried blood on her face. The warm color in her cheeks. The way her chest heaves with every breath. The way her finger trembles against the trigger and her throat pulses as she swallows. In the mingling of terror and blustery courage, she looks soalive.

Overhead, the sky darkens further. There’s a rumble of thunder, and lightning cracks through the coal-colored clouds.

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