Page 32 of Jump or Fall
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Five days later, he called Kimmie.
She’d answered with a voice that sounded unsurprised and vaguely bored, like she’d known all along he would cave.
Gordon had been staying in the only place he could find. A hostel above a bar that he was pretty sure doubled as a brothel. At least the proximity made it easy for a man to drink his anger into submission before collapsing into a bug-infested bed. The air in the room reeked of cigarettes and mildew, topped with whatever cheap disinfectant they used to clean.
The guy in the room next to him was fucking some whore every night, loud enough to hear every squeak of the bedframe and moaned performance through the thin walls. At least Gordon was usually drunk enough to pass out before the guy finished.
He couldn’t stay here forever. There were actual bugs in the mattress and someone had tried to break into his room once, probably hoping to snatch a credit key or whatever else they could sell for a hit of skiff.
Gordon couldn’t just sit around drinking until his money ran dry. He needed a job, or a way out of the city.
He checked the time—twenty minutes until his appointment. His grip tightened on the tablet as he scanned the area. Where the fuck was this place?
At least he’d remembered to set the location tracking so he could find his way back. The maps he’d downloaded only showed the outer edges of Division Eight.
He shoved his tablet into his pocket and picked up his pace.
Someone slammed into his shoulder hard enough to jolt him off balance. Instinct flared, and he spun around, already knowing what he’d find.
“Don’t even think about fishing through my pockets,” Gordon growled.
Sure enough, a man about his size stood there, hands slightly raised—but the smirk on his face gave him away.
“Hey, I wasn’t doing anything, man,” the guy said, backing off. “You need to chill.”
Gordon clenched his fists, weighing whether the confrontation was worth it. He thought of his meeting and turned away. This scum wasn’t worth the bruised knuckles.
Pickpocketing was a constant in Division Eight. Two people came at you from opposite sides: one bumped you backwards, the other caught you, pretending it was an accident. But by then, your pockets were already lighter.
The would-be thieves said nothing as Gordon rounded a corner—and nearly collided with someone else.
Fuck this place.
On his second day in Eight, he’d gotten hit with a scam he hadn’t seen before. A woman had sprinted up to him, breathless, begging him to help her find her missing cat. In the split second before he declined, he’d felt the featherlight brush of fingers in his pocket. He’d whirled around, grabbed the thief’s wrist, and squeezed until the guy shrieked and dropped the key he’d lifted.
He took another turn around a corner, ducking under a sagging wire, and stepped straight into a pile of soggy trash. He cursed as something soft and wet squished under his shoe. The stench hit immediately—rotting food, damp cardboard, and who knew what else. He gagged and kicked the worst of it off.
To his right, a sign read: Enforcer Station Eight.
“Fuckin’ finally,” he muttered.
Thestation sat at the edge of an open clearing—the only one he’d seen in this suffocating maze of concrete. And for the first time all day, he could see the sky. Faded blue through the humid haze, but still sky. A large tree stood in the grassy space out front. Beneath it, a couple sat on a bench, sharing noodles and laughing quietly.
The normalcy of it hit him like a sucker punch.
How could anything feel that simple here?
Inside the station, the receptionist told him to sit. As quickly as he had, Kimmie appeared from a door and called him in with barely a glance.
They entered a plain white room with nothing but a table and two chairs. She sat, gestured at the other chair, and placed her tablet on the table.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Surveillance,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know that. What did you do to piss off the Silvers? Or actually—are you a Silver?”
