Scavenged Hearts

The knife was at my throat before I heard the bastard breathe.

"Give me one reason," he said, "why I shouldn't open you up right here and leave you for the dogs."

I didn't move. Moving gets you killed. I'd learned that at twelve, when I watched a man try to run from a raider and lose his spine for the trouble. So I stayed very still, the edge of his blade pressed cold against the faded red scarf I never took off, and I took stock of what I had.

One working hand. A pack of salvage strapped to my back. A pistol in my belt that I couldn't reach without him slicing me open first.

"Because you'd have to carry the pack yourself," I said.

The pressure eased a fraction. Not much. A hair.

"What pack."

"The one you were following me for. You've been on my trail since the overpass. You're loud, by the way. Anyone ever tell you that?"

He didn't answer. But he didn't kill me, either. That was something.

The sun was going down over the bones of the old city, and the light came through the broken towers in long orange bars. Beautiful, if you didn't know what the towers used to be. I'd been scavenging the eastern district for three days, pulling copper wire and a cracked solar cell from a collapsed transit station, and I was two hours from the wall when I heard the footsteps. Heavy. Confident. The kind of footsteps that belong to someone who doesn't expect to get caught.

I should've run. But the pack on my back was worth more than my life, and I'd learned a long time ago that giving up a haul was the same as giving up breathing. You do it once, you do it forever.

So I'd let him follow. Led him into the narrow streets near the old market, where I knew every gap and every loose brick. He was faster than I expected. Smarter, too. When I ducked through a hole in a wall, he went around and met me on the other side.

And now here we were.

"Turn around," he said.

"I'd rather not."

"Turn around or I'll make you turn around."

I turned around.

He was younger than I expected. Maybe my age, maybe a year or two older. Dark hair, cut short and uneven, like he'd done it himself with a dull blade. A long scar ran from his left temple down past his jaw, pale against his skin. He wore a coat that had once been military, patched in a dozen places with whatever he could find, and a rifle slung across his back that looked better maintained than anything else about him.

His eyes were gray. Almost silver in the dying light. And they were looking at me like I was a problem he hadn't decided how to solve.

"You're a scavenger," he said.

"Sharp. What gave it away?"

"The pack. The route. You move like you know the ruins." He tilted his head. "You're from the settlement. The one by the river."

"I'm from nowhere."

"Everyone's from somewhere."

I didn't answer that. The knife was still in his hand, hanging loose at his side now, like he'd already decided I wasn't a threat. That stung more than the blade had.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"The eastern transit station. I heard there's a working generator down there. You've been in the district for three days. You know where it is."

So that was it. He wasn't after my pack. He was after something bigger. Something he couldn't find on his own.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm an excellent liar. You're just not worth the effort."

Something flickered across his face. Not anger. Something closer to amusement. It was gone before I could name it.

"My name's Kade," he said.

"I didn't ask."

"I know. I'm telling you anyway." He slid the knife into a sheath at his belt and crossed his arms. "Here's the deal. You show me the generator, I let you keep your pack and your life. You refuse, I take the pack and your life anyway. I'll find the generator eventually. You're just saving me time."

"You could just kill me and take your chances."

"I could." He looked at me, steady. "But I've been in this city for two weeks, and you're the first person I've seen who moves like they belong here. That's worth something."

I hated that. Being seen. Being read. I'd spent years making myself invisible, and this stranger had cracked me open in five minutes.

"The generator's dead," I said. "I checked it yesterday."

"Then you won't mind showing me."

He was good. I'd give him that. Not good enough, but good.

The transit station was half a mile east, down a street that had caved in on one side and flooded on the other. I'd been avoiding it because the water was dark and still, and still water in this city meant something had died in it. But Kade didn't seem to care. He walked beside me through the ruins like he'd been born there, his boots crunching on broken glass, his eyes moving across the shadows the same way mine did.

"You're not from the settlements," I said.

"No."

"Where, then?"

"North."

North was a word that meant nothing anymore. North of the city was a dead zone, a hundred miles of ash and radiation that nobody crossed and nobody came back from.

"There's nothing north," I said.

"That's what everyone thinks."

I looked at him. He wasn't lying. Or if he was, he was better at it than me.

We reached the transit station as the last light died. The entrance was a wide set of stairs leading down into darkness, and the smell that came up from below was old and wet and wrong. I pulled a flashlight from my pack and clicked it on. The beam cut through the dark, showing cracked tile and a ticket booth that had been stripped to the frame.

"After you," Kade said.

"Afraid of the dark?"

"Afraid of you running."

Smart. Annoying, but smart.

I went down first. The stairs were slick with something I didn't want to identify, and the air got colder with every step. At the bottom, the station opened up into a wide concourse, the ceiling half-collapsed, moonlight spilling through the gaps in silver columns. It would've been beautiful once. Now it was just another grave.

The generator was at the far end, behind a metal door that had been pried open years ago. I'd found it on my first day in the district, a massive machine the size of a car, its casing stripped and its guts spilled across the floor. Dead. Completely dead. I'd taken what I could and left the rest.

"Here," I said, and stepped aside.

Kade walked past me and knelt by the machine. He ran his hand along the casing, then reached inside and pulled out a tangle of wires. He studied them for a long moment, his face unreadable.

"This isn't dead," he said.

"It's not running."

"It's not running because someone pulled the core." He looked up at me. "You?"

"I didn't touch the core."

"Then someone else did. Recently." He stood and brushed his hands on his coat. "The core's the most valuable part. Whoever took it knew what they were doing. They'll be back for the rest."

"So?"

"So we wait."

I stared at him. "You want to ambush a scavenger in a dead transit station."

"I want to find out who's been stripping this district before I do." He smiled, and it was the first time I'd seen him smile. It didn't make him look friendly. It made him look like a wolf. "You can leave if you want. But you're the one who said the pack was worth more than your life. This core is worth ten packs."

He was right. I hated that he was right.

"I'm not helping you kill anyone," I said.

"Nobody said anything about killing." He sat down on the edge of the generator and pulled a canteen from his belt. "We wait. We watch. We see who shows up. Then we decide."

"And if I decide to walk away?"

"Then you walk away. I'm not your keeper."

I should have walked away. I should have taken my pack and my life and gone back to the wall, back to the settlement, back to the small, safe life I'd built out of nothing. That was the smart play. That was what Layla the scavenger would do.

But the core was worth ten packs. And I was tired of being smart.

I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall, and pulled my scarf tighter around my neck.

"Fine," I said. "We wait."

Kade nodded and took a drink from his canteen. He didn't offer me any. I didn't ask.

The station was quiet, except for the drip of water somewhere in the dark. I kept my hand on my pistol and my eyes on the stairs, and I told myself I'd leave the moment this got stupid.

It got stupid about an hour later, when the footsteps came down the stairs.