Alex grew up in a city without sunlight, and she is brutal in all the ways she needs to be. In the Underground, she finds work as a thief and a con, running odd jobs for a lethal man named Kenny Ackermann whose reputation is enough to keep her from...
METAL DIGS INTO Alex's wrists as the Garrison soldier restrains her, knees digging into the stone of the city street. She glares daggers at him over her shoulder, seething, and his smile is so full of smugness that Alex wants to run back to the Underground just to take him with her, see how he fares without his precious sunlight and alcohol and unearned power.
She certainly didn't make her capture easy, and this guy hates her for it.
"Enjoy your night in the slammer," he taunts. "I'm sure your fellow Wall Maria folk will be jealous of the roof over your head—"
"Oi," his partner snaps, a girl with hair so blonde it's nearly white. "She's not just some refugee thief, you dumbass, look at her. She's paler than you. She's from below."
The guy's hands freeze on her wrists. "An Undergrounder, huh?" He laughs, a dry, crackly sound. "Thought you were just a rumor."
People aboveground know about the Underground, in some sense. It's whispered about in passing with tones of disgust and pity. Nobody ventures down there, not on purpose. It's easier for most to ignore its existence, to assuage their guilt with ignorance. Alex wonders what the military tells their cadets about it, about them. Wonders if they even know the extent of the raiding network, if they know Kenny steals from right under their noses even while he works in the interior.
Wonders if Martin and Carly are safe.
Safe is a relative word, really. But she hopes they got back down with the new kids.
She hopes Martin doesn't do something stupid. Like come back for her.
"Just take her to the closest outpost," the girl sighs, hardly paying attention anymore. "They'll deport her from there."
"Y'think we can weasel some info out of her, though? Get a promotion if we take her to the top?" The man yanks her up by her chin-length hair, kept short with the blade the guy confiscated from her pocket. She loves that knife. She better get it back. "Better she rots in a cell than gets sent back down, where she can just come back."
Alex snorts, and the soldier's grip tightens in warning. But it is funny, the ignorance. The military won't waste precious resources on Underground scum. This man—boy, really, obviously a recent graduate on a power trip—is operating on the assumption that things are fair, logical, black and white, right and wrong.
Alex knows better.
She wishes she had ODM gear on her. She could've moved the cart and made a quick getaway. There's no way this guy could have caught her, no way he's spent more time than her zipping through the air with something to lose. But that's not the part she was meant to play today. So here she is.
