The Canine System

Prologue + Chapter One

THEY HAVEN'T REMOVED AYESHA'S CORPSE. It still floats face-down, tangled in the razor-edged wire coiled just below the surface of the Lake. At least it's far enough away from the boardwalks that her shredded skin isn't clearly visible. The thick dregs of black hair still swish, lively, around her pale, stiff body. At least we can't see her permanent scream, her wide eyes, the steel collar strangled around her throat. But that doesn't make walking past the pallid remains any easier.

The Alliance wants us to remember that our wrong doings will not go unpunished. They rule with fear and so they instill it in the form of corpses and brutalities, of hierarchies and etiquettes that smother us like ivy. It should hollow me out, like some parasite that eats its host from the inside out. But Ayesha's corpse, like all the others, is no longer a horror. I have learned to close my eyes to the death and decline around me, so that I may stay standing among the carnivorous weeds.

Salty planks groan under my feet as I continue down the boardwalk, away from my home. The air is crisp, and the breeze carries the stale aftertaste of the lake. As it whistles past, I pull my cloak tighter around myself. I'm thankful for the old, heavy boots laced over my feet, keeping the cold from biting into my toes. I live in the Fourth Sector, home to the Bloodhounds. Home is a loose term, designed for places of warmth and comfort and prosperity. Kennels would be more appropriate; or shelters. Our house is barely more than a two-roomed shack, located by the water's edge on the outer-most ring of the Fourth Sector. My neighbours live in the same squalor, the homes threaded together with wet boardwalks and rope railings. On the water's edge, it reeks of old water and damp wood. Lakeflies hang the air, making it risky to breathe through your mouth. I swat them away as I move inland along the boardwalks, my lips pressed firmly together.

My grandmother once told me of a time where it didn't used to be like this. The city was bright and clean, and the Alliance worked alongside the people, helping to build a better life on the Lake. A long time ago, in the Fourth Sector, there used to be a wharf that stretched a good half mile into the distance. It was strong and hospitable, with market and food stalls trimming its entire length. It used to be a place of excitement and reprieve. You could stand at the very end with a bag of sweets and all you could see in any direction was a continuous stretch of lake. But one day the Landers came in massive vessels and used the wharf as an access point from which they could enter and attack the city. So many people died. So many were slaughtered, and all for a pointless cause. The Alliance destroyed the wharf after that and introduced their Canine System. Greyhounds at the bottom, Bloodhounds in the middle, Wolfhounds at the top – a dehumanising hierarchy that measured strength and intellect to segregate the weak from the strong, and remodel humanity as we knew it. They switched their focus from building a better life to building an indomitable one. They built a stronger society, a surviving society.

I am a product of the Canine System, a product born from war. The wharf – now an array of broken posts worn smooth by water and time, their woody colour leached away to leave them standing like broken teeth looming out of the Lake – is an example of what the Alliance were willing to destroy in the name of revolutionising.

I glance at the ruins and my eyes are dragged to the hesitant thrum of people who are debating the identity of the Lake's latest victim. Ayesha has been there for three days now, and still no one has come forward to claim her. Her family will know, of course, but no one will speak of her passing. No one will mourn her, not in the ways that we want to. I know her name; I knew who she was. She was a Bloodhound. She was my friend.

She is gone.

No one, specifically, discovered Ayesha's body after she drowned. Many people probably saw her trying to swim away, getting caught in the wire, struggling and entangling herself until her life faded away. They probably paused to curtly frown at her attempt at escape before continuing on their way, too busy to take the time to call her back to the boardwalks. Too busy to demand someone throw her a rope before she drowned.