Alleyways ━ terry mcginnis

I left myself in the alleyway.

i can still feel
heartbreak in my throat
before it's even happened.

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OLD GOTHAM UNIVERSITY's elite societies wear claw hidden amongst a velvet glove — a world with shared interests in near death experiments, seemingly supernatural events, loyalty used to underground societies to further their power and ambition.... eager to put their hands in red with no remorse for what it might cost. Those societies take something from each; their fear, their conscience.... the end is inevitable. Iliana Cardale knows for certain the reputation that precedes them but every now and then, she'd see the small crack in their little perfect world of deceits and fleeting lies — a moment when said academic theories and experiments would not line up.

Thing is, things can go horribly wrong. This year, everything is different, and Iliana finds herself drowning, struggling with the weight of so much. She probably should have seen this coming through — reported missing people, thesis moving from academic to something twisted, the betrayals and seething resentments of people who are far too clever for their own good. Iliana wishes things aren't so messed up all of a sudden. Acheron Society, line of Old Gotham's prodigies, used to be her escape thereby offending the rest of the world. Then Vincent Lynch's thesis reveals a possibility which sends that perfect world in a spiral, taking them all to hell and back. By the end of the year, they'd become less friends and more things for each other to envy/hate and almost inevitably, a murder. It's an almost painful reminder that she will never escape their world of deceptions. It's craved into her flesh, fresh like the blood and haunting like her nightmares.

There are many versions of the story everyone has made up — neat distillations of what had happened. Those secretes she has kept have sharp edges, dreading up times and times again, churning to the surface to be replayed.

It's up to Terry McGinnis to make sure she doesn't fall from the edge in the process.

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Iliana Cardale, LXXI.