Chapter 1

The runes that decorated the outer wall glowed in the twilight. Big hulking letters that spelt out words in an ancient language that I shouldn’t have been able to read. My heart sank as the coach lurched forward. I gripped the worn vinyl of the bench in front of me, but it did little to stop my body from swaying side to side.

There was no other clue that we had approached one of the Red Cities. No 'Welcome to' sign. Just concrete walls, marked up with magic, and border patrol for miles.

I rubbed the inside of my wrist as it prickled, reacting to the magic around us. The rest of the coach full of criminals did the same. A sucking sensation gripped my chest like the city wanted to vacuum me up and swallow me whole. The feeling made it hard to breathe, and a drop of sweat rolled down my forehead, leaving an itch behind as it dripped off my nose.

None of us wore cuffs. The mark on our wrist had many ways to subdue and harm.

“Everyone, border patrol is coming on board. Shut up. Be smart. And for God's sake, don’t try and jump anyone.” The guard at the front of the coach called down the benches. “These guys deal with Demons every goddamn day. Any bright spark that thinks that skipping the border might save them? Think again.”

I shivered and looked out the window. Curious at the number of poor souls that had tried to run away at the last bastion of humanity. We were at the entrance to Hell on earth.

Abandon hope, all who enter here.

As our coach crawled past the first concrete wall, a gush of oxygen pushed from my lungs. Every other prisoner on the bus seemed to exhale in time as the pulsating magic rushed over our bodies. A phantom gripped my wrist, and a deep foreboding feeling told me that no one with a mark like ours would be leaving the city alive.

The dark ink that the prisoners wore was a runic symbol like the ones on the outer wall of the concrete rings. Branded onto our skin and down to the bone. The circular loops crossed each other, forming small planets, with harsh guttural lines. Cyclian runes from the bowels of hell.

H’carykhut

The demonic language for trapped. Imprisoned.

The coach slowed to a stop in front of another checkpoint. The space between the concrete rings was a barren wasteland, empty of all but pockmarked dry mud. The new ring, closer to the city, was taller and ringed with barbed wire. A faint throb of magic, enough to rob me of my breath, but not enough to feel like my lungs were trying to hack up a blood clot.

If that was how I felt at the border, I didn’t know how we would make it to the city.

A glance to my fellow prisoners told me that they weren’t feeling much better. Sweat rolled down clammy foreheads. Una, one of the women that had been by my side at intake, held her stomach with tight fingers as she struggled not to moan in pain.

The driver stood up without ceremony and left the bus; he walked to a black painted door, spray-painted with the word ‘border patrol’ in white stencilled letters. The prison guard at the front stood up and rested his hand on the baton on his belt loop. His eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses, but the lines around his mouth hinted at his age. The word Closter was stitched to his breast pocket, which I took to be his name.

“Right, inmates. Get up.” He barked. We all paused, unsure and scared. With a quick and practised movement, Officer Closter held his baton in his hand, slamming the heavy club against his open meaty palm. “Now.” He added unnecessarily. All of us had rushed to our feet when the weapon had come out.

I swayed and grabbed the bar at the edge of my seat. I knocked into another prisoner and flinched as I waited for the pain of a hit or a shove. None came. Everyone was struggling just as much as I was to remain standing. Caught on the edge of cage that wanted to swallow us whole, I could feel the magic pinging back and forth between the concrete outer rings.

I shoved my fist to my mouth and bit down on my knuckle. The sharp slash of pain helped just enough for me to gain my feet and step forward. I kept my head down as I trudged past the guard, in line like a good little girl with the other prisoners.

A yellow line, stencilled and painted on the floor, told us which way to go to be processed. It was in the opposite direction to the door the driver had disappeared into. The red-painted door had no word on the outside to signal what laid behind the cheap metal.

Officer Closter passed all of us with an unhurried gait as we stumbled down the line. He pushed open the unmarked door and waved his baton to usher us through.

“Line up against the wall,” The guard said lazily as he strode in behind us and joined another border patrol agent behind the desk.

Our group was a mix of both men and woman. Large, small, Black, White, and Asian. I recognised some of the other girls from the corrections unit. Una, the redhead, still clasped her stomach. I only knew her name because she was a loud personality. Una worked in the prison library. She'd once folded down a page in a romance novel and winked when she passed it to me, telling me to enjoy.

Bethany, who I only knew as a quiet woman, stood nearest the door. Ratty hair hung around her shoulders, stringy and matted. She wore the same black baggy clothes that we all wore, but hers hung off her. Beth was a junkie, and from the dark circles and trembling limbs, I would hazard a guess that it had been a while since her last fix.

Stepping through the metal door had washed away the sickness that radiated from our marks, but my stomach squirmed at the thought of what awaited us closer to the city.

“You're all here because you’re scum.” The new guard stood up and began to pace the line of convicts. “The Demons need food, and you're it. You've signed away your rights for the chance to live without bars in a Red City. I want you to remember that.”

Bethany started to shake her head, her hands boxed in her ears, and her mouth moved. No words passed her lips, but even we could see her soundless movements were pleading and begging.

Officer Closter pushed his substantial body to standing and walked around the table, his baton hung from his fingers. “What did you say, Miss O'Hallohan? You want to go first through the door?”

Bethany folded in on herself; her body began to jerk with the force of her shivering. “ No. No. No. You can’t make me. I don’t want to go. ” She whispered to herself, repeating the words until they became mulch between her teeth.

“O'Hallohan. Stand up.” Officer Closter demanded. “Get your ass up. You’re first out the door.”

Bethany began to rock but her head tilted and her wild eyes flung around the room, unable to gain purchase on anything. Her mouth never stopped moving; it took a second for me to realise that the words streaming out of her mouth were the Lord's prayer.

Closter palmed his baton as he moved closer, but with unexpected strength, Bethany jumped to her feet like a newborn giraffe and darted under his arm.

“You can’t make me!” She screamed as her body slammed into the locked metal door that led to no man’s land. “I don’t want to go! God will forgive all sinners! Even those that repent in the last hour. He'll forgive me!”

“God ain't here, rat.” The newer guard grunted, but Bethany was too far gone. Her shrieks had risen in pitch; she no longer formed words.

We all watched, in silence, as the stringy girl flung herself against the door. Her waiflike body was too light to make a sound.

A sharp crack rang out through the room, but the concrete walls swallowed the sound. Bethany's head slammed into the door; her body began to slide, leaving a trail of blood as it went. She did not make a sound. Her begging and pleading had been silenced. Half of her head was missing.

Officer Trigger-Happy pushed his gun back into his holster and brushed his hands together. “Fucking hate to lose a bright spark like that. Demons love a good crazy.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Alright, single file.” Closter snapped his fingers and pointed to the door on the other end of the room. “We’ve gotta walk you through the next checkpoints.”

I forced my eyes to leave Bethany's mangled head and her awkwardly sprawled limbs. Unable to sum up any emotion, lest I unleash a torrent. That was the only way that I would survive. I had to be numb.

It worked in prison. I only hoped it would work in the Red City.

The exit swung open with a creak and a harsh bang. The bright sunlight lit up the stark terrain until my vision was almost white.

“Behind the line,” Officer Closter called out as we began to file out. Without words, every other prison pressed their back against the concrete wall and waited for Officer Trigger-Happy to back up the line. He didn’t. The office must have been his station. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about a bullet to the skull. Closter had a baton, which was bad enough, but somehow a bullet seemed scarier. Zero to dead in one second.

“I’m going to activate the path in a moment. This section is filled with landmines. Deviate from the path, and there won’t be enough parts to identify your corpse.” Closter's tone was bored as he walked to what I had thought was a fuse box and scanned his retina.

The lid of the box flipped up; Closter programmed in a code word that I was too far away to see. A whirring motor began to chug, a high pitched whine filled the air. The path lifted off the ground, leaving huge chunks of the terrain below.

“Hurry up, inmates!” Closter's shout snapped my spine straight as I darted forward to the raised ledge. I put both hands on the platform and pulled myself up, crawling forward before I could stand. I did not look back as I began to navigate the nonsensical pathway to the next concrete ring. Grunts and groans of the other prisoners sounded out behind me, but otherwise, we all moved in silence. I concentrated on the sharp turns and trying not to think about O'Hallohan's pulpy brain matter or the ichor confetti that would scatter the ground if one of us fell off the ledge.

I saw a black stain a few feet away, past the edge of the path, and a large crater. The only evidence that an unlucky soul had slipped and been blown to pieces. Closter wasn’t bluffing.

I was the first to reach the next inner wall, but I was hesitant to walk to the door without an instruction.

Closter had proved that everything was dangerous unless you had the right instructions, and I liked my body in one piece.

I began an orderly line, and soon, the other prisoners joined me. Someone tapped my shoulder, but I did not turn.

“I know you,” A male voice badgered. “You’re the Prophet. Aren’t you?”

I shook my head and kept my eyes trained forward.

“Everyone in C wing was talking about some chick who looked like the girl from one of those old Japanese horror movies.” He nudged my shoulder to try and get my attention. “They said you painted the fire before it took out the main office.” He huffed a quiet laugh. “I bet my commissary that you set that fire.”

I lifted one shoulder and shrugged.

“It’s your fault we’re all here.”

I said nothing.

“Mr Willows!” Closter barked. “Flirt as much as you want once we get to the city, but if you say another word, I will leave you between the rings.”

Willows snapped his mouth shut as Closter opened the door and began to usher us through. Another stark office. One blue line and one pink. The universal symbols for male and female on each side.

“Line up, inmates!” Closter's words jolted the drifting young adults into action. Una lifted her hand to ask a question.

“The sex you were born with, Una.” Closter's voice softened as he gestured for her to join the line behind the symbol for male. “It’s for credits. You won't need the feminine hygiene ones, that’s all. You'll still get your HRT.”

Una's turned on her heel and sauntered over to the other side of the room, to join the blue line.

Closter marched to the front before taking a sharp turn to the previously hidden door on the right, at the front of the men's line. He did not instruct us to stay still, but none of us moved.

As soon as we were alone, Willows turned towards me. “Psycho bitch,” He hissed. “You killed five people, did you know that?”

Una jabbed him in the stomach, before flipping her long red hair over her shoulder. She said nothing before facing forward.

Closter came back only seconds later, holding two guns with a hollow plastic tube at the top. They looked like nail guns from the hardware store and the sight of them filled my stomach with squirming insects.

“Left arm out,” He didn’t look up as he began to load a capsule into the empty tube the first gun. “For those fools who don’t know their left from their right, it’s the arm without a mark on it.”

Closter moved down the line. When he stood in front of me, the gun hissed and whirred as it shunted something under the skin. After he walked down the line, I rubbed the sore spot. Something the size of a grain of rice rested under the surface.

The mark on my other arm didn’t burn or throb, so I could only assume that whatever was in the implant was medical, not magical.

Once Closter injected all of us, he made his way to the front again.

“Those implants are your identity.” He told us. “Your money, your ID. Your CV. Everything.”

I rubbed my thumb over the tiny incision and noticed that a few of the others were doing the same.

“The city operates on a credit system. Women will get an extra five credits once a month for feminine hygiene products.” Closter informed us.

Some of the men started to gripe. Willows was one of them.

“If you start bleeding from your pussy, Mr Willows, you can have some extra credits. Until then, shut your hole.” Closter snapped.

“Can't they just like... Hold it in?” One of the men at the back whined.

Closter pinched the bridge of his nose. “The next person to say something stupid is gonna get a whack.”

That shut the moaners up.

Closter raised his hand in farewell to whoever stood unseen behind the frosted glass window past the line of male inmates. He pushed open the door and tilted his head. We all filed out, the action more natural as we became accustomed to what was expected of us.

My stomach flew to my throat when I caught sight of the terrain behind the door.

A jagged scar on the landscape. A deep fissure that seemed to have no visible bottom, the edges sparkled pink and white. It smelt crisp. I could only guess at the material that lined the chasm. Salt? Crystal? Quartz? I didn’t know. All I knew was that the air buzzed with magic.

It was on the other end of the spectrum to the spells that guarded the outer wall. An absence that told me that magic wouldn’t work between these rings. The chasm had to be physically crossed, without preternatural help.

Closter strode over to another fuse box, the same procedure as before. Retina scan and passcode. A metal ladder emerged from the wall and fell across the chasm.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I imagined crossing the chasm using only a steel ladder. I didn’t want to do it, but still, I found myself in the queue of inmates waiting to reach the other side.

Willows was at the front of the line, muscular and physically adept, he had no issue traversing the crossing. Followed by Una, who moved with confidence. I was next. My hands trembled as I wiped my clammy palms against my baggy uniform.

I couldn’t empty my brain of all thoughts. Bad things happened when I did that. But I had to find a way to cope with the chasm. I had discovered something new about myself, I was terrified of heights.

The words to the alphabet song ran through my mind; I sang my ABCs three times before my feet found purchase on the other side. I rushed over to the concrete wall and pressed my hands against the rough surface. The solid ground soothed the rolling waves of vertigo that washed through my body.

Closter was the last person to cross, and thirty seconds after his feet landed on the other side of the chasm the ladder swung up with a hinge and slowly crept back into its notch on the wall.

“What do you think's down there?” Una whispered as she sidled up to my shoulder.

I squinted at the glittering rock face and shrugged. Unable to answer.

Closter stepped to the front of the line and cleared his throat. “One more barrier before we reach the edge of the city.” His booming voice warned. “This one's easy as pie.”

Somehow I didn’t believe him.

Closter opened another unmarked door and gestured for us to step through. No one moved until Willows straightened his shoulders and swaggered past the guard. His smirk was the epitome of smug.

“Not long now, ladies. Almost to the city of Sin.” Willows laughed heartily, winking. He stepped over the threshold to the office and jerked as if he had been struck with a thousand volts of electricity.

I watched him fall to the ground with a groan. His hands clenched as if reaching for something. He curled into the fetal position. His arrogance washed away and left nothing but a scared child inside a man’s body.

“Willows!” Closter barked, unsympathetic. “It’ll stop hurting the closer you get to the entrance. Now move!”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat and stepped forward before my fear caught up. My mark began to itch. The inside of my skin felt like ants were crawling over my every nerve ending. I gritted my teeth as I followed Willows, stepping over his inert body and past the invisible line in the office.

The air was thick. Cloying. Stagnant with abundant magic. It raced through my veins, spreading out from the mark that they had burnt into my skin when I was asleep.

My thoughts swam away on a sea of pain, but I forced my feet to keep walking. Then, like a popping balloon, the pain was gone.

I belonged to the city now.

I didn’t need to test my theory. I could feel it in my bones, the same way that I knew I had two arms and two legs. If I tried to cross over the barrier and back the way I had come—the magic would kill me.