She'd been standing by the window for two hours. With difficulty, she squeezed another cigarette butt into the middle of a dozen or so previously burned ones, scattered around a tightly packed old ashtray. The entire room was filled with smoke, yet she didn't seem to notice. She was breathing in the smoke.
And you could always swap the "container" for another. The District had plenty of abandoned apartments.
Her legs were already aching. Finally, Caligari pushed an old, dilapidated chair towards her.
"Has he jumped yet?
" "No." She cut the conversation short, placing her shapely, firm buttocks on the antique leather chair. She crossed her bare legs and, lighting another cigarette, watched the scene unfolding on the roof of a building two blocks away. Her eyesight was excellent, but she occasionally held up small binoculars that resembled old theater props. However, they were state-of-the-art military equipment, like everything the group had brought into the apartment.
Anya leaned against the window, resting her elbow on her knee. They couldn't open the windows—the New Ones had too keen a sense of smell. If they smelled them or saw them, half the neighborhood would flock to their stairwell, exposing their best hiding place in months.
She narrowed her eyes as the smoke crept too close to her enormous brown eyes. She didn't take her eyes off the attempted suicide, who was turning into a murderer before her eyes. This place has that effect on everyone, she thought.
She wore only blue panties and a tank top that hugged her smooth, dark skin perfectly. The perfection of her figure was evident in every, even the smallest, slow movement. Her dark, almost black hair was tied in a bun. Only a few stray strands fell enticingly over her bare shoulders. She didn't care that the rest of the squad consisted of three men and a lesbian who was in love with her. They had to get used to her laid-back style. Or go mad. It was their business. As long as they respected her. As long as they listened to her commands and relied on her ever-reliable instincts. And for three years now, they'd been wandering the vast Suicide Quarter, living between two worlds. Between the living world, posing as law and order, drowning in panic and deception, and the wild, cruel reality of the New Ones.
She propped her foot on the windowsill and straightened. The stiffness made her muscles ache. But nothing could tear her eyes away from the boy, who was crossing the boundary between these two worlds with each passing moment, sinking and coming alive again.
He had quite a temper. He wanted to kill himself, but he was fucking the best bitch in town. And he was also destroying three males…
"Want a beer, Little One?"
Magenta. Only she had the right to speak to her that way. A female coalition was a necessity in the male unit. A necessity that, after Caspar's death, had given her leadership of the group. Or maybe in a pack. She wasn't sure anymore.
"Thanks, Maggie."
Without turning her head, she picked up the cold bottle. She placed it against the slowly healing wound on her right shoulder. A chill ripped through her body.
The boy was disappearing deeper into the building, entering through a trapdoor on the roof. She knew something he couldn't. The interior was swarming with corpses. Isolated, useless, yet mortally dangerous. All kinds of deviations, illnesses, mental disorders—all of these were suppressed by the District in Davos, as they called the building on whose roof the attempted suicide had accidentally found itself. The New Ones had such a developed instinct for self-preservation that they could distinguish the sick from the healthy. They dragged the "strange" to Davos, whose main doors opened only from the outside, and only a few were clever enough to do what a seven-year-old child could manage.
In Davos, the New Ones ate each other—sometimes there were dozens of them, sometimes three or four of the strongest. Their fate was of no concern to anyone. The natural brutality of this species had always fascinated Anya, ever since their first night in the District.
Magenta crouched down beside her. She rested her head against her leader's long, slender leg. It seemed accidental, but Anya knew that none of this girl's movements were accidental.
"How does this brat give birth?" the girl asked.
"Incredible, I'd say." She tried to keep her voice flat, but she was clearly intrigued. "He's still alive."
Magenta took the smoldering cigarette from Anya's hand and inhaled the remnants of the tobacco before she could only taste the bitter taste of the filter. She stubbed out the pipe on the windowsill and tossed it into the overflowing ashtray.
"Don't tell anyone..." Anya said slowly but firmly. "Three New Ones threw a Rattler off the roof."
Magenta looked at the squad leader in disbelief. But Anya's face was impassive.
"Seriously...?"
The lieutenant wasn't in the habit of answering rhetorical questions. She rarely offered any explanations at all. Therefore, the lack of an answer didn't surprise the girl. Yet she continued to stare at the woman's beautiful profile. She had always admired her. It was no secret. She was also in love with her. That hadn't been a secret until recently. But she knew she had to comply, try to forget her dreams. About Anya's tone of voice, different from the official one, about her touch, different from the patronizing touch of her superior. A group was a group. Especially in these difficult conditions.
But she continued to look. At the slightly parted, full lips, the slightly shorter upper lip, revealing even teeth. At the high cheekbones and those incredible, intelligent eyes.
"Why did they do this to her?" she asked, though the answer slowly formed in her mind. Everyone knew what the Rattle was for. "Was she there with that suicide bomber?"
"Yes." This time, Anya smiled gently. She liked Magenta very much, but she felt she had to keep her distance. For the good of the unit. Her charge, a few years younger than her, was just over eighteen. Yet she killed without batting an eyelid. She hadn't had any hardships, unlike most of her contemporaries. Her parents hadn't been struck down by the plague, and no one, other than a distant relative, had been torn to pieces on the city streets before the corpses were captured and locked away in the District. Quite the opposite. Everyone was perfectly protected. For generations, all members of her family had been members of the army; her family had based their existence on military service. From the age of ten, the girl had been trained by the best instructors, and she knew tricks that were black magic to many members of the regular units. This gave her a stable position in this highly unusual group. The girl's maturity was less satisfactory. But Anya saw Magenta's skin harden with each passing day, her gaze grow more determined, and her psyche, warped like the rest, take on the shape of a steely mass, irregular and battered, yet unwavering. She treated her somewhat like a daughter. However, this only worked one way. From the girl's perspective, the situation was no longer so clear.
When the would-be suicide vanished beneath the surface of the Davos roof, the Lieutenant glanced at the girl, who was now staring sightlessly out the window.
"Pass me your pipe," she said quietly, as if not wanting to break the girl's reverie.
The girl didn't even move her head, but with a deft movement, slipped the cigarette into the leader's parted lips. It was their little ritual, one neither of them could resist. Slipping the cigarette into the leader's mouth was a friendly gesture, reminding both parties of the rather close relationship they shared. Magenta felt a sense of self-worth, and Anyi was reminded of the old days, when she still had friends, people close to her. Then, only acquaintances from the industry remained, and eventually, only the squad remained. The five survivors of the nine who had entered the District over two years ago.
They sat in silence for a moment. The room was dark. Yet none of them needed light to move around the apartment, the so-called "container," with the same agility as during the day. Any light source could attract hordes of angry Newcomers. And the squad's entire advantage lay in their intangibility. They didn't exist. Neither to the Newcomers nor to the world outside.
Muffled laughter drifted from the next room. The boys were telling each other the same jokes they'd heard hundreds of times. There were no new ones. Reality wasn't funny at all. For months, they'd been telling each other the same stories, the laughs each time more artificial, quieter. But there was no other way to maintain a semblance of normalcy.
Morale. This was Anya's biggest problem. The collection of degenerate individuals that was her unit struggled to function in the isolation and general paranoia that gripped the entire city, especially the District. Suicide Land. The name couldn't mean anything good. There was nothing about it that would allow them to live longer. That's why it allowed them to do so much. Perhaps too much. Risky games, complete moral degradation, a lack of values – all of this deepened the confusion of five people who knew only how to kill. On the other hand, they were the closest people to each other, they had only each other, and in their daily lives, they depended on each other more than anyone wanted to depend on another.
"I feel sorry for Rattle..." Magenta finally broke the silence.
"I know, Little..." Anya said slowly, taking a drag on her cigarette. "Me too. On the other hand, remember, she belonged to a different species; she wasn't one of us, despite the boys' approach to her, or rather, her shapely backside. Maybe now there'll be less trouble…
"You're probably right. Just because I feel sorry for her doesn't change the fact that she pissed me off like no other corpse."
Anya leaned back against the creaking arm of the chair, smiling to herself. This brat is finally maturing, she thought with satisfaction. She's growing into a woman with character.
Between puffs of sharp smoke, she said in a cool voice what had been on her mind for an hour:
"If the boy survives tonight and gets out of Davos, we'll consider helping him."
Magenta took a moment to react.
"You want to accept a would-be suicider into our group?"
"He killed pretty well, for a would-be suicider?"
This time, a sly, very feminine smile lit up the younger girl's rather unattractive face.
"You were the one watching him all evening. What else did he do well?"
Anya smiled in the darkness, but her features quickly hardened. Her voice had to be serious and decisive.
"Don't let yourself, Little One," she managed, though with difficulty. The comment might have been accurate, but there was more to it than that. The boy was adapting quickly. He could be useful, bring some freshness.
How beautifully he kills, she thought. But she quickly scolded herself for the statement, too subjective and too skewed for the leader of the group.
"He simply could be useful."
Another moment of silence.
"Okay, you're in charge." Magenta rose, resting her hand on Anya's exposed thigh. As usual, she'd held it a fraction too long.
The lieutenant took a long swig of her cold beer.
Time for bed. Tomorrow was another long day of hunting.
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