I’m not ashamed to admit I couldn’t find my tongue when the leader of the Kittens focused his cybernetic eyes on me. He looked like he killed hardened gangers every morning before breakfast. I definitely didn’t.

  Fortunately, Mela decided to come to my rescue. Not so fortunately, she drew her chair up to mine and grabbed my head in the crook of her arm, almost squashing me into her breast.

  “This little shit is the one who got me here in one piece,” she said, giving my neck an extra squeeze. “I saved his scrawny ass yesterday, but he did enough today to put me in his debt twice over.”

  I was still speechless, but for an entirely different reason. For one thing, Mela’s arm around my throat was cutting off my oxygen. But that wasn’t the main point. Mela seemed just irreverent and wild enough to blow off anyone who did her a favor. That she was taking ownership of it, especially right to her gang leader’s face, spoke volumes.

  “That so?” Garren hummed, but the intense look in his eye eased off. “Guess we owe him a favor, then! Can’t have one of my favorite lieutenants getting offed in some random alley. What happened anyway? We just lost track of you.”

  I couldn’t see Mela’s face. I was still trapped against her chest, tapping her arm in an attempt to communicate that she was going to make me pass out. But the venom in her voice made it clear that she was not happy.

  “One of the fucking Zerx rats managed to get me. I have no clue how he snuck up on me, but he had a knife in me before I could react. Blew his fucking head off for the trouble but — oi, kid, if you wanna nuzzle into my chest all ya gotta do is — oh, sorry.”

  My face was an interesting shade of blue when she finally let me go. I broke out into coughing immediately, glaring at the ganger as I massaged my throat.

  “Ha! Your friend’s too scrawny if a little rough love gets him like this!” Garren laughed, then directed his grin to me. “Go ahead and eat, kid. I remember how it felt when I finally got the first good meal in me after ages, and I don’t think you’re much better off than I was back then.”

  A flush beat back the blue from my cheeks, but I did nod and dig in. I’m sorry to say I practically moaned when I took the first bite. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t some premium shit from the city center. It was about as close to ‘real food’ as my left sock. But it was processed better than anything I’d ever put in my mouth before, so was there really a difference?

  “Look at ‘im go!” Mela laughed, but her face was worried as she turned back to the gang leader. “We can’t just let ‘em do this to us, Garren. We gotta retaliate somehow or they’ll just keep coming at us. We need to work even harder. Our territory’s a mess already, and it’s only the Zerx coming after us at the minute.”

  The big guy sighed morosely and rubbed at his forehead. “I know. I just don’t want all-out war. Dammit, Mela, it’s bad for business! If we pull our guys off the protection details, we’ll have assholes nosing into our turf in no time. They just need to hit a few of our big establishments and we’ll be bleeding money for fucking months trying to get everything fixed and set up again.”

  “I know that,” the redhead snapped. “But it’s not like they’ll stop now! They started this shit. We need to —”

  “— finish it, yes.” Garren sighed again. He sounded so tired and frustrated, I would have felt bad for him even if I didn’t feel largely responsible for the mess in the slums. “We need to kick off another recruitment round. If they’re going to swarm us, we gotta replace the people we lost and get some more guns out there.”

  Suddenly, a pit opened in my stomach. The food I’d already shoveled down my throat wasn’t sitting so pretty.

  Memories from the past two days spun around inside my head. The tension and recruitment all over the streets. The attacks. What happened to Mela. Even the deserted state of the slums while everyone fought to keep their heads down and out of sight.

  “I can help.”

  Garren’s and Mela’s eyes both snapped to me, making me realize I was the one who’d said those words.

  “I mean…” I fought down the urge to look away like a chastised child. “I don’t, like, want to join join, but if you need more hands out there, I can at least —”

  “Kid, you look, what? Twelve?” the mountain of a man asked kindly.

  This time, when I flushed, it had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with indignation. “I’m almost seventeen!”

  “Ah.” Clearing his throat, he glanced at Mela like he was asking her to rescue him, but she just smirked and looked away. “Listen, kid — I mean, just… listen. You look, eh, capable, but we don’t use chi— I mean… Fine. I’ll just say it. Whether you saved Mela or not, I need someone who looks like they can actually hold and fire a gun without buckling. Besides, you ever kill someone?”

  “I have. Ask her.” I jutted my chin at the redhead, fighting the urge to cross my arms and glare. I didn’t want to look like a pouting child. It wouldn’t help my case any.

  Why am I doing this? I never wanted to be part of a gang!

  I knew why, of course. The new eyes in my skull were a constant reminder that I was the one responsible for this whole mess.

  I kept wondering what my mother would have thought of me. What Catill would think of me if he knew. What the countless souls stuck in the slums would do to me if it ever got out that they had me to thank for the storm raging outside their doors.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The guilt was eating at my insides, and fuck me, but I couldn’t just ignore it. I’d gladly watch plenty of the gangers burn, and laugh the whole time, but what about the kids like me? The desperate families? Everyone forced to demean themselves just to earn a few creds and feed their loved ones contaminated slop for one more meal?

  Something must have shown on my face, because Mela actually sighed instead of just dismissing me. “Damn it, kid. Alright, ya wanna play big tough ganger? Let’s see what yer made of first. Impress me, and I’ll put in a good word with Garren here.”

  Garren’s chemical green eyes narrowed. “Mela, you can’t seriously be —”

  “I said what I said. ’Sides, ye heard the kid. He doesn’t want to join for real. He just wants to help out right now. Let’s see if he can even stand straight after I’m done with him, and we’ll go from there.”

  Garren nodded with obvious reluctance while I put away what little was left of my meal. Guilty or not, afraid or not, I wasn’t going to waste food. I was raised better than that.

  “Kay then, squirt. Follow,” Mela ordered as soon as I was done.

  I pushed away from the table with one last glance at Garren. He was watching us speculatively with an odd look in his chrome eyes, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, more for something to distract myself than from real desire to know.

  “We have a place to train on the lower level, right next to all the rippers. Nice and safe. If someone gets opened up by accident, they can put them back together. Real handy when we’re training with the knifes and such.”

  I blanched. Who the fuck trained with actual weapons?! Weren’t they supposed to be blunted or fake or whatever?

  Mela noticed my shock and laughed, loud and clear. Then she sent me a bloodthirsty grin. “Best to practice with the real thing. Can’t learn to respect the fucking blade if it won’t fuck you up when ye do something stupid. Didja know we had an idiot who thought he could ‘catch the blade before it struck’ him or someshit like that? It was hilarious when he tried it the first time. Torn put his fingers back on out of order and made him live like that for a week, just to drive the lesson home before he put him back together the right way.”

  Never fuck with Torn. Never, ever fuck with Torn.

  Message received.

  “We’re, uh, not going to train with knives right now, right? Right?”

  “Look at the big manly man,” the frustrating woman cooed. “All his bravado’s gone already! What happened to talking back all the time, hm?”

  Well, we weren’t surrounded by hardened criminals before, all of whom seem to adore you, I thought, eyes darting around at the Kittens. **Everyone we passed was happy to see Mela. Half of them were gazing at her with unconcealed bedroom eyes, while the other half just looked like they’d gladly take a bullet for her.

  So I didn’t dare say anything. Mela laughed at my silence, but didn’t question it further.

  Really, the woman’s popularity was just odd. Or at least it was until I saw the easy way she greeted everyone we came across. Sharing jokes, reassuring them that everything would be fine, and generally showing exemplary levels of charisma… where was that when she was dealing with me?!

  Of course, while part of me was caught up in all that nonsense, another part took careful stock of the way she moved. Graceful, snappy, and with no pain or hitches lingering at all. I would’ve been shocked if I wasn’t also feeling way, waaay better myself. Not a thing was hurting, and it wasn’t just because I’d been stuck full of painkillers.

  While we ate, I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the metal spoon. My black eye was gone. The nicks and small wounds were cleared up, too. When I’d experimentally run my fingers along my thigh under the table, there was no trace of the long cut, either.

  To say my mind was blown would be an understatement. It was now high on my priority list to get some of that stuff Torn had used in the syringes, no matter the price.

  Maybe even a MaxDoc. Those miracle inhalers couldn’t cure you, but they did have some odd mix of healing reagents that sped up blood clotting and general recovery. They also included a shot of adrenaline, mixed with antibiotics and several kinds of stimulants. I heard they led to one hell of a crash-out if you pushed yourself too hard after taking them, but they’d get you up and keep you up for an hour or two in emergencies.

  A second wind and a second chance bottled up in an inhaler. Probably why they cost enough to feel like paying for a second life in the slums.

  While I was lost inside my head, we arrived at our destination. We first stepped into a large gym-style room that stank to high heaven of sweat, then Mela beelined for a door in the far wall. There, we found a private workout space. It was much smaller than the gym, but admittedly comfier and not nearly as smelly.

  The room already had mats laid out all over the floors. There was even a boxing bag in a corner. One whole wall was lined with racks of various equipment I didn’t have the first clue how to use.

  “Okay, kid. Let’s see what made you so confident to ask Garren to fight alongside Kittens,” Mela purred as she limbered up.

  Gingerly, I slipped my backpack off and left it on the seat of one of the mystery machines. “Okay, I’m rea—”

  I almost lost my recent meal as Mela buried her fist in my stomach, knocking the breath out of my lungs.

  “What the fuck?!” I backed off, clutching my stomach and wheezing.

  “Ya think Zerx are gonna wait for ya to square up? Fucking hell kid, don’t make me laugh. Come on, get those arms up, we’re not done.”

  She came at me then, and she was relentless. It was all I could do to keep my face and torso relatively safe, and I only managed that much because of ‘my early slum experience’TM.

  When we first moved to the slums, a lot of kids didn’t like it that I had slightly better clothes or a mother actually willing to take care of me. Those kids didn’t hesitate to make their dislike known.

  It took me a month or two of trying to hide that shit from my mother before she finally forced me to confront it. But then, with more reluctance than I’d even seen from her, she taught me how to at least minimize the damage, if not effectively fight back. The little shits stopped bothering me after I managed to slog a few of them in the nose.

  Mela didn’t. She just laughed and grinned at me like a feral cat. Then she swiped my legs out from under me.

  As I lay on the floor, questioning all my life choices, her face came to hover above mine. “Not complete shit, kid. Didn’t expect that. But do ya really want to sign on? With those skills? Fuck, kid, I saw you fire my shooter. Almost broke your wrist.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Shooting that thing had left my arms feeling sore and strained. I wasn’t about to admit that to her, though.

  “Oi, stop glaring at me like that.” She sighed. “This is for yer own good! Wouldn’t give two shits if you didn’t save my ass. Woulda handed you a gun with a smile on my face and let ya just get fucking shot the first time we had trouble.”

  Somehow, I sincerely doubted that was true. For all her bustle, Mela was the type to save a random street rat from getting his teeth kicked in.

  When I went to tell her that, though, I barely managed a wheeze.

  “What was that?”

  “My name’s Adrian, you ass,” I gasped instead.

  She gave me this odd look before breaking into a laugh.

  “Well, imagine that! It has a name after all!”

  I moaned in distress as she pulled me up and started dragging me off to the ripper. Even for the chance of another MaxDoc, I did not feel like being on my feet right then.