Kiss of the Painless Blade

Sera Westbrook's POV

The spores came down like snow.

The whole boulevard was pushing east—people everywhere, cars jammed between them, everyone moving away from the coast and the sound the ocean had started making: low, rhythmic, like something enormous breathing against the shoreline. I went against the current and looked down at my left hand.

A deep cut ran from the base of my index finger to my wrist, deep enough to show the tissue underneath. I turned my hand over, then back. I felt nothing. After a quick bandage, I kept walking.

The supermarket on Fifth Street had no doors anymore. Someone had driven through the glass. The emergency lights were still flickering, and people were surging through the aisles like a flood through a broken dam. I went in against the flow.

I found the canned drinks in aisle seven, behind an overturned display rack. High-protein, sealed, with an old USDA clean-source certification on them. I packed eight cans into a military backpack I'd taken from the camping section, added some water-purification capsules, three filter cores, and a foil-sealed box of GCI suppressants. Someone slammed into my shoulder hard enough to knock me half a step off balance. I steadied myself and went back to checking the seals.

When I reached the exit, five people were blocking it. The one in front was lean, with a bleached streak of hair above one ear. He looked me over with a peculiar interest—especially the supplies in my backpack, which he eyed with predatory greed.

"Well." He looked at my pack, then at me. "You picked up quite a bit, didn't you." He tilted his head at the others. "Go on, get our stuff back. She walks right in, takes whatever she wants, and walks out without a scratch. I don't think so."

Two of them came at me with rebar. The third had a knife. The fourth was large and stayed by the door.

I set the pack down beside my foot.

The first one reached for it. I caught his wrist, twisted outward, and used his own stumbling weight to drive his shoulder into the shelf behind him. He went down with the shelf. The second swung an axe at my head. I stepped inside his reach, caught the axe with both hands, and pulled. He came with it, and I put him on the ground, knee on his back, his arm pinned up until something popped near his shoulder.

The sly face stopped smiling and started begging. I shook off his hand, stood up, and looked at the people around me. The gang leader looked at his two men on the floor, then at the terrified underling frozen by the door, and something in his expression cracked.

His legs went weak. He dropped to the ground, hands over his head, begging. "Don't hit me, don't hit me—here, the supplies, I—I'll give you half! How about that? You take half, and we pretend none of this ever happened."

Why on earth would I obediently listen to him?

I walked toward him. He kept shrinking back until his back hit the doorframe. I grabbed his collar and shoved his face into the old lottery display case beside the door, hard enough that his face twisted instantly.

Just then, the noise around us surged again, and the few remaining underlings scattered and ran.

I kept the gang leader pressed against the glass.

"Your supplies," I said. "Where are they?"

He was breathing fast through his nose. "What supplies?"

"The place where you stash your supplies. Where is it?"

"Three blocks north." His lips were flat against the case, trembling. "The laundromat on Kearny Street. Under the floor, in the back room. Forty, maybe fifty cans in there, water, some medicine. That's all of it, I swear."

"How many of you are there?"

"Nine." He swallowed. "But most of them ran."

I let go of his neck. He slid down the frame and sat slumped on the floor. I picked up my pack and the knife from under the shelf on my way out, then headed north.

The street had already been torn up by the Eroded. I pulled a length of rebar from a nearby construction site, dragging it along the ground; the sound drew the Eroded toward me. I struck their heads without mercy and kicked them aside, forcing a path through.

It had been a full six months since the Eroded descended. No one knew why they'd mutated, and no one knew when it would end. In those six months I'd drifted from place to place. My memory had gaps—I could feel them—but they hadn't gotten in the way of my survival. I could still make my way in the apocalypse just fine, because I was strong.

Then the wristband buzzed. GCI 95.3%.

I sat on the hood of a car and dry-swallowed two crude low-grade suppressants. The number recalculated to 95.1%—back in the safe range, more or less.

There was only one piece of information in my wristband.

A name.

"Kyle."

I had been looking for him.

After a short rest, I set out again.

The laundromat was where the gang leader had said it was—a supply stash. I pried up the floor, took some necessities, and left.

By evening, it was time to rest. I found a parking structure under the Meridian overpass; on the second floor there was an SUV with intact door seals, so I broke the window, cleared the interior, locked the doors, and shut myself inside.

I looked at my wristband again: GCI 95.1%.

I turned to look out the window. The spores were starting to rage, and the sky was turning gray.

Now and then someone walked past outside, apparently browsing a video site. I happened to glance at their phone screens and saw a familiar scene.

Was that footage of me?

Kyle Reynolds's POV

I never thought I'd see her again.

Jax brought the video to me. "Captain, look at this—she's incredible."

I looked at the phone without much interest. In the video, five men were blocking an exit, and then a long-haired woman walked in. Half a minute later, the scene turned chaotic; the long-haired woman put all those men on the ground and walked out without a care.

I stared at her, unable to look away. I recognized her.

I knew that wrist. I knew the way she stood, the set of her shoulders, her composure and calm. I had spent seven years trying to forget those things, and I had failed.

She broke up with me on a Tuesday. No argument, no explanation that held water—just a decision already made, delivered like she was reading off a script. Then she vanished into the crowd and was never seen again.

I looked for her after that. For a long time—long enough that the searching itself became a kind of torment, and to keep myself from going crazy, I forced myself to stop.

And now she was right there on the screen in front of me.

Dorian had put his glasses back on. I'd told him about her before; he'd probably recognized her too.

It's hard to describe how I felt at that moment.

"Tomorrow," I said, my heart heavy, "we go find her."