Chapter One

At this point, some explaining should probably be done about our city, and the beasts within it. After all, it is very different from all of the other cities on earth, and the beasts are different from any other animal, if they are an animal at all.

Our city, Craminth, was a state in its own right. As an overview: proudly communist, ostensibly self-sufficient, and definitely corrupt. It had been formed in the nineteen hundreds by a small group of English upper-class idiots who had some bright idea about a just and fair society, but no clear strategy for forming it. Somehow, we had managed to survive to the twenty-first century, and grow in size to over one million citizens. Really, we were a glorified shanty town, where almost all the residents lived in poverty and technology was far behind the rest of the world. We managed to protect ourselves from world powers by being a largely undesirable place to live, with little to offer in terms of natural resources, and by keeping ourselves to ourselves.

The beasts had started to appear almost as soon as the land was built-up enough to hide them. Almost every street in the city was an alleyway – just space between houses really. And at night, in many dark alleyways, lay a beast.

They were easy to avoid, really. They didn’t roam, but only lay in wait. They seemed to disappear in daylight, and even at night only hid in alleyways dark enough to hide the centre completely from view. They made a quiet scuffling noise, and anyone who avoided these suspiciously scuffling dark alleys would be fine.

Scientists couldn’t explain them. They couldn’t explain how they got there; they couldn’t explain where they went in daylight. As they claimed more and more lives of careless people, they scientists found another thing they couldn’t explain: why almost exactly fifty percent of people who met with one of these beasts wound up dead. Or why the other fifty percent found the beast itself dead before they even reached it.

The scientific community jokingly referred to them as Schrödinger’s beasts, after Schrödinger’s cat, because there existed a fifty-percent chance they were alive. The name caught on a little in the general public, too, though mostly they were referred to simply as Beasts.

Among teenage boys, facing a Schrödinger became a test of bravery. The bodies, ugly, feathered, four-legged things, a little taller than a man, became trophies. Deaths became more common.

And somewhere along the line, the government decided to do something terrible.

Perhaps the scientists thought it would give them more evidence, more Beast bodies to do autopsies on. Perhaps the government thought it was a good idea to help them distinguish the citizens they thought were dangerous – cautious, smart, rebellious men and women who thought of self-preservation before the good of their country – from those who were an asset – brave, obedient, wanting to fit in to their community.

Whatever their reasons for it, the government thought that everyone should face a Beast. To be exact, every eighteen year old should face a Beast, or give up their citizenship. This meant not voting, not legally being allowed to have a job or continue with education, not receiving clothing or food stamps or housing. Not being recognised by the system as existing at all.

And so I found myself, aged seventeen, worrying about my future; worrying if I would even be alive eight months from then. I sat on my bed, in my very own bedroom, in the larger house that we had moved to two years ago. I glanced up from my worrying, and saw my reflection in the mirror. Despite my sombre mood, I nearly laughed. My face was so freckled it looked dirty, and I had let my sandy hair grow unruly so that it fell into my face. Despite my skinniness everywhere else, my face was quite podgy. My expression was far too serious for someone whose appearance would never allow them to be taken seriously.

Rachel swung my door open without knocking. Since Jessica’s death, she had changed dramatically. She had grown up into a striking woman, with hair the same colour as mine but that hung in graceful waves to her chest. She was tall and very thin, with a prominent nose and something new - a faint scar that curved from her ear to her chin, following her jaw line. She had changed in character too. She was braver now, brasher and stronger-willed. She spoke her mind more and many called her a bitch. And she was one of the most prestigious women in the city, thanks to her luck with Schrödingers.

“Where have you been?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her in a week and a half, despite the fact that we lived together. This wasn’t unheard of for Rachel, but it was unusual. And her life was dangerous. I had been worried.

“Hanging out at HQ.” She said. I rolled my eyes. Nobody called the Hunter’s headquarters ‘HQ’ except those self-important Hunters who thought they were better than the rest of us. Rachel had only started doing it recently, when she started being involved in their more secret activities, many of which, I suspected, were illegal.

“You didn’t get that scar from a Beast.” I said.

“You don’t know that!” she said, defensively. “We’re getting somewhere, you know. We know more about them each day. One day it won’t be just luck. Soon we’ll be able to fight them.”

I made a ‘phmph’ noise in disbelief. “You don’t know anything about them. Nobody does. And it will always be just luck. That’s their magic.”

“I got you gifts, little brother.” She grinned, and revealed a plastic bag from somewhere. From it, she pulled out some ground coffee and two pairs of jeans.

“Hey, thanks!” I said. Coffee is rare in our city, and these jeans were better made than any you could buy here. They were fashionable, too. They weren’t made in the factory here in our city. The government always made sure that goods from outside got to the Hunters, rewarded them for their bravery and stupidity, for romanticising fighting the beasts. For being good examples of what a citizen should be. Despite my scepticism about the whole thing, I was glad of gifts from Rachel.

She hugged me. “It’s going to be alright you know.” She said. “I know you’re nearly eighteen, but it’s going to be fine. You’re a survivor, like me.”

The next day, I wore a pair of my new jeans to school. I knew I was the envy of a lot of the kids there, kids whose clothes were all made within our city. They wore poor quality dresses in bland colours, or straight-legged plain jeans in light blue denim, or home-knitted items.

I entered the classroom a little late and made apologies to my teacher. She frowned a little, but let me off with no more than that. I don’t like to gloat, but I was one of the best students in the school, likely to do well enough in these exams to stay on next year. If I survived that long.

There was a new girl in my class since the day before, and I found myself staring without meaning to. Two things made me stare: firstly, she was gorgeous; secondly, she was black.

The founding fathers of the city had all been white, and there had been no immigrants for a long time after that. The fact that she was black meant that she or one of her recent ancestors had chosen to come live in our city. Chosen a life of poverty, in a land where less than fifty percent of people survived to adulthood. This fact made her mysterious.

I hoped I didn’t stare as I sat, not listening, in class. But I couldn’t help watching her. I couldn’t tell how tall she was, sitting down, but I thought her to be taller than me. She wore a plain white t-shirt and light blue jeans, both obviously made in the city. Her dark hair fell almost to her waist, but somehow had stayed perfectly neat. She sat up very straight, and didn’t smile; she listened carefully to everything the teacher said. Her brown eyes were very large, very hypnotic, and her cheekbones were very high. She looked out of place in this classroom of scruffy kids, seeming to look and act older than us, and when she moved to pick up a pen she had dropped, her hair fell and hid her face from my view. I was fascinated.

The lesson ended, and we all stood up to leave. Many of us split into groups of friends, and for one second she looked less like a graceful woman and more like a lost child. Then she headed towards the door.

Bray came up behind me, hitting me on the arm. “New jeans?” he asked. Bray was my best friend. He was also a tall kid a little older and a lot smarter than me, athletic and muscle-bound with a face ugly as sin. His nose was wide and flattened, and his eyes were too far back into his head. It might seem strange to be so insulting about your best friend, but as he had always been better liked than me, with more girlfriends, better academic prospects, and better at all sports, I relished in this one little thing that he didn’t have over me; the fact that I didn’t look like I had been punched in the face repeatedly.

“Yeah,” I said. “From Rachel,”

“You got any more?” he asked, hopefully.

I shook my head. “Not for you.”

He moaned, but he hadn’t expected me to give them up. I never did.

“At least come round to my place, so I can copy them.” He begged of me. I shrugged in agreement. This was how it always worked – I would get fashionable jeans from out-of-city, and Bray would painstakingly alter his own clothing-stamp jeans into a recreation of them, using dye, scissors, and his expert sewing skills (ha!).

We headed in the direction of Bray’s house. We spoke only of jeans, girls and school, ignoring the thought which hung over us like a grey cloud. Bray would be eighteen in three weeks, and we hadn’t spoken a single word about it.

Rachel often faced hundreds of Beasts in a night, and she had always survived. Some people are lucky. But some people are unlucky, and Bray’s family seemed one of those doomed to balance out the statistics. Bray had had seven older siblings, and each one had died aged eighteen, facing their first Schrödinger. His parents each came from a family where they had each been the only child to survive, too; his mother from four children, and his father from seven.

And we all knew that it was coincidence, and that everyone had a fifty percent chance of surviving, regardless of history (that was what made Rachel’s life so terrifying, after all). But that thought didn’t help to quell our fears, just like it didn’t tone down Rachel’s complacency.

At Bray’s house, his father offered us water. I smiled at the thought of the coffee I had at home, and accepted, and as I watched Bray alter his clothing to match mine I asked “What do you think of the new girl?”

“May?” he asked. “Oh, of course, you missed her intro. She’s hot.”

“Yeah. But what’s her story?”

“She’s lived in the outside world. She only moved her seven months ago. Her parents must be crazy, moving her here just in time to get her killed. I’m thinking of asking her out.”

I tensed just a little. “Really?”

“Hmm. I’m thinking, what the hell, I might not be here much longer.”

“What? Bray!” I said in astonishment.

“We’re going to have to talk about it sometime, Lee. You’re my best friend. Who else can I talk to?”

“How about your new girlfriend?” I laughed, trying to lighten up the conversation.

“You know, Lee, if you want her, I won’t fight you for her.” I didn’t know how he’d worked it out, but I was grateful.

“You sure?”

“You’re joking? I care about you more than some stupid girl I don’t know. Besides, ‘May and Bray’ sounds lame anyway, right?”