Clover toppled into a trash bin as she took another corner. The sound reverberated off the buildings that rose up on either side of the dark alley like an alarm, and with her own breath muffling everything to a dull murmur, she dug into the garbage. Numb, trembling fingers scraped through the refuse, searching for something sharp—glass, the cut lid of a can—anything that might help her slit her own throat before it was too late.

Not everyone in her pack carried a knife with them, but those who went into the city always did, even if it was just a tiny pocket knife like Clover’s. It didn’t matter how big they were, because they weren’t used for protection. Not from people. They were cyanide pills. They were their way out if they got trapped—their way to escape before the Bureau agents could lay hands on them.

And Clover had dropped hers.

Over the sound of the rustling garbage, came the steady thumping of boots that had driven her into the unfamiliar maze of the city, pounding in tandem with her racing heart. She didn’t have time to keep looking, though her legs shook and barely held her up. Her chest burned and stomach lurched as she pushed back into a run. How long had she been fleeing this agent? An hour? Two hours? Her body was on the brink of collapse, and yet the steady pulse of boots behind her was unchanging. She was falling apart, and her assailant hadn’t slowed at all.

She took every turn she came to, hoping to confuse the man behind her. It wouldn’t stop him, but maybe it would delay him. Maybe the relay from the cameras that dotted rooftops would be slow. Maybe she would finally take a turn the surveillance cameras would miss and he would wander off in the wrong direction. She hoped these things would happen, but the cocktail of adrenaline and terror that had masked most of her pain was gone. She was out of time, and like prey that had been run to exhaustion, she would soon be nothing more than a wrecked prize for him to collect.

As the alley turned, leading back toward a main street, her legs tangled and she hit the concrete again. She didn’t want to get up this time. She didn’t want to run any more. She didn’t even want to breathe anymore. But what were her choices?

She could bite her tongue. She’d seen the mess it made, seen desperate members of her pack do it when they couldn’t handle the pressure of their fear any more. It was a bad way to go, but she had no options left. If this man caught her, she would be taken to the Bureau. She would be killed—or worse, she would be a slave. Pressing her fingers into the wet concrete, she pushed herself to her knees. Her time was up. She pressed the sharp edge of her teeth to the pliant muscle in her mouth, breathing hard as she willed herself to follow through.

Then the roar of a freight truck drew her attention to the street ahead of her. The lampposts washed the space in a pale light, blinding compared to the narrow, dim crevice she was in. But there, like a dark beacon of hope, she saw the black slit of a storm drain. Most drains in the city were barred to keep debris from blocking up the sewage system, but also to keep her kind out. The Bureau tried to block off anything they thought could be used as a hiding place. But this one was narrow—too narrow for a person, probably—and so it had been left open.

With a surge of impetuous hope, Clover was on her feet again, running a crooked path toward the light of the street. There were no other cars, no pedestrians, and the only camera to be seen was pointing in the other direction. As she stumbled across the street, she watched the small grey box that acted as the eyes of the agents. She watched it complete its swivel and slowly start back toward her. She had less than thirty seconds before it completed its cycle again and caught her it its line of sight. And the growing sound of her assailant suggested even less time.

The runoff that had collected around the opening of the drain was like ice as she threw herself to the ground, ripping her backpack from her shoulders. The space was even narrower than it had looked, and as she crammed the worn, green canvas bag through the slot, she wondered how she would manage to squeeze herself in after it. As her bag finally gave, she dove into the opening after it. Her head barely fit through, and her hands scraped themselves raw on the pavement as she tried to force her chest into the darkness that would keep her safe.

She was sandwiched between two slabs of concrete, stuck with her legs scrambling for purchase in the street, waiting for hands to wrap around her ankles and drag her out to her death. The city had suddenly become a vice that would split her in half. It was a monster her kind feared, but she had willingly crawled into its waiting mouth, and now it was devouring her.

Bracing her hands on the wet walls of the culvert, she pushed the air from her lungs, twisted her coat out of the way, and finally slipped down into the gullet of the sewers. She landed on top of her bag, the hard lump raising bruises on her side that would hurt much more later on than they did right that minute. Then she remembered the delicate cargo her backpack carried and scrambled to get it out of the water.

Just as she’d scrambled into the corner, away from the light that shone into the small box of stone from the streetlight, she heard boots come to a stop above her. She clutched her bag and held her breath, trying to keep the water she sat in still. The man above her shuffled back and forth for a few moments, then Clover heard the static-y murmur from his earpiece that kept him in touch with the surveillance team.

“What do you mean you lost it?” The man’s voice echoed into the drain, booming inside the tiny space. “How do you lose something like that on an empty street?”

He wasn’t even winded.

Clover’s hand moved to her mouth as she felt a terrified warbling shake her chest. She sat and listened to the too-familiar sound of his boots move back and forth, his shadow darkening her hiding place over and over. Bureau issued boots had a distinct sound to them. The thick rubber soles brought the heels down in a muffled thump, but the metal that covered the toe scraped the concrete. The thud-scuff it made sent ice through Clover every time she heard it. She wanted to scream, but instead she just held her breath.

“I’m heading south,” he said finally. “Keep looking for it.”

Then he was gone, the horrible sound of his running fading into silence.

- 02 -

Clover had recognized the agent the moment he’d asked her name. And, if she
hadn’t
been one hundred percent certain, the name “Rainer” had been sewn into his Mylar vest, the shoulder of his black uniform emblazoned with red—the color reserved for high ranking officers. She’d seen his face on the front of every newspaper in the city a few months ago, his name celebrated for the mass extermination he’d led. His target: a pack that had taken up arms against some of the bureau agents—vandalizing Bureau property, even leaving a few agents injured or dead in the worse parts of town.

Even through newsprint, Rainer’s eyes had been sharp, intimidating, pale in the grey-scaled picture. And just like in the picture, his black hair had been pushed back from his trim, cultured looking face.

“What’s your name, miss?” His voice had been polite, but he flashed her in the face with a small light all the agents kept on their belt, next to the more harmful weapons they kept. Even in the fair light of evening, if caught just right, the beam would reflect in her eyes and bounce back to him, so she had looked away, trying to seem bashful and not terrified.

She’d lied—told him her name was Jenny and that she’d been cutting through the park on her way to the soup kitchen on the other side of town. That still worked sometimes. Without the flash of her eyes, they had no real way to tell that she was a werewolf. Not unless they planned to take blood samples there on the sidewalk as parents skirted them with their kids. This time it didn’t work, though. She knew the moment the three trainees surrounding her unsnapped their holsters, freeing their Track-Tasers.

She ran, then. Yanking one of the baby-faced rookies between her and the barb that had been fired from Rainer’s gun so fast she’d hardly seen his arm move at all. The boy seized in her arms, his body going rigid as the barb electrified his body, then she’d dropped him and started running.

“Tag her!” Rainer’s voice had struck her like the dart she felt pass through her mass of curly hair should have.

Just the thought of being grazed by one of those needles set her shaking. The Bureau’s Track-Tasers were specialized weapons designed to incapacitate any werewolf in their sights. The barbs were electrified and hooked like a miniature whaler’s spear. If the convulsions didn’t slow their target down long enough to catch, the dart was set with a GPS tracker that would lead them straight to their prey. Clover got the impression they liked playing that game sometimes.

They had played that game during Clover’s first real run in with a Track-Taser. She'd been eleven. Her father had just started taking her on reconnaissance trips into the city. He'd been careful to bring her on only the most mundane missions, but they'd been unlucky. Byron, her father’s cousin, had taken one of the barbs to his arm. They’d been able to escape the trio of agents responsible, but just as the rules of the game had demanded, returning home had been out of the question.

Hidden behind a dumpster in a dank alley, Clover had steadied Byron's head in her lap while her father spent excruciating minutes trying to dig the tracker out. Eventually, when they’d realized the barb was lodged in bone, he had removed their friend's arm with his utility knife. She still remembered the ripping sound of her father's shirt, which had been used as a tourniquet, and the wet, icy skin of the man's forehead under her hands. Clover had been sent to dispose of the limb, the weight of a single arm surprising her as she’d wrapped it in her jacket before dumping it in the fast moving canal.

She distinctly remembered, as Rainer had broken away from the rookies he’d been training, that she had no one to cut off her arm for her. And she’d been sure, in that moment, that she wouldn’t be able to do it to herself.

- 03 -

Clover spent hours sitting in the tiny concrete box that had saved her from Rainer—from self-slaughter. She sat in the icy water at the bottom of the culvert until her legs were completely numbed, sure that if she moved even a centimeter Rainer would hear her—hear the ripple in the water and drop a noose down to haul her out of her den like a fox by hounds.

Morning was coming, though. The sliver of sky Clover could see through the slit of the storm drain was still black, but a softness had crept into it. She could feel the pull of the moon which had long since dropped past its apex, and, at best, she figured it was midnight—or maybe one. Sitting in the dark was comfortable, safe, but would only get her so far. She’d come into the city for a reason, and leaving without fulfilling the next step in her plan was out of the question.

Of course, she would first have to find a way out of the sewers.

It seemed to Clover like she’d been shivering all night—first from adrenaline, then from fear, now from cold. She crouched against the brick wall of an alley, concealing herself from the main walkway, which was only just starting to see a few pedestrians, behind the pile of crates staged up beside a dumpster. She’d only been there for ten minutes, but somehow it was colder than the culverts had been.

It had taken her nearly the whole night to find her way out of the sewers. Even after she’d begun to recognize the streets she saw through the narrow storm drains she passed, it still took hours to find a spot she could fit through. Eventually, she’d stumbled upon a larger opening that emptied into one of the canals and managed to squeeze through the bars that were supposed to keep people out. She supposed the street workers who monitored these things didn’t care so much about the smaller wolves getting around.

But above ground, in her new waiting place, the wind snaked between buildings and chilled her still-damp clothes. She wanted to pace, to jump around to warm herself, but she still hurt everywhere. And anyway, drawing attention to herself was the last thing she wanted. So she would just be cold.

To distract herself, she fished out the now soggy piece of paper she’d been keeping safe in her pocket. It was like detangling a spider’s web, but somehow, even with her trembling fingers, she managed to flatten the article—only a few corners torn. She laid it out on one of the boxes beside her, hoping it would dry out, and stared at the picture.

Just as she’d seen Rainer’s face for the first time at a newspaper stand, she’d seen this man’s face for the first time there as well. But he hadn’t been exulted for mass murder the way Rainer had. The title read:

“New Leadership in the Bureau for Werewolf Control?”

The font was bold and gossipy looking, like it should have run in a tabloid, not the city news journal. Beneath those words was the photo of a stern looking young man, not much older than she was—eighteen, nineteen—his light hair combed so neatly she thought his mother might have cleaned him up before sending him to the reporters. He wore thin-rimmed glasses and a Bureau uniform so crisp it might have stood up on its own. He was handsome, but reminded her of a child’s military doll. Beautiful, but empty on the inside. Then again, wasn’t that how every human was? Empty shells pretending to be decent people?

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