Havoc by Jane Higgins

lodged in the wound.
    Downstairs in the emergency room I gawped at the riches in the medicine cupboard:
antiseptics, bandages, painkillers, antihistamines—shelves of the stuff, and all
for a single family. You could fill one of those packing cartons with it all and
haul it back to Southside, and if you weren’t mobbed first by a bunch of rampaging
medics you could do very well for yourself on the black market.
    When we’d done what we could for Sandor, he lay still, eyes closed, and we didn’t
know if we’d done enough. At least the bleeding had stopped and the wound was as
clean as we could make it. ‘I’ll look for food,’ I said.
    I found some tins of lamb-and-barley stew. We ate it cold because I didn’t dare turn
on the power in case that triggered a security alert and, anyway, we were too hungry
to care. Then I went downstairs and cleaned up, disposed of the empty cans and tidied
up the emergency room. I told myself I was doing that so no one would know we’d been
here. But it was habit too; it’s what Lou and I used to do when we’d crept in here
for a weekend and it was time to head back to school. Most of the weekend we’d slouch
about, games console in one hand, beer in the other, and the place would rapidly
descend into a pigsty. Until it was time to leave, and then we’d go into this mad
cleaning frenzy that would have astonished Lou’s mother. I don’t know if we ever
fooled the cleaners or Sarah Hendry, and if Lou got bawled out about it he never
told me.
    I looked in on Sandor and Lanya. Sandor’s face was tense even in sleep. Lanya was
curled up asleep on the couch nearby. Without her scarf, now lying bloodsoaked in
the bathroom basin, her braids fell over her cheek and she looked far too young to
be wielding knives and pointing guns at security agents. But here she was, and I
was glad and guilty in equal measure—which is to say, very glad and very guilty.
    I turned back to the main room and went over to the windows. I looked across the
river to Southside. Rain still hammered the river and the city in great sweeping
torrents, and the clouds were low over Southside making it look gloomy and dangerous:
the shadow city—that’s how we’d thought of it at school, and that’s what it looked
like now. I thought, what if you were Breken, and Frieda offered you the chance to
get out of there—provided you agreed to work for her. Why would you choose that?
Why would my mother choose that? Maybe because it would be a better life for her
kid. But if she’d worked for Frieda she wouldn’t have been with my father.
    Why should I believe Dash anyway? We’d been good friends at Tornmoor, and for a time,
more than friends, really close. We knew each other well, but we were a long way
apart now, on different sides, and not just of the river.
    I had no answers to any of this, and no time to find them. The clock was ticking
as Frieda laid her plans for Moldam, and I had to find my father.
    Away west, the light of the setting sun slipped under the clouds and shone red down
the river. I listened to the house, silent above and below. No one home but us intruders.
Which, to be honest, is what I’d always been. Lou had tried to make it otherwise—like
I said, he was generous to a fault—but it wasn’t his call. If he got caught breaking
curfew or skipping class he might lose a month’s allowance. If I got caught I’d be
on the street with the clothes I stood up in and nothing else. That always made me
look two, three times at Lou’s latest harebrained scheme before I jumped in; it made
me study everything for the catch that would send things spinning out of control.
Lou was the out-and-out loon; I was the one standing on the sidelines saying, ‘but
hold on a second’. On average then, I guess that made us a fairly sensible pair.
But now? Now being too cautious would lose us the game.
    I peered