Shifting Fates by Nadia Simonenko, Aubrey Rose

Chapter One
    Bindi
    It’s Christmas Eve and there are too many people in Times Square for my taste. They’re mostly humans, too.
    Most nights, the streets in lower Manhattan empty out and the monsters come prowling: genetically mutated near-animals who scour the alleys for trash or food. They leave their deformed tracks in the radioactive ash coating the sidewalks of Lexington. They scavenge dumpsters. They lunge, territorial. They slouch toward nothing.
    But tonight, the still-human survivors swarm the streets instead. Bright and sparkling, Times Square makes the world look almost like New York City before the war. At least, that’s how I remember it from when I was a little girl. The military has turned on the lights for an extra hour.
    To celebrate . That’s what they said over the loudspeakers.
    My right hand is on the knife inside my coat pocket as I move through the crowds of men and women, my small fingers clenched white around the handle. I have a doll for Kit stuffed into my hidden pouch along with the rations packages I’ve already stolen, and I’m having trouble keeping all of them balanced inside.
    Another guard crosses the street. The huge store windows are empty now, and I press myself back, turning my face towards the window and pretending to fix the hood over my hair in the reflection of the glass as the sentry guard passes.
    My long dark hair is wound tightly back into a braid, partially covered by the ragged burlap hood of my coat. I blink and cannot tear my gaze away from the bright irises of my eyes in the light.
    Green and blue like the waves in the bay , my dad used to say. I tilt my head and I am squinting into the light but I don’t care. Tears fill my eyes and I smile. My eyes are shining green now, then blue in the harsh fluorescent light, and because of the brightness my pupils are nearly invisible in the reflection.
    That is how I like to imagine myself—blind, with no eyes anymore, just color.
    In the darkness where I live now, everyone’s pupils have taken over the color that their eyes used to be. Predators in the light are majestic, their eyes tawny as a lion’s, or bright green as a snake’s. But only grubs live underground, and those who prey on grubs. Sewer rats have black eyes. So do we.
    My eyes are rimmed red from the tears, and I breathe out through a clenched jaw as the reflection of the sentry passes behind me. He glances at me, and I am certain that he notices that my arms are hooded, my outdated identification badge obscured. I choke on my fear as his gaze sweeps me over.
    I know what he sees. Small female. A limp. A cane. No threat. Still, my thumb rubs circles of worry into the knife’s handle.
    Then he is around the corner and gone, and I’m safe.
    My other hand swings the metal rod that I use as a cane, and I dart another glance to the mirrored glass. I bend over farther to look like an older woman, hoping that my small stature will hide me in the crowd. I let my left foot drag slightly as though I, too, have the radiation sickness that makes all the men and women here weak in their limbs. But I’m not weak. No, I’m stronger than all of them .
    I am one of the monsters.
    The city blocks are lit harshly with bright fluorescent tubes that stretch out over my head, as though cautioning me not to look upward, toward the stars. Even with my head down, I am unused to the brightness, and when I squint I hope that the normal people around me don’t notice.
    My breath is a white cloud in front of me as I cross the street and begin to limp alongside the food distribution line. There are more people here today than I’ve ever seen before, all hoping for extra rations at the end of the line. My eyes search for an easy target.
    There is an old man twenty feet ahead of me, his bag already bulging. He must have been through the bread distribution once before, maybe twice. His nose is so close to the glass that his breath turns the surface of the window white and cloudy. Inside