Skylark by Meagan Spooner Page B

. think she’ll stay put,” he was saying. “No, I don’t think so.” A pause. “A few minutes?”
    I stopped dead in the doorway. With one hand, Caesar was stacking plates, keeping up a steady clatter of activity. But in his other, he was holding his talkie. It was pulsating the red of a steady connection. I could feel the hum of the Resource from here, throbbing against my temples like a bruise.
    I stood frozen, my mind unwilling to accept what my eyes were seeing. He didn’t notice me at first, continuing to speak into the device.
    “Yeah, she doesn’t know anything. No problem, she’s about half-dead—” He saw me and stopped speaking.
    The moment stretched into an eternity, the pit of my stomach roiling though my mind had yet to understand.
    “Lark,” he said, his voice low, steady. “Just listen—”
    I whirled, grabbed my pack, and sprinted for the door.
    I heard him thumping after me. “Lark!” he shouted. “Get back here! It’s not what you think!”
    I flew down the fire escape, scarcely noticing how the metal grid cut into my battered bare feet.
    His heavy footsteps started clanging down after me. “You need a doctor!” he shouted. “They know what’s best for you, Lark; they were keeping you for a reason—you’re sick—jeez, Lark, slow down!”
    My legs were shaking with effort, but I could hear his footsteps getting closer. I couldn’t afford weakness.
    He was just above me now, one floor up. As I turned a corner, he swung himself over the railing out over empty space, letting his momentum carry him back in. He landed hard on his feet in front of me, between me and the next flight of stairs down. I skidded to a halt.
    I darted to the side, looking down over the railing. Five stories.
    Caesar saw my sideways movement. “Uh uh,” he said, stretching his hands out so as to make it clear there was no way past him. “Stop it, Lark. Just come back in with me and we’ll have some food, okay? I know you think all that stuff is true, but you’re sick. It isn’t real.” He smiled at me, showing his teeth.
    There was no escaping him. He was twice my size, and, like he’d said into his talkie, I was half-dead. “Do you really believe what they told you?”
    His false smile faded. “Where are you going to go except back?” he asked, shaking his head. “It’s better if you go voluntarily. Don’t make a fuss. Go quietly, smoothly. You have to understand your function in this city.”
    I tried to catch my breath, too angry and too frightened to find words. How could he believe my function should be a lifetime of enslavement?
    He must have read something of my thoughts from my expression. “Let me take you in.”
    “Is this all so you can get your precious promotion?” I spat.
    Caesar shrugged. “We are who we are, little sister,” he said. He came toward me.
    I backed up until I was pressed against the railing behind me. “I’d rather die than live there.” My voice was steady as I stepped up onto the bottom edge of the railing.
    “If you jump here you won’t die.” Caesar rolled his eyes as if I were six years old. “You’ll just break a bunch of bones, and it’ll hurt like hell, and then you’ll end up back there anyway. Might as well make it easy for yourself.”
    My stomach lurched as I realized his words were true. Maybe if I’d run a little more slowly he’d have caught up when I was still high enough. Now I couldn’t even kill myself.
    My despair must have been clear on my face. Caesar nodded. “Good girl,” he said, and without warning, lunged for me.
    I thrust out my arms and felt the sickening, now-familiar lurch, the world spinning. There was an audible crack as my vision went black for an instant, and then I heard a strangled cry. Caesar’s body sailed over the railing and then dropped down, down. I saw his legs kicking feebly until he struck the ground with a wet, meaty smack.
    I had killed my own brother.
    He betrayed you , said a whispery little voice