Petra Vane's Arc

Chapter 1 of 10

Petra Vane cut the tracking implant from the boy's arm just as the sirens started. She worked by lamplight in her back room, blood on her butcher's apron, rubber gloves slick to the wrist. The regime had taken her medical license years ago. She still stitched up the people it beat down, and she still dug out the trackers that let it hunt them. The boy on her rusted gurney was branded, barcode fresh on his neck. He had no social points, no clinic, no chance. He had only her table. The implant came free. She dropped it into a steel pan on the wall shelf, where her old surgical tools hung in neat rows. Then she killed the lamp and listened. Boots. Many boots. A curfew sweep had locked down her whole block. "They're checking doors," she said. "You can't leave before dawn. Not with those checkpoints out there." The boy didn't answer. He couldn't. This was Juno Vael, who had come to her twice before, always in that oversized state-issue hazmat suit, hair growing back in patches over old surgeon's work. Twin scars ran up both his forearms. He flinched at every number, and the sweep outside called them out — house four, house five, house six. Each shout made him curl tighter on the gurney. Petra pressed a clean cloth to his fresh wound. "Breathe," she whispered. "Don't count with them." House seven. House eight. The boots reached her storefront, the ruined shell of masonry and broken glass she used for cover. A fist hit the front door. Juno's whole body shook. Petra had one path. Below her back room ran an old drainage crawl, sealed years ago. She had never used it. She gripped Juno's arm and pulled him off the gurney. "Down here. Now." She kicked loose the board over the crawl. The gap was narrow, black, cold. Juno stared at it and would not move. She took his scarred hand and put it flat against her chest, over her heartbeat. "No numbers," she said. "Just my hand. Go." He went. She pushed him in and followed, dragging the board back over the hole as the front door splintered. Boots crossed the floor above them. A voice barked a room count. Juno's breath hitched. Petra held his hand hard until the boots faded down the block. They crawled out an hour before dawn, three buildings away, into a sagging storefront full of rubble. Juno was safe. His tracker was gone. But in the black pan on her shelf, the implant still sat. She had left it behind. A live tracker, in her room, now marked on the regime's map as the exact place a fugitive had disappeared. They knew her table now. She could not go back to it.