Marvis didn't trust the stranger.
It was a survival instinct, honed over sixteen years of being the lowest caste in a city that fed on the low. Trust was a luxury O-Negatives couldn't afford. Trust got you sold to a Processing Hub. Trust got your blood drained into a vial and traded like coin. Trust got your name called on Tithe Day.
But the woman calling herself Renn had her brand on display—that circle-and-line mark behind her ear, raw and pink as if freshly burned. No one faked that brand. It was burned into the flesh of every O-Negative on their tenth birthday, a permanent scar that marked them as chattel. And Renn had spoken the Commander's name like someone who had learned it the hard way, like someone who had felt the weight of his attention and survived.
Marvis kept her body angled between Renn and Mira, her hands open and ready. She had no weapon, no training, nothing but her own flesh to shield her sister. But she had something else: a lifetime of knowing when danger was near. Every nerve in her body was screaming.
"What do you mean, he wants my blood?" Marvis kept her voice low, but it cut through the alley like a blade. "Everyone wants O-Negative blood. That's not news. That's our purpose."
Renn's amber eyes flicked to Mira, then back to Marvis. In the dim light of the alley, her face was all sharp angles and shadows, her expression unreadable. But there was something in her eyes—a hunger, a desperation, a recognition that made Marvis's skin prickle.
"He doesn't want to drain you," Renn said. "That's too common for him. Commander Jeff Vance collects rare things. Unusual things. Things that don't fit the system." She tilted her head, studying Marvis with an intensity that felt like a physical touch. "And you—you've been flagged."
"Flagged how?" The word tasted like ash in Marvis's mouth. Flagged meant watched. Flagged meant targeted. Flagged meant you became a name on a list, and names on lists had a way of disappearing.
"I don't know. I'm not in Enforcement. But I have eyes in places. Word travels fast when an O-Negative gets moved up four sectors overnight with a direct order from the Commander's own office." Renn crossed her arms, leaning against the stack of crates behind her. Her posture was casual, but her eyes never stopped moving—scanning the alley, the rooftops, the mouth of the passage behind them. "You should be in a filtration pit right now, scrubbing blood off grates until your fingers bleed. Instead you're here, in Sector Four, eating cream pastries with your sister. That doesn't worry you?"
Marvis's jaw tightened. Of course it worried her. She had been telling herself it was luck, a clerical error, a fluke of the system. But luck didn't deliver handwritten notes to your pillow while you were at work. Luck didn't put the city's most dangerous man in the same market square where you happened to be standing.
"What do you want?" Marvis asked bluntly. "You didn't track me down to give me a friendly warning out of the goodness of your heart. People like us don't do things for free."
Renn's smile was thin, almost bitter. "No. We don't." She pushed off from the crates, taking a step closer. Marvis tensed, but Renn stopped at arm's length, close enough to whisper. "I want to know what makes you special. And I want to know before he does. Because if I know, I can protect myself. And maybe protect you too."
"There's nothing special about me." The words came automatically, a defense mechanism honed by years of being told she was worthless. But even as she said them, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered: Then why are you here? Why did he write you a note? Why does this woman think you're different?
"Everyone says that," Renn replied. "Usually they're wrong."
Mira shifted behind Marvis, her voice small but steady. Mira had always been braver than Marvis, even when she was scared. "Why should we believe anything you say? You could be working for him."
Renn's expression flickered—something dark passing behind her eyes, a shadow of memory that made her face go still. Slowly, she reached up and pulled down the collar of her shirt.
The scars were worse than Marvis had expected.
A constellation of puncture wounds covered Renn's neck and shoulder, some old and white, others still pink and healing. The skin was mottled, cratered, the veins beneath it collapsed and useless. Marvis had seen wounds like that before, on the O-Negatives who survived the Processing Hubs. The ones who were drained twice a week, week after week, until their bodies gave out. The ones who were thrown back into the lower wards when their blood ran too thin to be worth harvesting.
They didn't usually last long.
"I was in the Processing Hub for three years," Renn said quietly. "Sector Twelve. They drained me twice a week until my veins collapsed. I lost count of how many times I almost died. And the whole time, he didn't even know my name. He just signed the allocation orders. A flick of his pen, and my blood became someone else's luxury."
She let her collar fall back into place, hiding the evidence. But the image was burned into Marvis's memory.
"How did you get out?" Marvis asked, her voice softer now.
"I was lucky." Renn's smile returned, but it was hollow. "A raid on the hub. Some B-Positive radicals thought they could sabotage the system. They blew a hole in the wall, and in the chaos, I ran." She looked at Marvis with something like hunger. "I've been running ever since. But you—you're the first O-Negative I've ever seen get moved up. So I'll ask again: what makes you special?"
Marvis had no answer. She had nothing but the crumpled note in her pocket and a growing certainty that her life was no longer her own.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "I'm nobody. I scrub filters. I keep my head down. That's all."
Renn studied her for a long moment, her amber eyes unblinking. Then she reached into her coat and pulled out a small object—a disc of polished metal no larger than her palm. It was warm when she pressed it into Marvis's hand, and Marvis could feel faint vibrations coming from it, like a heartbeat.
"If you find out what he wants," Renn said, "or if he makes a move, press the center. It'll send a signal to people who can help."
"What people?"
"People who don't think O-Negatives should be cattle." Renn pulled her hood up, shadowing her face. "People who have been changed."
Before Marvis could ask what she meant, Renn turned and melted into the darkness between two buildings, disappearing as if she had never been there.
Marvis stood in the alley, the metal disc warm in her palm, her mind racing. Beside her, Mira was trembling.
"Marvis," Mira whispered. "What was that? What did she mean, changed?"
Marvis didn't answer. She was staring at the spot where Renn had vanished, replaying the woman's words. Things that don't fit the system. People who have been changed.
She thought of the note on her pillow. The reassignment. The Commander's grey eyes finding her in the crowd on Tithe Day.
She thought of her father, taken three years ago, his name called from the list. She thought of the way he had looked at her before the enforcers came—as if he had seen something in her that she couldn't see herself.
You are the foundation, he had said. But they will never let you forget that you are also worthless.
Was that what Renn saw? Something that wasn't worthless? Something worth hunting?
She shoved the disc into her pocket, next to the note, and grabbed Mira's hand.
"We're going back to the textile house," she said. "And we're not leaving until we figure out what's happening."
They slipped out of the alley and into the crowded streets, moving quickly, keeping to the shadows. Marvis's heart pounded with every step. She could feel eyes on her—the Commander's eyes, grey and cold, watching from somewhere in the darkness.
You have been seen.
The words echoed in her skull like a death sentence