The Gray House

I’ve never said anything against old friends. Never told my husband he couldn’t see someone he wanted to. But those trips are very hard on him. He’s not himself for days afterward, almost as if he’s ill, or something bad happens to him there. I am a mother. It’s my duty to think about the children first. I surely don’t want people blabbing around them that their father lived in that place, you know what I mean? I come from there myself, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, but it doesn’t mean such things should be discussed with strangers. Nobody could say that I am not like everyone else. I am a normal woman, and that’s exactly what the children need—normal, regular parents. And as for that commune . . . excuse me, but it is not a place where I would ever go myself, not that my opinion matters, of course. And they are not the people with whom I would want to have anything in common.

Hybrid

Oh for Pete’s sake, we didn’t do nothing! It’s just that Red took it into his head that we should support the Sleepers. Those who were going completely unclaimed, at least. With no relatives. Because who knows, right? So we passed a plate around. We weren’t doing too bad at the time, so we could’ve swung it ourselves, but we thought that maybe some of the guys would like to chip in. Nothing sinister. And then Needle made it look like we came to rob them. Of their last shirt, like. They’re pretty well off, you know. And we helped them with everything we had in the very beginning, when they didn’t know squat about how the Outsides worked. Two stupid kids in love! Right, whatever. Lary came afterward, with all kinds of excuses, brought a couple of coins. We never took anything from them. Imagine if she barged in right after him and demanded we give all of it back!

Smoker

I saw Red at the opening night of my latest exhibition. He lives in the same commune as Horse, and is considered a person of authority. Kind of like a respected elder. At first the whole affair was being run by the old night guard who had joined the fugitives after the graduation, but he’s been long dead, leaving behind only his collection of broken clocks, so now Red is the big man there.

He looks like an aging rock star, fairly washed out but still deadly. Hair halfway down his back, a tattoo on his forehead, a necklace of dangerous-looking claws. He generated way more interest than my paintings ever could. All the photos from the exhibition featured Red, from different angles, and the paintings only ended up in a shot because he happened to be staring at them. The poor photographers just couldn’t keep their lenses off him, and I totally understand them.

Red’s got eight children (he swears that they’re all from his wife), four dogs, two horses, and a flock of sheep. He showed me pictures of all of them except the latter, and it would have been a nicely satisfying day had he not picked a fight with my manager. It was a messy, juicy scandal, and there were too many reporters hanging around to let it go to waste. Red was raring to go, calling Black a traitor and a renegade, and it took no small effort to shut him down, and an even bigger one to explain to the curious what these two possibly could have had in common with each other.

Black

I know many people consider me a traitor. So what? I couldn’t just stand by and watch that shyster pull for his side at our expense day after day. I should have smelled it from the start. Two former Leaders in one place. But I thought I had it under control. I had the numbers, six of mine against three Rats. But then some of them went away, some things changed, and before I knew it Red was already on top, and it was too late to roll it back. He’s made a neat little profit for himself, I’m sure. It wasn’t an easy time for the commune, but we would’ve gotten our stuff together even without his financial shenanigans. Hard work and a steady hand, that’s all we needed.

Smoker

Red was the only one to try and talk to me about the Sleepers. After the fight we holed up in the bar across from the exhibition hall. Holding an ice pack to his shiner, he told me with a significant smirk that there were fewer Sleepers now. A lot fewer.

“How’s that?” I said. “They woke up?”

“No. They vanished. The first couple of cases they wrote about, but since then mum’s the word. Don’t you read the papers?”

I don’t read papers and I don’t watch TV, but I decided not to elaborate on that. It wasn’t a pleasant topic even by itself, and Red’s smugness only added to it. The whole thing reminded me of that time when I asked a lot of questions and received no answers, until it almost drove me crazy. So I didn’t ask. Not about who vanished, not about where they went. Red was obviously expecting my questions, and when he realized he wasn’t getting any, he soured and quickly left. I haven’t seen him since.

Red