Chapter 1

Before anybody asks, yes, it's entirely legal. At least it is in my county.

Denen law changes depending on which side of the river you're standing on. Cross the bridge going north, and they're protected persons. Cross it going south, and they're nuisance primates, which means anybody with a Class-C abatement license can poison, trap, or mechanically dispatch them on private property.

I've carried that license for nearly nine years.

I work for a company called Town—or for the extermination arm of it, anyway. Town started in water. By the time I signed on, they controlled most of the state’s supply, along with the pipes, pumping stations, and sewer lines.

Denens need water the same as anybody else, but Town decided killing them was cheaper. Greedy bastards, every last one of them. But they paid better than the county, and the job came with a pension. Back then, that was enough to silence a questioning man.

Three days ago, dispatch handed me a yellow work order with my own address printed across the top.

ESTIMATED POPULATION: 17-24

HEAT SIGNATURES: EAST-FACING BEDROOM WALL

There was only one east-facing bedroom in my house. And it belonged to my daughter.

Deep down, I already knew what had happened.

Lilith had always been fascinated by Denens. She was only ten, too young to understand much about the laws or the culture surrounding them. More than once, her mother and I had caught her trying to smuggle one into the house inside her backpack.

I thought we’d finally gotten through to her.

Clearly, she’d just gotten better at hiding them.

Company policy should have required dispatch to send another technician. Town didn't believe in letting employees clear their own properties. Too many opportunities to falsify the population count.

But my name was printed beneath the address.

ASSIGNED TECHNICIAN: FREDDY ██████

Someone had circled it in red ink. Underneath, my supervisor had written:

Let’s see where your loyalties are.

I wish I could say the note offended me. I knew Town had a habit of framing folk as "Guppy-lovers" if they had an infestation, even if it was as simple as them getting in through a crack.

Mostly, it scared me.

If I refused the assignment, company policy required dispatch to suspend my license and send a second crew. Same as if I refused any job.

I signed the bottom of the work order.

"I'll take care of it," I told my supervisor.

All he did was nod and smile.

Town gave us six hours to clear a residential colony. The clock started the moment the technician accepted the order, which meant I had until four that afternoon to produce a body count matching the thermal estimate.

My wife was working, and Lilith was at school.

I drove home alone.

I had never heard anything moving inside Lilith's walls before.

Her bedroom door was closed when I got in.

I opened it and stood there for a moment, surveying the area.

Her room looked more or less the same. Unkempt bed, clothes strewn about. She had one of those expensive wooden dollhouses against the east wall. It had working doors and little battery-powered lights. Her grandmother bought it for her three Christmases ago.

I’d always thought it was strange that she never kept dolls inside it.

Most of the furniture was missing too.

I took the thermal reader from my case and aimed it at the wall.

Orange shapes crowded the screen.

Some were standing between the studs. Others were gathered around the outlet near the floor. The machine couldn’t distinguish individuals when they were packed together, which explained the estimated population range, but there were enough signatures to confirm the report.

I lowered the reader.

A clear plastic tube ran from the back of her bedside humidifier to a hole she had drilled through the baseboard. It was no wider than a drinking straw. Beside it, two insulated wires disappeared beneath the trim, spliced into the dollhouse battery pack.

Water and electricity.

Of course she hadn’t simply hidden refugees in her bedroom; that would be far too easy. She went out of her way and built them utilities.

Procedure required me to photograph the colony entrance before disturbing it. I took three pictures, uploaded one to Town’s server, then switched my tablet into airplane mode before the upload could finish.

That bought me maybe twenty minutes; once it sent, I had to send more updates.

I removed the outlet cover.

The cavity behind it was dark, but I could see movement several inches inside. A tiny lantern went out, and I heard something metallic scrape across wood.

“I know you’re in there,” I said.

Nothing answered.

“My name is Freddy. This is my house.”

A woman’s voice came from inside the wall.

“We know whose house it is.”

She sounded older.

“I need everybody to come out where I can count you.”

A few seconds passed.

“Is that what you told them at Band?”

My hand tightened around the screwdriver.

Band had been a job six months earlier. It was an abandoned textile mill scheduled for redevelopment that a few Denens were trying to turn into a settlement. Town estimated eighteen inside. I recovered twenty-two.

I remembered because the bounty rate increased after twenty.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The woman stepped into the light from Lilith’s window.

She was no taller than my palm. Her gray hair had been braided down her back, and she wore a dark dress stitched from fabric I recognized immediately. The blue Town disposal bags.

The left side of her face had been badly burned. One eye had sealed shut beneath the scar tissue. She leaned against a sewing needle fashioned into a walking staff.

“You counted twenty-two bodies at Band,” she said.

“I remember.”

“There were twenty-five of us.”

Something moved behind her.

Then another figure stepped forward. Then another.

Men and women. Two children. An elderly Denen missing most of his right arm. Several wore clothing cut from materials I carried in my truck: nitrile gloves, gauze, scraps of yellow evidence labels. One little boy had a blanket made from the corner of a Town work order.

“Lilith found me near the drainage ditch,” the woman continued. “Your poison took my husband before we reached the culvert. She carried me home in her lunchbox.”

I looked at the child behind her.

He couldn’t have been more than four inches tall. At Denen scale, that made him young—maybe five or six. His mouth and nose were covered by a square of white cloth, but I could still see the chemical burns around his throat.

“How many of you came from my jobs?” I asked.

The woman stared at me with her remaining eye.

“How many jobs have you done?”

My tablet vibrated inside the case. The failed upload had been detected.

A message appeared across the screen.

TECHNICIAN STATUS REQUESTED.

Beneath it, a timer began counting down from five minutes.

I raised the thermal reader and swept it across the wall again. Nineteen distinct signatures appeared this time.

Town would expect nineteen bodies by sundown.

The little boy looked up at me through the empty outlet.

“Lilith said you wouldn’t do it,” he whispered.

Behind me, tires rolled slowly onto the gravel driveway.

“Please, sir,” the boy whispered. “Don’t put us back in the bag.”

I looked at the dress the older woman was wearing.

The tires stopped outside.

Every Denen disappeared from the outlet at once. The lantern vanished deeper into the wall, followed by the soft clicking of feet.

My tablet continued counting down.

03:41

I replaced the outlet cover but didn’t screw it back into place—there wasn’t time.

Through Lilith’s window, I saw a white Town truck parked behind mine. My supervisor climbed out carrying a silver equipment case. He opened the passenger door and removed a black collection tote.

He had brought enough equipment to do the job himself.

The doorbell rang. Then again.

Town protocol gave technicians legal access to any property under an active abatement order. He didn’t need my permission to enter. The ringing was a courtesy since it was my own house, and Town wasn’t known for extending those.

I met him downstairs.

“You took your tablet offline,” he said.

“Signal dropped.”

“In your own house?”

“Trust me, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

He stared at me for a moment before holding out his hand. I gave him the work order; he checked my signature at the bottom, folded the page, and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

“Where’s the family?”

“My wife’s working. Lilith’s at school.”

“Good.”

He stepped past me.

The collection tote bumped against his leg as he walked upstairs. Something shifted inside it with the dry rustling sound of plastic.

I followed him into Lilith’s bedroom. He noticed the dollhouse immediately.

“Well,” he said. “Isn't that cute.”

He set the silver case on her bed and opened it.

Inside were twenty-four transparent disposal sleeves. Each was about the size of a sandwich bag, with a white barcode printed near the seal. They had been stacked beside a pressure canister, three lengths of tubing, and a steel dispatch clamp.

The clamp was for any Denens who survived the poison.

Town’s training material called it cervical separation. The jaws fit around the neck, and one hard squeeze severed the spinal cord. It was supposedly more humane than leaving them to suffocate.

I’d used one once or twice in the past. The sound was tiny—barely louder than snapping the lead inside a pencil.

My supervisor counted the bags and spread them across Lilith’s unmade bed.

“Twenty-four,” he said. “Just in case the reader came in low.”

“They usually come in high.”

“Key word. Usually.”

He crouched beside the eastern wall. His eyes followed the plastic water line from the humidifier to the baseboard, then moved to the wires connected to the dollhouse battery.

He gave a low whistle.

“Your girl built them a damn subdivision.”

“She’s ten.”

“She’s old enough to know what they are.”

“She knows they’re people.”

He looked up at me. That was the wrong answer. I knew it as soon as I said it.

He stood and wiped his hands against his trousers, though he hadn’t touched anything dirty.

“Careful, Freddy.”

I said nothing.

"Town doesn't like that sort of talk. Getting all sympathetic to a rat."

He removed his thermal reader and swept it across the wall. Orange shapes scattered between the studs. Some had climbed toward the ceiling. Others were pressed beneath the floor line.

“Nineteen,” he said. “Maybe twenty. It's a very active colony. Established utilities. Seems like evidence of human assistance.”

He aimed the reader at the dollhouse. Three smaller signatures glowed inside it.

I felt something cold move through my stomach. I had missed them. I didn't even bother opening the dollhouse to check.

My supervisor walked over and lifted the roof from it.

The rooms appeared empty, but I could see where the missing furniture had gone. Tiny beds had been pushed against the walls. A table made from a wooden spool stood in the kitchen. Lilith had cut pieces from one of her washcloths and folded them into blankets.

He reached inside.

“Don’t,” I said.

His hand stopped. He turned his head slightly. “Don’t what?”

“They’re hiding. You start grabbing around blind, one of them might have a needle.”

As if the wall had been waiting for me to finish, something snapped through the air. My supervisor jerked backward.

A needle no longer than a thumbnail had buried itself in the soft skin beneath his left eye. A thread trailed from its end.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then he pulled it out.

A bright bead of blood rolled down his cheek.

He examined the needle and smiled.

“Well,” he said. “That makes them aggressive.”

“They’re just frightened.”

“That makes the bounty double.”

He dropped the needle into one of the disposal sleeves.

Inside the wall, somebody began crying.

My supervisor took the pressure canister from the case and passed it to me. It was Town Blue. The name came from the colored band around the tank, not the chemical itself. The gas was clear and smelled faintly sweet, almost like honey.

Homeowners liked hearing that. It made the process sound clean.

Town Blue attacked the nervous system first. Denens lost control of their legs within thirty seconds. Their diaphragms stopped working after approximately two minutes. Smaller children sometimes remained conscious through most of it because they hadn’t inhaled enough to pass out.

We were instructed to tell clients it was painless.

I attached the regulator.

My supervisor pulled Lilith’s desk chair away from the wall and sat down. He crossed one ankle over his knee, comfortable as can be.

“Aren’t you going to help?” I asked.

“This is your evaluation.”

“What evaluation?”

“We’ve had inventory discrepancies on your route.”

My fingers stopped against the regulator. He continued.

“Empty traps. Incorrect body counts. Containers arriving underweight. It started about four months ago.”

Lilith had first been caught with a Denen in her backpack four months ago.

My supervisor nodded toward the wall.

“Corporate thinks your daughter’s been pulling live ones from your truck.”

“Again, she’s ten.”

“You keep saying that like it makes her innocent.”

“She is innocent.”

“Then prove it.”

He pointed toward the unfinished hole beneath the outlet.

“Run the line.”

I connected the first length of tubing to the canister. The procedure was simple. Feed the tube into the lowest opening. Seal the gaps. Release the gas for fifteen seconds per estimated occupant. Wait five minutes before recovery.

Nineteen occupants meant four minutes and forty-five seconds of continuous flow.

I had performed the calculation hundreds of times.

My supervisor checked his watch.

“If the count matches, Town keeps this internal. You keep your license. Your wife keeps the house. Your daughter gets written up for unlawful harboring, but nobody takes her anywhere.”

“And if it doesn’t match?”

“Then another crew tears the walls out.”

The crying inside had stopped.

I knelt beside the outlet and pushed the tubing into the darkness. Something touched the other end.

A tiny hand rested against the clear plastic for a moment, its shape visible through the tube where the light struck it.

Then the woman from Band spoke from somewhere inside the wall.

“How long?”

My supervisor leaned forward. I closed my eyes.

She asked again.

“How long does the poison hurt?”

I had answered that question for homeowners plenty of times, but never for the people breathing it.

“Freddy,” my supervisor said. “Turn the goddamn valve.”

I reached for the valve, but then my supervisor's left foot began to tremble against the floor.

At first, I thought he was tapping it impatiently. Then his knee buckled sideways, and the clipboard slipped from his lap.

He tried to stand. His legs didn’t follow.

The chair went over beneath him. He struck the floor shoulder-first, hard enough to shake the dollhouse against the wall.

“What the hell—”

His hand flew to his face. The puncture beneath his eye had swollen around a bead of dark blood. Thin veins spread outward through his cheek, branching toward his nose and temple.

The needle. He looked toward the outlet.

“You little fucking—”

His jaw locked before he could finish. His teeth clicked together, and his right arm drew tightly against his chest.

From inside the wall, the woman asked again.

“How long?”

I looked down at the unopened valve.

“Town Blue takes about two minutes to stop your breathing,” I said. “Four or five before it’s over.”

A long silence followed.

Then she said, “Ours is faster.”

My supervisor’s eyes found mine.

“Antidote,” he forced through his teeth. "N-now."

Every Town vehicle carried two auto-injectors in case of accidental exposure. One was in the glove compartment, and the other was clipped beneath the driver’s seat.

His truck was twenty feet from the front door.

I could have reached it in seconds.

Instead, I watched his fingers drag uselessly across Lilith’s carpet.

“What the hell did you use?” I asked.

“The poison you left at Band,” the woman answered. “We found it in the soil. In our clothes. On our children.”

My supervisor managed to roll onto his back. His breathing had become shallow and fast.

“You can’t concentrate Town Blue without killing yourselves.”

“We lost three.”

My supervisor clawed at my trouser leg.

“Freddy.”

I looked down at him. The left side of his face had begun to sag. Saliva ran from the corner of his mouth onto my daughter’s carpet.

“Truck,” he whispered.

The woman stepped back into view behind the outlet. “They sent him here to kill us,” she said. “If you save him, he will.”

“He has a family.”

“So did my husband.”

I looked at the blue fabric wrapped around her body. I thought about it; I honestly did. About just leaving him there to die.

But I ran downstairs.

Outside, I yanked open the passenger door of his truck and tore the injector from the glove compartment. It was sealed in orange plastic with instructions printed down the side.

I took his radio from the console too. Dispatch was already calling.

“Unit Twelve, confirm status.”

I switched it off.

When I returned upstairs, my supervisor had stopped moving. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. For half a second, I thought I’d waited too long.

Then his chest hitched. I drove the injector through his trousers and into his thigh. The mechanism snapped as the medication emptied into the muscle.

His body jerked.

“You saved him,” the woman said.

"I'm tired of killing folk."

I took the handcuffs from my supervisor’s belt, rolled him onto his stomach, and secured his wrists behind his back. His muscles were still locked tight, which made it difficult. He watched me through one open eye.

“You’re finished,” he whispered.

I took his phone, his keys, and the work order from his shirt pocket.

“You’ll lose the house,” he continued. Each word came out wet and slow. “They’ll charge your wife. Your girl’ll go into county care.”

I tightened the cuffs until he winced.

“That antidote saved your damn life. You got about fifteen minutes before you can move again,” I said. “Spend them breathing.”

I returned to the outlet.

“You heard him,” I told the woman. “Town will send another crew. They’ll bring dogs and thermal scopes. If they know you attacked a technician, they won’t bother with gas.”

“What will they use?”

“Fire, if we're being honest.”

The wall remained silent.

“There’s a bridge twelve miles north,” I continued. “The other side recognizes Denen personhood. Town can’t remove you without a warrant once you cross.”

“They watch the bridge.”

“They watch Denens crossing it. They don’t check sealed disposal containers.”

The woman looked past me toward the black tote.

Several Denens began murmuring behind her.

“No bags,” someone said.

“They’ll suffocate us.”

“He’ll seal them.”

“He brought the poison inside.”

The little boy appeared beside the woman. His cloth mask had slipped beneath his nose.

“Lilith said he’d help.”

I opened the black collection tote and removed the disposal sleeves. Twenty-four transparent bags slid across Lilith’s bed. The Denens recoiled at the sound. I understood why.

“You won’t be sealed inside these,” I said. “I need Town to see nineteen occupied bags if we pass an inspection. You can cut breathing holes from inside. I’ll leave the tote unlocked.”

“And if you change your mind?” the woman asked.

“You'll just have to take my word."

My supervisor coughed behind me. His fingers had begun moving again. We had less than fifteen minutes now.

The woman turned away from the outlet. Voices whispered inside the wall. I heard some of them arguing.

Finally, she faced me again.

“We don’t all come from Band,” she said. “Some came from Hartwell. Some from the pumping station at Creek. Two escaped the collection yard.”

“I worked Hartwell.”

“We know.”

“How many?”

She paused.

“You counted eighty-six at Hartwell.”

I remembered. The quarterly bonus had paid for Lilith’s dollhouse.

“How many survived?” I asked.

The woman looked toward the three children hiding inside it.

“Three.”

My supervisor was trying to push himself onto his knees.

The woman raised her sewing-needle staff and called into the wall. One by one, the Denens began to emerge.

They carried bundles made from gauze and scraps of plastic. Several wore masks over damaged mouths. A man with one arm helped lower the children from the outlet using a thread tied around his waist.

Nineteen people gathered inside my daughter’s dollhouse.

Twenty-four empty body bags waited on her bed.

I opened the first one.

The little boy stared into it for a long time. Then he climbed inside.

The others followed.

I punctured breathing holes near the seals and laid each sleeve across Lilith’s bed. They climbed in carrying everything they had left: bundles of gauze, needle tools, scraps of food and the names of people I had killed.

The woman from Band entered the final bag.

I arranged all nineteen around the Town Blue canister and took the photograph.

On the screen, they looked dead.

Some were scarred. Some were missing limbs. None of them moved. The little boy’s eyes remained open, fixed on the plastic several inches above his face.

I uploaded the photograph.

CLEARANCE STATUS: COMPLETE

The system accepted it. My supervisor laughed from the floor.

It came out weak and mangled.

“You won’t make the bridge.”

I sealed the collection tote without locking it.

I called my wife and told her to leave work, collect Lilith, and cross the northern bridge. She asked me what had happened. I told her there wasn’t time to explain.

Then I carried the tote downstairs.

Nineteen people weighed less than my extermination equipment.

My supervisor’s truck blocked the driveway, so I took his keys and moved it onto the grass. Before leaving, I smashed his phone and radio. Anything to buy time.

He would live. He shouldn't have got to. But I destroyed enough lives.

The checkpoint officer opened the tote before letting me cross the bridge. He looked at nineteen transparent bags, nineteen barcode labels, and nineteen bodies lying perfectly still.

He never touched them.

He closed the lid and waved me through.

Three days have passed.

Town’s official report says an aggressive colony attacked two technicians before being successfully cleared from a residential property. It lists nineteen Denens exterminated and one supervisor injured.

My name is listed as a fugitive.

My wife and Lilith are with me north of the river. We’re staying in the basement of a church that shelters displaced Denens while their protection claims are processed. There are mattresses for us and small wooden homes built along the walls for them.

Lilith hasn’t spoken to me much.

Yesterday, I asked the woman from Band what I should call her.

She looked at me with her remaining eye.

“Nine years,” she said. “How many of us did you kill before you thought to ask one of our names?”

I couldn’t answer.

Her name is Esther. Her husband’s name was Lowell.

The little boy is Johnny. His mother died at Hartwell. He still sleeps with the blanket made from my work order, although Lilith has offered to make him another one.

Town seized our house yesterday. My pension is gone. My supervisor says he’ll testify that I was radicalized by an aggressive colony. They’ll probably come north looking for some legal way to take me back.

I don’t expect forgiveness from Esther or any of the others. I’m not asking for any of yours either.

I spent nine years returning to Town with numbers written beside the word bodies.

Nineteen people climbed into those bags.

For once, nineteen people climbed back out.