Then Dieter leaned close and brushed his lips against her cheek. He whispered into her ear, “The Schottentor gate at the east side of the city, behind the waste treatment plant—you know the one?”

She did. Old Vienna had been a fortress city, surrounded by medieval walls with bastions and gates that had been refortified and put into use to control access into and out of the city when New Vienna rose from the ashes after the Flash. But why would he mention it?

Dieter didn’t wait for her response. “If they figure it out, run. Get your father and go to the gate. Look for the white rabbit. There’s always someone on lookout; you can escape that way. Just stay alive. We’ll get you out. And whatever happens, don’t let them catch you.”

He straightened and said in a loud, furious voice, “What a little tease you are, jungfrau! You think your shit doesn’t stink? Hell if I want a dirty little Third Former like you, anyway!”

Without another word or a glance in her direction, Dieter strode away, back straight, head high, rifle swinging from his shoulder. A pair of men passing by on the sidewalk smirked at her, then moved on.

And Lu was left alone with the shock of comprehension making her reel in disbelief. The world tilted left, slipping dangerously, and in the end it was only the gate of the Hospice that held her up, its iron bars gripped tightly in her fists.

From far, far away, Lumina heard the echo of angry shouting from behind the vast and icy wall she’d erected inside her head.

TWO

The hunter with the scarred face and penetrating dark eyes was perched high atop the street opposite the Hospice, on the crest of the sloped tiled roof of the Palais Hansen Kempinski, a former luxury hotel that now functioned as the IF’s media headquarters. Inside, the “news” was manufactured and distributed throughout the federation by a team of reporters on the company payroll, and through the soles of his feet he felt their scurried activity as scant vibrations, smelled their fear and fervor as comingled sour scents on the evening wind.

Some of them actually believed the propaganda they churned out. Most of them were simply too afraid to say they did not.

He watched the young woman leaning on the courtyard gate of the Hospice below with hawklike fixedness. Every sense hummed with the power of her. The elegant, electrical thrill of the energy she emanated was like nothing he’d ever felt. He’d hunted Aberrants for more than twenty of his thirty-six years, and not a single one of them had ever set his nerves alight like this one.

Looking at her, he felt stung. He felt slapped. He felt, for a moment, a jolt of terrifying elation, as if he’d flung himself from the roof and was free-falling through space toward his death.

This was the one he’d been seeking. He’d found her at last.

She pulled herself upright for the first time since her uniformed companion had walked away, and passed a trembling hand over her hair. Even from this distance he saw how hard it shook. He saw the effort it took for her to straighten her shoulders and lift her chin. He longed to see her face, but she had her back to him, and didn’t turn, even as she pushed through the gate and walked slowly up the cracked cement path to the Hospice entrance. She removed the glove from her right hand, placed her palm on the scanner beside the front door, then disappeared within the building as the door swung open and shut behind her. The chance to look at her face was lost.

No matter, he thought, rising from his crouch. He’d see her face soon enough. Besides, he already knew what she looked like. He knew everything there was to know about this imposter who called herself Lumina Bohn.

He’d made it his life’s mission to do so.

“You’re early.” Liesel straightened from the kitchen counter, her stout arms dusted in flour up to the elbow. Her expression was surprised, but pleased. The older woman liked her, even if most of the other Hospice workers didn’t; the two of them shared a love of silence the gossip-sharing others found off-putting at best, and suspicious at worst.

Round and red-cheeked, with strands of graying hair escaping from her haphazard bun, Liesel was the Hospice pastry cook. As she always did in the evening before first meal, she was preparing the dough for the apfelstrudel, the famous dessert the Hospice guests devoured in huge quantity. Dietary restrictions were nonexistent in this place, and the guests were allowed to eat and drink to their hearts’ content. Sweets and schnapps and fatty foods were served with every meal, and overindulging in all three was heartily encouraged, because no revolt was ever started by a bunch of fat drunkards with digestive trouble.

Also, if one of the guests died sooner than he otherwise might have due to clogged arteries and high cholesterol, so much the better. There was always another citizen who’d aged out ready to fill his bed.

“Need the extra credits,” said Lu, taking her place beside Liesel at the long stainless steel counter. She’d already hung her coat in her locker and changed into her white apron. And changed her gloves for a disposable latex pair, perfect for kitchen work but a trifle too thin for Lu’s comfort. No push had ever leaked through yet, but she wasn’t entirely convinced that would remain the case forever.

Especially today.

The thought caused a tickle in her palms. Lu began immediately to hum.

She and Liesel worked in companionable silence for a moment, rolling, kneading, dusting flour over the dough, until finally Liesel asked, “What’s that song you’re always humming? It sounds familiar.”

“Just something my father used to sing to me. It’s from an opera called Song to the Moon.”

Liesel made a gentle grunt that managed to convey she’d never heard of it. Her grunts were many and varied, one as distinguishable from the other as the notes of a song. She often used them in place of words.

“My mother had a terrible singing voice. Could stun the birds right out of the trees, make them fall dead to the sidewalk.”

Lu grimaced, imagining a woman walking along singing while the sky rained dead birds.

“She used to tell me stories instead. At that, she was talented. She was Romanian, my mother, a peasant who married a farmer and had eleven children in twelve years.” Liesel shook her head, producing a disbelieving grunt. “Those were the days you could have as many children as you wanted. Can you imagine? No permits? Just breed away like so many rabbits?”

Lu couldn’t imagine such a thing. Only two children per married couple were allowed under the IF’s birth regulations, and only if the couple could afford it. The wealthy First Form families had no problem paying the birth tax. Everyone else saved or bartered credits or wound up indebted to the government for the remainder of their lives, paying down the astronomical tax through a work program.

And Thorne forbid if you had an “accident.” Unplanned, unpermitted children disappeared almost as soon as they were born, raised in State orphanages and ultimately conscripted into the IF’s vast, unpaid labor force known as the Drones.