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voices. I can’t make out any words, only the rhythms and beats of what sound like shouts.
    They’re coming from Chord’s Alt’s house.
    I don’t even give myself a chance to consider what I’m doing before I hurtle from the car, leaving the door swinging open behind me. No time to care.
    In the moonlight, the prickly lanceweeds that make up the front lawn are a mottled gray and black. They catch on my sneakers, my ankles, little swords in their own right, trying to keep meback. Panic is sharp and metallic in my mouth, and it chases me until I reach the back of the house. Where Luc and Chord went.
    Through the filtered darkness, I see a patch of a yard, beaten down with neglect. A sad tire swing hangs from the low arm of a thin, scraggly tree; its branches are claws, its trunk a hunkered threat of a body. There is a tricycle in the far corner, half-buried in some stiff grass.
    Kids. There are
kids
here.
    Alarm floods me. In my head I see Chord’s tormented face again; I hear him tell us about what happened to Taje’s friends, how they were PKs.
    Luc, Chord, did you see? Did you know, when you went inside?
    The voices are louder here behind the house, an angry cacophony of sound. They flow out from the crack that separates the back door from its frame. It’s unlocked and open.
    So I do the only thing I can do. I step up, nudge the door open a bit more, and slide right in.
    Dark inside. The air is stuffy and smells like sleep. The scale of everything is too cramped, angles and corners and furniture wherever my eyes touch down. Only my ears tell me something is happening.
    There. It’s coming from the room down the hall.
    It takes me an eternity to cover the few feet that lie between where I came in and the bedroom doorway. When I get there, I see it all, a flash of a nightmare lit by cool moonlight streaming in through open blinds.
    A threadbare carpet. Stale bedsheets dotted with cigarette burns and stains. A collection of dirty needles on the bedside table. And people—too many people stuffed into too small a space.
    Luc is sprawled on the ground on his back, the handle of a blade sticking out of his side. He’s holding his gun in his hands. It’s pointed right at Chord’s Alt, who’s standing in the middle of the room. The Alt’s gun is pointed right back at Luc. And Chord, standing behind
him
, his arm clotheslined around his Alt’s neck. With his free hand, Chord’s pressing the tip of his switchblade into a face too much like his own. Except the eyes are harder, the body addict-thin and running on nothing but pure adrenaline and whatever was in those needles.
    “Let me go, or he’s as good as dead!” The Alt’s voice is a smoker’s, rough and guttural … but still too much like Chord’s. His eyes don’t waver from Luc. His hands don’t shake. It’s the worst kind of courage, built on pills, powders, heated crystals. It doesn’t know fear or doubt.
    Luc’s face is harsh and furious. “Don’t, Chord! Don’t listen to him!”
    The Alt’s snarl of a laugh chills me to the bone. It’s horrible to hear nuances of Chord in there.
    “Time’s running out for you, man,” Chord’s Alt says to Luc. “Look at you. You’re bleeding out.”
    “I have more than enough time to kill you first.”
    “And make this an AK? Nah, man. You won’t go there.” The Alt shakes his head in disgust. “Then your life would
really
be over.”
    “Then I have nothing left to lose, do I?” Luc says. He sounds so calm. How is he so calm?
    “So do it. What are you waiting for? Do it!”
    “Shut up!” Chord’s yell booms throughout the room. Witha flick of his wrist, he slides the blade up to his Alt’s temple. “Put the gun down.
Now
.”
    “I’ll get the first shot off before you can even think about it!” his Alt snaps.
    Chord twists the blade, angles it just so. The gesture is almost elegant.
“Put it down.”
    A sudden, soft swish against my hip shocks me into taking a breath.
    It’s a little