It’s a Nightmare, The Gold Stone Girl, book 1

Prologue

The girl stops running, wild-eyed, hunted, her breathing the rattle of old machines, of gears grinding without grease. Her head swivels, a bird trapped in the coils of a snake. In the near stillness she hears the beat of her own heart. The pounding fills her ribcage, it swells inside her throat, it pulses afterbirth down the tender skin of her inner thighs. She’s woozy, she sways and then steadies.

It was a sound that startled her, a screech, and it wasn’t human. There it is again! Monsters rampaging off the walkways, she thinks, her fear rising. Phlegm beasts, or hammerheads, those slimy thickskulled creatures seen on the screens, hunting on the public walkways.

No, be sensible, the girl thinks again, these are different sounds, smaller shrieks, less fearful growls, than the sound of the dogs on her scent, or the creatures who filet their food before eating. This must be the noise of the hyenas, known to forage at the river’s edge, the girl decides. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry,” she murmurs to the bundle clutched in her stiffening arm. She’s heard that hyenas eat babies.

The girl wears a dirty, ill-fitting, public-herd uniform. A pink tease of ruffles and sleaze, meant to advertise her, haunch and teat. She crouches low, preparing to sprint from her hiding place, in the shadows cast by the tall windowless buildings of the city’s Breederhood. A negative of moonlight etches the city skyline into a jagged silhouette across the riverbank.