From the look on Gyde’s face as they entered the building it occurred to Pol that his partner might know even less about Irons than he did.

The interior smelled putrid. It was the kind of stench Pol had become unaccustomed to in his short time in the privileged world of the Silvers. It smelled of the sweat of despair, the self-loathing of the unwashed. The narrow cement hallways were empty except for bundles of rags here and there that turned out to be children. Some of the apartment doors stood open, and as Gyde and Pol moved silently from floor to floor, Pol could see why. The apartments were tiny boxes, filled with the discarded trash that Irons used as clothes, furniture, or household items and crowded with bodies, even now, when the majority of the Irons were at work.

Pol, who insisted on stepping through the open doors and glancing around, saw no signs of literacy, no signs of any mentality that could calculate, plan, sneak past guards, or formulate obscure theories worth writing on walls. They might as well have been monkeys for all the intelligence he saw. And there was something else that bothered him.

“Children,” he said to Gyde with a disapproving tone. They were peering into one apartment where a dark-headed baby was attached to a startled female’s breast. Two others, toddler age, were playing listlessly on the floor.

Trick number two in avoiding detection: if you must ask a question, don’t phrase it as such; simply open the topic for discussion.

“Disgusting isn’t it? They let them breed at will, this class. It’s their mortality rate. Can’t even procreate right.” Gyde, who did not appreciate having to be here in the first place, let his abhorrence fully vent. “I’ve heard half of ’em are born monsters. Have to kill ’em right out of the womb. Racial garbage. Besides, you know the state—they always need more slaves.”

They were four stories up when the air-raid sirens went off: jolting, the way they always were, no matter how many times you heard them. Sometimes Pol heard them even when they weren’t there.

“Scarp!” Gyde cursed.

From all sides, Irons flooded the halls. Gyde and Pol were caught in a panicked stampede. There was no time to get out of the building, to search for another shelter. They were trapped in a crowd that pushed through the narrow corridors and stairwells like a tide through a funnel, going down, down, down.

The bombs began to hit as they reached the cellar. Someone lit a lantern.

Pol could feel Gyde next to him, muscles stiff as a ramrod. In the flickering light, the old warrior’s eyes were closed: closed against the sight, wishfully closed against the smell, of a hundred terrified Irons, panting, rank, braying, groaning, moaning. The light flickered in and out. The bombs were close. Then they were very close. The building shook. Dust was in the air—from the ceiling, walls, corridor, coating Pol’s throat.

How easily it could happen: a ceiling collapsed and you were trapped under a ton of rubble. If you were lucky, you died in the first few minutes. If you were not, you lived for days in the crushing dark until done in by your wounds, by starvation and thirst. It happened every day in Centalia. It was as common as rain.

Trapped with a hundred Irons in a cramped basement during a bad air raid—it was a Silver’s worst nightmare.

The bombs drew closer and Pol found himself flat on the ground. Through the clogging dust that was the first round of liquefaction of the building he was in, Pol saw a female not far from him. She was huddled over a bundle, her face looking upward plaintively, as though to hold the ceiling in place. The bundle in her arms shifted and stretched. Coverings parted to reveal a young boy—bare from his waist to his toes, struggling against his mother’s frightened grip. He was wailing, but Pol’s ears were ringing with the sound of the explosions.

They must be hitting next door. The enemy loved to hit construction sites. That was another reason that hardly anyone but Irons worked them and perhaps why the state was so low on slaves.

The boy’s right foot was clubbed, a fleshy mass. If the state had let him live they were desperate for warm bodies. The mother felt his struggles, reached down, and gathered his arms around her neck, pulling him to sitting. He was two or three years old. He clung to her, looking at Pol. His thumb went into his mouth. Staring eyes. Mother.

Something came surging across the chasm. He had been held like that once, hadn’t he? He’d had a mother. She… She had left him before he was very old, he was pretty sure, because his memories of her were faint, but he’d had one. In a house, a private home, she had held him in just such a way. And then later there had been a father. Hate flared in his heart. Yes, he was very sure there had been a father.

But the lives of Silvers were dedicated to the state: they didn’t have wives, homes, children, mothers, fathers.

He buried his face in his forearms. If this scarping noise didn’t stop he would kill someone!

“Get up!” Gyde said. Pol felt a toe in his side, nudging. “What’s the matter with you? Are you hurt?”

Pol looked up. The Irons were shuffling from the room. The air raid was over. Gyde wanted out at all costs, was going to leave him here in a minute if he didn’t move.

Outside, the air was hazy with dust. Gyde might have upbraided Pol for making him go in that hellish place except for the fact that right in front of them the construction site—where they’d been standing minutes ago—was a smoking pile of beams and steel and the occasional bloody limb of a construction worker.

Gyde looked at the site briefly, rubbed his reddened eyes. “If that scarping terrorist dies before we catch him and I lose my merits… !”

The very thought—that the terrorist might die in just such an air raid, that they might never know any more about him, might never solve the case—caused Pol to feel very upset as well.

There are aliens among us.

“Let’s wash up and get out of here,” Gyde said gruffly. He headed for a spigot on the side of the building.

“The water line might be down. Let’s just get back to the station.”

Gyde turned the spigot. Water came out. He shot Pol a look and removed his coat. “Come on. We’re filthy from that place. I don’t want you getting it in the car.”

They were filthy. The dust darkened the water that sluiced off Gyde’s hands. Pol could feel it clogging his pores, coating his hair, even his eyelashes. Damn. It must be matting on the blue makeup at his temples.

Gyde rolled up his sleeves, revealing his corded, hairless forearms. He rubbed his hands and face in the stream: “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

Pol went over to the spigot reluctantly. Put his hands in the flow.

“You’re going to get your sleeves wet,” Gyde said with exasperation.

Pol shook the water from his fingers, face hard. “It’s the smell of blood, too many memories. I just want to get out of here.”

To the Citizens of Centalia

Some secrets lead to destruction.

Let it be known then: there are other realities beyond this planet.

I have been in contact with aliens, beings from other worlds. I have been taken to those worlds.

These aliens have advanced technology. If they choose (maybe I should say when they choose…) they will take all power from us and enslave us (every citizen… ).

This is a warning. They are already here. Their spies have infiltrated our society from the lowest levels to the highest ranks of our government. These aliens are in disguise and they are almost impossible to detect. (I know how, but I cannot speak for obvious reasons.)

We must unite, in secret, to save ourselves. Do not trust the State. TRUST NO ONE.

The pamphlet was signed on the back page with the open circle with the bar on top, the “signature” they’d seen on the wall.