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trying to make friends. I’m an Executioner. My duty is to deal death. Friends don’t tend to stick around when your job is to behead people.”
     “Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?” I snarl.
    “It’s supposed to warn you,” he says, voice gravelly and low. “These conversations must remain light. We must not become friendly. Bad things will happen to the Gutter and human who openly become friends first. Do you not understand that? We are being watched. This entire school is being watched.”
    “Yeah, duh, the paparazzi is right outside the front gate –”
    “Not by the paparazzi outside,” He interrupts. “But by people inside. Teachers. Faculty. Other students. Not everyone here is dedicated to building bridges. Some are here to burn the bridges right when they begin to be built.”
    I narrow my eyes. “What are you talking about? No one’s plotting anything. This isn’t a spy movie. I mean, yeah, it won’t be sunshine and rainbows – ”
    “No. It won’t. It will be death, and blood. I’ve seen it enough in my life to know when it is coming.”
    “What the fuck are you trying to say?”
    The bell rings. He stands, looming over my chair with a book under one arm, his searing glare piercing my suspicious one.
    “I am saying this is a bloodbath waiting to happen. Don’t trust anyone here. Not even me.”
    “Wasn’t planning to.”
    “Smart girl.” He smirks again, and walks off.
     

 
     
    3. The Emperor
     
    The sky is an ice-blue flower. I watch it through the office window, sitting on the table while the Gutter school doctor readies a needle. The EVE scar under my ribs pulses with my anxiety. I’m here in the nurse’s office for the mandatory monthly EVE checkup.
    “This is a simple procedure. There will be a small amount of pain.” Dr. Yulan looks me in the eyes, his gray ones pale. The school nurse is a Gutter. Of course he is.
    “Can we just get it over with, already?”
    Yulan smiles. “If that’s what you wish.”
    He swipes my skin with a cotton ball of tingly stuff. The needle prods in and sucks up blood. My arm goes cold. He bandages the tiny bleeding hole.
    “I do hope that wasn’t too painful.”
    “Masterfully done, good sir,” I imitate his stiff accent. He holds up the needle filled with my blood and writes something about it. His long fingers move gracefully over the paper. When I first saw Yulan, I mistook him for a woman at a distance. With his thin nose and fine lips, he’s the most effeminate, no, most beautiful , Gutter I’ve seen so far. His dark hair is kept in a ponytail that trails down his back. It suits him.
    “You’re an Illuminator, aren’t you?” I ask. Yulan looks at me over his thin glasses.
    “Did you cover factions in Gutter Culture class already?”
    “Nah. My roommate told me. Raine. You know her, right? She’s your sotho .”
    “Yes,” Yulan nods. “Her family is very dear to me. I was a poor farm hand in my childhood. Raine’s father visited the farm on one of his tours, and saw potential in me. He paid for my schooling. I owe them a very great debt.”
    They obviously chose Yulan as school nurse for a reason. He has a disarming way of smiling - it wipes your anxiety clean. His voice is soft and barely hits a normal volume. It’s soothing. He’s not creepy in the slightest.
    “Your blood looks clean,” He says, after running the vial of it through a blue-light machine of some sort that looks like a rice cooker. “The EVE organ is taking very well to you, and it’s filling up quite nicely. Do you have any complaints, or concerns?”
    “It twinges sometimes, when I’m feeling real angry or scared. But the EVE clinic dudes told me that’s normal.”
    “It is. But if those twinges become painful and frequent , that would be cause for you to come see me, and for us to do an examination. Those are warning signs of a rupture.”
    A rupture is when the EVE organ bursts due to high emotional stress. It’s rare, but