Read SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) for Free Online

woman behind the counter thunders over to investigate.
    She looks at Silver … and the meat … and back to Silver.
    “New here, girl?”
    Silver half nods, too scared to properly admit her fault. Instead, she opts for a shameful retraction of her attempted robbery and steps tentatively back up to the counter, laying the meat down carefully upon it. About to pull back her hands, the toothless woman doesn’t give her the chance. Before any objection can be made, the brutish woman’s chubby fingers are wrapped tightly around Silver’s left wrist, still aching from the earlier incision.
    Silver bites her tongue, holding back a small squeal of discomfort.
    She knows what will follow.
    The woman pulls a portable device out of her apron pouch and waves it over Silver’s oozing wrist.
    One second.
    Two.
    Silver closes her eyes and holds her breath, trying to recall the pre-planned escape route in her mind.
    Three.
    Four.
    Then … beep!
    Silver feels the grip on her wrist relax and she opens one eye to check.
    The light on the device is green—not red.
    A swell of relief.
    Payment approved.
    “There, was that so hard?” The toothless hag pushes the meat back across the counter toward Silver. “Now, get lost.”
    Crisis averted, though Silver has no idea how, normality returns to the meat shop and the echoes of her pounding heart are drowned out in the cacophony of business once more. She shoves the meat into her backpack and skulks away, confused but thankful.
    Rounding a street corner, eager to get away from the scene of her embarrassment, Silver spots a U-Check machine. Similar to an Old World bank machine, the U-Check allows you to scan your wrist to check your account balance—and Silver makes a beeline for it.
    Shoving her wrist through the scan zone, she waits impatiently for the results to display on the cracked and stained screen. Under usual circumstances, any money in your personal account at the time of your banishment immediately becomes the property of Omega. It’s transferred into a government account, and added to the Governor’s annual budget.
    A clerical error, perhaps?
    The U-Check calculates her request for information …
    … … …
    The result, a balance of: 348.57.
    Silver’s brow furrows into a frown. How can that be?
    She selects ‘display transaction history’.
    Most recently, a debit for 151.43—MacIntyre Meats.
    Before that, a credit.
    500.00.
    Gabriel Maydevine.
    She almost smiles.
    Alone, but not forgotten.
    “Thanks, Papa,” she whispers into the dark, night air.
    Another stomach rumble.
    She may have meat, but now she needs to find a way to cook it. As a teenager, she spent many nights out on the streets with her friends. In the dead of night, they would strike fire with the powder from a bullet and toast marshmallows over flaming trash cans.
    Easy peasy.
    There are trash cans in the theatre, she already knows that. All she needs is a catalyst and some fuel to keep the fire going once she gets a flame. Charcoal or dry wood works best, and there’s an ample supply of both here. A building burns to the ground here on an almost daily basis, and within just a few hundred yards, she finds one.
    From the internal remains of what was once an old squat, she fills the rest of her backpack with as much charcoal and wood as she can—what little of it she can find that wasn’t touched by the recent rainfall. Already adding to her knowledge of the intricate layout of the Fringe streets, she locates a shortcut back to the theatre and wastes no time in rolling another trash can out from behind the stage.
    In doing so, she knocks over a stack of old books.
    Bingo!            
    Dry paper makes a great catalyst, and she snatches up two of them at random.
    Hauling everything back into the upstairs apartment she discovers that, in her time away, some major renovations have been undertaken. The floor is swept and the bed has been leveled on bricks. All the kitchen counters are cleaned of