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sickly cool weight of the medallion against his chest. Focus, focus.
    The nearest subway station sat a block away. South City had shut down the subways—it was too dangerous, what with the Corsai flocking to the dark—and boarded up the passages as best they could, even though August knew the FTF still used the tunnels when they had to.
    He took the stairs two at a time. He’d read somewhere that V-City had grown up as much as out, that the buildings were actually built on top of the old grid, the subways where the original streets used to be. He didn’t know if it was true, but the subway station below was as clean as the roads above, buffed white stone and, somewhere underneath the sounds of foot traffic, a strain of classical music. A piano concerto. No signs of struggle or suffering, no remnant of the terrors that came out at night. It was a trick, meant to lure South siders over and remind North siders why they paid the price.
    August got to the platform just in time to miss the train. He slumped back against a post to wait for the next one, his attention wandering from a couple kissing farther down the line to a busker playing guitar before it finally settled on a small girl in front of him, clutching a woman’s hand. She looked over at him, and August stared back, fascinated by the sight of such a youngchild. There were so few children in the compound, so few in South City for that matter. The girl broke into a toothy grin, and August found himself smiling back.
    And then she starting singing.
    â€œ Monsters, monsters, big and small ,” she sang cheerfully. “ They’re gonna come and eat you all .”
    A shiver ran through him.
    â€œ Corsai, Corsai, tooth and claw,
    Shadow and bone will eat you raw .
    Malchai, Malchai, sharp and sly ,
    Smile and bite and drink you dry .”
    August swallowed hard, knowing what came next.
    â€œ Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal ,
    Sing you a song and steal your soul. ”
    The little girl’s smile grew even wider.
    â€œ Monsters, monsters, big and small ,
    They’re gonna come and eat you all! ”
    She gave a small, delighted squeal, and August felt ill and took a step away.
    When the train pulled into the station, he chose another car.

Monsters, monsters, big and small . . .
    Kate hummed as the car barreled on. She tapped the tablet’s screen, closing out of the map and opening a new window, clicking through the folders on her father’s private drive—she’d swiped the access codes on her first night home—until she found the ones she was looking for. Harker had surveillance throughout North City, not just on the Seam but on nearly every block of the red zone. Every day the footage was checked and then cleared, save for any “incidents”—those were stored so he could see them and take action, if necessary. These “incidents” would never make the news, of course. They knew better than to put stuff like this on TV. It would disturb the illusion of normalcy, of safety—and that’s what the people were paying for.
    But Harker had to keep an eye on his monsters. Had to know when new ones showed up, when old onesmisbehaved. The culled footage had been filtered into categories. Monster . Human . Genesis .
    Kate had been working her way through the footage since the moment she arrived, trying to learn everything she could about the real monsters of Verity. She tapped Genesis , and it brought up two further options. Corsai or Malchai (they’d never caught a Sunai’s creation on film). She felt like she was traveling down a rabbit hole as she tapped Corsai and the screen filled with video clips, the thumbnails nothing but a blur of shadows. Her fingers hovered for a moment over the grid, and then she tapped a clip, and the footage expanded to fill the screen.
    The film had been trimmed, all the fat cut away, leaving only the violent meat of the incident behind. The camera didn’t have