Tris sat on the edge of his bed in his cartridge deep in the East District. He hadn’t told Echo no, but he hadn’t said yes, either. Echo seemed ok with that, for now.
Then he heard it, the first voice he’d heard in over a day. Since Hilltop Park. It was a couple arguing a couple of cartridges over. The realization that his faulty embed hadn’t picked up a single signal the entire time hit him like a runaway car. Sure, the adrenaline pumps would have quieted those nerve clusters for a while, but he wasn’t that amped up the entire time. He hadn’t heard a thing from any of them. Not Zhao, not Bissell, not Echo.
Tris slept nine hours hooked up to the Equalibriumizer™, twice as long as he’d ever needed to before. His endocrine system was clearly fucked up after all that activity.
“Breakfast,” he thought out loud as he climbed out of bed.
The streets were as alive as ever, steam, the smell of frying oil, fish, grilled meats, plastics, shouts over the low din of a hundred conversations. Tris felt it all like a blanket on a cold morning. He was home again.
A half-block from his normal morning dumpling place, the crowd parted and he saw a throng of Horsefolk approaching.
“Fuck,” he said to himself. Then in his peripheral vision, he saw a familiar figure shuffle towards him. Bissell arrived just in time to position himself between Tris and the lead horse person. He held up his hand, two fingers gently extended skyward like a saint.
“He no longer has what you are looking for,” he said, calmly.
“Get the fuck out of our way, old man,” the Horsefolk leader said.
Just then, Tris heard a faint popping sound from behind him, and a hole appeared in the horse leader’s forehead. Then more popping sounds, and more holes in foreheads. The front half-dozen Horsefolk gang members fell to the floor.
The rest of the gang turned and ran, and Tris heard no more popping as he watched them disappear into the crowds of the district. Slowly people emerged from the stalls and buildings and began dragging the lifeless bodies of the Horsefolk away. He had never seen anything like this in all his years in the district, yet these people were acting like they were simply cleaning up after a particularly busy day. Soon, most of the bodies had disappeared. Tris realized there was very little blood. He turned and looked at Bissell in disbelief. Bissell smiled.
“Care for some tea?” Bissell asked as an old woman splashed a bucket of soapy water across the street.