Joan Undone

Chapter 1

On a street in White Center that's lined with crumbling buildings and overflowing trash cans, a small crowd of Throwback clones in worn clothes jostle each other with playful companionship, as if their favorite football team has won the Super Bowl. They are all streaked with the same war paint, which is spattered across their clothes and drying on their knuckles.

The light-hearted back-slapping and high-pitched laughter are at odds with the gruesome reality of the blood that stains the sidewalk bright red and rusty brown. It belongs to Windsom Carter, a politician who voted against Throwback rights. His motionless form is contorted, and large bruises disfigure his face. His utter stillness can only mean one thing. He's dead.

It's an effort to push back against a dizzy rush of emotions. The first time I'd seen someone beaten to death since this madness began, I cried, puked my guts up, and was awake for days. Now, I can catalog every detail of the scene that might be useful later, and stuff my horror, rage, and sadness down deep, to process at some future time when the world makes sense again.

Angry mobs of Throwbacks—often instigated by my ex-mentor Crew and his team of rebels—performing vigilante executions of those whose DNA has "evolved" is a reality of life in Seattle now. It began when the Evolved Seattle Police Department's files were hacked a few weeks ago. Information from every case, open and closed, that passed through their doors became accessible to the public.

Data spilled across the web, and Throwbacks everywhere downloaded file after file, absorbing the magnitude of crimes that the Evolved had been allowed to perpetrate against Throwbacks in their city for years. Hundreds of rapes, beatings, robberies, and even murders had been buried or ignored by corrupt police officers. The streams of ones and zeros were analyzed and decoded, and the anger of Throwbacks everywhere—my people—ratcheted higher and higher.

Crew's impassioned speeches and calls to action on his vlog became the highest-viewed vids in the country. His supporters even start wearing copies of his signature-style piece, a red armband that glows with embedded lights.

"In a victim-abuser dynamic, it is only the victim who can break the cycle by refusing to accept a culture of violence and exploitation," he said in a vid that I know by heart. "The Evolved will give us nothing, not even justice. So we must take our vengeance."

My team and I suspect that Crew personally sent data to families of the victims of some of the worst crimes. The first wave of murders by Throwbacks was horrifying, but the "victims" included serial rapists, brutal politicians, and violent police officers. Or so Crew said. Without a trial, the truth of their guilt will never be known.

As for Windsom Carter, Crew's assertion that he deserved to die because of the laws he crafted to limit Throwbacks' rights put a target on his back. He didn't deserve the ending he got, by any measure.

I video the crowd as they disperse in hopes of tracking down these murderers later and bringing at least some of them to justice. Saving any more Evolved from falling victim to Crew's brutal executions is my atonement for my mistakes, proof to myself that what I helped destroy can be rebuilt. I had no idea that my work with Crew last summer would be used to launch a violent rebellion that is ripping my city apart. But ignorance is no excuse, and I will not stop fighting Crew until his rebellion is dismantled.

Maybe tomorrow, I won't be too late.

The crowd's merriment vanishes as quickly as it erupted. I'd question if their relish for death was real if this was the first time I'd seen it. But as happens every time, their usual gloom returns to their gaunt faces before they're out of sight. Bloodlust only distracts them from the hunger in their bellies for a little while.

A woman tugs her tattered sweater around her shoulders as she hurries down an alley, the beginning of a question in her eyes. Another man absently rubs the blood on his hands onto his pants, leaving dark streaks. He checks the time on his phone. He wouldn't want to be late for work.