Katie Tenney

The city had changed since she was a wide, white-eyed child.

Dramatically.

The cool street passed below her as she jogged.

Well, she wasn't jogging, exactly.

Jogging implies…something that wasn't happening here (perhaps simply doing it for the exercise and that she could stop whenever she wished).

More accurately, she was running quickly.

Sprinting.

She had to, considering that the Guard was chasing her.

Memo had done his job, and she had been free for three minutes, even managed to turn the corner before the Guard descended from nowhere.

They had always been good at that.

She remembered when she could walk the streets at night. Her bright, innocent, pure white eyes scanning everything with ease and eagerness, desperate to learn what she could.

She had learned too much.

She hated her new eyes.

Her blue eye had been with her since she was small, and she deserved that one—she had done wrong.

However, this new one—the color of the dirt they made her feel like—wasn't what she deserved.

She was willing to atone for the blue, but the brown was a burden that wasn't hers.

Memo had been the only one to believe.

He had even put everything on the line to try and help her escape.

The presence of the Guard meant only one thing: he had been caught.

It was hard to run with her eye still so sore. She even had to hold the bandage in place so that no one would see her eye.

She couldn't hide the bandage, but she could hide the eye color as long as possible.

She had to, so she could survive.

She rounded a corner, but their footsteps were getting closer. Her blue eye searched frantically for any sort of escape.

Passersby purposely ignored her—she was still in her prison uniform, but that wasn't nearly as damning as her eyes.

As she ran by child pointed at her, and its mother yanked him away.

Best not to get those pesky criminal germs.

She hoped that there was one nearby—she was losing her strength. The camps had made her tanned, deathly skinny, and absurdly weak. She wouldn't be surprised if her muscles had atrophied a bit.

She spotted it out of the corner of her eye—a manhole cover. She sprinted towards it and used her last bit of strength to pull it open and dive in.

The water splashed onto her sandaled feet, and she bent over to try and catch her breath.

One of the Guards started to follow her in, but the other stopped him. "You know the rules—only Inferi can enter the drains."

The Guards glowered at her and she simply continued to try and fill her lungs without falling into the sewage below her.

Finally, she heard them walk away, and she fell against a nearby wall. She was safe for now.

The drains were a sort of safe haven for those like her—the Inferi—ever since the Protection of Citizens Act of 2136.

The Leaders had figured that, if given a choice between the camps, drains, and the upper world where they were killed upon sight, the Inferi would pick one of the first two and stay out of their way.

Her new eye throbbed, and she clutched desperately at it, as though that would dull the stabs of pain. She went to rip the bandage off, but stopped herself just in time. She sighed in relief—that could have been bad.

She pushed herself off the wall and looked both ways down to drain, trying to decide on which way to go.

She shrugged and began walking left. It was better than staying there, and she could always double back if needed.

Plus, nothing could be as bad as the Camp.