“At ease, corporal,” the other guard, Johnson, said. His blue eyes twinkled when he rolled them and grinned at me, his dimples deepening and making him look less severe. “Here to see Ione?”
I patted the bulging book bag slung over my shoulder. “I have some of her things.”
“We need to search any bags going in or out of the District,” the new guard said.
Johnson let out an exasperated sigh, giving the impression he’d heard this statement more than once today. “Will you give it a rest, Brentwood?” He shook his head as he shot me a wink. “He thinks you have a bomb.”
“No bomb.” I pulled Ione’s bag from my shoulder and held it open for the corporal. “Just some personal belongings for my cousin. She just married a Veilorian.”
The new guard blinked in a combination of surprise and confusion. “Your cousin married one of the visitors, and you’re visiting her?”
He acted like he’d never heard of such a thing, which was stupid. While a lot of humans didn’t like to acknowledge that intermarrying happened, everyone knew it did. It wasn’t even a new thing. For years, there had been rumors about how one family or another had to live in shame after their son or daughter eloped with a Veilorian, as well as stories of half-human children living on the other side of the fence. When we were younger, Ione and I used to whisper about those children during sleepovers, turning them into mutant freaks who would sneak out at night and steal human kids from their beds so they could eat them whole. Years later, however, the stories shifted, turning half-human children into something that more closely resembled the gods of Greek mythology than the monsters we’d once imagined. Teenage hormones had a funny way of doing things like that.
“There have to be a couple hundred humans living in the District now,” Johnson told his new partner as he gave the contents of my bag a cursory inspection. “A lot of halflings too, although we don’t have an official count since the Veilorians census their own people.”
I cringed at the word halfling.
As far as guards went, Johnson was one of the nicer ones. He’d always had a friendly smile for Ione and me when we came to visit and had never even come close to insinuating that she was betraying her people, but even he had moments when his prejudice broke through. Like now. Halfling was a bad word in the District. A slur that suggested something dirty. Something more similar to the creatures I’d heard about as a child than the actual half-human children I’d seen running through the streets of the District, laughing and smiling.
Still grinning, Johnson gently pushed my bags away. “You’re good, Ava.”
“Thanks.” I zipped them up before slinging them over my shoulder once again, pushing my dark hair aside when one of the straps tugged at it.
Out of habit, I held my right hand out and waited for the new guard, Brentwood, to use the portable scanner on my chip. It was implanted just below the skin and used for nearly everything I did. Getting paid at my job, buying food or anything else I needed, and even keeping track of who went in and out of the District. Although what the government did with that information was beyond me. Probably it was just a precaution. In case someone caused trouble and the authorities needed to track them down.
Brentwood held the little device over my hand, and a second later it beeped, cataloguing my visit. Once he’d finished, he nodded and stepped aside so I could head into the District.
“Tell Ione hi,” Johnson said as I passed him.
“I will.”
I noticed he didn’t send his greetings to Rye but chose not to point it out. Johnson may have always been cordial to the Veilorians, but even he wouldn’t stoop that low.
I paused just inside the gate to take a look around the way I always did, my gaze moving higher and higher as I scanned the homes and walkways. The District had been established about twenty years ago, only two years after the visitors arrived on the planet. Back then, their numbers had been small—only a little over two hundred—and five square miles had been more than enough space for them to create a city of their own. But as the years stretched on and the population increased, they’d begun to run out of room, forcing them to improvise. That was when they’d started building their homes on top of one another, and as a result, the Veilorian city was now five or even six stories high in some places, and dozens upon dozens of walkways crisscrossed in a maze of paths above my head. Some of them connected buildings on the opposite side of the street while others stretched out in front of the homes like sidewalks suspended in midair. All of them were brimming with activity as I headed toward my destination.
The District was cleaner than the part of the city I lived in. Nicer, too. Unlike humans, Veilorians didn’t like waste, and they would never even consider throwing a piece of garbage on the ground or not trying to repurpose something instead of throwing it away, a fact that was evident the second you stepped through the gate. Old pots—discarded by humans who no longer needed them—had been turned into planters and attached to the sides of buildings and walkways, creating bursts of greenery nearly everywhere I looked. Most held human plants the Veilorians had found use for over the years—aloe or lavender, basil and other herbs—while others held florae the visitors had brought with them from their own planet. Wheels from old bicycles had been repurposed and hung outside homes
