Prologue

Phantom sat alone in the dark room that comprised of just a single bunk bed and a desk. It was what once was a county jail pod, where criminals could use a common area as opposed to traditional cells. There were at least ten of the pods, besides the singular cells. Now, there were eight others with her in the pod they were staying in. What once was a prison, had been turned into a home.

Standing, the purple-haired rebel had slid out of bed and strode in socked feet out onto the catwalk before making her way down to the main area. Several tables filled the space at the center of the common area, littered with maps and papers, pens, pencils, old books and weapons.

The anarchist clans that rose with the fall of America had been pressing in on their city borders since they found the place, smoldering in ruin. When the Exos built the place up from ground zero, the clans sought to take whatever they could pillage. Women, children, food, supplies.

Phantom looked over the tables, drawing a map closer to her. It was of their city.

Quiet night pressed around them. It was almost as if the distant gunshots and occasional rocking bomb had ceased.

The Great Eight, hard working and sharp minded, jacks of different trades, were all asleep now. Phantom let her eyes trail over the dark squares that marked their open cells, where each slept.

Lucky C, weapons extraordinaire. He could recognize a B2 from a mile away and rattle off which weapon a bullet belonged to like it was milk and cookies. Bombay, their personal pipe bomb builder. A useful skill for the road when a high speed chase needed to go out with a little bang. Bones, the young Kenyan nurse-turned-renegade doctor, who ran the Recovery wing with a warm heart and sarcastic tongue. There were Radio and Cherry, trackers trained by their parents for search and rescue far before the fall of the nation. Both were good alone, but together they could find a beetle in a tropical storm. Spade was part of the anarchist clans when they first got to the compound, and it was with his help that they secured their place in the city and drove out his old allies. Joy, whose cell was directly beside Phantom's, was her wingman. She was fierce in battle and a proven jack of all trades- with that came an ungodly amount of knowledge she acquired through the years, and was thus Phantom's second in command.

Phantom turned to the table again with a soft sigh. She, among the Eight, was nothing spectacular. She simply lead, with Joy's help, if you didn't count her strange ability to see the dead.

Ever since the fall of the nations, the bombs, the scores of dead buried in damaged and rotting soil. Ever since they had to fight to keep what little they had, the City. Lost, staring at the table without really seeing it, Phantom let out a sigh. Could it have been that this was all for nothing? That the Exos- having survived this long to keep strings of order held tight in their grasp from the old world, were bound to waste away into the margins of an already teeming history?

Part of the woman, small as it was, was latched firmly onto the idea that they would eventually burn out.

"You have doubt," a raspy voice cut through the quiet night so suddenly that the purple haired rebel upturned the papers she was near, gripping her pistol and pulling it out to aim it at the one who spoke.

A woman stood behind her, face seeming to rot away, slightly bent over a thick cane of sorts, rounded at the end. She laughed, loudly, the sound reverberating through the cinder block pod. Half of Phantom wished one or two of the others were awake. Instead, she regained her composure, tipping her chin up slightly and cocking the gun in warning, "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"Dear," the crone gave another raspy laugh, walking surprisingly quickly to the table to stand beside it, emerald green eyes turned to the leader, whose heart pounded in her chest, "Lovely, my sweet, you're quite the fucking idiot."

Phantom felt her nose recoil in a brand of anger as she shook her head, staring at the woman. The way she moved was inhuman. There was a light around her that was unlike the sodium bulbs powered by the generators far below them.

"I asked you a question."

"One you already know the answer to," the woman replied with a hiss of impatience, "You really are stubborn. All you need to do is listen." She fussed over the clothes she wore- which seemed to have shimmered at one point, but were now dull. If one looked close enough, they could see that the ivory beads were actually human teeth, and that the hair the woman wore in tight braids were trailing behind her by a good few feet.

After a moment under her searing gaze, Phantom lowered the gun with a shaky hand.

"Good, are you listening?"

"Yes."

"When the city burns, the roots will thrive."

The woman took her cane and tapped the map that Phantom was studying, and before she could yell out in surprise, a fire had engulfed the paper. Singed ash was all that remained of the thick parchment, and an acrid smell that stung Phantom's nose. Confused, the purple haired rebel opened her mouth to speak, but a blaze had started up where the paper was, setting the pod up in brilliant flames as Phantom desperately searched for an escape. There was none, just towering walls of heat. Letting out a yell to the others, confused by how quickly it spread, dizzy from the thick smoke that seared her throat and lungs, Phantom stumbled and fell, screaming.

Cold floor met her body with a dull thud as she woke, her body dropping to the floor of her cell.

Winded, she struggled to breathe as she gasped and sat up sharply, voice cut short. Three pairs of eyes were glinting from the doorway- those closest to her. Embarrassed, she shook her head and swallowed, catching her breath.

"Go back to bed," she rasped, throat dry from the flames that didn't exist.

While two pairs eventually succumbed, deep blue flints of color moved closer, and before she could properly regain all of her senses, a pair of slender hands were hoisting her up.

"A bad dream?" Joy asked, worriedly glancing over her counterpart, short battery acid blue hair tousled from reckless sleep. There were lines under her eyes where the mask she wore sat during the day. Like Bones, she shared a proclivity for hiding her face. Now, porcelain skin and scattered freckles were illuminated in an alien way by the faint hum of a single sodium light.

When she next spoke, it was words that chilled Phantom's bones and made her stomach twist in a weightless way.

"The city, will it burn, Phan?"