Read Online The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff - Free Book Online

and hungry part of me wants to stand under the bridge forever, breathing the air, feeling the cold on my face. But time exists now. I don’t think I have very much of it.
    I take out my map, opening it against one of the cement pylons supporting the bridge, and run my finger along lines meant to represent roads, trying to find Cicero. I trace the streets, their almost-regular intersections. The sheer vastness of the world is thrilling.
    I’m scanning the map for Sebastian Street when there’s a stealthy footfall behind me.
    “Hey,” says someone from quite close by. “What are you doing down here?”
    When I look around, a man of indeterminate age is standing in the shadow of one of the pylons. His clothes are grimy and his beard is heavy and matted. “You lost?” he asks.
    “Perhaps.” I turn to face him, rattling the map closed. “Can you tell me how to get to Cicero from here?”
    He comes closer, parting his lips to reveal crooked yellow teeth. The movies can’t convey how everything on Earth has a smell. He is an unpleasant array of things I don’t know the words for, all of them tight and sharp and high-pitched.
    “I’ll do you one better,” he says. “I can show you.”
    He motions me back into the shadow of the bridge and when I follow, he takes something from his pocket. It’s black, as long as my hand from wrist to fingertips, and decorated with pictures of the same red flower over and over, linked together by a tangle of vines.
    “What is it?” I ask, leaning closer.
    His wrist twitches and suddenly the thing opens with a click and I see that it’s a knife. He holds it out to me.
    “It’s beautiful,” I say.
    Then he brings the blade up level with my chin, not offering it after all. “Give me your money.”
    I watch the knife tremble, red flowers swarming over the handle. They wriggle and squirm as his hand shakes, making it hard to identify the genus.
    “Are you deaf?” His voice is taut now, panicked. “Give me your fucking money.”
    “No,” I say, stepping closer, reaching out.
    At first, I’m not sure what I’m about to do, only that he’s standing much too close and my hands are tingling. Then he lunges for me and as he does, I reach out, pressing the tips of my fingers against his throat.
    The instant I touch him, red light blooms behind my eyelids and I smell a strange smell, heady and sweet. It’s the smell of burning flesh.
    His cry is short and shocked. Then it cuts off and he wrenches away, my fingerprints smoking along the side of his neck. The knife falls from his hand, clanging on the pavement, and I bend to pick it up. When I straighten, he’s gone, the sound of his feet still echoing under the bridge.
    Petra warned me about the dangers of Earth—traffic accidents and fairy tales. But those things only seem to happen to people who aren’t being careful, and I just burned a man by touching him. Above me, the bridge begins to shake, making a noise so loud I feel it in the ground. It shudders through the soles of my boots, and in a parking lot across the street, the cars burst into a cacophony of loud, rhythmic honking, each with its own tempo and pitch.
    A train rumbles overhead, rattling and clattering along its track, and for the first time, I understand that I’m the most dangerous thing here.

    There are a lot of streets in Cicero, which is confusing, but not impossible. The map shows them laid out in uniform squares—nothing like the chaotic spirals of Pandemonium.
    I’m six blocks from Sebastian Street when I first notice the ache in my chest. It echoes in my ribcage, making me breathe too fast. I think it started under the bridge, right after my encounter with the thief. The farther I go, the worse it seems to get.
    On the steps of a public building, three skinny boys are passing a cigarette back and forth. The smoke looks like home, and I have a strange, unbidden idea that I want to put it in my mouth. The ache in my chest is terrible now, and with it