I didn't mean to catch the man. I was never some Mercury looking to die for glory, and I wasn't stupid, either, but when he stumbled my arms shot out of their own volition. It wasn't until the stumble turned into a full-fledged fall, though, that I saw the Mercury arrow sticking from the drunken Logos' chest, the shaft buried through the center of his rank patch. The red and gold fletching caught the flickering light from a nearby street lamp, and I felt my fear run like a river down my leg. Touching a Logos was charged as murder even if they weren't dead, and alleyways always had cameras.

Maybe it was the acrid smell of my fear that caused me to do the unthinkable. If I'd been less terrified, I might not have stolen the one item forbidden to Crimsons, but the door handle to the alley was already twisting when I grabbed the man's Switch Band. Shaking and splattered with blood, I dropped the Logos Captain to the wet ground and slipped the device onto my bony wrist, hitting the back-lit numbers at random as the wrist band slid down to my elbow. As I pushed a seven, my skin turned to electricity.

I reassembled in the middle of a marketplace, blessedly free of urine, dirt, and splattered blood. I was surrounded by creatures I never even knew existed, invisible in the bustle of midday. The air smelled like honey, hickory smoke, and a host of other delicious things I had no name for, but it was the noise and the creatures making it that excited me the most. There were shaggy balls of fur rolling around squeaking, tall reptiles with long, supple necks and sad eyes that clutched quills and paper in their curiously human hands, cats that spoke in words I could understand but not repeat, and every possible permutation of human. I was afraid to blink.

I'd always somehow thought the other worlds weren't real. I'd seen a man disappear once, and even knew how Switch Bands worked, but the thought of other worlds was so far out of my own experience it had always left me dizzy and doubting. If it seemed too good to be true, it probably was, as the saying goes, only this time the adage was wrong. I'd never left my city, never even left my block, and now I was being bumped and jostled around the marketplace of a foreign world.

I lost myself in the shock of the sights for a while, almost disbelieving my own senses, but they stubbornly insisted this was not a dream, and I finally gave in and believed them. The very alien nature of the place made me feel safe, as if the horror of minutes before had happened to someone else in a far distant past.

I think that's why the cat came up to me. It stretched itself against my leg, kneading softly, then mewed, and its noise was both words and something beyond them. "What a bony, scrawny thing you are!" The kneading was almost full clawed as the cat continued. "Do you have a name, little scarecrow?"

"Jawla."

"Well, Jawla, I wouldn't get too comfortable." The cat licked an orange paw leisurely, then perked its ears with a low hiss, seeming to hear something I couldn't. "They're on their way, and I think they've got dogs."

The cat's fur stood on end at the last word, rubbing sharply as static built. A rumbling growl started against my leg, and I felt the cat's claws beginning to extend as my own fear returned with a rush. "8 -9 - 7 - 6 - 8 - 1 - 5. Press it. NOW."

There was electricity, then silence, then cold.

My skin tingled with chill and the air was harsh on my throat. I felt like I was breathing liquid memory, and it burnt my heart as much as it burnt my lungs and skin. The last blizzard this bad I'd been in, my brother Nick had died. He was seven. He'd have been ten by now. I shivered, eyes open, seeing nothing, memories rushing through my mind like a plane nose-diving with no way of pulling up.

Nick had always been sickly, but Crimsons weren't allowed to go to hospitals. No self-respecting Doctor would help a Crimson, and schooling was forbidden to my Class, so I never learned why sickness came so easily to Nick.

When the blizzard roared through our block, Nick's forehead had been hot and beaded with sweat for a week and three days, and our flimsy canvas roof did little to protect him from the chill. Soon even that had blown away into the white-out, and now there was no way to shield him from the icy winds. The coughing started immediately, a deep, wheezing sound that hurt to hear, and by morning his skin was ice and his mouth no longer expelled air. They burnt him with the rest of the dead ones, and we never even saw his ashes. The ash wouldn't have brought him back anyway.

The day the Logos burnt Nick's ice to ash was the first time I considered becoming a Mercury, but militant Crimsons were more about vengeance than success, and I knew even then that violence would take us nowhere except death. Still, my heart was frozen flames when Nick dispersed into the wind, and I never felt the cold again.

"Jawla! JAWLA!" There were claws dug deep into my legs when the yells finally brought my treacherous mind to the present. I blinked, eyes dry and almost frosted from being held open too long in the blinding snow. I could barely make out the cat at my feet, but its yells finally sank in. "Run!"

"Wha-?"

"Dogs! Run!"

I pushed my frozen limbs into motion, and then I was running forward through the snow. The wind tried to topple me and I sank downward with every rapid step, but I forced myself to sprint. I didn't want to sacrifice the tenuous advantage the cat had given me. The dogs couldn't track in a blizzard, but if I wasn't out of sight and hearing, it wouldn't matter.

I knew what those dogs could do. They'd torn apart my best friend when he stole some fruit for his dying mum, fifteen yards from my front door. It hadn't taken the dogs more than a moment, but they'd had fun with it.

Run, Jawla. Don't think. Run.

The cat had disappeared in a sizzle of electricity shortly into the mad push forward. The wind kept pulling it backward, and anyway who would sacrifice himself to those creatures for an absolute stranger? I wasn't even sure I'd die that way for my own mum.

I ran until my legs buckled under me and I lay unmoving in the snow. I hadn't heard barks in hours. They shouldn't be able to trace me here.

I tried all threes this time. When I opened my eyes again, it was Spring.

I'd never seen the bugs that buzzed their way through the field of flowers I had come to in, but they were stunning, all iridescent colors and humming beauty. The air tasted of citrus, and I wondered for a second if I'd awoken in the free lands, where there were always flowers and Crimsons could go to school. The only catch was you had to be dead to get there. I wouldn't really have minded. If I wasn't there yet, I would be soon enough.

I didn't move for five hours. The grass was almost achingly comforting to my sore body, and the flowers lit up my vision and taste buds with their beautiful colors and mouth-watering smells. The humming buzz of the bugs even managed to put me to sleep in fits and starts of wonder. Invariably, though, my hunger pulled me awake.

I decided to try some of the multicolored flowers that coated the ground and filled the air with sweetness. I knew beautiful often meant the opposite of safe to eat, but if I didn't get food in me soon I'd die anyway. The coursing adrenalin had bled from me, and I hadn't eaten anything for the two days before the idiot Logos fell into my arms. After all that running I wouldn't be able to stand if the flowers couldn't help.

All else failing, I'd catch some of those colorful bugs. I'd lived on chirping ones before. This couldn't be too different.

The flowers tasted as beautiful as they smelled, rich and earthy and wet. I ate slowly. There was no use making myself ill from eating too fast on an empty stomach, especially if the flowers didn't make me sick.

I still felt fine an hour later, so I ate a few more, then slowly struggled to my feet. I needed to find somewhere safe to rest. I pushed myself forward, sometimes crawling, occasionally collapsing to the soft ground, but then forcing myself onward again. This place's coordinates were in the Switch Band's collection of worlds to go to, so it had to be a well-tested and well-known world. A Captain wouldn't have access to the untested ones, and it was far too beautiful to be uninhabited.

How old was I when I learned about Switch Bands? As I pushed myself onward, memories of my Grandmum began to float to the surface.

"The world wasn't always so divided. Once, Logos and Crimsons mixed freely and even intermarried."

I had started laughing when she told me that. Back then I thought it was a joke, and I still do sometimes. Logos speaking to Crimsons in anything other than threats? Logos marrying us? And even more disturbing, a Crimson choosing a Logos as a partner? It made my mind spin.

Could Logos even love? The few I'd seen walking with a partner kept a careful, wary distance, and I'd never once seen a Logos couple holding hands. It was kind of sad, really. Grandmum and Grandpop always seemed to glow when they looked at each other, and mum got this wistful smile when she stared at pictures of Poppa. He'd died when I was five, and I'd never been told how, but I remember him spinning my mother through the air in joy when he came home from foraging, and the way they spoke to each other. I'd yet to find that love, but I knew it took time. I couldn't imagine a Logos taking that time.

Maybe that was why the Logos hated us. We got the luxury of love and affection while they were tied in uneasy alliances to keep peace and ensure proper lineage.

I felt a sudden deep pang of homesickness for my family before catapulting back into memories.