Free The Killables by Gemma Malley Page A

his refusal to accept what she’d told him. All she could feel was a longing deep inside her to see him again, just one more time; to think of a new way – a good way – they could still be friends, even though she knew it was impossible and that she could never see him.
    Her thoughts were so feverish, her mind so full, that she didn’t hear the tap at the window the first time. And when the second tap came, it shocked her so much that she sat bolt upright in bed, pulled the bedclothes to her and stared at the window as though fearing that the Evils themselves were coming for her, that they could read her thoughts and that they knew she was one of them after all.
    ‘Evie. Evie.’ And then her heart stopped because it wasn’t the Evils. It was Raffy. He was here – he had come to her house. And her fear at what would happen if he was discovered was mixed with a desperate need to see him – to comfort him, to explain and to have him understand and absolve her.
    Shaking, Evie approached the window and hesitantly drew back the curtain. Even though she knew it was Raffy, she still jumped when she saw him looking at her, balancing precariously on the window ledge, his face so full of sadness she almost wanted to cry.
    Immediately she opened the window and pulled him in, putting her finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet, to not make a sound because if they were caught now, there would be no going back, there would be no forgiveness.
    He sat on her bed; she looked at him, unable to speak, unable to think of the right words. And so it was Raffy who spoke first, his voice low, taut and tired.
    ‘You’re making a mistake,’ he said. ‘You can’t do this.’
    ‘Yes, I can,’ Evie replied, looking down. ‘And you have to, too. The System will be watching you. It probably knows everything already. I don’t know why it hasn’t punished us yet, but it will, if we don’t stop. I am going to marry Lucas. And we can’t meet again.’
    ‘Because the System will punish us? I don’t care. So I’ll be a D. Everyone treats me like one anyway.’
    ‘What if you’re not made a D?’ Evie whispered fiercely. ‘What if we’re made K’s? We’ll be thrown out of the City. We’ll be left for the Evils to claim.’ Tears of fear and unhappiness filled her eyes. ‘Raffy, there is no alternative. We have to stop seeing each other. You have to understand that.’
    ‘No. What I understand is that you can’t marry Lucas,’ Raffy said, his jaw clenching. ‘You just can’t. He isn’t a person, he’s a machine. He won’t take care of you. He won’t listen to you. He won’t love you. Not like I do. He doesn’t deserve you. He . . .’
    Raffy’s arms reached out to touch Evie, but she shrank back.
    ‘He’s not a machine,’ she said, falteringly.
    ‘Yes, he is,’ Raffy said, his eyes seeking hers out, uncompromising.
    ‘Then maybe we need to become machines, too,’ Evie replied, wiping at her eyes. ‘Maybe that’s the key to being good. Maybe evil lives in emotions, in our hidden thoughts.’
    ‘If that’s being good then I don’t want to be good.’ Raffy stared at her angrily, challengingly, but Evie refused to rise to the bait.
    ‘You don’t mean that,’ she whispered.
    ‘Don’t I?’ He folded his arms. ‘When Dad was taken away, Lucas didn’t say a thing. He just threw all his stuff out, said he’d brought shame on our family and we were never to mention his name again. His own father. Is that good?’
    Evie tried to swallow, but a huge lump had appeared in her throat. She remembered it so well – Raffy’s misery at losing his father being compounded by Lucas’s response, and the cold flash in Lucas’s eyes whenever Raffy tried to mention the man who had raised them both. ‘Your father was made a K,’ Evie said, hesitantly.
    Raffy’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you’re turning into a machine too,’ he responded bitterly. ‘My father was a good man. Not evil. Not evil.’
    He turned away,