Taken (Erin Bowman)

the thief rushes by me, I stick my leg out and trip him. Water jugs tumble from his arms, contents spill from his bag. He stumbles to his feet and takes off down the alley, but I am quicker. I lunge at him, seize the back of his shirt, throw him against the wall.
    “You should really watch where you’re going,” I snarl.
    “Please,” he says. “You don’t understand. My wife. My kids. They’re sick.”
    His eyes no longer look livid. They look broken. They look moments away from hopeless. I peer down the alley to where Emma is climbing to her feet. Her white pants are torn, blood dripping from her knees. I shove the man into the wall again. The Order is coming. I can hear their shouts.
    “Please,” the thief begs. “We need the water.”
    “It seems like everyone needs it.”
    “What would you know?” he says, eyeing my uniform. “Living in that place, following the orders of a corrupt man.”
    The first Order member rounds the corner, and the man wriggles in my grasp.
    “Please. My son, he’s just five. There’s still time. Just let go. Tell them I stabbed you. Or kicked you. Or spit in your eye.”
    I almost do it. I almost let his shirt slip from my fingers—his words sound so sincere—but Emma falling is replaying in my mind, her body being thrown to the side by the thief’s frame. I hold his shirt just a second longer, and then an Order member arrives. He presses the thief into the wall. I watch his cheek scrape the brick while his hands are bound with not rope but an odd chain of metal links, two of which are snapped closed around his wrists.
    “Turn around,” the Order member says. When the thief doesn’t, he is shoved. Hard. He hits his head on the wall and with fresh blood trickling into his eyebrows, he continues to beg.
    “Please. We need it. You don’t understand.”
    “Turn around.”
    “I’ll do anything. Just let me bring the water to my family first.”
    “Now!”
    The thief puts his back to the wall. He is crying, blood mixing with tears. The Order member steps back and repositions his weapon.
    And then there is an explosion, a noise so loud it rattles the space between my ears, echoing for an eternity. I blink, and when I open my eyes, the thief is on the ground, dead. There is no arrow, no spear, no knife. Nothing. Just a gaping hole. I stare at his bleeding skull until I turn to dry heave against the wall.
    Emma shakes the entire way back. She doesn’t cry, but at least her reaction is better than mine. She’s showing fear or remorse or nerves or something . I do nothing but look blankly ahead, wondering what on earth happened, wondering if I’m somehow responsible. Everyone wanted water. Everyone was waiting in line. He stole something. He was a thief. But did he deserve to die over a jug of water?
    I keep the thoughts to myself because I fear that if I speak them aloud, Emma might collapse right beside me. We walk to Union Central, my arm wrapped around her and the blood drying on her pants. I take her to her room, which happens to be on the same floor as mine, just in a different wing, and then march straight to Frank’s office. I pound on the door until someone comes and tells me Frank doesn’t have time to talk to me. I demand to see him. They tell me to leave. I demand some more.
    I end up sitting on the floor outside his office, arms folded across my chest. I doze off momentarily and wake to a foot prodding my side.
    “Gray.” Frank stands above me, a pile of documents in hand.
    I scramble to my feet. “I need to talk to you.”
    “I’ve heard. I only have a moment, but, please, come in.”
    We sit at his desk, and when he puts the papers on them, everything suddenly looks out of place, that one disorganized pile throwing the entirely methodical room out of orbit. Frank leans back in his chair, places his fingertips together in a calming wave, and says, “So, Gray. What can I help you with?”
    “There was a man today, in town. He was—”
    “Shot,” Frank finishes.
    “But there was no arrow.”
    “This is true. You carry a bow in Claysoot, correct? You shoot arrows?”
    I nod.
    “In the Order, we carry guns. We shoot bullets.” He lifts his shirt, and removes something from a belt at his waist. It is much smaller than the weapons the other men had carried in the public square. Frank points it away from us and slides a slender box from its base before pulling back on the weapon’s top. He fishes something from the gun, gold and glinting, and