The smoke tears water from my eyes and the breath from my lungs as it twists and climbs over me to touch a heavy gray sky. Wind blows ash and dust into the unquiet air. The smell of burning canvas and wood blankets the city, and below me, far, far below me, I can see tiny, toy-like people stuffing their noses in their collars and their sleeves. I can see them looking at the city walls in the distance, pointing at the smoke billowing up behind the gates.

The smoke and the ash aren't commanding as much attention as the screams are. The screams are bone chilling and they haunt your mind months after the fires are set and the encampments are burned to the ground. You hear them in your dreams, and sometimes in your waking thoughts, and they bounce around in your head and echo in your ears. It's easier for the rest of the Shadowhunters to forget about them. The rest of the Shadowhunters simply hear them, wonder about them, and then continue with their peaceful, conflict free, horror free lives.

It's a bit harder for us. We're the ones who set the fires.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to block everything out, try to ignore the vertigo gripping my stomach. Try to focus only on my hands and where they are currently placed. The ridges of the metal dig into my palms and tear the skin away. The joints in my fingers ache and my arms are screaming. Despite my pain, I try to focus on breathing slowly and calmly, to focus on steadying my erratically beating heart. I open my eyes again and look up at the metal beam I'm desperately clinging to—the one I fell off of two minutes ago. Dangling from a support beam 800 feet above the ground isn't the most ideal time to pause and watch the smoke and listen to the screaming from the other side of the wall. I should have just stayed on the roof.

I suck the air in through my teeth and adjust my grip on the beam, wincing as I manage to haul myself up and over the beam so I'm straddling it. My legs swing over the edges of the beam and I ever so gracefully scoot myself back until I can twist around and place my feet securely on the roof of the building. I stand up and wince as I rub the feeling back into my fingers, taking more time to gaze at the city walls.

The city itself isn't on fire. Reinforced steel walls are hard to light on fire. Hence the fact that they're made of reinforced steel. The encampment on the other side of the gates is on fire, as are many of its inhabitants. I let out a shaky breath and hoist my backpack onto my shoulders, buckling the straps across my chest.

The smoke in the distance has already begun to diminish—the fires have been burning for well over an hour now, and will eventually hit the fire line encircling the city's outskirts, and burn themselves out. The encampment's inhabitants will have either fled or stupidly stayed behind to die with the few worldly possessions they had.

I unclip my gloves from my belt and slip them over my shaking hands, turning away from the grim scene and climbing over the other side of the building onto the fire escape stairs. I pull the neck of my sweater over my mouth and nose and keep my eyes downcast. Anybody in the building is likely to be looking the other way, at the fires, but I can't take any chances. I look conspicuous enough wearing all black and hurrying down the fire escape of a skyscraper with a handgun and an array of hunting knives shoved into my belt. The last thing I need is for someone to remember my face and possibly recognize me down the road.

Public recognition results in an automatic failure of the course.

There's a tiny burst of static in my right ear and I freeze on the fire escape stairs, my back hugging the wall, my collar pulled up to my eyes. I fumble with my gloves for a moment, but I manage to pull my DocScreen out of my backpack and accept the incoming message.

Clarissa Morgenstern, a mechanical voice drones in my ear. Report.

I take a deep breath and slide the DocScreen back into my backpack, and I begin to descend the stairs again, moving quickly and quietly. "ID Verification 2325," I say under my breath.

Status report.

"Assignment completed," I answer, feeling a load of anxiety free itself from my chest as I speak. "Fires set. Encampment emptied. Those who wished to survive fled on foot into the Unoccupied Territories. Those who wished to stay behind did so at their own peril. Sanitization is complete. Position currently uncompromised."

Assignment completion validated. Proceed back to the academy.

I sigh in relief as another burst of static indicates that the conversation is over. Sometimes the computer running the conversation is simultaneously having the same conversation with three or four other students and the replies come sporadically, with minutes in between answers. Sometimes the instructor doesn't receive the computer's notification of our assignment completion for a while, and therefore doesn't validate the completion until he or she sees the notification. Thus, sometimes we are stranded in the cities for hours, left alone to try and kill time without being caught and without being asked too many questions.

I duck into a nearby public restroom and check to see that it's empty. I pull a thin, oblong object from my belt and point it at the cameras in the restroom, disabling each of them in turn. I slip into a stall and drop my backpack to the ground.

I was stranded in a city about ten miles east of this one, once. My particular instructor had told me to mount cameras in the home office of a particularly wealthy Downworlder in the city who was suspected of conspiring against the New Global Empire—created and calculated by the Clave- and then leave the city immediately thereafter. Apparently, she thought it would take me much more time than it did, because I was stuck wandering the unfamiliar city for three hours before I received the 'Assignment completion validated. Proceed back to the academy' message.

I know the name of every single grocery store in that city now, thanks to her.

I pull my hair out of its ponytail and finish buttoning the orange flannel shirt I shoved into my bag this morning before practically sprinting out of my bedroom door at the academy. I look down at my clothes and screw my mouth up to one side. Orange flannel shirt. Boot cut blue jeans. Moccasin slippers. How attractive.

I shove my uniform back into my backpack and cover it with a tattered old basketball uniform, lest anyone should look inside of the bag. No one would be able to get close enough to me to even touch the bag without first getting their wrists broken, but you can never be too careful.

I slip out of the restroom unseen, and I sling my backpack over one shoulder, shuffling down the sidewalk in my slippers, heading straight for the clunky old green sedan parked at the end of the block. The getaway car.

I allow myself a wry smile before getting into the car and starting the ignition. In all the old action films, the spy would have a sleek black sports car to hop into, and a chauffeur to shove the gas pedal to the floor board and speed away before the enemy could blink an eye.

The academy allows me this ancient grandma car on special occasions, and I have to drive myself.

Then again,I think, pulling up alongside the city gates and handing the guard my clearance card. I'm not exactly a spy.

Spies don't get graded on how well they set tents and wooden shacks on fire.

The guard hands my clearance card back and the reinforced steel gates shudder and groan with their own weight as they swing outward, allowing just enough space for my little car to squeeze through onto the sparsely traveled roads beyond the city walls. As I drive away from the city, in the rearview mirror, I can see the fires smoldering along the wall. A few people have returned from the Unoccupied Territories to pick through the rubble, to salvage anything they find. To see if any of their loved ones remained behind in the fire, or if their loved ones were too sick, or injured, or crippled to escape into the Territories when the fires were set.

The sick, injured and crippled aren't meant to escape these things. The entire purpose of the fires is to 'sanitize' the outskirts, as our instructors tell us. Those living in the encampments around the walls are very often carriers of deadly diseases. Usually demon diseases that the Clave doesn't want spread to any of the Shadowhunters or humans living in the Cities of Refuge. Or they have injuries that could get infected and harbor more disease. Cripples, in the sight of the NGE, serve no purpose at all. These kinds of people are a detriment to society, they say. They don't aid us in any way. They can even harm us if their diseases jump the city walls. They could wipe out entire cities with just one sneeze. Therefore, they say, we must sanitize the land.

Burn the germs.

It's wrong, and I know that. To expose innocent people to the wrath of the demons that now freely terrorize the entire face of the planet. To abandon our mission in favor of saving ourselves and any humans we think may become Shadowhunters one day. To set entire makeshift villages on fire with the knowledge that many will be unable to escape the flames and the smoke. It's murder. But it has to be done, and no one higher up really enjoys the task, so it defaults to the academy students, who are forced to accept any assignment given on the grounds that we could be kicked out of the school if we don't complete it.

I grip the steering wheel tightly as I drive up to the gates of Ancora. I hand Derek, the guard on duty, my clearance pass and watch as he swipes it through the computer. "You know me well enough by now," I tell him. "You should be able to just wave me on."

Derek smiles widely, his dimples immediately appearing on his ruddy cheeks. "Right?" He hands me my pass and reaches for the small lever built into the side of the control board that opens the gates. The steel groans as it shifts and the doors begin to open. "Unfortunately, the lever doesn't work without a clearance card. Something about being distrustful of crotchety old gatekeepers that would let random people in from the Territories." He shrugs.

I frown. "You are neither old, nor crotchety."

"But I am untrustworthy," he says mischievously. He grins again and leans back into the gatehouse. "Natasha has the gate shift up at the Academy," he says. "Make sure to tell her hello or she won't let you through. She kept Jose waiting outside the gates for twenty minutes last week because he didn't say hello before handing her his clearance card."

The gates groan to a stop, wide open, giving anyone around us access to the city or the Territories…depending on which side of the wall you're on. "When is your shift over?"

Derek glances at the watch on his wrist. "About an hour and a half. I'll be back at the Academy before dinner."

I nod. "I don't envy you."

"Nor I you," he replies, glancing at my orange flannel.

I shrug. "Someone has to do it. It might as well be me."

The gates begin to shudder again. They only stand open for a short amount of time if they don't sense a car going through them. They don't stand open at all if they detect a singular human body going through them. There's this mechanism inside each of the gates that will freeze you in place if you try to run through them on foot, and they'll hold you there until the city authorities can come and either take you away or dispose of you.

"You better go," Derek says, jerking his chin in the direction of the groaning gates. "I'll see you later."

I nod again and move my car through the gates just as they begin to close, and I merge into the traffic of the city that houses a national academy for teenagers who become glorified assassins.

Shadowhunter assassins, of course.