Long minutes later, I find the beginnings of the bad part of the city. Not that this is really a city, after all. By now, I've realized there are no skyscrapers crumbling in the distance. There are not enough people. And judging by the cold, the icy drizzle that has begun to sink into my rags, it's either getting toward winter, or I'm in the north. One of the Outposts, I guess. I consider what's happened to me as I make my way slowly past lean-tos and shanties, past people with sunken-in faces, vacant, bloodless stares. Some of them don't bother to avoid me, but neither do they pay me any attention.
I ignore them, swimming in the black memories of the box, my mind prodding, obsessed with poking the wound despite the pain it brings. People don't talk about the torture. Maybe no one knows. No one who is able to speak about it. You emerge from the box half-mad and paranoid, unable to function. Unable to pretend that life is the same. It's supposed to be a humane punishment. Supposed to erase a person's criminality and give them a second chance. If they break the Covenant a second time, then they're considered to be intrinsically flawed and are simply 'removed' from the system. But no one ever mentioned sticking you in a tiny metal box until you crack.
You have been warned. I shiver again. Is it meant to compel me to an honest start in my new life? I don't feel honest, wrapping myself in rags and pretending to have the pox. I feel hardly anything more than fear, and I have the strangest feeling that this fear will compel me to dishonesty.