Mirror's Edge

by Scott Westerfeld

  “So specific,” Sara says. “Whatever you’re planning, no one’s getting hurt, right?”

  “Not if we can help it.” Yandre hesitates. “We’re only—”

  “Don’t want to know!” she cries, her hands up to ward off their words. “Just don’t get us all arrested. The cliques are still recovering from the Revelation.”

  “The Revelation?” I ask.

  She stares at me. “You must know about that—when our first daughter turned out to be twins? The two sisters gave this speech together, the Revelation, telling everyone how bad it was to be them. Little rich girls having to share clothes. They told us to rise up and kick their dad out of power—and everyone believed it! But then they bailed on us.”

  For a moment, no one says anything. None of the commandoes looks at me, but I can feel their thoughts like heat on my skin.

  When Col and the rebels attacked my father’s tower last year, Rafi and I went on the feeds to ask the people to rise up. But then Col was captured, and we lost, and I had to stay behind to save him.

  “We know about the Battle of Shreve,” Col finally says. “It didn’t go as planned. Most battles don’t.”

  “Sure,” Sara says. “But after the fighting was over, Princess Rafia stuck by her dad, leaving us to take the heat for her little rebellion.”

  That was me, not Rafi.

  Col keeps trying to defend me. “Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”

  “Tell that to the people who went on their roofs that night, celebrating the end of the dictator! A few days later, Security shows up at their door. We aren’t talking about merits either. Some of them were my friends.”

  Were my friends.

  Sara looks at me, like she can see straight through my camo-surge. If I was wearing my real face, she’d curse me on behalf of her lost friends, probably turn me in to Security …

  She wouldn’t risk her freedom to help us, if she knew the truth of me.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do this,” I say softly.

  Sara narrows her eyes. “Why not?”

  “Once it’s over, Security might take a close look and realize that the cliques conspired with us. We’ll be gone, and you’ll be left to take the blame … again.”

  No one speaks up. Col and Yandre look uncertain, and Zura is staring up into the rain, like she’s ready to walk away from all of us in frustration.

  “Keep that badge,” I say. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Sara looks me up and down. “I thought you were rebels. But rebels wouldn’t choke like this. So who are you?”

  I’m not sure what to tell her. That I’m the second daughter of Shreve? The next leader of her city?

  The betrayer of her friends …

  “This is our fight, not yours,” I say.

  A chuckle slips from her, barely audible in the rain. “If you think that, you really don’t know anything.”

  Riggs speaks up. “Don’t listen to her, Sara. You’re right; she’s not a rebel. But I am, and we don’t choke.”

  With her foreign accent and intense expression, Riggs is completely convincing. The last word turns in my gut like a hot knife.

  Sara gives me another wary glance, then nods to Riggs. “Four of those badges for the biggest DOA ever. Deal?”

  Yandre speaks up. “We also need some hardware. Whatever you use to write those hidden messages.”

  “Okay. When we meet up with Future, I’ll bring you a sprayer.”

  “We have to meet them too?” Yandre asks.

  “The other cliques have leaders. I can bribe the right people, and it’s done. But in Future, we make our own stories. You’ll have to convince people face-to-face.”

  Col shakes his head. “We don’t have time to wait for another storm. This is all happening the day after tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sara says. “Future does their meetups out in the greenbelt, in dust-free spots. Is a little hiking okay?”

  When no one else answers, Riggs lets out a sigh.

  “Hiking is healthy and fun.”

  It’s still raining when we get back to the markets.

  Boss Charles looks up from her picked-clean plate, wearing a satisfied expression. “Nice walk?”

  “A little soggy,” Yandre says. “But it all worked out.”

  I’m worse than soggy. This new face no longer feels like a disguise—more like I’m hiding in shame.

  We should have realized that any resisters here would be wary of me and my sister. Encouraging the people of Shreve to rebel put them at risk, and then I supported my father in exchange for Col’s life.

  Every choice I make these days feels like betrayal.

  My lunch is cold and beaded with the rainspray gusting across the markets. I’m not hungry anymore.

  “How long till the next train out?” Zura asks Col.

  “Forty minutes.”

  “Waiting in the station might be warmer,” she says.

  We gather our gear and step back out into the rain. I walk quickly, staring down at the puddles, my shoulders hunched.

  A sudden roar fills the air.

  It’s a groundcar—moving too fast, skidding through the dust-slurry. As it rushes past, a curtain of mud splashes onto me, almost knocking me down.

  The groundcar roars away down the street.

  “What the …” Col’s voice comes.

  I wipe the muck from my face, blinded and confused. Dangerous driving in Shreve can get you shame-cammed.

  “Count your bags,” Riggs calls out.

  There’s a frantic moment of checking. My three bags are all accounted for.

  Then Lodge calls out, “My pack!”

  “That way!” Boss Charles shouts.

  At the end of the street, a figure is splashing away through the puddles, carrying one of our backpacks.

  “You two, with me,” I say to Zura and Lodge. “Everyone else, stay here!”

  We run after the figure, feet sliding in the mud.

  The thief must have spotted us the moment we walked into the covered markets. If they think we’re smugglers, afraid to report a theft, they’re not completely wrong.

  We can’t afford the Shreve AI to look inside that pack.

  Of course, neither can they.

  But they know this city, where to run and hide. There’s only one thing the thief doesn’t know—two of us are Specials.

  Zura and Lodge put on a burst of superhuman speed. They take the next corner, leaving me behind.

  Running in my new body is strange. The extra height makes the ground feel too far away, and the swing of my arms is wrong. It feels like making a marionette run—the strings tangling, wooden feet uncertain on the mud.

  I round the corner and skid in the wet. The dust-slurry feels slick and silty underfoot, like campfire ashes after a rain.

  Ahead of me, the two Specials have come to a halt in the middle of the next street. The thief has disappeared.

  I pull the eyeglasses from my pocket.

  To my right, a pair of six-story buildings are marked with hidden symbols. I run toward them.

  There’s an alley between the buildings. At the far end, a blob of heat flashes in my infrared. But it’s not the thief—it’s two people intertwined in the rain, flashing bare skin.

  Secret Hookups.

  But halfway up one of the alley walls, someone’s climbing a drainpipe.

  “This way!” I call, and charge into the alley.

  Grabbing the drainpipe, I haul myself up. The pipe trembles with the downpour flowing through it, but it isn’t slick. There’s some kind of grippy surface on the backside.

  It’s been treated to make it easy to climb in the rain.

  This is a marked escape route—palimpsest symbols clutter the wall beside me.

  Overhead, the thief slips over the top, then reappears for a moment against the dark gray sky, looking down at me.

  It’s a man, I can tell. He’s wearing a mask, his eyes wide behind it, like he’s surprised that I’m
chasing him. Maybe real smugglers wouldn’t take the risk.

  I keep climbing, hoping he doesn’t decide to drop something heavy on my head.

  When I clear the edge, he’s off again across the rooftops. There are gaps between the buildings, more alleys. But through the eyeglasses, I see arrows marking the best spots to jump.

  As he takes the first leap, there’s something familiar about the thief’s run.

  Zura clambers up and bolts past. I stagger after her, dodging between solar panels and dust chimneys, wondering if I really want to jump across an alley in this unfamiliar body—in the pouring rain.

  The first chasm looms before us. Zura leaps it without hesitation, and I don’t give myself a choice, pulling off the rain-streaked glasses and running straight at the gap.

  Reflexes take over. My grippy climbing shoes don’t slip in the wet. I land on the next rooftop, alive and well.

  Lodge lands beside me a second later, graceful as a panther, and bounds ahead.

  There’s no way the thief can escape these two.

  I try to keep up, flying across the next alley at a run. I start to find my stride, growing reckless and exultant in the geometries of my new body.

  Turns out being tall is good for distance jumping.

  Ahead of me, Zura skids to a halt. She kneels to look under the wet and glistening solar panels.

  She turns as Lodge and I catch up. “He’s gone. You think he went inside?”

  “Into the dust?” I put the glasses back on.

  It takes me only seconds to spot it—an exhaust hood a few meters away, a spinning fan on top, flinging out a skirt of rain. The access panel to the hood is marked with a hidden sign, a stylized bunch of feathers tied together.

  I remember a pre-Rusty drama that Rafi used to watch, set in the age of horse-drawn carriages, ballroom intrigue, and lots of servants …

  Those servants were always cleaning with bundles of feathers—it was called dusting.

  “He’s in there,” I say softly.

  Zura covers the distance in two long steps and yanks open the panel.

  Crouched inside is the man, folded up like a doll.

  He takes off the mask with a sigh.

  It’s Jax.

  “You are disheartened by this turn of events, perhaps,” he says, unfolding himself from the tight space and standing up.

  Zura grabs the stolen pack from him.

  I take the glasses off. “We trusted you.”

  “Why wouldn’t you? I sent you Sara, and she’ll deliver.” He shrugs. “But if Sir Dust isn’t watching, then …”

  “Then you try to run over us and take our stuff?” I cry.

  “I’ve worked with that driver many times. She wouldn’t harm a flea. And as for that stuff, is it legally yours, when the items themselves are illegal?”

  “Yes! That’s why you ran away after you took it!”

  “Sir Dust tells us what belongs to whom,” Jax says with a philosophical air. “It opens the front entrance for the owner, the back for the widget. It counts the merits when we buy and sell. So when the dust is rained away, the concept of property is up for grabs.”

  I groan. “You said you’d never betray a customer!”

  He waves a hand. “A statement in the context of betraying you to the authorities, not disappointing behaviors in general.”

  “Disappointing?” I ask. “We need this gear for our mission!”

  “Which I truly hope succeeds. But I can’t let sentiment interfere with business.” He looks into the sky. “The rain won’t last much longer. Shall we go down?”

  I share a look with Zura, but there’s no point in exacting revenge on Jax. We have to let him go.

  Maybe that’s why he tried to steal from us. He saw no downside except the risk of embarrassment.

  “There’s another pipe this way,” he says.

  Through the rain-smudged glasses, I see the mark, a pair of wings.

  “A tactical error, selling you those,” Jax mutters.

  As we climb down, the rain is already slackening. I check my badge, but it’s still at zero. I wonder how long it takes for the dust to come back after a downpour.

  “Any chance we were spotted?” I ask Jax at the bottom of the climb. “Traffic cams? Motion detectors on the rooftops?”

  “I stayed between the cams.” Jax shrugs. “Security could put eyes into every brick, but they choose not to. The rain is the rain.”

  “Raining or not,” Zura warns, “my own philosophy of property includes breaking people’s fingers.”

  The man smiles. “You’re Sara’s customer now, not mine. She’s a true believer, and her friends know how to bring the drama. But I should warn you, the Futures can be a little sense-missing at time.”

  I laugh. “Coming from you, that’s distressing.”

  “My madness has method. I’m never sure about them.” Jax bows deeply. “Good luck … and try to be mindful of your possessions.”

  As we walk back toward the station, the downpour fades to a trickle. No stars flicker on my badge, and the air still has a fresh, clean taste.

  Lodge looks up. “You think he’s right? None of these traffic cams saw us chasing him?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” I say.

  But I remember the original crims, uglies who played tricks back in the pretty regime. The authorities always gave them leeway to find themselves. Maybe Security doesn’t mind a little mayhem boiling over in the rain.

  Growing up here, the feeds always said there’d never been a single unsolved crime in Shreve. But they lied about everything else, so why not that too?

  Or maybe it’s what Jax said—what the dust doesn’t see doesn’t count.

  Zura glances at the sky. “We won’t have time to explain this to the others. You and I have to make this choice, Frey.”

  “What choice?”

  “Whether to meet Sara tomorrow. If we can’t trust Jax, why trust her?”

  I frown. “Because he’s a crim, and she isn’t.”

  “So he claims, but Sara knows we’re carrying valuable gear.” Zura shakes her head. “What if her real plan is to steal it?”

  “If they’re plotting together, then why would Jax try—”

  “To test us,” she says. “He can warn them that we’re Specials now.”

  I let out a sigh. As the rain fades, a new smell is rising up from the muck in the street, like graphite. The dust is starting to dry out, and the chimneys around us are belching haze into the air.

  The first star is flickering on my badge.

  “We don’t even know what kind of clique we’re meeting,” Zura says quickly. “Jax said they’re sense-missing. What does Future even mean?”

  “Maybe that they want a better future. You want to tell Col and Yandre we’re giving up?”

  “There won’t be a chance. Just say you’ve picked a different spot to camp. They’ll trust you.”

  Col is still the heir to House Palafox, and Zura his loyal soldier. She’d rather lay this decision on me than disobey him directly.

  “This campsite.” Zura taps her location-finder, where Sara put in coordinates. “It’s close to that construction zone.”

  “The valley that’s off-limits?”

  “Not just off-limits. Dangerous.” Zura’s voice goes softer. “Those digging machines, their drivers were wearing hazard suits.”

  I come to a halt in the street. “What for?”

  Zura checks her badge before answering. The first star is almost solid, and she whispers now. “Radiation? Chemicals? Nanos? Whatever’s out there, I’m not letting Col anywhere near it.”

  She pulls me back into motion.

  In the silence, Rafi’s warning goes through my head again.

  He’ll be ready with something.

  A little mutually assured destruction.

  What’s my father up to on the outskirts of Shreve?

  I put on the glasses again. Almost every doorway is marked. Half with drawing of a
hand, others with wide, unblinking eyes. People who’ll help you in a pinch? Those who are spies for Security?

  In the last few hours, I’ve learned so much about Shreve, all the shades of complexity that were invisible from my father’s tower. But I still hardly know a thing.

  Like the palimpsest itself, there are layers upon layers here.

  By the time we reach the station, sunlight slants through the broken clouds, revealing that the dust haze has returned. The air has that heavy smell again.

  Three solid stars on my badge.

  The rest of our crew is huddled at the station entrance, in a vigilant circle around our gear. When they see the pack in Lodge’s hands, they relax a little.

  “Just a misunderstanding,” I say.

  “So no change in plans?” Col asks. “We’re still trying that new campsite?”

  I hesitate, feeling Zura’s eyes on me. The sensible step is to go back to the original plan. Let Victoria take care of itself. Stay away from cliques and crims, and even farther away from anyone in a hazard suit.

  Rescue Boss X. Let the free cities handle Shreve.

  I open my mouth.

  “You bet we are. It sounds like fun.”

  Our train is running on time.

  We stand out even more now, seven muddy campers with a vaguely foreign air. Being soaking wet is noticeable in any city, but here in Shreve it tells a story—we went out in the rain to escape the dust.

  We’re not the only soggy passengers, though. The train is divided into wet and dry, rebellious and obedient. Glances travel across the aisles. Suspicion, even a little fear, but mostly a steady resolve to ignore each other.

  Maybe the good citizens of Shreve just want to stay out of trouble until we’ve all gone our separate ways.

  The real tension on the train is between Zura and me. Her cool expression reminds me of my tutors in the month before I went to live with the Palafoxes. When I used the wrong fork for the hundredth time, they sighed with what a disappointment I was. But they also knew that my missing manners weren’t my own fault. My big sister was born for elegance and style; I was born for havoc.

  To Zura, I’m nothing but an unlucky roll of the dice, a complication in Col’s path back to his rightful place. Boss X once told me that I owed the world nothing but chaos.