by Lu, Marie
If the AIS ever gets a whiff of how Pressa really makes her money, how she’s been paying her father’s medical bills by betting on illegal drone races, she’ll be jailed and her Level flattened before I can take a breath to speak for her. Even Daniel doesn’t have the kind of power to save her.
I fold the drone notice back into my pocket and hide it away. The Undercity. The danger and noise and chaos. The need for it to fill my mind and push everything else out.
“I’m heading down now,” I confirm. “Meet you at midnight.”
DANIEL
It’s a cold night, but I don’t mind the sting of the air against my skin. There’s something familiar about the wind against my face at a place high above the city, where I can see everything—the pulse of the hundreds of floors below me, the menagerie of bright lights lining the walkways that connect each high-rise, the flickering of virtual notations over people shuffling by below. Tonight, the skyscrapers nearest ours have a set of virtual murals of the ocean overlaid against their walls, of bright corals and rainbow-hued fish swimming between each building. As I look on through the augmented-reality system installed in my chip, a virtual whale colored neon turquoise and pink glides lazily in the air between two skyscrapers, its massive body materializing out through one wall and into another like a ghost.
I admire the moving art in silence.
Back in the Republic, I would climb to the top of a building and look down at a scene of haze and dirt, concrete and steel and red banners and metal waterwheels. At night, there would be patches of the city that were completely dark, areas where they cut the power to conserve it for military use. I have fragments of memories about those rolling blackouts, nights when Tess and I would light a roll of trash as a torch to navigate the pitch-dark alleys. It was a place that always seemed broken.
All I see here is a sea of eternal lights and colors. Yet, somehow, everything still has a feeling of precarious balance—like this whole goddy city’s sitting on a neglected, crumbling foundation, teetering on the brink of something sinister.
Dominic Hann.
The AIS has been tracking him for so long, and yet we still have no good leads. Not even a public sighting of him. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s got some powerful friends and a lot of spies. No doubt he knows that we’re after him, and he’s found a way to keep out of our sights.
I check my messages again in my view. No new updates from Jessan or Lara. No luck hunting down where the next drone race might be happening in the Undercity.
I run a hand through my hair and try not to remember the feeling of that woman’s body going limp in my arms, her head lolling to one side as the life left her. Every time I close my eyes, I picture the foam flecks at her mouth and feel the weight of her. The memory makes me shudder. I’m too afraid to see her in my dreams.
It was easier when I had an enemy I could face: the old Republic, the military jeeps and the airfields and the plague patrols, those shining epaulettes and black boots. Not that I’m itching to go back to living on the streets anytime soon.
The thought reminds me of Eden, and I look instinctively over my shoulder toward the darkness of his room. At least he can get some sleep. Maybe in the morning I’ll be able to catch him before he heads off to the university and get a few words in with him. A part of me itches to check his location again, just to make sure he’s where he should be—but Eden’s outburst from this afternoon makes me pause. I force myself to leave him alone.
Instead, I look up to the few floors above our apartment. Tomorrow, the Republic’s Elector and his entourage are going to land on the Sky Floor of a nearby building. June will be with him. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen her since I bumped into her on the street in Batalla a month ago.
A knot of excitement and fear tightens in my chest. I look to my side and imagine our meeting, picture her standing here beside me and leaning against the railing. My memories have been so shattered since I left the Republic, and for years I couldn’t even remember who June was at all. I’d only see a nameless girl in my dreams, her long, dark ponytail swinging behind her, and wonder how I could never seem to catch up. I’d study the paper clip ring around my finger, something I’ve always worn since I left the Republic, and try to remember why it mattered so much to me.
It wasn’t until I saw her in the Republic a month ago, purely by accident, that fragments of her in my memories came rushing back to me. That I remembered June was the one who’d give me that paper clip ring.
That time, we’d shaken hands, and there had been tears in my eyes. We smiled over dinner with Tess and made awkward conversation. I walked her back home. I made jokes and she eased into them. Every gesture, every question, and every laugh from her triggered old memories that I thought I’d lost. She was the flint lighting sparks in my darkness, illuminating a history that I can just barely see.
That was the last time we spoke. She hasn’t contacted me in the month since then, and I haven’t reached out either. I don’t know why I’m terrified to call her again. Maybe it’s the fear of those sparks of memory returning to me.
But tomorrow, I’ll see her again. So every idle moment I have, I find my thoughts drifting to her.
I clear my throat, then pretend to look over at her and smile. Even this practice session makes me nervous. What the hell do I say to her?
“Fancy running into you again, yeah?” I murmur to myself, feigning the casual, flirtatious tone I try to have around her. I shake my head. I don’t want her to think I’m an idiot. “Seems like we’re always bumping into each other on the street,” I rephrase, but grimace. I try out a few other phrases.
“Welcome to my new neighborhood.”
“If you need a guide around the city, I’m pretty free today.”
“Any plans with your Elector tonight, or can I steal you for dinner?”
I scowl, embarrassed and grateful that no one else is around to see me talking to myself. I’ve never had trouble talking to a girl before. Why am I working myself up into such a panic?
I shift my footing against the ledge and start reciting things I’ve been working on telling her all week, memories of us that I’ve been working hard to recollect.
“Remember the time when you taught me how to fight?” I murmur to an imaginary June beside me, a sly grin on my face. “You had a fever from being Patient Zero for a plague, and you still beat me up.”
Honestly, the memory is vague for me. Most of them are. I remember the fight, recall June teaching me how to space my footing and how to protect my chin. But I don’t quite remember where we were, or why. I don’t remember what happened after she tripped me. There was a long, dark tunnel. Sweat beaded her brow.
If I mention it to her, she might help me fill in the gaps of that memory.
“Or the time when you wore that scarlet dress? You were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. Still are.”
That memory, too, is like a blurred photo. There were glasses of champagne and glittering chandeliers. There was the vision of June in that stunning red gown, her hair clipped high and thick on her head. We stood in a room lit only by moonlight, and for some reason, I’d walked away from her. Why would I ever do that?
I recite other fragments of memories. Her face, wet and glistening, as we crouched in a raging storm. Us, huddled together under a burlap sack in a rolling train car. Me, kissing her, pulling her to me, brushing strands of hair away from her face. Me, painstakingly twisting a pair of paper clips together and giving the ring to her. Her, doing the same for me in return.
There are a million pieces of us scattered through my memory, moments tiny and insignificant to everyone else in the world except for me.
I fall into silence and go back to staring out at the city. Suddenly I’m aware of how small I am against its backdrop, nothing more than a shadow in the night, lost in the sea of lights.
Maybe she doesn’t remember any of this, either. Maybe it wasn’t worth remembering. I look down, gathering my
courage, taking in deep breaths to undo the knot coiled tight in my chest.
It doesn’t matter. If anything, it’ll have been worth it to tell her that I know we had something special.
EDEN
I don’t know exactly when drone racing started. Decades ago, I think, in some other country, during a time when a game had supposedly taken the world by storm. All I know is that when Pressa first took me to one of the matches—when I saw the drones’ colorful streaks light up the air—I was hooked.
Now I pull my hood farther down over my head and hurry through the night markets of the Undercity. Where the Sky Floors of Ross City are awash in virtual murals, the scenes down here have the grit of reality. At this hour, everything is bathed in neon—flickering red and yellow signs hanging over crumbling stores and barred motels, trails of neon bulbs dangling over the menagerie of market stalls that are still as crowded as they are during the day. Everyone keeps their head down as they shove their way through the smoky streets. No one pays attention to me.
Tonight I’m passing through the area of the Undercity that’s usually teeming with criminals. Conmen. Gamblers and thieves, drug dealers and mafiosi. The Level system starts to break down here, where the majority of people have hacked accounts. Numbers and names don’t float over most heads. And when violence and murder break out, there are no points deducted, no alarms sent digitally to the police.
This is where you go if you need to take out a loan in a hurry, to temporarily bring your Level up high enough to be allowed to use a bus, or to buy medication that’s off the official market. People down here will do it for you, hacking your system so that you Level up—but for an exorbitant price. If you can’t pay that price back after your Level goes back down to normal … well, a lot of desperate people go missing all the time, their disappearances uninvestigated by an uninterested country.
I double-check my account. Hacking the Level system is no small feat, but it helps when your brother works for the government and you’ve occasionally glimpsed how his account is set up from the inside. So tonight I’ve got my Level turned off and my identity randomized, and when you glance over my head, you don’t see: EDEN BATAAR WING, LEVEL 54. Instead, it reads: ELI WHITMAN, LEVEL 5.
For all I know, though, Daniel’s found a way around that and is following my location again without telling me. I glance over my shoulder, as if I’ll see him tailing me somewhere in the crowds.
As I turn a corner and hit a darker section of the Undercity, where people with flattened Levels shelter along either side of the streets in rows of tents, I start to feel nervous. Even though I’m dressed in my subtlest clothing, stares dart my way and eyes seem to pierce my back. Something about my demeanor—the hunch of my shoulders, or the way I push my glasses up, or maybe just the fact that I know I don’t belong here—makes me stand out.
Maybe I look like a pawn again, and someone’s going to come at me with a knife and rob me. I shove my hands into my pockets and lower my head farther. I should have asked Pressa to come with me instead of agreeing to meet her there.
As I get closer to the drone race’s starting point, I start to notice crowds of people lining the sidewalks here and there, standing around and waiting, as if for a parade. Money exchanges hands, and excited murmurs fill the alleys. I can tell people are toggling their virtual settings so that they can follow the race through their chips.
The streets get more and more packed until I’m squeezing my way through the throngs. Finally, I stop before what looks like a run-down bar, so tiny that I can barely squeeze through its grated door.
The inside of it is lit with scarlet-neon light. People pack around a bar, behind which a woman leans, eyeing me.
I clear my throat and give her what I hope is a calm look. “Serving any red whiskey tonight?” I ask her. It’s the current password I’d found in my searches.
For a second, I think I got it all wrong, because she doesn’t react. She just stares at me as if I don’t look like the right type of person to be here.
Then she steps around the side of the bar and nods for me to follow her. We walk to the back, where a bathroom door is locked tight with a sign over it that reads: OUT OF ORDER.
She scans a finger in front of the door. It cracks open.
She nods for me to go in, but doesn’t make a move to follow. I give her a quick smile, then step past her and head into the darkness beyond the door. It closes behind me. I’m in some sort of dark, enclosed space. All I can see for a moment is a faint, glowing green light on the door handle. My heart thuds, and I feel a hint of claustrophobia.
Then the ground beneath me shudders. A neon-green light washes over the space, and the wall in front of me slides open with a rusty creak. I pull my shirt up over my nose as the smell of sewage threatens to suffocate me.
I step out of the makeshift elevator into a square plaza fenced in by four skyscrapers, lit by flickering neon lights against the walls and a haze of crimson fog. Pounding music and a roar of voices hits me.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Neon-red bulbs dangle by the thousands from building to building. Vendors selling savory buns and fried meat on sticks jumble near the edges of the square. The walls are lined with lattices of steel support beams, and a giant circuit breaker hangs near where I came in. This looks like it used to be an elevator station under construction at one point that then got torn down and abandoned.
People are packed so tightly into the space that any disaster—a fight, a fire—would turn this place into a death pit. But no one cares. They all gather around a circular clearing in the middle of the plaza, where the racers for tonight are now lining up and preparing their drones.
A giant virtual countdown hovers over the middle of the plaza, turning in my view to match wherever I move.
DRONE RACE: SEMIFINALS
FIRST HEAT COMMENCES IN 10:00 MINUTES
Right below it is the list of racer names for the first heat, updating as each racer checks in to the space.
My false name is up there.
ENTRY 9: ELI WHITMAN
For a moment, I freeze up. The people around me look like they’ve been coming to races like this forever. I, on the other hand, must look like the easiest mark that ever stumbled into the Undercity. My palms start to sweat.
Pressa, I send out a message. I’m here now. Where the hell are you?
Eventually, I catch sight of a stand where people are registering their drones. I walk over to it, trying to ignore the way others are staring at me from the corners of their eyes.
The man behind the stand gives me a skeptical look. “Drone,” he says.
I swing my backpack to my front and unzip it, carefully removing my drone model for him to inspect. He raises an eyebrow at my design. It looks unlike anyone else’s here, with its small, slender shape and the glowing engine attached to its end. I stand back and wait as he holds it up this way and that.
“A little runt of a drone, eh?” he mutters. Finally, he nods at me. “Patron?”
I frown. “A what?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Every racer needs a patron. We need assurance that you can pay for any damage that you cause. Unless you got ten thousand corras lying around, and can be your own.”
Pressa hadn’t mentioned anything about a patron. “I don’t have one yet,” I start to say, glancing around for any sign of my friend, “but I’m on the roster to race. If you look—”
But he’s already shaking his head at me and handing the drone back. “You must be new here,” he says with a laugh. “No patron, no race. I don’t care where your name is.”
“But if you just let—”
Any sympathy for me now leaves his eyes. Annoyed, he waves for me to exit the line. “There are people behind you,” he barks, gesturing for the next person to step up.
“Wait!”
I slacken in relief as Pressa emerges from behind the gamblers and heads to the table. As usual, her persona down here looks completely different from what I’m used t
o seeing of her at the university and her father’s shop. She’s in a long wig, for one—bright blond, a startling contrast from her black, bobbed hair—and sporting a pair of fake pink glasses that make her eyes look abnormally large. She flashes a frown at the man.
“I’m his patron,” she says, taking out a sealed envelope and sliding it over to him.
He seems to recognize her, because he grunts in acknowledgment before tearing the envelope open. Inside is a stack of corras, clean and crisp. He holds them up to the light, then nods and pockets the envelope.
“You’re official,” he says to me, and barely a few seconds later, he nods up to the racer names displayed in the rotating virtual menu. Over my head, a blue light goes on, indicating me as one of the entries. As if in unison, people around us turn to look at me.
“Do you wait in a corner and just watch me until I look like I’m about to do something stupid?” I mutter to Pressa.
She smiles at me and loops an arm through mine. “I don’t have to wait around very long for that,” she replies. “You’re welcome for saving your ass.”
“Where’d you get ten thousand corras?”
She shrugs. “Not important. Been saving up. If your drone’s as good as you say, we’ll earn it back after the first race.” She peers curiously at my backpack. “Care to show me what you got?”
Up on the wall, the countdown has moved down to three minutes, and most of the standing area around the clearing is packed. I can already see the racers lining up in the center, some of them doing last-minute tinkering on their engines.
As we reach the other racers, I show my drone to Pressa.
Compared with the other models here, it’s easily the smallest, maybe the tiniest size that could qualify for these races. But it makes up for any fragility with speed. The engine coils in a perfect circle underneath the drone, and when I flip it on, it glows with a faint blue light.
Pressa makes an impressed sound at it. “Pretty design,” she says, admiring its swept wings. “Efficient. Can it survive a hit, though?”