by Lu, Marie
I look at him. “Close, yes,” I reply, surprised that he knows. “It’s powered by a combination of tech and biology.”
“The microorganisms in it feed off the heat that the initial engine blasts generates, and create more energy of their own.” Hann nods. “I recognized the glow that your engine was giving off. Now, I know you are planning to head back to the Republic of America and begin an internship there.” He shakes his head. “But I think it’s a waste of your talent. Stay here, and you’ll find yourself designing much more interesting things than hospitals and museums.”
I bristle at his backhanded compliment. “I don’t consider it a waste of time.”
Hann gives me a crooked smile. “I had to fight my way to where I am today. I knew my worth, that I was destined for more than just staying on the lowest rungs, running errands for someone else. You’re destined for more too. How about you apply that skill of yours to working for me?”
I stare at him incredulously. His machine looms beside us, its light casting a faint glow against my skin but not against his hologram. “You’re offering me a job?”
“I never shaft my talent, Eden. You’ll be paid handsomely. More than anyone in the Republic would offer you, I can guarantee it. Anyone you love and care for will be taken care of.”
“Like how you’re taking care of my brother right now? Like how you had your guys show me a video of someone following him home?”
He shakes his head. “My methods are unconventional. It’s a result of the world I operate in. But I’m not interested in hurting your brother, Eden. What good would that do me, when I’m trying to earn your trust? Cooperate with me, and your brother will be released unharmed, with no knowledge of where he was held, and he and the AIS can go back to hunting me like they always do.”
If you lure Hann out into a space where our agents are ready for him, we can take him down before he can escape.
The AIS director’s words come back to me now, haunting in their premonition. I’d refused to do it, but now the choice has been taken out of my hands. Now I’m down here, and my brother is in real danger, with no promise that AIS will be able to find him in time should I refuse or displease Hann.
I turn my head back to the towering machine, to its soft glow. On a small scale, my engine was able to turn the drone into one of the fastest racers I’ve ever seen. What is this engine for? What is Hann planning to do with it?
At this very moment, Daniel is somewhere down here, wondering whether I’m still alive.
Hann sighs when he sees my hesitation. “When I was younger,” he says, “I lived in the Undercity with my family. My mother once sent me on an errand to buy groceries in a part of the Undercity far from our home. That’s what happens to single-Level folks who don’t qualify for the good stores, you see? We have only a few shops to choose from, and the only one with what we needed was on the other side of the city. I got lost on the way there, and ended up in an alley where I witnessed an attack.
“I hid behind a trash bin and watched several people holding down a man. His attackers all had knives. The man they held down was sobbing, apologizing for stealing a crate of canned food.” Hann glances at me. My heartbeat quickens. “Do you know what they did to him?”
Is he telling me a story from his past, or is he threatening me? All I can see is the blurred edges of my vision, the sharpened focus on this criminal. All I can think about is the way I’d crouched beside my brother on the floor of our kitchen years ago, holding his hand as he fought through the pain in his head.
The way he’d screamed and collapsed. The way I’d shouted for an ambulance. The bright lights of the hospital.
Hann looks grave at my pale expression. “Some of us aren’t born with the luxury of a good childhood. Isn’t that right, Eden? Some of us know what it’s like to carry a burden on our shoulders for the rest of our lives, something that no one can understand except those who have experienced it for themselves.”
And in spite of everything, I find myself drawn to what he’s saying, like he knows me from the inside out. I wonder what had happened to Hann in his past, and why he sounds like he has a chronic condition of the chest or the lungs. He looks so sharp and proper now. It’s impossible to imagine him as a young boy hiding behind a trash bin.
“I’m not trying to hurt your brother,” Hann says quietly to me now. “But I know talent when I see it, and I don’t like wasting it. Your brother is only my way to you. You don’t have to work for me forever. If you don’t like it, I swear that I will let you leave. And your brother will be unharmed.”
In this moment, I am a small boy again, and every word Hann says brings me back to the dark years, and I hear John’s shouts in my mind, I hear the shaking of my mother’s voice, I am strapped down to the gurney and being taken away from my family. I am blind, helpless against the onslaught.
So I hold up my hands, and when I speak, my voice comes out quiet.
“Leave him alone,” I hear myself say. “Don’t hurt my brother.”
Hann frowns at the tears blurring my vision. “And in return?”
“We can talk about what I can do for you. Just talk, no guarantees. All right?”
He doesn’t answer at first. All he does is give me a steady smile. “A good start,” he says.
DANIEL
I can’t remember how many hours or even days might have passed. The lack of windows down here is disorienting, and a lack of water is making me weaker than I should be. Guards change rotation around me.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m just delirious now, but I find myself continuously thinking about June. This time it’s a recent memory, of the night when Tess first set up a dinner between June and me.
I’d seen June walking toward me at a train station in Los Angeles, right after Eden had finished interviewing for his Batalla Hall internship. Eden and I had been in a good mood that day—he was chatting up a storm beside me, explaining all that he wanted to do, while I’d walked quietly and listened to him, grateful that we were walking down the streets of a peaceful Republic. Then I’d looked up and seen her heading toward us.
It’d been the briefest, most significant meeting of my life. A glance, a flash of a memory. Her dark eyes had locked for a second on mine, and I’d stopped in the middle of the path, overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia. I’d looked back at her, and then decided on a whim to introduce myself to her.
June Iparis. A girl I’d loved for a long time. Someone who, despite the flaws in my memory, I’d managed to hang on to all those years.
That night, we sat down in a restaurant at the top of a newly constructed Republic building. Tess and Eden sat across from us. I sat next to June, trying to figure out what to say to her.
I asked her how Anden was doing. Word was that June had been in a long relationship with the young Elector, that they had even moved in together.
“We’re not together anymore,” she told me. There was a small smile on her lips as she said it, as if she was embarrassed to tell me. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew to smile back.
“Ah,” I tried to say. “I just got out of a relationship myself.”
We spent the entire dinner stumbling through our words. Tess found it so entertaining that she kept throwing questions our way, forcing us to bring up specific memories from the past.
Afterward, we walked together in the late, quiet hours of the Ruby sector. The air had the clean chill that comes after a good rainstorm, and we steered carefully around the puddles that dotted the streets. June stayed a small distance away from me, and I did the same. We walked as if we’d just met each other. In a way, I guess we did.
When we finally reached her front door, I faced her with my hands in my pockets, trying to find a good way to say goodbye.
She gave me a small smile and tilted her head. “You’re not staying in the Republic, then,” she said. “You’re heading back to Antarctica soon.”
Everything in me wanted to ask her to come with me, so that
I could show her the new city where I lived. But I held back because she held back. “Tomorrow morning,” I answered. “Eden needs to finish his degree before he comes back here for his internship.”
“Are you going to move back here with him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet. My work is in Ross City. But I’ll come here, at least for a little while. I’d rather not leave Eden alone.”
She nodded. “Don’t worry. He’ll have friends in town.”
I smiled at her. “That’s a relief,” I replied, taking a step closer to her. She didn’t pull away. She leaned toward me too, with such an earnest expression that it took everything in me not to kiss her right there and then.
I looked down. “I was wondering…,” I started to say. “Tess told me that when you came to the hospital ten years ago, to see me off to Antarctica, you didn’t mention who you were. I didn’t recognize you, either. It was the worst of my memory loss, that year.”
June hesitated, her eyes far away for a moment, and then nodded. “That’s true,” she replied.
“Why’d you do that?” I shook my head. “Just thank me and walk away without telling me your real name? Why’d you let me go?”
June stayed quiet. Then she turned to me and said, “I once made a promise to myself that if it meant it would help you survive, I would never step back into your life.” She smiled faintly. “And you did survive. So I kept that promise.”
For me. She had done this, made this sacrifice, for her heart as well as mine. I closed my eyes for a second, overwhelmed by her gesture, and then looked at her again.
“Are you happy here, in the Republic?” I asked her.
She shrugged. A rare uncertainty came into her gaze. “Yes,” she said after a pause. “We’ve had such a time together, haven’t we? I still don’t know what it all means. But you have your life in Ross City now. And I have mine here in the Republic. We’re moving forward and leaving our past behind.”
Up until that moment, I would have broken down at her feet and pulled her in for a kiss. I would have wrapped my arms around her and let myself fall madly back in love with her.
But her words pulled me up short. You have your life in Ross City now. And I have mine here in the Republic.
It was true. We were completely different people now, living completely separate lives. We had just sat through an entire dinner and barely managed to exchange a handful of sentences with each other. My memories of her were still so fragmented, a million broken shards of a once-intact window.
She had been the one to let me go.
Did she ever love me as fiercely as I loved her? How fiercely had I loved her?
I didn’t know if she read the hesitation in my gaze first, or if she just reacted the same way I did. But she seemed to retreat from me then too. Her smile was guarded, as if she was also afraid of being hurt.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we can find a way back into each other’s lives. Perhaps we can be friends again.”
Friends. It would be a start, at least.
I pulled back my desire to kiss her, the way I wanted to obsess over every detail of her—the darkness of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the thick length of her hair that I remembered running my fingers through. I pulled it all back and let it close, safeguarding those emotions for another time.
“Friends again,” I said, nodding in agreement.
She smiled at me, genuinely smiled, and it brightened her face so much that I wanted to remember it forever. I stretched out a hand to her. She took it. We shook once before pulling each other into a farewell embrace.
“Travel safe tomorrow,” she murmured to me.
I let her go reluctantly. “Tell me if you’re ever in Ross City,” I replied.
And I stepped away from her. I let her go this time. I turned my back and forced myself to walk away. It was our first night together after ten years apart. This was as large a step as we could possibly take. Friends again.
Maybe we could find our way back to that friendship space. Then, and only then, could we have a chance for more.
It would be another month before we saw each other again.
* * *
The delirious memory came into focus and then faded away, focused and faded again, ceaseless and repetitive. I don’t know how long it’s been. Days? If they kept withholding water from me, I would die down here. Did June get my message? I don’t know. My head lolls to one side as I dream of water, of rainstorms and summer pools and rivers.
Your past is always a part of you, June had said to me during our last conversation in her apartment. Just as it is a part of me.
I let her words play over and over in my thoughts. I think of how right it’d felt to be beside her. I think of her dark, steady eyes, her beautiful face. It clears my mind, forces me to think.
I’d spent ten years pushing that old part of me away, carefully boxing up every piece of it, every nightmare and horrible memory and moment of grief and hate and rage, had started here in Ross City as if we’d always been here. That I’d only ever been Daniel.
But June, as always, is right. Boxing that past away hasn’t stopped it from creeping into my mind. And if I’m going to get out of here alive, if I’m going to get Eden out of this and pull him through his trauma, if I’m ever going to see June again, I need to remember that I’m still the boy from the streets. The boy who could raise hell.
That I’m Day.
EDEN
“I know you’re hungry.”
I glare at Hann. I’m standing at the door to his Undercity estate’s dining room, with two of his guards behind me. He’s sitting at the opposite end of a round table, observing me with his hands tucked casually into his pockets.
I’d spent most of the afternoon at the construction site, helping them integrate my drone’s engine into their own. The structure they’re working with glowed a pulsing blue the entire time, casting its light against my skin. I can still see the rhythm of its color whenever I close my eyes.
The entire time, Hann had looked impressed with what I’d done.
Now he frowns at me as I stand swaying in the doorway. “Are you refusing to sit down because you’re worried about your brother?”
“I mean, it’s not like I’ve forgotten about him or anything,” I reply, a little too sharply. “I’ve helped you as much as you wanted me to.”
The man pauses to cough his heaving, sickly cough. Then he sighs and glances at the guards behind me. “Leave him here.”
The two guards exchange an uncertain look with each other, but it’s only for the briefest moment. Then they’re bowing their heads in unison to their boss and stepping back. I hear the door close behind me, sealing me in with my kidnapper. The guards are probably standing watch on the other side now. I hadn’t heard any footsteps echoing away from us.
Hann motions for me to take a seat at the table. “You’ll do your brother no good by just standing there. Sit down, please. Eat something. You’re going to need your strength, no matter what you do.”
He acts like this is a completely normal day for him. How large is this underground estate? I try to remember the distance that I’d walked today, then guess at how much more space there might be down here. What if he’s not keeping Daniel here at all, but at some other location?
When I still don’t move, he gestures again toward the seat.
Behind me comes a faint knock on the door. I step aside as it swings open, this time letting in a cook bearing two silver trays. She hurries past me to the table, places the trays at each of our place settings, and then bows to Hann like all the others. She doesn’t even bother looking at me as she steps out of the room.
Whatever the food is, it smells delicious. My stomach rumbles in spite of itself. I hesitate a while longer. Then I finally walk over to the table and slowly lower myself into the second chair.
Hann lifts the cover off of his own tray. “I’ve been told you’re a vegetarian,” Hann says. “Your dish has been adjusted to your tastes.”
His words send a chill through me. How does he know that?
“Thanks,” I mutter, the word thick with sarcasm.
“I can tell you’re no stranger to tense situations,” he says. “I’m guessing that’s from your days back in the Republic.”
I watch him as he lifts a forkful of steaming fish to his lips. “I had my share of moments,” I finally reply.
He looks up briefly at me from his meal. “I can respect that. News about what was happening in the Republic back then was sparse, but I followed it. It was a worthy cause, what you and your brother fought for.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He’s baiting me, praising my brother while he keeps him locked up in some other room. “What does someone like you know about what we went through?” I say.
“Your family survived based on the whim of your government. Isn’t that true? Your brother was someone like me. An underdog. A rebel. A wanted criminal. I understand, more than you know, what it means to be under the authority’s thumb.”
“Except my brother fought for the people,” I reply. “And as far as I know, you sound like you take advantage of those down here in the Undercity.”
He doesn’t look offended by my words. Instead, he bows his head and smiles grimly. “I am one of those down here in the Undercity,” he replies. “What happens down here has directly affected me all of my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I’ve been very fair to you,” he says. “You are, understandably, worried about your brother. And while you’ve told me many things about yourself, you still don’t know much about me. So I’m going to make a deal with you.”
“What kind of deal?” I mutter.
He puts his fork down and laces his fingers together, then gives me a steady look. “I’m going to let your brother go,” he says. “If you finish helping me install your engine on our machine.”
I wasn’t expecting him to say that. “You’re what?” I blurt out.