by Lu, Marie
“I’m going to let him go,” he repeats. “I told you that none of this was about him, and that my only interest in him was to find a way to get to you.” He holds a hand out at me. “But here you are. You’ve demonstrated your talent already by what you’ve done here.” He leans back in his chair. “So I’m going to do what I promised myself I would. I’m going to release him.”
He must be lying to me. It doesn’t make any sense for him to let Daniel go, not when he could keep using my brother against me. “How can I even trust that you’d do such a thing?” I ask.
He nods. “Because I’ll show you,” he replies. “I’ll send you a live feed of him being released.”
I shake my head, confused and wary. “I don’t understand.”
Hann sighs, then leans against his armrest and regards me carefully. When he speaks again, there’s a strange tinge of sadness in his voice. “You remind me very much of my son.”
“Your son?” I ask.
“Like I said. You’ve offered so much about yourself. It’s only fair that I now tell you a bit about me. It’s the only way we’ll build trust around each other.” He regards my question. “So let me enlighten you about where I came from.”
Everything about him now—his grave expression, the sudden exhaustion in his eyes, the weight on his shoulders—seems serious, and instinctively, I feel myself leaning forward to listen.
“I grew up down here,” he says. “In the Undercity, just like your friend Pressa. My mother and father worked a tiny stall in the markets, selling fried skewers. I remember running in the dirty streets, just like you, weaving through the crowds at the markets, helping my parents until the late hours of the night. Like you and your brother, I grew up learning how to fill the holes in my pockets with things I could steal from others. I had to, you see. We could barely feed ourselves.”
Something strange clicks in my mind. For an instant, I see John circling before me, as tall and rumpled as I remember, his hands burned from his factory shift. He slaps a stolen coin from my hands and kicks the money into the gutter. Don’t ever do that again, he scolds me. The next time, that money will come with street police at our door. It’s never worth it.
I shake the memory away, my stomach churning uneasily. My eyes dart for a second to the corridor behind us, where two guards stand now, and then go back to him.
“I married into the Undercity too, you know,” he continues. “I loved my wife, and we had a son that mattered more to us than anything else in the world.”
Loved. Had. The mention of his son again.
“Except he got sick.” His eyes flatten at that. The rasp in his voice trembles. “So did I. It was a common side effect in our neighborhood, located so close to the factories on the outskirts of the city. The smoke from the factories turned my son’s lungs black and shriveled. His grades fell in school, and his Level fell because of that. I began to cough blood.” He pats his throat once. “The infection in my lungs cost me my job. That lowered my Level further. They punish you for not working, you know. This government. And the lower my Level fell, the harder it became for me to qualify for work.”
There’s a brief silence from him. “So my wife took out a loan with the illegal businesses that run down here, made a deal with them in order to pay for our son’s illness. She agreed to something we couldn’t possibly pay back.”
“What happened?” I whisper.
“I came home one day to find her body in our ransacked apartment.”
His words make my chest tighten. He says it so calmly and quietly that I can tell it’s something he’s used to saying. Suddenly I see the soldier—Thomas, his name was Thomas—lifting a rifle to my mother’s head. John lunges in vain against the guards holding him back. June holds out a helpless hand in an attempt to stop him.
“They left a note, demanding payment by threatening our son. So I did the only thing I could. I offered to work for the gang, to pay off the debt.” He’s silent for a moment, the weight of it hanging between us in the air. “It didn’t matter, in the end. My son died a couple of months later.”
He could be lying to you. But I swallow hard, feeling sick at his story. There is nothing that feels false about these words.
“I don’t blame the Undercity,” Dominic Hann says, snapping me to the present again. “People are businessmen. They step in when no one else will. There’s a need for services like illegal loans down here, for the people forgotten by your government.” He points up at the ceiling. “No, I blame this entire damn system, the Levels and the floors and the hierarchy of this place that made it impossible for us to get out of our predicament. I blame the fact that the President sells the Undercity the dream that, if they only worked hard enough, they too could Level themselves up to the Sky Floors. I blame the fact that the dream is a fantasy.”
It’s as if he’s having the exact same conversation I’d had with Daniel. The Undercity has no choice but to be the way it is. I find myself staring back at Hann with a confused look, trying to understand how a ruthless, notorious killer can make so much sense. Can grieve a family he had lost, just as I’d lost mine.
“Is it still true, though?” I manage to say at last. “The things you’ve done to people here? You killed that councilman the other night. You—” I swallow hard. “You’ve murdered Undercity citizens in the same way that your own family was murdered.”
“You want to play a game?” he says coolly. “Play it down here, where there are no rules at all. Then it’s fair. You do what you have to do to survive. Everyone knows what the game they’re playing is. There are no unfulfilled promises, no special favors. It’s just business here.” His eyes harden. “That, I can work with.”
I look for that taunting edge in his expression—but Dominic Hann looks genuine now, his eyes lit up in earnest as if trying to convince me of his words. And for an instant, I can see him rising up the ranks of this dangerous world, drawing people to him with nothing but his own resolve.
Like Daniel.
The thought is so startling that I shove it away in fright.
“And if someone doesn’t want to work their way up like you?” I say through gritted teeth. Every hair on my skin feels like it’s standing on end.
His cold ease has returned. “Few don’t,” he replies. “Why wouldn’t they, when the system’s decks are stacked against them anyway? Surely you, of all people, can understand that.”
“Stop comparing me with you.”
“Why not?” He leans toward me. “You’re instinctively drawn to this place. This is where you feel at home, down here, where you can keep all those memories swirling in your head at bay.”
I wince. In spite of everything, I find myself struggling to breathe, impressed that this criminal—this murderer—has figured out secrets about me that my own brother hasn’t been able to understand. He knows me better than Daniel does. His words pierce straight through me, as if he could see the dreams that swallow me whole every night.
“You can’t understand why your brother is no longer in the same place you are,” Hann adds. “Hadn’t he been just like me, made his entire reputation off fighting for the people? But he’s left behind that dark place from his past. Now he works for the government, helping to enforce this system that’s crushing us. Working to dismantle what people like me are trying to do.”
He’s trying to turn me against my brother, convincing me of something I’ve always disliked—his work for the AIS, his siding with this government that is crippling its people. And if he were saying this to someone else, maybe it would even work. I see Daniel’s face, his worried expression. I think of the way he’d argued with the director, how he’d railed against this system. He doesn’t support the Level system, either. But it doesn’t matter. He still works for the AIS.
Hann sips from his glass. “So you see, Eden,” he says as I hesitate, “I’m not trying to force you into anything. But what I am saying is that I think you’re a better fit down here than you think. Even if you left—eve
n if I let you go or you escaped … you’d come back. You belong here.”
You belong here. A part of me wonders if this is what he tells everyone before he kills them. But another part of me … knows he’s right. Because I do keep coming back.
“What is the machine that you’re building, then?” I finally ask him. It’s the question that has been waiting on the tip of my tongue. “What does that have to do with anything you’ve just told me? What exactly am I helping you to do?”
Hann gives me a pointed look. “Finish installing your engine today,” he says, “and we can run a blank sample test. Then you can see for yourself.”
* * *
When we head out after dinner to the construction site, there’s no hint at all on Dominic Hann’s face that he had revealed any weakness to me. Instead, he seems cool, almost cold. There’s none of the weight and the anguish that he’d let me witness when he told me about what happened to his family. I wonder whether he’s genuinely confiding in me.
“How much longer?” Hann asks me now as he walks over to where I’m working.
I look up at the structure. The new engine I’ve installed is mostly in place now, the new pieces expanding on top of the original drone engine I’d built so that it can conduct enough power for the whole machine. The rest of Hann’s workers are already securing the final pieces.
I point at one end of the machine, the portion that’s supposed to send some sort of signal out. It’s all I’ve managed to puzzle out about what the whole thing does. “They’re installing the last piece now,” I say to Hann. “This signal needs to be amplified more than you thought if you plan on making it hit the entire city. So I needed to make sure it gets that boost.”
Hann studies the engine I’ve made closely. “And this will work,” he says, lifting an eyebrow at me.
I wish it didn’t. But everything else about the machine was already in place. All it needed was enough of a power boost. And my engine has given him that.
My silence is the answer that he needs. He smiles in approval at me, then straightens. “I want to see a demonstration of it, then,” he says. “Send out a blank sample of a signal.”
Of course he wants to test it. I glance to where his guards are watching us, then back to the machine, where one of his workers comes over to start programming in a blank sample to test the signal.
“You look nervous, Eden,” Hann says to me as I watch them work. “It’s as if you don’t believe in the capabilities of your engine.”
“It works,” I reply, but there’s a slight tremble in my voice. Is he really going to free Daniel if this works? I think back to everything Hann had told me about himself. If I fail at this, will Hann kill me? It’s all part of his business, after all.
We wait until the programmer has finished inputting a sample signal. It’s fast, the work of a moment. I watch carefully as he does it, observing the chip he places on the machine and then the info he swipes right onto the system. He steps away from the machine, then nods at us.
“Ready,” he says.
Hann nods. “Good.” We all take a step back from the machine. “Send the signal out.”
The machine’s coil begins to glow. At its bottom, my drone engine, now with its power amplified, glows a bright, brilliant blue.
Maybe everything I’d calculated is incorrect, and my engine will fail the machine. If that happens, what will he do with Daniel?
For a moment, nothing happens. I hold my breath, waiting.
Then a pulse comes from the machine. It ripples out in a wave of vibration that tingles through my body. On the machine’s monitor, the entirety of Ross City lights up with green dots, millions of them.
When I look over at Hann, his eyes are bright and focused. A smile plays on his face.
The signal works. I can see it written all over his expression. And in spite of myself, I feel a wild surge of pride at what my engine is capable of. This is the first real test of something I’ve made, and Dominic Hann—of all people—is the one who gave me the chance to do it.
My delight makes me recoil in horror.
Hann glances at me and nods. “You’re pleased,” he says. “And it goes beyond your desire to protect your brother.”
I’m too afraid to say anything back.
He studies me curiously. “Could it be because, deep down, you believe in everything that I’ve told you before?”
“You promised me that you would release my brother if this worked,” I say through clenched teeth. “How good is your word?”
“Don’t ever question my word.” Hann looks to his side and nods once. Two of his guards don’t even hesitate for a breath. They bow immediately, then leave without a word.
“I want to see it,” I say. “On a live feed, like you told me.”
“Done.” Hann turns back to me. “Any other requests?” he asks.
My palms are slick with sweat, and my heart shivers with each beat. There’s the final question I have, the one that Hann hasn’t answered up until now, and that I’m almost too scared to ask.
“What’s the signal for?” I say, my voice coming out like a hoarse whisper. “What does your machine do?”
Hann smiles sidelong at me. I look back up at the machine. My gaze settles on the screen full of green dots.
And suddenly, I know. The Levels that had crushed his family, the system that had forced his mother’s hand. The points, the game that runs this city.
I know what this machine is going to do.
It’s going to take down Ross City’s entire Level system.
DANIEL
Maybe it’s still the same night as when I was having my illusions of memories about June. I can’t tell.
My lips crack from thirst. My eyes can focus only on a gray line of sparse embroidery along the edge of the floor’s rug. The guards near the door shuffle their boots against the floor.
They sound like they’re about to switch out. The two women are still here. There are other guards now too, just arrived, and in the exchange between them, I listen for clues.
“The boy’s been working on the site,” one of them says in a low voice. “He’s good, from what I hear.”
“Yeah?”
“It sounds like Hann has really taken to him.”
Another sighs. “Great. But what about us? How long are we going to sit around with this one?”
The woman shrugs. “As long as it takes.”
As long as it takes. Through my thirst-induced weakness, I attempt to concentrate. Are they trying to break Eden? Has he not already offered his help?
I close my eyes, trying to stave off the nausea that bites at my insides. My hands twist quietly behind my back. I’ve been tightening and loosening my hands against the ropes for hours now. My wrists are scraped down to the flesh, and I can feel the blood trickling wet down my hands, probably soaking crimson into the rope fibers. But it’s not for nothing; the rope has loosened slightly since I first started working on it. Another couple of hours, and I might be able to slip a hand through one of them.
After that, I don’t know what the hell I’ll do. But I’m used to taking crises one step at a time.
Near the door, the women switch out with two male guards. I see them turn their heads in my direction, but my figure stays limp against the chair. After several long minutes, they lean idly away and against the doorframe. My last round of guards make their way down the hall outside that I’ve never seen, their boots echoing against marble.
I listen closely to them until they fade away. It takes a long time. How big is this place? The hall they walked down seems to continue forever, and only after long seconds have dragged by am I no longer able to hear their echo at all.
My wrists keep twisting. The pain of it makes me clench my jaw, but I fight to keep the grimace off of my lips. The metal of my artificial leg cuts cold through my pant leg as I keep my ankles crossed.
The new guards don’t pay me any attention. They must have been warned about the way I bit the firs
t man, but they haven’t seen it, and as far as they’re concerned, I look pretty harmless.
My wrists keep twisting. Fresh blood flows down my hands. I can feel it dripping silently down my fingers to the rug behind me. The slickness of it makes my hand slightly more mobile within its bond. I tug slowly, careful not to show my arms at work.
The bonds loosen a fraction more. Just enough.
I stop twisting and pull one of my hands gently against the frayed bond. My thumb and pinkie finger are squeezed together as I tug as hard as I can. At first, the bond doesn’t give, and the ropes cut hard against my already-damaged skin. I let out a quiet, shaky breath. Then I pull harder.
Finally, the rope gives a little. The tight bond edges closer to the rim of my knuckles. I keep working it. By the door, one of the guards casts me a casual glance.
I stop moving for a moment and keep still, my eyes still focused on the ground.
He nudges his friend and says something about me in a low voice. They laugh. Then they do what I’d hoped, going back to their positions.
I give my hand one determined tug, ignoring the pain.
This time, my knuckles finally squeeze past the rope, and my hand comes free.
I don’t dare react. My arms stay firmly locked in place behind my back. But my freed hand searches for the knots tying my other hand down, and quietly I start to work on that.
My second hand loosens, then starts to come free.
By the door, one of the guards looks in my direction. This time, instead of glancing away again, his gaze lingers. I stop moving for a moment and shift uncomfortably in my chair, letting myself look like I’m settling back into a restless sleep. But through the slit of my half-opened eyes, I can tell that he’s not looking away.
Then he pushes back from the door and starts heading toward me.
For some reason, this triggers a flicker of a memory. June, standing at the door of an underground bunker, approaching me and motioning for me to get up. Her hands brush my waist, my chest, my chin. She positions me for a fight, then teaches me how to view my opponent. She throws a purposeful punch and shows me how to dodge and counter.