by Lu, Marie
I try to hang on to this wisp of a memory even as it starts to fade. Over the years, I’ve learned to hold my own in a fight, have fought back the urge to run and replaced it with the bracing of an attack. And now, as the guard steps toward me, I can feel my muscles tensing, my hands instinctively tightening into fists.
The guard stops in front of me with a frown. Then he starts moving to look behind the chair.
My second hand slips free. I move.
He shifts toward me in surprise—but I’m already in motion. I snap to my feet in an instant, then swing the chair up. The guard has only a moment to bring his arms up in defense before the chair catches him in the side hard enough to send him sprawling onto the floor.
I don’t wait. Instead, my eyes fall on the gun at his belt. I lunge for it. He kicks out at me.
The other guard runs toward me now. I manage to get my hands on the gun, but the first man’s leg kicks up at me. Better to let the gun go instead of falling. The thought flashes through my head and I snap backward, giving up on grabbing the weapon. I race toward the entrance.
But I’m weaker than normal right now, and my swinging of the chair has sapped more of my energy than I thought. I stumble in my steps.
One of the guards catches up to me and points a gun at me. Gritting my teeth, I thrust the chair at him. The chair leg hits him in the face—just enough time for me to whirl and dart out the door. I’m temporarily in the open.
Running—now that I can do. The hall before me is long and narrow, cutting through several rooms, and I race down it. At the end of the hall stand a couple of guards who don’t yet realize I’m coming. I won’t be able to go around the bend, but there’s a window against this wall. The first window I’ve seen.
The guards at the end of the hall turn toward me for the first time. Behind me, the others let out shouts. A bullet pings near my leg.
My breath runs shallow. The lack of water holds me back. Spots appear in my vision as I go, but I force myself to push back against it all.
As I reach the second set of guards now trained on me, I slide against the marble and turn my feet at the last instant. I lunge for the window, my bloody hands nearly slipping against the windowsill, but they catch, and I’m swinging myself through the window and out of the hall.
One glance out this window tells me that this building is entirely underground. High ceilings rise multiple floors over me. The complex is sprawling. And far ahead, I see what looks like a construction site and part of a large, circular machine.
Eden. My heart lurches. The guards had said he was working on some site. Was that where it was?
It’s all I have time to see. Then I’m twisting my body up, my boots pushing off against the windowsill and propelling me up toward the roof. My hands catch the edge of the roof and pull me up. I land in a firm crouch. Below me, I can hear shouts coming from inside. A spotlight starts to sweep across the estate.
This must be just one of Hann’s many hideouts. How many other places does he have? I duck behind a chimney as the spotlight sweeps close. My eyes narrow. As if bred out of years of muscle memory, my body knows exactly how to avoid the light, thinks it’s in Batalla Hall again and trying to find a way out. Thinks it’s on the Colonies’ airfield again and searching for a way to get close to their parked fighter jets.
I dart across the roofs. The construction site nears.
Then a bullet scrapes the roof nearest me. It misses me—but it chips the roof tiles hard enough to shatter them into fragments. My boot catches in just the wrong way against the breaking tiles.
I slip.
My hands scramble to grab the edge of the roof, but they’re too slippery with blood. I tumble off and to the ground.
Immediately, I try to scramble up again, but now a guard has reached me.
A Republic soldier, seizing me as a bullet shatters my knee. My scream, hoarse with rage and grief.
The memory is like a flint in me, lighting up the dark. A vicious growl rumbles in my throat, and I whirl on the guard, catching him hard in the jaw. I hit him once, twice—
—and then my strength gives way again, and I fall, dizzy from the exertion.
The guard stands over me. Several others rush to join him. I look back down to the ground and realize that I’m not sweating at all. There’s no water left in me.
That’s when I hear one of them say something above me that I swear I must have hallucinated.
“No,” one of the guards says to the others. “Let him go.”
“Hann’s order just came in. We’re to take him back up to the surface.”
I look up, thinking that maybe my weakness has left me too delirious to think straight. They’re letting me go.
I must be dreaming.
But then they’re taking me by the arms and dragging me up and throwing something dark across my eyes. I struggle with all the strength I have left. I’m misunderstanding what they’re saying, I tell myself. That’s the only way this makes sense. They’re not going to let me go. Hann has ordered them to kill me instead.
But I wait for the bullet through my head and it doesn’t happen. My feet drag against the floor. My consciousness is flickering in and out now. I can’t even tell when I’m awake and when I’m gone because, in this suffocating darkness, it’s all the same.
Eden. I have to find where they’re keeping him. My mind struggles to remember the path we’re taking.
I don’t know when they drag me into what seems to feel like an elevator. All I can do is try to remember how long we’re in it. Five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty.
My mind starts to fade. The guards’ voices above me are still talking, barking sharp orders at one another, but I can’t tell what they’re saying anymore.
I have to find my brother.
And then, suddenly they’re gone. The hands holding my arms vanish, and I crumple to the floor. It feels like asphalt, cement. The darkness lifts from over my eyes, and I suddenly see myself lying on the street somewhere in the Undercity, the smoke from nearby food stalls hazing the air.
AIS agents are here. They’re everywhere. The red dots of their guns are shining on me, and their shouts are deafening.
Hands in the air! Hands in the air! For an instant, I feel like a criminal again.
Then someone is shouting. “Stand down!” It’s the AIS director, Min. Her voice echoes against the concrete walls, forcing the guns to lower in a tidal wave. “Stand down! It’s Daniel. Stand down!”
Pushing through their ranks, too, is June. Her eyes lock on me and never steer away. I must be dreaming now. I lie where I am, the edges of my vision slowly fading into black, while she bends down beside me, her hands touching both sides of my face. Agents swarm around us.
“We’re here,” she’s saying. Then she raises her voice to those crowding around us, the authority in it returning. “Get back. Give him room. He’s injured!”
They listen to her instinctively, parting around us like a school of fish. I close my eyes, savoring her presence beside me. “They’ve got him,” I whisper through my parched lips. “Eden.”
June says something else. I think she’s ordering me to relax, that paramedics are going to take me to a hospital. I strain to understand what she’s saying, but her voice sounds muffled now. It’s still the loveliest voice I’ve ever heard. I want to stay awake to hear it.
And then everything is a blur of ambulance sirens and a chaos of other voices. June is nearby, holding my hand. Through it all, I keep looking back at where I’d come from. My thoughts blur together as I try to make sense of everything.
Hann ordered them to release me. They’d let me go. Why would he do that?
What does he want with Eden?
Where has he taken my brother?
EDEN
Dominic Hann keeps his promise to release Daniel.
I watch it numbly on a live feed in my view that night. My brother’s figure is undeniable—he’s tied down to a chair in some other part of this estate, struggling again
st his bonds. As I look on, he gets into a scuffle with the guards, and somehow—miraculously—breaks free. Shouts echo as he slithers out of a window with others on his tail.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that my brother used to be the master of avoiding the Republic’s soldiers. I’m dizzy with the speed at which he did it. How would he even know the route to get back up to the surface? But it doesn’t seem to matter. He keeps moving, even though he stumbles occasionally. I watch him go, my throat so dry that I gag.
He almost makes it on his own, even without Hann’s generosity. But then he stumbles. That’s when the guards approach him, and I think for a single, terrifying moment, that I’m going to witness them kill Daniel right there on the spot.
It will be what had happened to John, all over again.
But instead, I hear one of the guards say, “Let him go.”
He shakes his head and orders the others to pull Daniel to his feet. To my disbelief, they throw a bag over my brother’s head and start leading him away. They take him up an elevator, then leave him in the streets of the Undercity. The last thing the feed shows is the AIS finding him and swarming to him. Among them, I think I see June Iparis.
I don’t know what to make of the entire scene. I don’t know why Hann would agree to do such a thing.
Daniel’s free now. He’s going to come back for me, that I know with a dead certainty and a wild hope. He’s going to find where they’ve taken me and pull me back to the surface.
But if Hann succeeds in what he wants to do, I don’t know if any of that matters. I’ve now witnessed what his machine can do when powered with my engine. It’s one of the most spectacular and terrifying inventions I’ve ever seen.
Ross City is about to crumble.
DANIEL
I must have blacked out between the time June and the AIS found me and when I arrive at a hospital, because I don’t remember getting out of the ambulance. I don’t recall going up in an elevator or traveling down a hospital’s corridors.
All I know is that when I wake up next, I’m in my own bed, my window overlooking a blanket of clouds shrouding the glittering city. It’s nighttime now. The dizzy weakness I’d felt before is now gone, and I feel awake and alert, rehydrated, and as good as new.
When I look to my side, I see a girl asleep against the side of my bed, her head buried in her arms. Her dark hair spills behind her in a shining blanket.
It’s June.
She suddenly stirs, sensing that I’m awake. Her eyes dart first around the room, doing a quick sweep, probably sizing everything up in the way she always does to make sure we’re okay. Then her gaze settles on my face.
She lets out a long breath. “Hey,” she whispers, getting to her feet.
I give her a small smile. “Hey,” I reply.
She puts a cool hand against my forehead. “I don’t know how much longer we would have taken to get to you if you hadn’t sent that message. You looked pretty bad when we first found you.”
“They still have Eden,” I say. “Did you and AIS find anything about him?”
She shakes her head, her lips pressed tight. It’s the expression she gets when her mind is spinning, and I find myself remembering snippets of other memories, of when we were escaping the Republic. “No,” she says. “But AIS is trying to track him based on the general area where you were.”
“They were underground,” I reply.
“Is that where Hann was stationed in a hideout?” June asks.
“A hideout is an understatement. It looked like an estate buried under the city. I don’t know how many other spaces he might have like that. But he has a construction site there. A machine.”
“Do you remember anything about the route they took you through?”
I shake my head. “They had me blindfolded the entire time. The area beneath the Undercity is a maze of old tunnels and abandoned elevator shafts. It’ll take weeks to get down there and do a proper sweep. We need to find a different way.”
Had Eden heard that I’d gotten out? Does he know that Hann had intentionally let me go? Did he have anything to do with that—had he made a bargain with the man?
Immediately, I start trying to get out of bed. That’s when all the soreness of my captivity hits me. I wince, looking down at my bandaged wrists.
June gets up in the darkness and pushes me down. “You’re not going anywhere,” she says sternly. “Strict orders from the doctor. Everything you need to do, you can do from the comfort of your bed, okay? Your director said she’d contact you in the morning, and we can go from there.”
“What about you?” I ask. “The Elector? He—”
“—is well aware of the situation,” she says. “Anden sends his regards and concerns.” June leans closer to me. In the night, her eyes shine like dark marbles. “This is big news in your inner circles, apparently. The President wants to be kept updated on what happens with Hann.”
I slump back on my pillows and clench my teeth in frustration. I made a promise to myself to keep Eden from harm, but I’ve failed to do it again. Nightmares from the Republic come rushing back now to haunt me—Eden, being taken away for experimentation; Eden, blinded and weak; Eden, left to die during the war with the Colonies.
Now he is in Hann’s grasp, and I have no goddy clue what the man wants with him.
June puts a hand on my shoulder. Her warmth is the only thing that breaks through my whirlwind of thoughts. “We’re going to find him,” she tells me. “He’s a smart boy, and he’s going to take care of himself. Your job is to be sure you’re strong enough by morning to tackle all this. There’s nothing you can do before that. Understand?”
I look back at her. “How long have I been out?”
“A day,” she admits.
“And you stayed here?” I ask softly. “The entire time I was out?”
A flash of fear glints in her eyes, then fades. She looks away and out my window. “I was afraid,” she murmurs, “to lose you.”
And again, I find myself thinking about what she’d said during her first night here, when we shared a kiss. When I realized how much her life had moved forward and settled into place.
She looks back at me. “What’s on your mind?” she asks me. “I can always tell by the weight in your eyes.”
“I’m thinking about how I’m the catalyst for chaos in your life,” I answer. “And how sorry I am for it.”
“Don’t be,” she replies. June sighs and looks down. “We’ve always been each other’s catalysts, haven’t we?” she says. “I don’t think we would have met if we weren’t. And sometimes I find myself pulling away because I want to end that cycle for you, as if that might somehow solve it all.”
I think of the way June pulls herself away from our intimate moments. It’s the exact same thing I do. I lean closer to her, letting my hand brush hers. For an instant, I think that she might pull away … but her hand lingers in place, and she stays where she is.
I know that fear she mentioned. That terror of not knowing what might happen to us next, of what could go wrong if we opened our hearts completely to each other. I’d bled the last time I allowed myself to love her, and she had bled the same.
But still, I find myself tightening my grip around her hand, then pulling her closer. She turns to face me in the night.
The fear still grips me, and the words I want to say still stutter to a halt in my throat. But this time, all I can think about is what it was like to live without her for a decade.
When I open my mouth this time, the words finally spill out.
“I don’t deserve having you in my life,” I tell her quietly. “There may always be pain and grief that follows me, even here, in all this Ross City luxury. Maybe that’s the way it goes in life. You don’t deserve to share that pain.” I take a deep breath, trying to quell my fear, the rising tide of all the darkness that still haunts me from the Republic. “But I think you do deserve to know the truth of how I feel. Because even if we can’t be together in the end, I wo
uld like you to know.”
June’s eyes are glossy against the blue-gray light filtering in from the windows. “And what is that?” she whispers.
“That I love you,” I whisper. “That I’ve been in love with you for years, even when we were separated. Especially then. I’ve lived with you in my life, and I’ve lived without you. No matter what kind of fear I feel in the possibility of us being together, the fear of being away from you is something I don’t think I can bear.” I look down, shy to meet her gaze now. “I have nightmares of losing you again. All the time.”
There. My heart is ripped open and exposed before her. All the uncertainty that had plagued me before now roars in my mind as I wait for her response.
Maybe this was all a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her this. It’s too soon.
Then June draws nearer. “I never had a chance to tell you, before you and Eden left for Antarctica, that I love you too. So fiercely that it frightens me.” Her voice trembles.
I love you. I love you. I have never heard these words from June before, and now they fill my heart to bursting, making me whole in a way I never knew I could be.
She smiles a little, and now I see that her eyes are moist. “Even if we don’t know where we’ll go in the future, perhaps our lives were always meant to collide again and again. Perhaps we are forever meant to be each other’s catalysts.”
Forever. It’s a word I’ve never dared to use with June. Maybe there is a chance for a forever in our lives.
“I’ve looked over my shoulder for a decade,” I whisper, “wondering what it was that was missing in my life. Turns out, all this time, it was you.”
Then I lean close, and this time, I kiss her.
She nearly collapses into my embrace. Her lips are so soft and familiar against mine, everything that I’ve missed in the years we’ve been apart. Our conversations together may be awkward and polite, and our presence around each other stilted and distant … but this, this feels right in every possible way.