by Lu, Marie
Mr. Yu turns to him. I see a flash of worry cross his eyes—and instead of shoving the young man back out of the store, he bends down to help him.
“Steady,” Mr. Yu says to the young man on the ground as he clutches his face and moans. “That’s a nasty gash. I’ll help you bandage it—”
But the young man whirls on Mr. Yu in a blind fury. Pressa sees the glint in the air at the same time I do. She screams and grabs her father to yank him away, even as he holds the bandages in his hand. I open my mouth and lunge in their direction.
Neither of us reaches him in time. The young man’s knife plunges deep into her father’s stomach. Once. Twice.
Then I slam hard into the man and knock the knife from his hand. The weapon goes spinning to the floor as he and I both fall. Above me, Pressa grabs her father as he clutches his stomach, his watery eyes wide with shock.
The young man struggles with me. He’s surprisingly strong for his size, as if he were fighting for his life. Finally, I kick him off me hard enough to send him skidding against the wall. He hits his head and shakes it, dazed for a moment.
Daniel sees the commotion and rushes over, but it’s already too late. Pressa’s father drops to his knees in the middle of his floor as people stream all around him, running to grab everything from his shelves. Mr. Yu’s face has gone paper white, and he’s shaking uncontrollably. Between his fingers clutching his stomach seeps dark blood.
“Dad!” Pressa’s shouting at him as she helps him lean against the wall of his shop. She presses her hand against his leaking wounds too. Blood runs across her skin. “Dad!” She looks helplessly up at me. “Call an ambulance! Now!”
But without the Level system, there’s no way to make a proper call to anyone. I dash out into the street in an attempt to grab the nearest police officer I can see—but there are so many people in the streets, some shoving their way into other shops, others trying in vain to stop them. I run back in, bend down beside Mr. Yu, and strip off my thin jacket.
Mr. Yu’s eyes flutter weakly at me before they go to Pressa. His breaths come in irregular beats. He whispers something to her that sounds like he’s telling her to get out of here. She ignores him and keeps trying to stop the flow of blood.
I take Mr. Yu’s hand and hold it tight. Before either of us can do any more, his eyes fade, the light in them dimming to nothing. His trembling stops. One of his hands clutches the bandages that he’d been ready to use to help his killer. They’re stained red now.
Pressa’s hands are still pressed against her father’s wounds. Around us, people stumble forward to the shelves to grab handfuls of herbs and powders, stepping over his body as if he were nothing more than an obstacle.
I realize I’m tugging on Pressa’s arm, telling her we have to leave. She tries to shake me off and go back to what she’s doing. Only when June and Daniel join me do we finally manage to snap Pressa out of her reverie and start pulling her away from the store. Marren flees into the street and turns to watch helplessly as people overrun the store. Only then does Pressa break down in tears against me.
I force my eyes away from the scene around us. No matter how strong the country, no matter how invincible one might seem … there is always a tipping point. Always something that can pull the entire house down.
DANIEL
I know what it feels like to be forced to leave your home behind. I know what it’s like to lose your parent. To feel helpless as the world around you burns.
The girl named Pressa is quiet as we leave the hospital the following morning, where they’ve already covered her father’s body. She doesn’t look at me. She barely speaks to Eden, who has his arm around her in a protective grip.
I feel sorry for her. In her eyes, I can see a mirror of my own grief from the past. I can hear the echo of my screams and the blood on the ground.
“The Elector’s plane takes off in half an hour,” June says in a low voice to me as we walk toward the elevators. “We need to hurry. Your President is heading out soon too.”
I nod at June, then look back again at my brother and his friend. In this moment, it’s as if we’re back on the streets of the Republic, evacuating as the Colonies closed in. But this is no battle from an outside force. This is the consequence of a flawed system, something that had been rotting underneath a glistening exterior.
From the screens in the AIS lobby, we can see the police pushing the Undercity crowds back, clubs out, guns sparking. People falling.
I tear my gaze away from the sight and keep going. My job is to keep Eden safe. And right now, the only path to safety is to get out of this country.
We enter the elevator, now functioning only on emergency backup power.
As we rise toward the top floor, the Elector’s private jet comes into view. I stare at it, the red and black paint streaking the sides of the plane, the angled nose, the lights dotting the platform around it. The entire scene feels surreal.
I fall into step behind June, my brother and Pressa silent at my side. What thoughts must be running through his head? What were his last moments with Dominic Hann like? But I don’t have time to dwell on him before we are inside the jet and seated across from Anden.
As the engines start and the jet lifts into the air, I look out my window and down at the city below us. Smoke rises from the lowest streets, hazing the still-glittering lights on the higher floors. Without the colorful overlays on the city, the place looks more vulnerable than I ever imagined—the buildings stark white, empty of substance. Tiny dots of people run back and forth on the pathways that connect each of the buildings like a web.
It looks like war. It looks like something I’ve seen all too much of in my life. As we rise higher and the scene below fades behind the clouds, I find myself wondering if there is ever a time in history of peace, if we can ever find a way to escape the cycle of destruction we bring upon ourselves.
If there is, I sure as hell haven’t seen it.
LOS ANGELES
REPUBLIC OF AMERICA
EDEN
I spend the entire twelve hours on the plane sketching one schematic after another.
It’s the same habit that emerges every time I’m trying to distract myself from my anxieties. My drawings are of what I remember from working on Dominic Hann’s device, but they’re not enough—I hadn’t gotten access to everything, and as a result all I end up with is an unfinished idea of how he managed to take down the entire Antarctican system in Ross City in one fell swoop.
“Eden.”
It takes me a while to realize that Pressa is saying my name. I startle out of my sketching to see her staring pointedly at me, a cup of steaming tea in her hands. She puts it on the table before me.
“Thanks,” I mutter, forcing myself to sit back in my seat and wrap my hands around the cup. The heat of it scalds my skin, but the sudden shock feels nice too.
Pressa turns her dark eyes toward the window. She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Thanks for taking me with you,” she says in a low voice.
She’s been quiet for most of the trip, her eyes hollow and red with grief. Now she glances uncomfortably around the Elector’s jet. It’s a luxurious space, its rounded ceiling high and its sides lined with smooth couches and chairs. Behind us, two full-length beds with thick curtains draped over them bookend the back of the plane, along with a bathroom that rivals the one in our apartment.
Her gaze settles again and again on the Elector, who sits at the other end near the front of the plane and talks in low voices with June. Daniel lounges beside her, his face trained idly on the scene outside the windows. Despite his attempts to look like he’s not paying attention to what they’re saying, I can tell he’s taking in every bit of it. Just like how he’s noticing where I am right now and what I’m doing, even though he’d never show it.
Pressa’s eyes dart briefly to my schematics, then up to me. “You’re gonna need to rest if you want to make any more progress, you know,” she finally murmurs. “You’ve been at it nonstop
for the entire flight.”
“I know.” I rub my bleary eyes. “I just … The Level system was destroyed because of me. My own engine powered that machine, and I just let it happen. I have to figure this out.”
Her eyes soften at me. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it, though?” I put my cup down in disgust.
“I never should have taken you to the drone race.”
“What choice did you have?” I say gently. “You were trying to help your father. And instead, I gave Hann the last piece of the puzzle that he needed.”
And now Mr. Yu was gone. I see fresh pain cross Pressa’s face and bury my head in my hands. Numbers and blueprints crowd my exhausted mind.
Finally, Pressa shakes her head. “Hann would’ve gotten it somehow, with or without you. He couldn’t have moved as fast as he did otherwise.” She leans her elbows against the table between us. “How long must it have taken him to set that up? Months? Years?”
I flip incessantly through my useless sketches. “Long enough that no one noticed him building up that kind of infrastructure.” The only consolation I have is that at least he did use a part of something I’d created. It gives me some starting point to try to figure out the rest of his puzzle, at least. But there isn’t much time for that.
As I think about Hann, I feel a strange tug in my chest of something uncertain. The memory of the man’s grave eyes comes back to me, along with the story he’d told me about what had happened to his family.
You remind me of my son.
Those words of his shouldn’t stick with me. For all I know, they could be a lie. But the grief in his eyes as he’d said them …
He’d let my brother go. He’d let me go.
He’d taken down the very system that Daniel had argued against to his superiors, that I’d hated and defied every chance I could get.
It’s his fault that Pressa’s father is dead, I try to remind myself.
But was it Hann who had killed him, or Ross City’s system?
The plane dips slightly, and an announcement from our captain comes on the speakers. I pause to glance out the window and see a familiar outline of land emerging beneath the clouds. The curve of California’s coast.
Suddenly, thoughts of Hann dull as I realize that we are now officially over the waters of the Republic.
On the other side of the plane, Daniel stiffens at the sight and straightens in his seat. For a brief moment, his eyes flicker to mine. I remember the last time we’d visited, how uncomfortable he’d been to return to our homeland.
Now we’re back.
And the Republic is strangely our savior.
* * *
Half an hour later, we’ve emerged from the plane and are headed down the ramparts. I follow quietly behind June and the Elector. Beside me, Pressa clings tightly to my arm as she studies the entrance into Los Angeles’s airport. Everything looks so different here, as if we’d gone back in time to a different era. Towering, brutal columns draped with bold banners of red and black heralding the Elector’s return to his country. Tall, harsh rectangular windows. No augmented overlays or hovering digital images.
Daniel is also unusually silent, his head lowered and his hands shoved into his pockets. Republic soldiers in familiar, formal red-and-black uniforms snap to attention as we pass by. I can see my brother flinch slightly when they move. Even when we’d been here weeks ago for my interview, he was quieter than usual. Every instinct in him must be telling him that these guards are here to kill us, to arrest him, to take away his family.
Suddenly, I feel a rush of guilt at his days spent constantly wandering the Undercity. It’s one thing to hear him tell me how much he wants to leave our past behind. It’s another to see the past haunting every line of his body.
As we’re ushered into the airport, a throng of waiting reporters flock to the railings holding them back. A barrage of cameras clicks into overdrive, and we’re engulfed in a sea of blinding lights and roaring voices.
“Mr. Wing! Mr. Wing! Daniel!”
“Commander Iparis!”
“Elector! Elector, over here!”
I blink, taken aback by the onslaught. Ahead of me, Daniel stiffens even more beside June, keeping his head down as the news crews push forward toward us. I put an arm instinctively around Pressa, who has gone wide-eyed at the mess of a scene.
June looks the calmest of all of us. She lifts her head and snaps her fingers at the other guards walking alongside the Elector, and they tighten their formation protectively. Then she presses herself beside Daniel enough for their shoulders to come together. When an overly eager reporter sticks his camera too close to Daniel’s face, June shoves him unceremoniously back.
“Make way! Keep this area clear!” Her voice is unwavering and efficient. The reporters part obediently, but then keep trailing us in a constant tide.
“Daniel! Eden! Over here!”
I turn at the familiar voice.
There, in the midst of the crowds gathered to see the Elector’s—and Daniel’s—arrival, is Tess, her face as bright as ever and her arm waving high over others’ heads.
She doesn’t try going up to June, who’s technically still in formation and guarding the Elector, but I do see the two exchange a grin and wink. Then Tess darts away from the Elector’s entourage and makes a beeline for us.
I’d first seen her again a month ago, when we’d returned to the Republic for my interview. I hadn’t recognized much in her then of the little girl I remembered—small, uncertain, with hunched shoulders and wide eyes, always wringing her hands. She’d grown tall and straight-backed, her hair cut into a short brown bob, her movements confident and precise to match her surgeon demeanor. But the glint in her eyes, the bright echo in her voice … that stayed. And it’s still here now.
She waits until we’ve emerged and the guards allow her through, then steps toward us and throws her arms around Daniel’s neck.
My brother doesn’t hesitate. He wraps his arms around her and hugs her so tightly that he lifts her slightly off the ground. Cameras around us click wildly. As he puts her back down, he tweaks her nose the same way he used to do to me as a child. She protests, shoving him in the shoulder. Like his second sibling. He just laughs.
It makes me realize how long it’s been since I’ve heard such a lighthearted sound come from him.
“Welcome back,” she exclaims, beaming at him, then looking over to Pressa and me. Her hand comes up to pat my cheek. “You haven’t been sleeping well since the last time I saw you.”
“I’m fine now,” I say, trying not to let my embarrassment show. Nearby, Pressa watches with an uncertain look on her face.
Tess smiles shyly at her before she holds out her hand. Pressa takes it, and Tess shakes it once.
“This is Pressa,” I tell her. “A friend of mine.”
What I want to say is my best friend, my confidante, the girl who makes me bolder than I think I can be. But a friend of mine just comes out. It sounds careless, even cold.
“Nice to meet you,” Tess says to her, and she manages a smile back.
“Likewise,” Pressa answers. But I can see a slight tension in the way she steps away from me.
Several cars are waiting for us at the airport’s loading zone. Pressa and I follow Daniel into a second car. June and Tess climb into the seats in front of us. The doors shut, and the din from outside fades to a hum of noise. Here, Daniel’s shoulders relax and he leans back against the leather headrests. The Republic may not have the high tech of Antarctica—there aren’t auto-cars or rails running everywhere here—but it’s kind of comforting. Our driver, a Republic soldier, gives us all a terse nod before he follows the Elector’s train of cars as they pull onto the road ahead.
“News about Antarctica has been all over the news here,” Tess says as she swivels around in her seat to look back at us. “Is it true, what happened to their Level system? I thought that was supposed to be completely secure.”
“Nothing’s
completely secure,” Daniel says in the silence afterward. “We didn’t know how fast it could go down, though. Everything works until it doesn’t.”
“Now what?” June looks from Daniel to me, her eyes quicksilver as bars of sunlight and shadow slide through the car’s interior. “What is this man’s plan?”
Daniel shakes his head. “You crumble a place’s foundation, crack its walls, and anything can get in. There are fires in the streets—everything’s chaos. And chaos is exactly what someone like Dominic Hann likes best.”
There’s real anger in his voice. With this blow, Hann is going to take advantage of this mask of liberation to seize power for himself. In chaos, monsters rise quickly.
Whether or not Hann actually is a monster … I’m still not sure.
Tess frowns at us, then shakes her head. “We all know what chaos can do,” she says impatiently, waving a hand at us. “But I think what June’s asking is what he wants to do with that chaos. Specifically.”
At that, Pressa straightens beside me, shaken out of her daze at the overwhelming introduction to the Republic. She tilts her head at Tess. “I hadn’t thought about that,” she says. “Hann’s taken down the entire system. What if he knows enough about it to bring it back up? Put it back in place and change it to suit him?”
Tess nods back at her. “It’s what a dictator would do,” she replies. “Pure anarchy is never what they’re going for.”
A thought snaps into place. Sometimes I forget that Tess is a girl who had scraped by on the streets and barely survived the same revolution we had. She’s no stranger to understanding how a society falls apart.
It seems like an obvious next step. Why would Hann go as far as taking down a system of control just to throw it away?
And suddenly, I find myself thinking about my schematic doodles in a different light. I dig into my pocket and bring all the papers out in a crinkly mess. Then I straighten them in my lap. Pressa looks over my shoulder as I do.