by Lu, Marie
Finally, she looks down and says, “If we make it out of all this, I’d like to leave the Undercity,” she says. “Go somewhere new. Find an adventure.” She’s silent for another beat. “I stayed for my father. Now he’s gone, and I don’t know what to do.”
Then she laughs and shakes her head, as if this is an impossible dream forever out of her reach.
I touch her hand. “You’ll know,” I tell her. “You always have.”
Pressa gives me a tired smile. We sit without speaking for a moment before she looks at me again. “Do you feel sorry for Hann?” she asks, her voice softer now. “I mean—I’m not saying that he’s someone we should sympathize with, but…”
Do I feel sorry for him? I’m about to say no, of course not … but something makes me stop. I think of the way Hann has to have his medicine tested. “A little,” I end up replying. And I realize that maybe she’s asking because she does.
Pressa nods down at the medicine bag she tossed onto the bunk bed between us. “I think he might have been trustworthy, a long time ago. He has the characteristics of someone from the Undercity, you know? You always find a way to make things work, until the world makes it impossible. And even then, you have to hang on.”
I’m quiet at her words. The world had thrown Pressa out, and yet she somehow still managed to hold on to the goodness in herself, had never truly wavered from what was right. And I found myself wondering about the fine lines in our lives that turn us one way or the other—that the hardships my brother or June faced twisted them in one direction, while Hann went in another.
“When this is all over,” I finally say, “I’m going back to the Republic.”
Pressa smiles again. It’s a sadder expression this time, like she’d known all along, and the sadness twists my heart into a knot. “I never thought you were going to stay here in Antarctica,” she replies.
I look at her. “You didn’t?”
“Eden, you’ve lived your whole life with your shoes pointed in the direction of the Republic. That glint’s in your eyes every time I see you. It’s where you belong.” She puts a hand on my arm, and I think back to when she’d helped me up after the others in the university had shoved me to the ground. I think about what she’s doing right now, with me. If I head back to the Republic, I won’t get to lean on Pressa anymore.
“I…” I don’t know how to finish my sentence. I’ll miss her? I’ve liked her ever since we first became friends? That when we hang out late at night, I love watching her beautiful eyes flash in the dim light, reflecting the glow of everything around her?
She just smiles at me and leans closer. “Just visit me sometimes, okay?” she whispers. “So I can see how you’re doing.”
I swallow, searching for a good way to tell her how I feel. And in the middle of that search, I realize that what I’ve wanted to do all along was just to show her.
I lean toward her in the silence. Then I kiss her.
It’s a light kiss, my lips gentle against hers. She stiffens in surprise at my gesture, enough for me to pull away and give her a hesitant look. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so forward about it.
But before I can apologize, Pressa wraps her arms around me and pulls me back. She kisses me again, harder this time.
Every thought I have scatters. I can’t believe that I never knew this is what should have happened between us, that I never made a move earlier. There’s a bitterness in our kiss that reminds me how little time we might have left. I pull her close, wanting more, regretting that I’d held back so long.
At last we pull apart, our breaths shallow. Pressa looks down, a rare moment of fragility coming across her face. She laughs a little. “I’ve always wanted you to do that,” she murmurs, peering up at me through her canopy of lashes.
“Well,” I murmur back, “thank goodness I did something about it.”
Our conversation’s interrupted by an abrupt knock on the door. We dart apart as one of the guards comes in. He doesn’t smile at us. Instead, his eyes lock, cold and unfeeling, on mine. “Hurry up, both of you,” he tells us. “Hann doesn’t have all day to waste showing you the system facilities.”
I stand back up and give the man a firm look. Beside me, Pressa rises and lifts her chin, steadying herself back into calmness.
“Right behind you,” I say to the guard.
He glares at me again, casts an ugly glance at Pressa, and turns around, motioning for us to follow him. It won’t be long now before all our plans come to a head. Pressa and I exchange a quick glance before I follow the man out the door.
That’s when I realize that the tiny insect drone Daniel gave me is no longer in my pocket.
A jolt of panic rushes through me even as I try to keep my expression calm behind the man. But Pressa senses my sudden fear. She gives me a questioning look before she realizes what happened. Her eyes widen.
Maybe the drone fell out of my pocket.
But a feeling of dread swells in my chest. Somehow, I know that it wasn’t an accident. Somehow, I know.
Dominic Hann took it.
DANIEL
Another fitful sleep.
This time it’s a dream of my past, another series of memory fragments I’m struggling to piece together. Some of it doesn’t make sense at all—a bundle of sea daisies floating in the middle of the ocean, a lone figure struggling through a frozen tundra. But when my dream finally settles, it lands on a memory from childhood.
It’s of when I’d already been living on the streets for a year. Tess is nowhere in sight; I haven’t even met her yet. I’m still limping badly at this age, and when I finally make my way past the rooftops and stop behind a chimney near my mother’s house, I’m drenched in sweat.
My hands are bloody and raw from pulling myself up onto ledges. The hollow in my stomach feels like a cavern. All damn day, I struggled to find enough food to fill up that emptiness—but the day was difficult. No trash to be found. Guards patrolling the newly docked supply ships. I barely escaped the clutches of a street stall merchant selling pygmy-pig entrails strung on sticks. The smell was so intoxicating that I forgot myself for a moment and lingered too long. He lunged at me with a butcher knife. I got away, but not before he managed to catch me with the edge of the blade and sliced clean through my side.
I sway weakly. My hand stays pressed against my skin, but blood is still leaking out of the wound, staining everything black. I look desperately down at my mother’s home. The candles are lit inside. She’s home, and probably so are my brothers. As if on cue, I see John’s silhouette walk past the window.
They don’t know I’m alive. If I reveal myself to them, how will they react? What will the Republic do to them if they somehow make my family talk?
Another stab of pain lances its way up my side, and a soft groan escapes me. I lean my head back against the chimney and close my eyes. I can’t stay like this. If I do, I’ll die. In the morning, someone will find my lifeless body up on the roof, and a car will come to drag me away to some unmarked mass grave.
The side door to our home swings open, and a rectangle of golden light momentarily beams across the alley. John emerges with a bag of trash. The screen door claps shut behind him as he heads down the block to toss the bag into one of the bins.
I hesitate again, blinking sweat out of my eyes. My world is spinning now, my head dizzy from the loss of blood. Still, I find myself holding back.
Another wave of nausea hits me. I grit my teeth and swear. Then I finally begin making my way painstakingly down the side of the building. My hands cling desperately to the gutter running along the wall. The cold, slick metal is tricky, and I nearly fall several times.
At last, I reach the ground and collapse with a grunt. I pull myself up laboriously, then stagger toward my house right as John starts making his way back to the door. He steps inside, turning away from me.
I open my mouth to call out for him, but I’m too weak. As the screen shuts behind him and he locks the inside door, I crawl up to the step
s. One, two, three. I reach the closed door, gather the last of my strength, and knock.
For a moment, I don’t think the sound is strong enough to be heard. I wait a few seconds, listening for my brother, and then try knocking again. Still nothing.
I sink against the steps and close my eyes, savoring the cold of the stone. They might find me dead here in the morning. My mother will scream. John will furrow his brows in grief. And Eden …
Then the door suddenly opens a crack. I look up and find myself staring into the blue eyes of my older brother.
He doesn’t recognize me, at least not at first. His mouth curves down into a frown I’m all too familiar with, and for an instant, I feel like I never left home at all. I crack a feeble smile at him.
“It’s me,” I manage to croak out. My hands move aside from my wound to show him the blood soaking my shirt. “Could use some help, John.”
That’s when the realization hits him. He knows my voice, remembers the way I screamed for him when my train pulled away after I failed my Trials. His face drains of color, and his eyes widen in shock.
“Daniel?” he whispers.
But I’m too weak to answer now. I slump against the steps, trying hard to focus on them. I feel arms wrap around me and scoop me up. I shiver in the cold. Then I’m lying on a dining table lit by a flickering light, and staring up into the bewildered face of my brother.
“It’s impossible,” he’s saying over and over again. He runs a hand through his hair even as he takes a knife and cuts my shirt open. “I saw them take you away—they told us you were—you were—”
“Don’t tell Mom,” I whisper. “Don’t tell Eden.” A hoarse cry escapes from my lips as he wraps something tightly around my wounded waist. “I had no choice but to come to you. But if they know I’m here, they’ll kill all of you.”
John pauses in his work for a moment. He leans his head down toward me and rests it against my shoulder. It takes me a moment, through my delirium, to realize that he’s crying. I try to put my arm around his shoulders, tell him I’ll be all right. But even here, something cuts through my dream.
This isn’t real. Because John is dead.
I try to focus on the ceiling. It twists and morphs, and then somehow I turn into the one standing by the dining table. John isn’t here anymore—I’ve replaced him. And the figure on the table isn’t me, but Eden, a child version of him, chubby-cheeked and wide-eyed, in shock as blood seeps from his chest.
I frantically try to stanch my little brother’s bleeding, but it’s no use.
“Eden?” I call his name. “Eden. Look at me.” My hands are covered with scarlet. No matter how tightly I bandage his injury, the blood continues to pour. What has he done? He’s gone to save others—as always. But now he’s dying, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I look up and scream for help.
There’s no one here, though. It’s just the two of us.
* * *
I jolt awake with a shudder. There are smooth hands on my face, but it takes me a moment to realize that they belong to June. In the darkness, I can barely make out her eyes. She’s looking at me in concern.
“Hey, hey,” she says gently. “You’re okay. You’re right here.”
My body’s drenched in sweat and trembling all over. Apparently, I collapsed on the couch and drifted off to sleep while waiting for Eden’s message to come in, for him to tell us that he’s securely in Hann’s circle. The image of young Eden bleeding to death on the table is still fresh in my mind. I close my eyes in an attempt to blink it away, but it lingers like a stain against my eyes.
“I’m okay,” I finally whisper, nodding at June. “Just a nightmare. It’s fine.”
From her expression, I can tell June knows instinctively that my nightmare must have been about Eden. But she doesn’t press it. Instead, she nods and looks away toward the window. The metal of her epaulettes clinks softly.
I didn’t realize she was dressed in her full uniform. Her eyes are alert, glittering in the night.
“What’s going on?” I say, gradually shaking off my dream’s fog of terror. The room comes into sharper focus. Through the window, I can see the silhouette of Ross City’s outskirts. “Eden—did we hear from him yet?”
June shakes her head, and before she even starts talking, I feel the ominous pit stretch in my stomach. “Nothing. It’s zero-three-hundred hours. He should have responded hours ago.”
No sugarcoating. There’s no use in doing it, and June knows. I fight to keep my fears at bay, but she can see it spilling out onto my expression. I sit up straighter on the couch. “Any signals at all coming from the drone Eden has? Is he still in the same location?”
June looks at me with a grave face. “Daniel, there’s no more location signal.”
No more location signal. It can only mean three things: Eden chose to remove it, for his and Pressa’s safety. The drone itself doesn’t work anymore. Or …
Hann has discovered and disabled it.
EDEN
My mind whirls frantically as the guard motions for us to follow him.
Hann had taken the drone. He must have.
For an instant, I think we’re done. They’ve caught us, and there’s nothing we can do to stop Hann from killing us.
In front of us, the guard gives us an impatient wave of his hand. “Hann’s waiting,” he says.
Pressa glances once at the door and mouths a single word at me. Go.
I don’t know where our surge of courage comes from. Desperation, probably.
Pressa’s hand shoots out and seizes the guard’s wrist. Before he even has time to utter a shout of surprise, she yanks him hard inside the room and shoves him against the wall.
He gasps, then snarls at Pressa as he moves to grab her throat.
I strike him hard in the jaw before he can touch her.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from my brother, it’s how to throw a punch after getting jumped.
My hit lands true. The guard’s knees buckle, and everything in him goes limp as he slides slowly down to the floor.
Pressa gives me an impressed look. “Nice one,” she says.
I shrug. “The benefit of a brother who’s an AIS agent,” I reply.
We waste no time stealing out of the room and locking it behind us. Our clock is ticking now. There’s no going back. My steps quicken across the metal stairs leading to the upper levels of the building.
Here, I recognize the cavernous space that houses Hann’s construction site. Everything is cloaked halfway in shadows, as if silhouettes of guards are standing in every corner. We move slowly, startling at every stairway.
Finally, we arrive at the construction site I remember from when I’d first been held captive. The mazelike cavern full of rows of blinking machine lights is as ominous and mesmerizing as ever, the glow casting everything in the space in a dim blue hue.
I pull Pressa down beside me before she can reach the top landing of the steps. There, we crouch in the shadows, watching the two guards standing along the metal railing leading down to the main floor.
Pressa’s gaze sweeps the endless corridors of computers, her mouth slightly open at the sight. Then she glances at me. “How do we get down there?” she whispers, emphasizing the words soundlessly.
I glance at the guards. Their eyes are turned down toward the rest of the floor space. If we can just get past them, we’ll be able to lose ourselves in the maze of halls and make our way to the control platform located at the other end of the building.
I study the railings of the steps. If Daniel were here, he’d avoid the guards altogether and shimmy down the side of this railing, dropping quietly from floor to floor until he reached the ground below. They’d never even know he was here.
Before my brother took me on his run through the Lake district, I’d have even laughed at the idea of even attempting to do this. Now, though, I find myself looking at the landing, wondering if there’s a way I could at least get us one floor lower and bypass the
guards. I may not have Daniel’s agility—but maybe I could find a way with my own tricks.
I begin shrugging off my jacket. Pressa glances curiously at me.
I gesture at her jacket, telling her to do the same, and then point at the railings beside us and then at the ground below.
Pressa blinks at me. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispers.
“If you want to fight those guards, be my guest,” I whisper back. Then I slide over to the metal bars of the railing and loop my jacket through the holes. The bottom of the railing is open just wide enough for me to slide through. It’s a tight squeeze, though.
Pressa watches me go for a moment before she comes over to join me.
I lie flat on my back and push through the bottom of the railing, then lower myself gingerly, the sleeves of my jacket wrapped tightly around my left fist. I dangle over the edge, a silhouette lost in the shadows. Up above, the guards don’t move.
I let myself swing a little back and forth. Then I let go. I catch myself against the lower floor’s railings and manage to land in a soft crouch. There I stay for a second, breathless, listening for the guards above to notice and mutter to each other. Nothing.
Pressa comes shortly after me. She hangs in midair for a beat too, before doing the same and crouching beside me. Her landing is quieter than mine, but one of her bootlaces clinks against the metal railing. The sound makes a tiny echo.
We freeze. For a second, we don’t hear anything.
Then one of the guards shifts above us. “That came from downstairs,” she says.
“Are you sure?” the second one answers. “It just sounded like the building shifting.”
“Probably.” The first guard starts to move. “I’ll take a quick look in case.”
We have to move, now. I grab Pressa’s hand and we start running as quickly as we can down the walkway toward the next flight of steps. Up above, the guard’s footsteps clank loudly on the stairs. If she reaches us before we can get to the lower floor, she’ll see us and sound the alarm.