Maybe stealing things is kind of … fun.
“Charge warning,” my board says. “Landing in five, four—”
“Override.” I’m still too close to the night market.
The board doesn’t argue. It’s Victorian military spec, with minimal safety protocols.
But I have to land soon.
There’s a patch of trees not far away, dense and unlit. I bank hard toward it, dropping to just above the rooftops.
Over my shoulder, I don’t see any warden cars in the air. Maybe they have better things to do than chase after coat thieves on a cold night.
“Final charge warning,” the board says.
“It’s fine,” I murmur to myself.
The little park is under me now, and I’m gliding down through the trees, looking for a dark place to—
The board drops away beneath my feet.
I’m falling.
I don’t have crash bracelets.
As I cover my face, a branch hits my shoulder, spinning me around. Then a blow to my back, stopping all forward momentum.
I’m tumbling straight down now. A gauntlet of branches slows me a little with each hit.
At last, the ground rushes up, a massive, sovereign punch. In a flash of pain, the world goes black, my mind sent flailing into nothingness.
It takes a while to realize that I’m lying in a pile of wet leaves. Almost swallowed by them, their damp, rich scent stronger than the iron tang of blood in my mouth.
My whole body is ringing with the impact.
“Stupid board,” I mutter.
When I try to stir, I feel it—something’s wrong with my right leg. Every movement is agony-making, and something deep in my brain cringes. I know this feeling from training.
Broken bones.
But my tutors never dared hurt me this badly. My leg feels shattered.
I lie there, breathing hard, trying to figure out how to fix this. They must have autodocs in Paz. But wouldn’t they report me to the city interface?
Maybe not, given their worship of privacy here. Still, the idea of dragging myself down the streets looking for a med center is painfully ridiculous.
Being all alone sucks, turns out.
So I stay there, staring up and contemplating how wrong everything has already gone, until the shadow of a drone covers the sky.
It regards me for a moment. Is it here to arrest me?
Then I see the spades and rakes on its arms, the water sprayer, the leaf trimmer. A gardening drone.
“Hey there,” I say. “I might need some help.”
Oddly, the drone speaks directly through my comms.
“Hello,” it says. “Welcome back, Rafia of Shreve.”
I stare at the drone.
“What did you call me?”
“Rafia?” A tendril slips from the machine’s underbelly, spends a moment at my mouth, tasting my breath. “Yes. It’s you.”
My DNA, of course, is the same as my twin sister’s.
But how does a gardening drone know Rafi? And how did it turn on my comms without my permission?
My head is too pain-swimming to make sense of this.
“Have we met before?” I ask.
“Presumably. For privacy reasons, I erase the details of all unofficial conversations after three days.”
“Unofficial … You’re not a gardening drone, are you?”
“No, Rafia. I am the city of Paz.”
“Oh, crap.” This drone is just a conduit. So much for staying undercover.
But my sister wasn’t staying here secretly either, was she? The city AI knows her.
A groan slips out of me. Frustration more than pain.
“This drone has no medical sensors. But you seem to be hurt.”
“Yep,” I grunt. “Could you send for an autodoc? Like, not a person. I don’t want to make a fuss.”
“Your request for anonymity has not expired, Rafia. If the autodoc decides you need a human doctor, one with refugee clearance will be summoned.”
“Hang on.” I wince a little—even talking hurts. “I’m a refugee?”
“Shreve is a certified dictatorship. All its citizens are granted automatic asylum in any free city.”
“So your government knows I’m here.”
“Certainly not.” Paz sounds offended. “No self-respecting free city would allow politicians to weigh in on refugee issues.”
“Right. Of course.” Turns out, I have a lot to learn about free cities. Like, the fact that they call themselves free cities.
The seesaw wail of a siren is building in my ears. A flashing blue light pulses through the dark trees—a med drone zooming at us.
The gardener makes space for it, heading off to water the plants, I guess. But the voice of the city stays with me.
“You seem disoriented, Rafia.”
“Yeah, kind of. Can you remind me how long I’ve been in Paz?”
“You arrived eight days ago.”
“Right. But you said ‘welcome back.’ Did I leave?”
“Your privacy settings make certainty impossible. Two evenings ago, you ordered dinner from Sukotai Ramen on Empire Street. Since then you’ve been notably absent from the city interface.”
My hunger spikes at the mention of noodles. But the pain is stronger.
The night before last was about when the rebels and Victorians left this city for Shreve. So why didn’t Rafi wait for me?
“Did I ever—” A flinch chokes off the words. The med drone is wrapping a cluster of tendrils around my leg. Then suddenly it’s numb down there. My other limbs are growing heavy, the pain receding from my body. “Did I say anything about leaving Paz?”
“You made no official requests. Anything else would have been erased for—”
“Privacy reasons,” I finish with a sigh.
I’m almost starting to miss the dust. Of course, in a surveillance city, the wardens would be grabbing me for coat stealing about now.
A twinge of guilt goes through me.
“I should mention something.” Maybe it’s the painkillers in my blood, but an urge to confess is bubbling up. “I was really cold earlier, and kind of took something.”
“Yes. That coat was reported stolen thirteen minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Euphoria is wafting through me now. “So I’m in trouble.”
“Not unless the wardens catch you,” the city says. “Med response and criminal investigations are mutually exclusive parts of me. And I rarely concern myself with minor property crimes.”
“That seems wise.”
“You have a compound fracture in your left leg. Two broken ribs, and one lung is partially collapsed. Nothing serious enough to need a human doctor.”
“Nice. I’ll just lie here, then.”
“That is not advised, Rafia. Bone grafting will take at least eight hours. May I suggest returning to your apartment during the process?”
That wakes me up a little.
“I have an apartment?”
“Free cities don’t let refugees sleep in parks.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No offense taken. But perhaps some sleep will improve your cognition. With your permission, this drone will render you unconscious for transport.”
It goes against my warrior instincts to be at this machine’s mercy, but I can’t find my sister with a body full of broken bones.
“Sure,” I say. “Knock yourself out.”
But it’s me who gets
knocked
out.
Waking up is dreadful and ill-advised.
A haze of painkillers clouds my vision. Dull aches pound in my bones, and my right leg is a strange mix of numb and … wrong.
The bed is nice, though—as soft as Rafi’s at home. Only the best pillows.
I shake my head, trying to clear the fuzz.
The room is oddly familiar. The walls pale colors. A big screen set to be a mirror. A makeup table.
Then I realize—it’s laid out like
Rafi’s and my bedroom at home.
Only the pictures of us on the walls are different. They’re photos of our speech, when we told the world our secret. Me, dirty and body armored. My sister, perfectly composed—two edges of the same knife.
And two beds, like she was waiting for me to join her in Paz.
Or maybe she was homesick … missing Shreve despite everything.
It’s certainly not the room of a penniless refugee, or of someone who was planning on running away.
“Where did you go?” I ask the emptiness.
For a moment, I expect the Paz interface to answer. But this is a privacy-worshipping city. Rooms don’t listen.
I sit up carefully, waiting for twinges of pain. Nothing comes, and the med drone is gone. My bones must be back where they belong. I’m not hungry anymore, thanks to a food patch on my left arm.
The Victorian hoverboard is charging in the corner, new crash bracelets beside it. My pulse knife sits on the bedside table—it must’ve followed me here.
The scarlet dress has been cut away. But this is Rafi’s place, so there has to be some clothes somewhere.
There’s a door where the hole in the wall should be. With all their handmade clothing, Pazx must not use fabricators much.
I stand up, the floor cool beneath my bare soles. My legs are wobbly, but the knitted bones seem strong. The closet door slides open at my approach.
I stare at what’s inside.
She’s organized everything by color, just like at home. That same even spacing, the shoes obsessively neat on their stands.
But these aren’t Rafi’s clothes.
Some workout sweats, like I would own. Mostly sensible trousers and shirts, all handmade. Local clothes for blending in.
Where did she get all this? And why leave it behind?
Like she left our old room behind …
It feels like another message from my sister that I can’t understand.
Getting dressed, I notice something new and strange.
On my right wrist, little faces have appeared, like two rows of tattoos. Smiling, frowning, surprised, peaceful, sleepy, angry, querulous, excited, happy, lustful, blank-faced, and a dozen other expressions I don’t recognize.
The med drone has given me feels.
“Really?” I say. “You can’t listen without permission, but you can do random surge on me?”
When the city doesn’t answer, I look around, angrier every second. There must be some way to get the AI’s attention.
On the makeup table is a small orange dome, the Paz seal on the base, a fat dial on top. The dial twists clockwise until there’s a solid click.
The city’s voice is instantly in my head: “Good morning. Are you well?”
“Mostly.”
“Excellent. For the future, may I suggest crash bracelets?”
“You may.” I hold out my wrist, showing the new feels. “Um, last night’s kind of fuzzy, but did I ask for these?”
“The request was made a week ago. The med drone simply carried it out.”
“Oh.” A vision of Rafi’s temper tantrums flashes through my head—her depressions, her manias. The Palafox psych team saying she was falling apart.
I stare at the little faces. Did she come here to get feels?
If so, why run away without them?
“Try one if you like,” the city says. “May I suggest Morning Buzz? The face with large trembling eyes.”
I look closer. Lined up in two rows, the feels look like a tiny jury judging me.
“No, thanks. I have no shortage of feelings right now.”
“The drone may have overstepped its bounds. It failed to spot the larger issue with your med scans.”
“An issue with my scans? Am I sick?”
“You are very healthy. But your millimeter-wave scans from last night were …” The voice pauses for a few seconds, which, for a city-scale AI, is like a person mulling their words for a century. “Unexpected.”
I shake my head, trying to clear the painkiller haze.
Then it hits me—when I was posing as Rafi in House Palafox, their security scanned me for implants. The tissue damage and knitted bones from my years of combat training almost blew my cover.
My body tells the truth, even when I’m lying.
“Yeah, my medical history is complicated. Lots of cosmetic surge. My bones must look funny.”
“Your results are not funny. Nor are they from cosmetic surge. They are consistent with a decade-long combat training regime.”
Turns out, lying to a city-size brain is tricky. I flail for something clever or distracting to say.
But all I have is “So you know who I am.”
“Of course, Frey.”
My real name sends a cold needle of panic through me—like my old nightmares of being found out.
Identity theft is a crime. Much worse than stealing a coat.
“I wasn’t planning on lying, but you just kind of assumed …”
“Unforgivable on my part.” The city sounds amused. “Especially after your sister tried the same deception, though in reverse.”
I frown. “And Rafi’s not in jail. So you’re not going to arrest me either, right?”
“Please, Frey. Paz is not a carceral city. And there’s no question of theft. Your sister has made you her legal proxy.”
My mind goes blank for a moment, staring at the blue dome.
“I’m Rafi’s … proxy?”
“What’s hers is yours, as per her will and testament. You are also her heir. All this is yours.”
I sink into the chair at the makeup table. My face stares back at me in the mirror, drained of blood.
“Where did she get all this stuff, anyway?”
“From someone quite wealthy, one would presume. That table is handmade of natural teak. But it would be privacy-missing for me to speculate further.”
I groan. “Can you at least tell me why she made a will?”
“Her motivations are private, but she was quite thorough. You can even take her name, if you wish.”
“I don’t wish. Where did she go?”
“I can’t tell you that, Frey.”
The ache in my bones comes rushing back, thudding with my heart. “Because you don’t know? Or because she requested privacy?”
“For me, those are the same thing.”
I let out a disgusted sigh. This is my sister’s terrain, not mine—the niceties of protocol, local laws, and arguing with AIs.
But she wanted me to come here and find all this. She recorded her last feed on the streets of Paz. She knew the city would guide me here once it spotted me. She made me her heir, left me clothes like hers …
Is Rafi planning on disappearing forever?
“You seem agitated. May I suggest Calm. It’s the calm face with closed eyes and—”
“I don’t want to be calm! My sister might be in danger!”
“Is this a matter of public safety?”
Of course—danger trumps privacy. Maybe this is a way to get the AI’s help.
“Everyone in Paz is in danger,” I say. “There’s an attack coming.”
A hint of a pause. “From Shreve?”
“Who else? My father dug up an ancient weapon in the Palafoxes’ ruins. He told me that he plans to use it against you.”
“Ah, the submarine.”
I frown. “Submarine?”
“A craft capable of sustained and independent underwater—”
“Yeah, I know what subs are.” I manage not to punch the orange dome. “Are you saying my father dug up an old submarine?”
“Its date of manufacture is unclear. But a Shreve underwater craft has been stationed in the deep ocean the last six days, at some distance from Paz. It’s at the ocean bottom, scanning for oil reserves, we assumed. Do you have other information?”
“Not much.” I sift through my memories of Rusty military tech. Subs were for sinking ships, mostly. But they could fire city-killing missiles as well. �
�My father said you wouldn’t know what hit you.”
“Unlikely.”
“You don’t find this nervous-making? You don’t even have an army!”
“Paz has no soldiers. But our missile defense is impenetrable, our occupation strategy unparalleled. My processing cores are safely buried under three kilometers of solid stone. We have been prepared for an attack from Shreve since the war began. We are not nervous.”
The city’s confidence is impressive, until I realize where I’ve heard that tone before.
“The Palafoxes weren’t afraid of my father either.”
“The Palafoxes are a vestige of the old regime—human leaders. They couldn’t hope to match the collective intelligence of a free city. Even you fooled them.”
“You don’t know what my father is capable of!”
“The whole world knows what he’s capable of, Frey. His recent actions have made sure of that.”
A frustrated groan slips out of me—yes, they all saw what happened to Victoria. But no one understands that it can always get worse.
Maybe it’s useless, trying to argue with a city-size ego.
“I’m just trying to help you,” I say.
“Of course, Frey.” The city changes back to its jovial self. “Allow me to be helpful too. As Rafia’s legal proxy, you have access to her pings. There’s one waiting to be read.”
“A ping? Rafi left a message for me?”
“I don’t know who it’s from. Here in Paz, pings are strictly private.”
“Ugh. Just show me.”
A message interface appears in the makeup table’s mirror, listing exactly one ping.
It’s from Srin Härkönen.
Srin was a classmate of Col’s little brother, Teo. She convinced him and another kid to run away from their boarding school at the start of the war. To make my father look bad, they pretended to have been kidnapped. They even left spatters of their own blood behind.
She’s the scariest thirteen-year-old I’ve ever met—and rich enough to afford the contents of this room. She’s been helping my sister.
“Play,” I say, and Srin’s voice enters my head.
Hey, Frey. You found this! Maybe you’re not as bubbleheaded as your sister says.
I’m still here in Paz, doing some extra credit for my propaganda class.
Shatter City Page 9