Another pause. More confused looks.
“You mean,” X says slowly, “the virus is passed on to bricks and mortar?”
“Bricks are too dumb for a virus.” Yandre shrugs. “But mortar has safety sensors in it. Water pipes are made of smart plastic. Anything metal can be structured for intelligence. You can make a whole building into a brain. And once they put in wiring, all those new structures will start talking to each other.”
“About what?” Charles asks.
“Everything that happens in them.” Yandre waves a few more images onto the screen. “These sprayers add nanocams and listening devices to everything they touch—the fireproofing, the moldings, even the wood finishes and paint.”
Essa’s eyes widen. “Dust in the walls.”
The chill of the ice sleeve on my ankle travels up my whole body. Finally this all makes sense.
I sneak a touch of Calm to keep my voice steady.
“This is the second part of my father’s plan,” I say. “My sister trained her whole life for this—to take control by charming people. Imagine if she knew what everyone was saying to their friends, writing in their diaries, muttering in their sleep.”
“Just like in Shreve,” X says.
I shake my head. “Worse. In Shreve people know the walls are listening. Here, nobody hides their emotions or opinions. Everyone’s feels are out in the open.”
X clears the airscreen with an angry gesture. “He won’t even need Rafi, then. His propaganda teams can adjust their message house by house, person by person.”
Essa has wrapped her arms around herself.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Now the other cities will have to force Shreve out!”
“Frey,” Yandre says gently, “you and your sister gave your speech, and it didn’t work. Unmasking your father isn’t enough to end him.”
“That was my fault. Because I stayed there.”
“No, it’s because the other cities did nothing,” Boss X says. “You can’t shame dictators, Frey—you have to crush them.”
The trickle of Calm freezes in my veins. My father has an army, and we’re thirty people hiding in a cave.
“We can warn the other cities about this virus,” Yandre says. “But they don’t always believe rebels.”
Too much is building up inside me—the ache in my ankle, the panic in my heart. Not knowing how to save this city.
I give myself a longer touch of Calm.
“My friend has a feed network,” I say. “She can spread the word.”
Essa speaks up. “I will too—not all of us in Paz are lying down. We’ll start killing every one of those Shreve fabs. I’m not going to live in a city where the walls are watching me.”
Her hand is on her wrist, and I can tell from her voice that she’s Steadfast.
Boss Charles shrugs. “I’ll bet you half the construction sites are already infected.”
Essa doesn’t blink. “Then we’ll check every wire, every pipe, every wall.”
“Without a city AI?” Yandre asks.
Another silence falls on the council.
I remember the city’s arrogance. Its certainty that missile defenses and occupation strategies would keep Paz safe. But the AI couldn’t even save itself.
Then I remember …
“Right before it died, the Paz AI said something to me, out of nowhere—Iron Mountain.”
Essa sighs. “You told me and Srin. Those words don’t mean anything special in Paz.”
“Or to me,” X says, looking around his crew. “Anyone?”
The room is silent for a moment, then one of the rebels shyly raises her hand.
“Um, there’s a saying back east, Boss, where I come from.” The rebel clears her throat. “They never die who are buried in the Iron Mountain.”
Boss X stares at her. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
The young rebel shakes her head. “Never made sense to me. Why would they bury you if you aren’t already dead?”
“Excellent point.” Boss X sighs.
“Paz was supposed to have secret defenses,” Yandre says. “Maybe they’re hidden in a mountain somewhere.”
“But why tell me?” I ask.
“Did you warn the city before the quake?” Boss X says.
“Yeah, of course. The AI just laughed it off.”
“Until you turned out to be right,” he says softly. “You were the only person in Paz who knew Shreve was to blame. Someone with combat training and rebel friends, who was already at war with Shreve. With so many city officials dead, maybe the AI had no better option than you.”
“For what?” I ask. “What’s an Iron Mountain?”
Everyone looks at Yandre again.
“Maybe it’s a password,” they say. “It calls a hidden army from the hills, or turns local traffic drones into warcraft. But there’s no way to find out—the city archives are buried with the AI, three klicks down. We can’t beat Shreve with a password!”
“So this is what you called me here for,” Boss Charles says. “Two words that don’t mean anything?”
“And new targets, Boss,” Yandre says. “We can’t let those fabs keep working.”
She shrugs. “We can’t get them all. It’s time to face facts—we might lose another city to the dust.”
The words twist inside me. Two million more people under my father’s thumb.
If he takes over here, how will the next city stop him? Or the next?
He can rattle the earth. Make towers fall.
And what does this mean for Col? Who’ll dare to push my father out of Victoria if they’re afraid he’ll knock their city down?
Maybe this is why my sister ran away into the wild. Because there’s no winning against him.
The storm in my head is growing, until I have to slip a hand beneath my leather sleeve. Without looking, my fingers find the right face.
And I am Steadfast again.
Boss X wants us to stay overnight, but Essa and I leave the moment it gets dark.
My ankle is still mottled with bruises, and twinges when I put weight on it. The rebels’ autodoc has fixed the break, but soft tissues take time to heal.
There’s no time for that, though. I have to get home before Srin gets too worried. I have to tell Col that I’m okay, but that another city is at risk of falling to my father.
And I have to get myself ready …
Paz might soon be too dangerous for me to stay, and X has promised to look for my sister. I’ll have to leave Shatter City behind to find her.
Slipping out of the rebel stronghold into the darkness, I feel like the world is shaking under me again.
Steadfast. Calm.
The rebels have given us two hoverboards and some parts for Srin’s gear. Not just to spread the word about the virus—turns out X’s crew loves her cooking feed.
“Be careful getting home,” Yandre tells me at the edge of the excavation crater. “The RFS’ll be hunting rebels today.”
I look down at my sweats, clean at last, almost dry. “Do I look like a rebel?”
They shrug. “In the dark, we all do.”
Boss X is there too. He doesn’t say good-bye, just checks the knife at my waist. The charge light is green, the pulse engine freshly tuned by the rebels’ armorer.
“You give good presents,” I say.
“Here’s another, then.” He hands me a chip—the data from the Shreve fabricator. “We’ll tell the other crews. But I can’t promise you we can save this city.”
I sigh. “There’s always the Iron Mountain—whatever that means.”
“Someone will know.” He takes my shoulder. “But whatever happens, you have a home with us, Frey.”
His touch sends something through me—like a feel I don’t have a name for. Treasured? Safe?
“And you’ll ask about my sister too?” I ask.
“I’ve already sent out word. If she’s really with a crew, no matter where, we’ll find her.” He smiles. “But don’
t forget what I said on the train—Rafia of Shreve can take care of herself.”
Essa and I fly back out of the city center, through wrecked towers and building sites.
As we pass construction drones at work, I wonder how many are using my father’s infected parts. Maybe they’re already spraying sensors into the walls, injecting a prying, cold intelligence into the stones themselves.
In the central city, Essa and I don’t bother to hide. No one lives here—no wardens to wonder why we’re on brand-new survival boards, with backpacks of extra food. Like we’ve come to Paz for a camping trip.
But when we reach the first refugee inflatable tent, Essa leads me lower, down into the twisty pathways of ruin. In the months before the quake, she was teaching her little brother how to ride, taking him on all-day flights through the alleyways of Paz.
“Stay close,” she says. “We’re coming into the Seatac patrol zone.”
“Right.” I tighten up our formation. The city of Seatac is about three thousand klicks up the coast, and likes to think they’re strictly neutral about local politics. Their relief force is here to save people, not take sides, and they don’t like disruptions of good order.
My father must love them being here.
We go slower—checking around corners, staying below the rooftops.
This part of town wasn’t leveled by the quake, but debris from the fallen towers still lies heavy here. Everything is covered with a layer of gray ash.
A few Pazx are out in the ruins, collecting random objects, maybe searching their own homes for personal effects. They wear breathing masks and goggles, and walk with the heavy steps of Melancholy and Remembrance.
“Down,” Essa hisses, descending fast.
I spot it over the rooftops as we drop—a dust cloud, the kind raised by heavy fans. A supply lifter, or a big hovercar.
We settle in a narrow passage. One of those streets where the buildings were strangely untouched by the quake. The homes look inhabited, the cobblestones swept. Cats eye us from the shelter of flowerpots.
Animals are prized in Shatter City. According to locals, the cats and dogs all got twitchy about ten seconds before the first quake hit—a low-tech early warning system.
They’re also good company when you’ve lost everyone else.
Essa retreats into the shadows as the hovercar passes overhead.
As I join her, its lifting fans stir the flowers. The cats look up, languidly unimpressed.
The car is marked with vivid green stripes.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Diego is no ally of my father’s. The city was known for its freedoms even before the mind-rain.
But the car slows in the air. One of the cats drops from its perch and slithers away through an open window.
And I realize—Diego wardens shouldn’t be here in the Seatac Zone, unless they’re looking for someone.
I slip the data chip from my pocket and hand it to Essa. She frowns at me.
“Just in case,” I whisper. “If anything happens, run.”
A sound from above—two wardens are dropping from the car in bungee jackets. Another takes up a position on the rooftops. No weapons drawn, but they all look ready.
My whole body is alarm bells now. Battle frenzy with nowhere to go. I don’t want to hurt anyone from Diego, and my ankle will slow me down in fight or a chase.
I sneak the briefest touch of Courage to steady my voice.
“Anything wrong, officers?”
“You tell me,” the nearest one replies, landing softly on a pile of rubble. His eyes sweep across our hoverboards, the backpacks piled in the shadows. “You dropped pretty quick when you saw us.”
“I’m a Shreve refugee,” I say. “Thought you were RFS.”
That usually gets sympathy from Diego wardens, but this one nods like he was expecting me to say it.
Maybe that shower yesterday wasn’t such a great idea. Without its usual layer of grime, my famous face is too obvious.
“Where were you yesterday, just after dawn?” he asks.
“Attending to private matters,” Essa answers.
That’s how all good Pazx answer that question, but the warden shakes his head. “I wasn’t asking you.”
He’s looking at my pulse knife. Of course. The wardens who spotted us after we destroyed the fabricator—they must have eye-blinked a picture of the scene.
We can’t fight all three of them without someone getting hurt.
But it’s me they care about, not Essa.
Which means I have to focus their attention.
“Yesterday morning?” I scratch my head. “Pretty sure I was trying to talk my little sister out of doing something brain-missing. She had this crazy plan of blowing up a Shreve fab.”
That stuns them for a second, and I glance at Essa.
“Tell Col I’m okay,” I whisper.
She nods, then tips her hoverboard beneath her and races off through the alleyway, too low for a hovercar to follow.
Before they can react, I pull off my hood and cry out in a clear voice, “I’m the first daughter of Shreve, and I’m formally requesting asylum.”
“We can find no record of your refugee status,” the pleasant woman says.
I stare at her across the blank white table, wearing Rafi’s bored face.
“The city’s in ruins, the AI’s dead—and you’re wondering why my paperwork is missing?”
“Understandable, of course,” she says. “But it complicates the situation.”
“What situation? You’ve kept me waiting for hours, and I haven’t done anything.”
She smiles a polite and empty smile.
“What’s your name, anyway?” I ask.
“You can call me Sinjean,” she says. Like it’s not her real name.
She isn’t a relief worker.
She isn’t even wearing a uniform, just a gray monastic dress, shapeless without its belt, and a small Diego flag pin. This whole building is a blank-walled prefab, airlifted here in pieces after the quake. From the outside, it looks like a warehouse.
From the inside, it looks like the local headquarters of Diego Intelligence.
“If you are who you say you are,” Sinjean says, “there shouldn’t be a problem. Do you consent to lie detection?”
“Of course. Just ask your questions.”
“We will. But first please engage your Neutral feel.”
Right. Anyone can beat a lie detector test with a sufficient dose of Calm.
I hold the expressionless little face on my wrist.
The Steadfast drains out of me, the Painless too—my ankle starts to throb again. Suddenly I’m aware of the dozen sensors aimed at me, monitoring my voice, my skin response, my irises.
I’ve spent my whole life telling the same lie over and over. But I’ve been Frey for almost two weeks now. Speaking in Rafi’s voice suddenly feels wrong, like I’m losing myself …
I take a deep breath. I need to get out of here.
“Ask your questions,” I say, no tremor in my voice.
“Are you an armed combatant against the sovereign city of Shreve?”
“A combatant? My father was holding me against my will! Forcing me to marry that stupid boy!”
Sinjean hesitates, maybe checking an eyescreen for my lie detector results. But I’m telling the truth so far.
“He was forcing you into marriage? Is that why you’ve taken up arms against him?”
“My sister’s the one playing rebel, not me.”
Also true.
“But you were carrying a pulse knife. Not to mention your general …” Sinjean looks up at my shorn hair.
I look at hers. A generic cut, and her face is instantly forgettable. Perfect complexion, but boring features—typical surge for an intelligence agent.
“Fashion advice from a Diega,” I say. “How shaming.”
“It’s not a crime to have orange hair, but attacking relief equipment is. And yesterday morning, someone of your appea
rance did exactly that.”
“Someone of my appearance was on the feeds two weeks ago, calling for my father’s head—while I was planning a wedding.” Also completely true. “Can’t you tell us apart?”
“No one can,” she says. “Therein lies the problem.”
Sinjean sounds genuinely disappointed, like she wants to let me go.
Diego understands the threat my father poses. Theirs is the only relief force in Paz concerned more about his schemes than when the next shipment of spagbol arrives. But they need a reasonable excuse to release an armed saboteur.
There’s a bluff I’ve been saving. “Identical twins have different fingerprints. Check mine.”
I splay my hand. Sinjean pulls out a warden box and waves it across my palm. She stares at my fingertips the whole time.
They’re quivering, but I make it look like Rafi’s righteous anger when she doesn’t get her way.
Finally Sinjean sighs. “Unfortunately we have no record of either of your prints. Your father has been very careful on that front.”
Of course—or someone would’ve realized there were two of us a long time ago. “All those evening gloves at breakfast, explained at last.”
She looks me up and down for the hundredth time, and I twitch under her scrutiny. My muscles refuse to settle into Rafi’s posture, her expressions. Lying has become tricky without my feels.
Sinjean frowns. “Are you all right?”
Raw anger travels through me. I almost reach for Focus, but she’d think I was using it to lie.
“No one in this city is all right,” I snap, then settle myself. “As a first daughter, I’m not used to sleeping in a refugee tent.”
“If you’re really Rafia, why stay here? You could have sanctuary in any free city in the world.”
These are excellent questions, so I hit her with the truth again.
“Because I’ve always protected my sister, since we were littlies. We saved each other, not just from assassins and kidnappers, but from him.”
That familiar look of discomfort—of distaste—comes over Sinjean’s blandly surged face. People don’t enjoy thinking about my family.
“How does dressing like a rebel help Frey?”
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