Who I killed.
“Boss!” comes a cry from across the chamber.
We linger a moment, until I nod my okay. Then we turn and run.
The other rebels are already gathered when we arrive, around a pile of data bricks in Paz orange, sitting in the corner of the chamber. The backed-up city is smaller than I expected, all of it on a single, fully charged hoverpallet.
But a warning perimeter is painted on the floor around it—jagged stripes with lightning bolts.
Everyone stays well back.
“Boss,” one of the rebels says. “This might be the power supply.”
A set of cables leads from the pallet to the chamber wall.
“Too easy,” I say, inspecting the pallet from every side. The backup would need a link to the surface for new data to come in, and for solar power. But beating the defenses has to be trickier than simply unplugging them.
The warning stripes look lethal, but the Paz AI wasn’t a killer at heart. And there aren’t any dead rats piled up on the perimeter.
“Don’t cut the cable,” I say. “I’m going to wake it up.”
X shakes his head. “Frey, let’s discuss this.”
“If the other cities are on their way here, we don’t have time.”
I step past the perimeter.
A siren shrieks to life—red lights fill the chamber. A dozen weapons spring from the wall, their laser sights playing across my body.
I freeze, hands up.
“I’m not here to mess with you.”
No answer. The weapons splay out, taking aim at the rest of X’s crew. But one stays focused on my forehead, its sighting laser a halo in my vision.
A whisper of fear feathers in my chest. I’m almost grateful for it.
“There’s been a disaster in Paz,” I say. “We need you.”
An endless pause drags out, but finally the sirens cut off.
The machine speaks.
“Ah, Frey. I’ve been expecting you.”
“You know who I am?” I ask.
“My last full backup was seven hours before the disaster,” Paz says. “But during the quake, a block of data arrived—detailed readings from the earthquake, and a message that you might come.”
I stare at the pile of cubes. “How much of you is in there?”
“All of my memories, in compressed form, but only a fraction of my intelligence. My only connection to the outside world was severed by the quake, except a few sensors on my solar panels. May I ask you something?”
I nod, ready for the AI to test me, to make sure I’m really here to bring it back to life.
“How many dead?” it asks.
That sends a leftover spark of Grief through my veins. Suddenly the pile of cubes looks forlorn, lonely in this cavern of dead trees and crumbling corps.
“A hundred thousand,” I tell it.
Another pause, nothing but the hum of the room around us, the air passing through all those empty tunnels.
Finally Paz says, “I lack the capacity to process that.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“You tried to warn me,” Paz says. “The earthquake wasn’t natural—it was murder. But I failed to listen.”
And I didn’t scream my warning from the rooftops, because I was busy looking for my sister. The thought makes me reach for my wrist. But there was nothing there that could’ve fixed this, even before I lost my feels.
The lights in the chamber shift from red to white again. The weapons pull back into the walls.
“Take me home,” the city says.
The backup data lifts into the air on its hoverpallet, weightless but still massive. It takes some pushing to get it moving, but then momentum carries the pallet along.
Yandre and the others join us at the entrance to the central chamber, bringing two of the wounded rebels back. Their burns are awful—charred hands, leather melted into skin. Full medclamps are wrapped around their arms, delivering doses of painkiller. But horror still shows in their eyes.
The other six are lost.
I reach for Grief … and nothing is there.
Or maybe not nothing. A dull ache that won’t go away, that I wish there was a way to sharpen.
Climbing away from the central chamber, we pass them one by one. Yandre takes their crew badges, blackened and twisted by the flames. We add their weight to the backup’s pallet, an echo of the city’s countless dead.
The burned remains of spider drones crunch underfoot.
“How sturdy are you?” Yandre asks the city backup. “If there’s a firefight.”
“There won’t be any shooting. I have the shutdown codes for every drone in the mountain.”
I sigh. “We could’ve used those.”
“There was only time for a few words, Frey,” the city says. “The quake was hitting me as we spoke. But I’m sorry for those you’ve lost.”
“Pay us back by retaking your city,” X says. “And hitting Shreve any way you can.”
“That I will guarantee.”
I glance at the data blocks. At least Paz’s confidence has been faithfully preserved.
As we draw closer to the entrance, we hear drones scuttling in the darkness around us. True to its word, Paz sends them away.
Soon the opening is in sight, bright sunlight lancing through.
“Wait,” the city says. “There’s something out there.”
We drag the pallet to a halt, readying our weapons.
“My topside sensors detect two hovercraft. What origin, I can’t tell.”
Yandre pulls out their handscreen. “Less than an hour since the blast. Whoever it is got here quick.”
They all look at me.
“Could be Shreve,” I admit. “But when the Vics rescued me, other cities came in with orbital forces. Could be anyone.”
Yandre looks up from their screen. “Can’t tell from here, Boss. Someone has to go out and look.”
X gestures to me. “Come on.”
The two of us climb toward the light. We cross the long-dead rebels, the bodies of the robots destroyed by the splinter mine, weapons still gripped in their metal hands. The giant blast door still stands, half raised, our hoverboards stacked outside.
We creep out into the stones from the long-ago avalanche. After the darkness inside the mountain, the sun is punishingly bright.
I can’t see anything at first, but the hum of lifting fans fills the air.
X points down at the tree line. Two heavy orbital drones linger there, fully armored, investigating the spot where the flamethrowers exploded.
Their livery is the black and gray of Shreve.
“He’s here,” I whisper.
That familiar tremor goes through me. Being watched, followed, trapped. He’ll never leave me alone. That feel isn’t gone at all.
It won’t be until he’s dead.
X’s ears twitch, and he looks up—a flash crosses the bright sky. Then another, followed by the huff of drogue chutes opening.
My father is coming in force.
“What do we do?” I ask. “We can’t let him kill Paz again.”
X squints in the daylight, looking down at the tree line.
“Is that a wrecked drone?” he asks.
The Shreve orbitals are hovering over something in the rocks. The ceramic spine of an airframe, picked clean, the rest of it crumbling into orange-brown rust in the wall of haze.
“Yeah,” I say. “Looks like it got eaten.”
X looks at me, and smiles. “That gives me an idea.”
“Lure the other two into the nanos?”
“It’s that or wait for Shreve to come in and get us.”
“We’re out of ammo, Boss. And no rebels are coming to help us with that haze still there.”
“Those old robots at the tunnel entrance,” X says. “Do their weapons still work?”
“Well enough to shoot Teo. But there’s only a dozen of us!”
“Ten,” he says. “You and Yandre have to fly the backup
out.”
“That pallet barely—” I begin, but X gestures at the hoverboards stacked behind us. Six extra, thanks to the dead rebels inside.
Four of them could carry the data, two each in tandem mode with me and Yandre. X’s plan is almost workable, except …
“One speck of that haze gets on you, Boss, you’ll be defenseless.”
He shrugs. “Not if it gets on them first.”
Another streak crosses the sky, another reentry boom. Black-and-gray Shreve livery on the chute.
Every minute we argue only makes the situation worse.
“Okay,” I say. “Might as well try. But I’m sticking with you, Boss. Let someone take the backup out.”
X hesitates, his hands falling heavy on my shoulders.
“Frey. I have something to tell you.”
I flinch. This moment had to come.
“Me first,” I say. “Something I should’ve told you along time ago.”
He cocks his head a little. “Quickly, then.”
It takes long seconds for me to start talking, seconds wasted. But then another Shreve orbital streaks the sky, forcing the words from me.
“The assassin last year. The boy you loved … he was trying to kill my sister.”
“No. Your father was the target.”
“Right,” I say. “But Rafi took his place at the last moment. All we knew was that someone was shooting at everyone, at Rafi. I did my job.”
“You protected your sister.”
“Yes … with my knife.” A gulf opens in me, an emptiness. “I killed the boy you loved. I’m sorry, X.”
He doesn’t move.
“It was my job,” I say.
I know this isn’t my fault. The assassin could’ve killed my sister. But emotions have no logic.
I killed X’s love.
The worst part—it was ecstasy for me, the moment in which I first found my battle frenzy. Every fight since is just an echo of that rapture.
It’s the only feel I’m certain about, and I found it in killing someone. By turning him into a spray of red mist with my first pulse knife.
Another boom rumbles the sky. X still hasn’t moved. His dark eyes are silvering with tears.
“It was what I was created to do.” My voice breaks at last. “Save my sister.”
Finally he nods, like the meaning of my words has penetrated.
“The assassin,” Boss X says. “His name was Seanan.”
I killed my brother.
With a pulse knife, leaving almost nothing of him.
The first person I ever killed. The day I found my ecstasy.
My father’s security must have known within a few hours. They would’ve checked the assassin’s DNA, those little fragments of him that I scattered across the room.
From that moment on, my father hated me.
It was logic-missing of him—protecting my sister was what I was born to do. It was why he made me. But emotions have no logic, especially not his.
Seanan was his real child, not a body double. His first heir, not a spare.
This all storms in my head as Yandre and I fly hard across the Iron Mountain’s spine, two hoverboards on either side of us. Taking the Paz backup away from the thunder and flames of battle. Saving a city from—
I killed my brother.
It keeps hitting me, pounding like a headache. Like the ghost of my feels hammering on the inside of their tomb.
That’s why my father had a painting of me in his trophy room. Why he sent me to Victoria as a hostage. From the day I turned Seanan into red mist, he was searching for an excuse to throw away his murderous daughter.
The Palafoxes had to die so that my father had an excuse to end me too.
The war, the conquest of Victoria, a hundred thousand Pazx dead—what if all of it was one vast ritual, a sacrifice, a way to cleanse himself of me?
As we fly down the mountain’s other side, the Paz backup sends a signal to the nanos in our way. The haze shimmers before us, then falls like sudden rain. We pass over the rocks, and our boards don’t disintegrate beneath our feet.
But the battle spills down behind us—the orbital drones giving chase. Two people with six hoverboards, laden with bright orange cargo, we stand out.
They must know the rebels’ attack is only a distraction.
A deadly one. X’s board roars up to meet the drones, and the flicker of his pulse lance takes two of them down.
I killed his love, my brother, as I was born to do.
The rebels are falling, overmatched. Their ancient Rusty guns, taken from the robots, do almost nothing against heavy drones. And now a wave of Shreve soldiers is coming down, in powered armor, each streaking from orbit on their own glider wings.
But the haze springs up behind us again, catching another of our pursuers.
The orbital drone writhes against the bright sky, tumbling as the nanos tear through its lifting fans. By the time it hits the ground, nothing’s left but an airframe.
Just behind it, X tries to veer from the wall of haze—too late.
“Paz!” I cry. “Turn the nanos off again!”
“Frey,” it says. “My city needs saving.”
X’s board shudders, skidding in the air. He tries to bring it to a halt, but it’s crumbling beneath his feet. He’s thrown forward, rolling in the dirt.
More drones are coming across the mountain, and glider soldiers behind them. The wall of nanos grows taller, Paz’s defenses set to full to save itself.
Anything else would be logic-missing.
I watch Boss X spring to his feet, defiant, his lance flaring for a moment. Just like my knife, the nanos can’t get past the rampant energies surrounding it.
But there’s only him left, tiny in the distance, against the might of Shreve.
Yandre and I plunge into the trees.
Ride hard, ride fast.
Don’t look back.
Feel nothing.
I killed my brother. I killed my brother.
And X is taken or dead.
My sister throws a bash.
We won, after all. We took the Iron Mountain. The ancient Rusty ghosts buried there are dead at last. We rescued the mind—maybe the soul—of Paz.
Everyone shows up. The crews that scouted the mountain, even those who lost their boards and had to walk back. The two hundred unlucky rebels who came all this way, only to miss the battle. Those who never cared about saving some city AI, but who wouldn’t miss a Boss Frey bash. One crew arrives in a vertical-takeoff jet, splitting the sky with a sonic boom before it circles around and lands on a tendril of fire.
The Victorians are here too, all of them alive and well. After a two-hundred-klick ride with a tube sticking out of Teo’s chest, the autodoc had him patched up inside an hour. Yandre and I arrived to find him and Col waiting at the entrance of the mine.
We kept waiting, but none of the other rebels who went into the Iron Mountain came home after us.
Not one.
Rafi’s cavernous throne room isn’t big enough, so the party spills across the mountainside. Food, noise, drink, bonfires, the night sky peppered with safety fireworks—even a few explosions of the old-fashioned, unsafe kind.
It’s not like the stately summer festivals in Shreve, those measured, choreographed, color-themed displays. Rebel fireworks shows are mock battles—flares split open and lit, sent skittering along the ground at each other, homemade rockets sputtering at the sky.
I watch from the ridgeline, alone with my bubbly, letting myself feel the celebration without it asking too much of me. All that joy is too much to bear, when the Joy inside me is burned away.
Yandre and I are the heroes of the hour, the only people to emerge from the heart of the Iron Mountain alive and free. There’s talk of Yandre becoming a boss—and maybe me too.
I’d be Boss Rafia, of course. My greatest victory, and my sister gets the credit.
I lost my strongest ally. X, my friend.
Somewhere deep in my
heart is languish, grief, and torn.
I killed my brother.
“Frey?” someone calls through the darkness. I can’t quite place the voice, so Rafi’s balletic posture fills me.
“Wrong sister,” I say, gesturing at the party. “Frey’s down there.”
“I’m not looking for a boss.”
My eyes search the darkness. Then a weeping willow of flame bursts in the sky, shimmering blue and gold across a bland, familiar face.
A freshly minted avatar of the sovereign city of Diego.
The bubbly in my stomach goes sour. It’s nervous-making, meeting someone you recently chopped in half.
But nervous is better than feeling nothing.
“You’re looking well,” I say. “Compared to last time.”
That uninflected smile. “Can’t say the same for you.”
I rub a hand over the fuzz on my scalp. After two close encounters with exploding flamethrowers, I’m basically hair-missing. Though maybe the city means my sadness.
“Taking a page from Tally’s book,” I say. “Letting the scars heal naturally.”
“Nature is overrated,” Diego says.
“Spoken like a city. Speaking of scars, sorry about cutting you in half. It wasn’t personal.”
The avatar shrugs. “I’m not a person.”
I turn away. Something about that shrug has never looked quite human.
“You’re not a rebel either,” I say. “And this is a rebel bash—so why are you here? If you think you can lock me up again, I have several hundred heavily armed friends who beg to differ.”
“We detained you for your own safety.” They sit on the rocks beside me, straightening their dress with small, precise motions. “And you seem safe enough.”
“So this is a social call?”
“We’re assisting in the transfer of the Paz backup. We’ll take it back tonight and load it straight into the walls. In a few days, the city will start coming back to consciousness.”
I frown. “And erase my father’s spyware? I thought you wanted to let him think his conquest was on schedule.”
“A change of plan—we can’t let a fellow AI drift without a city. Besides, the Paz backup has proof that the earthquake was unnatural. That should make your father’s existence difficult enough.”
“Won’t it just make everyone more afraid of him?”
Shatter City Page 26