He was in.
Time to get to work, he thought with a sizzle of adrenaline. He waited until the staff member began refilling food items before rolling to the side and onto the floor. To his relief, the livery jacket he’d hidden in the cart hadn’t fallen out during the trip from the kitchens. It would at least buy him some time before he was discovered. He tugged the serving uniform on, blending in with the other staff tending to the partygoers.
His eyes quickly scanned the room. Being on the station still felt a bit disorienting, especially with the panoramic view of Earth staring back at him. A queasy feeling twisted in his stomach, but he forced it to calm, resolving not to look at the blue-and-green planet swirling beyond the synth-glass.
If I was Freiter, where would I be? Daxton had already searched the banquet halls, recreation arcades, and medical wards. Still, there was no sign of his friend having ever come on board. It was as if he had simply vanished.
Nothing made sense. Not the message Freiter had left for him days ago, warning him about the Atlas station, or the fact that the boy hadn’t tried to contact anyone since. Dread filled Daxton’s chest. Something had to be wrong.
The opulence of the penthouse made Daxton want to laugh. Strawberry champagne flowed freely, and all around him girls dressed in elaborate gowns giggled as they clinked crystal glasses together. Dozens of people gathered around a small stage to watch an artist paint with holographic laser strokes that seemed to float in the air like magic.
He pushed through the crowd. There must be two thousand people crammed in here. How would he be able to spot Freiter through the crush of party guests? Daxton sidestepped a serving draadhart, searching for a familiar coif of perfectly groomed hair.
A cannon exploded, causing the entire room to start. The crowd screamed with glee as a shower of glittering candy rained down. He used the diversion to hedge his way past two bouncers waiting by the wall and found himself standing before a holographic projection of the capital city.
But it was wrong. The skyline had been drawn by someone who had obviously not been to New London in quite some time. Daxton could count at least three structures, including a cloudscraper, that had been heavily damaged by Restoration attacks in the last six months alone. The military training center was in the wrong spot entirely. At the center of the laser-lined city sat the palace, its sleek outline and conical towers looking far more beautiful here than they did in reality.
“Want to dance?” a girl asked, bringing Daxton’s attention back to the party. She wiggled her hips, her tight dress shimmying even farther up her thighs.
“No thanks,” he shouted over the music. “My friend is missing.” He pulled up Freiter’s military photo on his wristcomm, showing it to the girl. “Have you seen him?”
She giggled, and the sound grated on Daxton’s nerves. “He’s cute. If you find him, send him my way—maybe he’ll be more fun than you.” With a wink, she danced back to the center of the party.
“You’re not his type,” Daxton muttered to himself. Freiter was a notorious flirt, and Daxton knew he would love to spend the night on the arm of a lux station boy. It made sense that he would be at a party filled with every temptation imaginable.
So why wasn’t he here?
FOUR
THE CLOSET LAY EXPOSED WITH A sense of growing hopelessness. Nothing Tesla owned was suitable for an upper-level party. Even though the invitation granted her access through the deimark, no Level Two bouncer would admit her wearing any of the singed shirts, dungarees, or overalls drooping limply from her wire hangers. She’d perked up at the sight of a forgotten skirt, but upon closer inspection, she remembered the tattered piece had been banished to the back of the closet to be used as scrap bandages for welding burns.
Kiyo had been right to guess she’d jump at the chance to access files from the upper dataports. Shortly after the execution, she’d begun sifting through videos and news reports regarding the evidence against her father. Most of what she’d found had already broadcasted on holovision screens throughout the station: Nevik Petrov had been caught stealing classified information, a Class One felony of treason against the Grand Imperator, the monarchy, and the First World Union.
But just days after she’d begun the search from an old dataport on Level Six, the files disappeared, erased from the Gulch’s records. By the time she’d finally mounted enough courage to watch the actual execution recordings, the videos were gone, along with her chance to finally discover what words he’d whispered at her seconds before the execution squad extinguished his life in a single roar of rifle fire.
Her boots nudged the small wooden box beneath her bed. She hadn’t opened it since she’d been reassigned back to the lower levels, but the state of her wardrobe didn’t leave her with any other option. The Level Five textile shops would be closed for curfew, and even if she could bribe one of Minko’s runners to contact the shopkeepers, the chance that they might have anything wearable for a penthouse party was slim. Not to mention the price tag would no doubt be higher due to all the upper-station girls looking for dresses. Getting her hands on a shirt right now might set her back weeks' worth of the money she’d managed to skim from Minko.
With a grit of her teeth, she knelt and opened the box.
Inside, on a bed of delicate tissue paper, rested her old academy dress uniform: a tailored black jacket with blank spaces where her patches used to be, form-fitting slacks, a stylized cravat, black gravity boots polished to a high sheen, and a blood-red silk blouse. She touched the fabric gently, blinking back tears.
Her entire life she’d dreamed of being a pilot, of escaping the Gulch and maybe even the Atlas if she managed to score a crew seat on the cargo shuttles that carried goods and supplies between the station and the Earth's surface. Instead, she’d been thrown back to the brutality of the slums.
She’d been born a Gulch rat, and thanks to whoever had framed her father, she would die a Gulch rat.
Tesla left the jacket, choosing the pants and blouse. At least they wouldn't be too conspicuous, allowing her to blend in as much as possible. Accessing public dataports wasn’t illegal, but Commander Grey wouldn’t take kindly to her poking around, especially above the deimark. She spread the clothes out on her bed and squeezed her curvy frame into the nearby shower.
The hot water stung her skin as she quickly scrubbed and washed the grease from her hair until the bottom of the shower turned a milky grey from her efforts. She leaned outside the water to release a latch on a compartment door the size of a stale loaf of bread from Bok’s market stall.
Inside rested small bottles, each filled with a different scented soap—one of the few items Nevik Petrov had kept upon the death of his wife almost a decade before his execution. Once, when Tesla was much younger, she’d accidentally spilled an entire bottle. Her father had been angry at first, but later, she’d heard him sobbing quietly in the lower bunk, sniffing the bottle’s rim for the last remnants of his wife’s perfume.
Clara Petrov had been a Level Four teacher before falling in love with Tesla’s father. Her body had been accustomed to the clean air pumping through the filtered upper levels, but marriage across the deimark was said to threaten the security of the barrier, so Commander Grey had ordered her to relocate downstation. The heavy pollution from the incinerators, coupled with exposure to the Gulch’s frequent outbreaks of illness, had left her body weakened. A quarantine crew came for Profea Clara Petrov while Tesla was in school taking an exam about the history of the First World Union. Bulky figures in biohazard suits had escorted her mother to the decontamination rooms somewhere deep within the station’s bowels. An outbreak of Bruise Boil, newscasters on the holovisions confirmed, had swept through the lower levels days later, and the incinerators had burned at all hours to keep up with the bodies. Tesla and her father had been spared, but Clara Petrov never returned.
The memory made Tesla slam the perfume compartment shut. She had to look like an upper-station richie, but she didn’t have to sme
ll like one. She grabbed the harsh soap she’d stolen from the welding crew’s chemical wash station and scrubbed her body until her skin felt shredded and raw.
She knew the upper stationers—both boys and girls—often wore makeup, but it hadn’t seemed necessary to buy for her new life in the Gulch. She rummaged around in a chest outside the bathroom door and found a small piece of drawing charcoal. Hands steady from hours spent piloting the transport simulators traced a thin line just above her lashes, cross-hatching two small segments toward the outer corner of her eye in the latest richie fashion. Or at least it had been a year ago. The charcoal wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
Tesla dressed quickly, sighing when the soft red silk of the blouse touched her skin as she half-tucked the shirt into her uniform slacks. She laced the black boots over her pants and grabbed her newest leather utility satchel from the shelf by her bed. It fit surprisingly well with her outfit, giving it less of an academy look while also providing her with space in which to hide tools, just in case she needed something to help her access the dataport. With one final touch, she donned a long silver necklace engraved with a compass—Kiyo’s gift to her on the day she'd aced her pilot admissions exam.
Crossing to the front door of the apartment, she passed a mirror and stared. No grease spots smeared her cheeks. No dirt ringed her neck from crawling between decks and access hatches for hours. There were no holes in her clothes allowing bare skin to peek through. The skin along her cheeks glistened, still slightly tender from the hard scrub.
I look like a spoiled richie, she thought bitterly. Taking a deep breath, Tesla exited her apartment, already feeling like an imposter.
Two chubby faces blinked back at her from a window that had been crudely cut into the front panel of the shipping container next door. Ren and Ming, twin boys no more than six years old who worked on Tesla’s welding crew as tool runners, stared back at her from behind breathing masks designed to protect their lungs against the toxins of the slums. Ren waved wildly, and Tesla smiled in return before the boy’s father scooped him away for supper.
Something she suspected might be one of Old Lady Burbage’s pet rats scurried past her foot as Tesla reached the bottom of the stairs. The guard from earlier scowled at the sight of a citizen out past curfew, his fingers unbuckling his sidearm as she neared. His youthful face and pristine uniform were obviously fresh out of security training. For a moment, Tesla wondered if it was the guard’s first time downstation. Probably thinks we’re all criminals ready to riot.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he barked. His wrist raised to his lips and he whispered into a metal speaker fused into his skin, a standard-issue bionic modification for all members of the station’s security forces. Seconds later, two additional guards arrived. “Curfew is active.”
Tesla raised her wristcomm, displaying the brightly colored invitation. A three-dimensional holograph of a young girl’s smiling face bounced onto the screen and blew kisses before exploding into a shower of animated fireworks. A part of Tesla wondered whether or not the invitation was fake. Not that she thought Kiyo would forge a document, but she wouldn’t put it past a richie to bait him upstation as a prank.
A quick scan of her wristcomm made the guard grunt, and Tesla knew the invitation checked out. She stepped back, but the guard took her by the elbow, sniffing the air.
“You smell like scouring soap. The same kind that was reported stolen ten days ago from a welding supply zone. Wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” He nodded toward one of the other waiting guards. “What do you think, Miggins?”
The shorter security force guard, a large-nosed girl with red hair who appeared to be a few years older than the boy, simply shrugged, probably too bored to even care. “Let her go. If she’s trouble, the Jackal will deal with her.”
Tesla hurried toward the station's main elevators, deliberately not looking over her shoulder in case they changed their minds. Inside the nearest elevator, a lift operator slept soundly. “Hey,” she said, poking the man sharply in his side. “I need to get to Level Two.” The man woke with a start, his face a sickly grey in the elevator’s yellow haze. She flashed the invitation once again, and smiled sweetly as the operator fumbled to place his hand on the control scanner. Once unlocked, he pressed the button for Level Two.
The compartment shuddered and began its ascent. Tesla watched the floor numbers change, indicating her proximity to the deimark. She focused on the gentle rumbling of the lift, careful to keep her breathing regular and normal. She’d once heard a rumor that the scanners were equipped to sense heart rate, pulse, and breathing patterns, to better anticipate trespassers trying to cross into the upper station without proper credentials. Like most of the Gulch legends, there was no telling how much truth was in the tale.
Still, it didn’t hurt to be careful.
The harsh red scanning lasers of the deimark filled the elevator. Tesla held out her wrist. Even though she’d lived on Level Three during pilot training, albeit briefly, crossing the barrier always made her nervous. A series of sharp electronic chimes sounded, and the light turned green, validating her invitation. Her breath rushed out in a whoosh and she turned to smile at the lift operator, but the man had already fallen back asleep, his snores echoing off the metal walls like scrap circuits down a trash chute.
Tesla jumped as the wall behind her shifted from a blank slate to a whirl of color, and she realized it was, in fact, a holovision screen cleverly disguised into the panel. It had to be a recent upgrade, because she certainly would have remembered the cheerful draadhart now staring back at her. Instead of Minko’s lifelike dancers, the robot had a faceless chrome exterior, unadorned save for the station’s emblem on its shoulder. “Greetings from the Atlas,” its musical audio unit recited as if the Gulch were some foreign land. “We are pleased to welcome His Majesty, the Grand Imperator, bringer of prosperity to the citizens of the First World Union...”
The citizens living in luxury, you mean. Tesla tuned out the android’s rambling. The view beyond the elevator’s glass doors had shifted dramatically once they’d crossed the deimark. The rusting metal bulkheads of the Gulch now gave way to sleek white walls. She took a deep breath, savoring the purified air pumping through the lift from two circular fans overhead.
The elevator slowed, and Tesla braced herself as the compartment now moved horizontally toward Sector Nine where the party was being hosted. The lift operator nearly fell over from the change in direction, but Tesla nudged his sleeping form back onto his work stool.
A light flashed above the doors: ARRIVING L2S9. MIND THE GAP.
The glass opened, and Tesla’s eyes drank in the wonder of the sights beyond. The opulence of the party made Minko’s club look like the public toilet behind Bok’s market stall. The doors of the lift had spit her out in a cavernous penthouse, easily ten shipping containers tall. Floor-to-ceiling synth-glass windows looked out onto the swirling pastels of Earth’s surface. A hologram projected a detailed skyline of New London, the capital of the First World Union. Each cloudscraper shone with a pearlescent glow, their edges traced with pulsing neon light, and animated personal transport cars darted between buildings like jeweled wasps.
Tesla’s stomach clenched. Tables piled high with rotating platters of candies, cakes, and fizzy drinks flanked the entrance. A small, rolling draadhart skittered by, spewing wine bubbles the size of meteorites into the air, and giggling partygoers slurped at them with fiber optic straws. Without warning, a cannon erupted, showering the room with a kaleidoscope of glittering light bursts. The richies passed blue tablets to one another as they cheered.
Tesla frowned. The claws of Minko’s skirri empire knew no bounds.
A bouncer cleared his throat next to Tesla, and she allowed him to scan her wristcomm for the invitation. His eyes shifted to her hair, and with a grunt, he scanned her access permit again.
“You going to keep checking it, big guy, or can I join my friends?” she demanded,
infusing her words with an air of boredom. The man finally waved her forward.
Unlike the Gulch, the upper station had no curfew, which meant that other than the muscled bouncers there were no guards at the party to keep a lookout for trespassers. Tesla eyed the room, but saw no sign of Kiyo. She jumped as a hand grabbed her arm, but it was only a squat boy, his hair braided and styled to resemble a crown, who pushed her out of the way as he began to dance beside a girl with blade-like cheekbone enhancements. A draadhart dressed in the ombre livery of food workers offered tiny pastries from a glass tray, but Tesla declined, making a mental note to check the food tables for raspberry pastilles—Kiyo’s favorite.
Two teenage girls bounced by Tesla in a fit of laughter, the delicate fabric of their dresses sweeping against her hand. The shorter of the two, a girl with an abundance of digitally implanted freckles, stopped long enough to point at Tesla’s utility belt. They both tittered behind their hands and ran off into the crowd.
Ignore them, Tesla thought, as she instinctively reached for her necklace. Her thumb rubbed its surface in a soothing circle, a nervous habit she’d learned over time. Brushing glitter from her shirt, she craned her neck to look past the richies, searching the room for a dataport away from the prying eyes of the partygoers. She spotted one a few stories above the party, near the edge of a balcony facing the windows, the lights of its screen and keyboard both glowing faintly.
A delicate spiral staircase connected the main floor to the catwalk. On her way, she grabbed a large handful of pastilles from a dessert table, stuffing the sugared desserts in her satchel for later. If her sharp words had made Kiyo skip tonight’s festivities, the treats might go a long way toward earning his forgiveness.
Just as she reached the stairs, Kiyo’s voice whispered softly over her shoulder, “And just where do you think you’re going?”
Atlas Fallen Page 3