Mirror's Edge

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Maybe those transports were empty,” Col says. “A bluff, to keep us from blowing up the tower!”

  A little shudder goes through me. What if my father’s survival instinct is too exquisitely refined to wrap himself in a dirty bomb?

  Like when he sent me in Rafi’s place as a hostage—he gives the illusion of taking risks but never exposes anything he really cares about to danger.

  It was just me he was willing to lose, not his first daughter.

  “Then we can take him out.”

  “No need,” Rafi’s voice comes from behind me.

  I turn. Her eyes are alight. She looks almost feverish.

  “They did it,” she says, breathless. “Boss X’s crew and the Diego squad—they got through the heavies.”

  I look up. The firefight above us has fallen silent.

  Col takes my hand.

  “Is he up there?” I ask.

  Rafi nods.

  “They have him. And he wants to see us.”

  The stairs up to our father’s study are a wreck.

  Blood and bullet casings. Scorched and broken stone, fiber dangling from holes in the walls. The massive bodies of heavies shoved aside to make room to walk, like a burial ground for giants.

  It smells like sweat and campfire.

  A military history tutor once told me that pre-Rusties thought battlegrounds were sacred. Climbing past the carnage of this stairway, I wonder if he was serious.

  My father’s study is somehow untouched by the battle. The curved windows taking in the skyline of Shreve are unscratched. The leather chairs, with their soft animal smell, aren’t even smudged.

  The only difference from my last visit is that the huge fireplace isn’t lit. A heavy piece of metal covers it—my father was afraid of rebels coming down the chimney.

  Boss X and Yandre are already here. Field bandages are wrapped around X’s arm, and his fur is matted with dust and blood. Yandre looks somehow unhurt.

  Two Diego jump troopers stand to attention when Rafi walks in.

  Our father is in his armchair, an empty glass in his hand. His army defeated, his city in flames, he still wears a contented smile. Like he’s just eaten the best dinner and is thinking of bed.

  My stomach clenches as his eyes drift across me—that old mix of fear, anxiety, and the pressure to stand up straight.

  But he barely registers my presence. In my camo-surge, I’m just some random with a pulse knife.

  He glares at Rafi in her leather and furs.

  “You,” he says. “Where’s Rafia? I know she’s here—she wouldn’t miss this.”

  My sister smiles, staying in character. “Rafi doesn’t care to see you. The truth is, she despises you.”

  “But I have something to give her—for her birthday. Did you forget? You used to enjoy those parties, from a distance.”

  My sister doesn’t rise to his bait.

  “You have nothing left to give, Father.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he says.

  Her eyes flash. “You might be an obscene excuse for a parent, but I’m still your child.”

  “You were just a copy,” he says. “A throwaway.”

  Rafi’s knife starts rumbling in her hand. “And your own son tried to kill you.”

  A pulse of dislocation goes through me. It’s like watching myself in a dream, saying what I’ve always wanted to our father’s face.

  He only smiles. “I wasn’t there that day. Maybe it was your sister that Seanan wanted to murder. She took his place as heir, after all.”

  Boss X’s hands twitch. I catch his eye, giving him the smallest shake of my head. This is Rafi’s moment.

  “I’ve met Seanan’s friends, the people he loved,” she says. “And he despised you, just like Rafi does.”

  Our father shrugs. “Brainwashed. Raised by rebels.”

  “Well, I was raised by you, Father.” She steps forward, lifting the knife. “And I’m going to end you.”

  That’s when I realize that Rafi isn’t going to reveal who she is. All those years, she hated him on my behalf—for erasing me, for ignoring me, for keeping me locked up, friendless and invisible.

  Rafi doesn’t simply want to kill our father.

  She wants to kill him as me.

  I resolve not to move a muscle. This invasion was my birthday gift to her, after all. This kill goes with it.

  Rafi takes a step forward, knife buzzing, and I half expect the Diego troopers to intervene. But they’re just watching—one has a hovercam floating at his shoulder.

  The city of Diego, always observing. Always testing us.

  “Stop this nonsense,” our father says. “Bring my daughter here, girl.”

  Col steps forward. “You don’t give orders anymore.”

  “And who are you?” my father asks.

  “Col Palafox.” He gestures out the window. “I owed you a wrecked city. I trust the debt is paid.”

  “Ah, the knight in shining armor.” My father stares at Col, looking bored. “Except it’s camo-surge. Pathetic.”

  Rafi pushes Col back, looming over our father. “Did you miss the part where you lost?”

  “I still have cards to play,” he says softly. “Now get your sister—I need to talk to both of you.”

  “You’ll never see her again,” Rafi says, knife pulsing in her hand. “Never touch her again!”

  Her eyes are alight, ecstatic. She gets to watch him die, without giving him the satisfaction of being in the same room one last time.

  My father ignores her shouting, her raised knife. He licks his finger and rubs it on the rim of the glass, creating a soft hum.

  “We’ll see about that,” he says gently.

  The metal plate across the fireplace slides away.

  Filling the hearth, stretching up into the chimney, are stacks of lead-covered boxes. Hundreds of them.

  “Oh, crap,” my sister says.

  My father smiles, holding the glass like something precious and fragile.

  “Now get me Rafia,” he says. “Or I’ll poison this city for a thousand years.”

  Yandre walks to the fireplace, multiscanner in hand.

  It chirps an alert, flashing red.

  They kneel, holds the scanner closer—stuffed between the boxes are slender red packets.

  “Explosives,” Yandre says.

  “Enough to scatter a new kind of dust two thousand klicks downwind,” our father says. “Powdered nuclear fuel. Now, bring me my real daughter.”

  Rafi doesn’t even look at me.

  “Father,” she says. “This whole city is a monument to you. You won’t destroy it.”

  “Hopefully not.” He gazes with distaste at the fireplace, like it’s something the servants haven’t properly cleaned. “I just need both of you in the same room, and we can avoid disaster. Now bring Rafia here, or I’ll end this.”

  His hand is white-knuckled around the glass. Finally my sister looks my way, worried.

  We have no Rafia of Shreve to show him. Even if she reveals herself, there’s no way to convince him that both of us are here.

  We have to go for the trigger, the glass in his hand.

  I glance at Zura, wondering if she can move fast enough. But she’s across the room with Col, as if she can protect him from a dirty bomb big enough to kill a city.

  Beside her, Col catches my eye. He points at the fourth knuckle on his hand—his ring finger.

  Of course.

  I ease myself closer to Boss X and Yandre, out of my father’s eye line.

  My sister sees me moving and starts pacing in the opposite direction. “Why do you want to see Rafi?”

  “To give her my city,” my father says.

  “It’s not yours anymore.”

  “But I can kill it.” He lifts the glass. “That’s just as good.”

  I make a fist, my thumb on the inside.

  “You always said nukes were beneath you,” Rafi says.

  “Many things I’ve done are beneath me
. One adjusts.”

  She smirks. “What if don’t I think you have the guts?”

  “Then a million people die. And another million are sick for the rest of their lives.”

  The variable blade forms in my hand, and I keep squeezing until it’s a meter long, thin as a wire. Then two meters, until it fades into a glimmer.

  “No more stalling,” our father demands. “Get me my daughter!”

  “That can be arranged.” Rafi nods at me.

  The knife is invisible now, and I’m not sure exactly where its tip is. I’m squeezing so hard my arm is trembling.

  But if I can slice off his hand—

  “Stop,” he says, turning to look straight at me. “Whatever you’re doing, you’ll kill us all. This is a dead-man’s switch.”

  I stare at the glass and realize that my father’s hand is trembling too. The fear in his eyes tells me the rest.

  A dead-man’s switch doesn’t go off when you trigger it—it goes off when you let go. If he drops the glass, the world ends.

  I almost destroyed a city.

  I uncurl my fist, letting the knife snap back into the rings. I hold up my empty hands and take a step back.

  But my father is still staring at me.

  “Oh.” His eyes widen. “I see it now. Of course.”

  For a moment, I think he recognizes me from shame-cam, but he’s looking at the way I’m standing—the ready-to-fight pose flayed into me by a dozen combat tutors.

  A wounded flutter of excitement goes through me.

  My father has seen beneath my camo-surge, just like X did coming through his cell door. At last.

  “You’re Frey,” he breathes, then throws back his head and barks a single, choked laugh. He turns to Rafi. “And what did you call me? ‘An obscene excuse for a parent’? Hardly a guard dog’s vocabulary.”

  The flutter dies in my stomach.

  My father turns to me again, disgusted now. “You gave up your name and your face? A throwaway to the end.”

  I find my voice. “This face is temporary. Just like you.”

  He grunts and turns back to Rafi.

  Once more, I don’t exist.

  “Congratulations, Daddy,” she says. “You figured it out—we’re both here. So say whatever you’ve been dying to and then give me Shreve!”

  “Rafia.” Our father sighs, rapturously, as if uttering her name was all he wanted. “I need you to understand this birthday gift. With me gone, the world will help you put Shreve back together. But they’ll always fear and respect you, thanks to me.”

  “Nothing is thanks to you.” She points her pulse knife at the window. “Look what you did to my city!”

  “Yes, this is my fault.” He stares sadly at the glass in his hand. “When I learned that Seanan had died in my own house, killed by my own creation, I lost control. But you’ll do better, as long as you rid yourself of the weakness in your heart. Once and for all.”

  He looks at me. Rafi does too.

  Her voice goes small. “What are you saying, Daddy?”

  “I’ll give you Shreve,” he says, “if you kill your sister.”

  There’s an endless moment of silence.

  Then Rafi lets out a laugh. “Go to hell, Dad.”

  “Happy to,” he says, raising the glass. “But a million people will come with me. Or you can just do this one thing for me.”

  “Why? What did Frey ever do to you?”

  “She turned you against me.” His voice is growing hoarse, ragged with grief. “She gave you someone to take care of, which made you weak.”

  “She saved me!” Rafi shouts. “Without her, there was only you!”

  “She killed your brother,” he says.

  Rafi shakes her head. “You killed Seanan. You traded him for power!”

  “My finest moment! That’s what you need to learn, Rafia—give up your sister, and you can have this city!”

  Of course. Letting the kidnappers keep Seanan is what made my father the way he is, and now he wants to cast Rafi in his own image.

  One last lesson in the etiquette of dictators.

  “With power comes sacrifice.” He raises the glass over his head, ready to throw it to the ground. “Lose one sister, or kill a million people. That’s a choice no leader can hesitate to make!”

  “I’d rather die,” my sister says.

  “Not just you,” my father says.

  My eyes go to the skyline framed by the window—those Futures, so desperately trying to make sense of life in the dust. The cliques who just wanted some drama, some fun. The crims and smugglers scrawling on the walls invisibly, undermining the rigid order of the regime. The widgets cleaning houses, moving every night. The randoms breathing dust and hearing lies and telling themselves this is normal.

  All of them are about to die … for me.

  No one dies for me.

  I step forward. It’s the only way.

  Neither my sister nor my father sees me, though. Their real struggle has always been with each other.

  “You have thirty seconds to decide,” he says, the glass high. “It’s all the same to me.”

  “Wreck it, then!” Rafi brings her knife to full pulse, points it at his throat. “You don’t get to win this!”

  “Frey dies either way,” my father says.

  “Not by my hand.” But there are tears in her eyes, and her voice is breaking. I think she knows the right thing to do.

  “Save a whole city, Rafia,” my father whispers, pointing at me. “All you have to do is tear her heart out.”

  She hesitates, just for a moment. Like she understands.

  “That, I can do,” Rafi says—

  And throws her pulse knife into Col’s chest.

  The world is screaming around me.

  Our father laughing at the spectacle, hysterical and satisfied. Rafi walking into his embrace, gently taking the glass from his hand. Then the spray of pink mist as her pulse knife guts him, shreds him, halves him from bottom to top.

  Zura and Yandre kneeling over Col, calling for the Diego troopers—for anyone—to go for help. But the troopers are too busy taking the trigger glass out of Rafi’s blood-slippery hands.

  Me, sinking to my knees, unable to help Col. Or my sister, who’s howling now, in pain again, like she didn’t want to hurt me this way. Or like she’s realized that killing our father wasn’t enough and never will be.

  Boss X taking me in his strong arms. A piece of me knowing that he’s the only one left who’ll fight for me. And at first I think I’m sobbing—but it’s X, like Seanan has died again today.

  The hovercam from Diego, recording it all.

  Within moments, a huge hovercraft in Paz livery looms in the ragged window. It blocks off the news cams behind it, swarming in the sky, wanting to come in and take historic pictures.

  A dozen med drones scream through the door, descending on the bodies of wounded soldiers, a dictator cut in half lengthwise, a dead Palafox heir.

  I vomit from anguish—but one of the med drones scans me and says it’s radiation sickness, not a broken heart.

  The skyline of Shreve out the window, fractured. But not obliterated, not poisoned for a thousand years. A city saved.

  Col lying, torn, on the stone floor.

  Instead of me.

  I wake up in a softly lit hospital room in Paz.

  There are flowers everywhere—on the windowsills, the bedside tables, climbing trellises made of silver wire. For a moment, I wonder if I’m a captive in a fairy den.

  It’s five days later, a doctors tell me. But it feels like a century.

  They replaced my blood, my skin, some bones in my feet. They had to go all the way down to my poisoned marrow, deeper even than the pretty surge in olden days.

  The doctors must have missed something, though, some spark of radiation inside me—after a groggy day awake, they put me in the tank again.

  I come back with more new bones in my left foot.

  As an afterthought, almost,
they’ve given me my old face back.

  But the mirror is no longer my friend. I want to smash that nose, split those lips, gouge those eyes.

  Vengeance by proxy.

  My sister doesn’t come to visit.

  She’s too busy taking control of Shreve. Like everyone else, I’ve seen the speech she gave after the battle ended. So brilliant, so moving, somehow humble. Our father’s blood still on her face, Rafi spoke of a new city, free and peaceful.

  She didn’t mention whose blood she bought it with.

  The citizens love her—Boss Frey, the once-invisible sister now on every screen, her voice in everyone’s ear.

  She’s decided it’s still useful, being me.

  She’s better at it than I ever was.

  A few hours later, I watch Teo’s speech when he takes his honorary seat on the Victorian elected council.

  He looks so somber in his black uniform. His citizens love him too, after all his family’s sacrifices in the fight for freedom.

  It’s lonely in this bed, watching the word spin into its new shape without me. I lie here, too weak to intervene, aching with an emptiness as deep as the poison in my bones.

  I could talk to the Paz AI. It’s all around me, in the walls, the window glass, the wires of the trellis. Maybe even in the gene-spliced flowers, closing and opening as the sun moves across the room.

  Paz might understand the way I feel, having once lost a hundred thousand pieces of itself, all those people who died in my father’s war.

  But the silence is already too bright and sharp; I worry that the sound of a friend’s voice might cut my shiny new skin.

  The day after my second awakening, a visitor finally arrives.

  “No,” I say. “Not you.”

  The avatar of the sovereign city of Diego smiles. “We’re pleased that your recovery is complete.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. I can barely move.”

  “Radiation is a tricky thing.”

  “You don’t say.”

  The avatar regards me impassively, letting the silence stretch. The host of machines might be processing a trillion thoughts a second, but still they have more patience than me.

  “Why are you here?” I finally ask.

  “To explain things.” The avatar pulls a chair from the corner of the room and places it next to my bed but doesn’t sit. “We’ve decided to leave your sister in charge of Shreve.”