by Lu, Marie
She belongs here, in my arms, and I belong here, giving my whole heart to her.
A deep hunger rises in me. This time, I don’t waste a second. I wrap my arms tightly around her and push her back against the bed. My skin prickles in pleasure wherever she runs her fingers. She runs her hands through my hair and sighs contentedly against me. Her waist, her slender neck, the curve of her hips … I shiver at the warmth of her. Everything about her is like a fever dream. I want to preserve this in time for us. I want a million more of these moments.
She unbuttons my shirt. I pull hers over her head. My fingers run across new scars on her, here and there, a healed scratch, an old raised bruise. She is older, as am I, and we are different now than we were. I love her more for it, wish I had been able to share in all of it with her over the last few years. She kisses my cheeks as I fall into her. Her hands slide down my back. I shudder at her every touch.
The rest of the apartment is silent. Outside, I hear the passing of airplanes. Somewhere in the distance, music is playing. Millions of lights twinkle beyond the windows and against the night, each one a different life, a different moment from ours.
But tonight, we let ourselves stay entwined together, as if everything will remain as perfect as this moment. As if this could be our future.
EDEN
I don’t know when Hann plans to unleash the real signal. All I know is that Hann finally comes to see me again in the makeshift chamber that he’s offered me at the estate.
I jump a little as he enters the room with two of his guards.
“I don’t mean to startle you,” he says to me now, holding up both of his hands. Then he nods at the guards. “You’re no longer needed,” he adds. “I’d like a word alone with Mr. Wing.”
The guards do as he says. They step out, and the room is suddenly just me and him.
Hann sits down in a chair across from me and leans his chin on his hand. “Word is that your brother is now safely back with the AIS,” he says.
“Thank you for keeping your word,” I reply.
“Do you know why I’m here right now?” he asks me.
I just stare warily at him. “Why?”
He reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket, then pulls out what looks like a heavy purse. With a careless gesture, he tosses it in my direction.
I fumble with it as it lands against my chest with a chunky clink of metal. “What’s this?” I say.
“Your payment, of course,” Hann replies. He nods at me. “I only pay in real gold corras. Soon, this place’s virtual currency will be useless after the Level system is disabled. I figure you’ll want real money instead.”
I glare at him, then peek once inside the purse.
There are hundreds—thousands—of gold coins in here. Each is worth a thousand corras. This entire purse must contain at least a million.
I look sharply back up at him. He’d promised a handsome pay for what I did, but this level of money is an amount that I hadn’t guessed at.
Hann smiles at me. “Surprised?” he says. “I’ve made enough of a fortune doing what I do. It’s a worthy investment for me to spend that money on talent like you.”
This kind of money is beyond what even most of the Sky Floor citizens can earn. It’s money that could pull Pressa and her father completely out of the Undercity. It’s money that could buy you the kind of Level that would make you safe forever.
It’s also the kind of money that’s dipped in the blood of people who have paid dearly for crossing someone like Hann.
I close the purse back up and toss it to the floor between us. “How long are you going to keep me down here?” I ask quietly. “Until my brother comes to find me? Until the AIS descend on you? Just because you disable the Level system doesn’t mean they don’t have a way to hunt you down.”
Hann smiles, unconcerned about the way I’ve rejected his money. “I’m not going to keep you anywhere,” he replies, nodding toward the door. “You’re free to go, whenever you wish. My guards are ready and waiting to escort you back to the surface of the Undercity whenever you want.”
Now I know he’s messing with me. I laugh, shaking my head at him. “What kind of game do you want me to play?” I say.
“I don’t play games with people I respect,” Hann replies. “Or have you just lived in a gamified society for so long that you don’t even know how to react to people outside of its system?”
“Why would you let me go?” I demand. “I’ve been a proven asset to you. I know where this place is. I’ve seen you, and I could go straight to the AIS the instant you release me.”
He shrugs. “I know.”
I spread my hands wide. “So—that’s it? You’re setting me free?” As if to test him, I stand up from my chair and walk toward the door. Everything in me tells me that this is a trap, that the instant I try to step out into the hall, they’ll clap me in chains or shoot me dead.
But Hann just watches me. “Go.”
When I still don’t budge, he leans forward in the chair and regards me with a focused expression. “Do you want to know why I’m letting you go? Do you want to know why I’m willing to give you millions?” He smiles. “Because you’ll be back.”
“What?”
“You’ll return to find me again. I can see the fire in your eyes, the way you try to hide the satisfaction of seeing that machine work with your engine attached to it. I know that you believe in the same things I believe in.” He narrows his eyes. “It’s haunted you the entire time you’ve lived in Antarctica, hasn’t it? The way this place runs its Undercity? The way the government handles the poor? The Level system that is as corrupt as it is innovative? You hate it all, just like I do.”
I shake my head. “Once I step out of here, I’m never coming back.”
Hann leans back in his chair and heaves a sigh. “Yes, you are,” he replies. “You will, because when you see the chaos that will reign in this city after the Level system is disabled, when you see the change it can bring about in the upper-class people you loathe … you’ll realize that what I do here is the noble cause. You want to be a part of something significant, don’t you? All people with your talent desire to make a difference. And I can help you get there. You can go from obscurity in your brother’s shadow to becoming one of the most prominent disrupters of change that the world has ever seen.” He nods at the purse on the floor. “And think of your friend Pressa. You can change her life forever with that. With a new job at my side.”
I start to shake. “You’re offering me a job,” I repeat incredulously.
He nods. “Yes. I’m offering you the chance to come work for me, permanently. Think of the things you could do, Eden, without restrictions placed on you. Think of not having to cater to anyone else when it comes to your schedule and your life.” Hann laces his fingers together. “You’re free to come and go as you wish. Should you need to contact me again, you can use this.”
A series of six numbers appears in front of my view. I stare at it for a second, memorizing it, before it vanishes.
Hann smiles briefly at me. “I never intended for you to be my prisoner, Eden, and now I want to prove that to you in the most obvious way.”
I don’t trust him. I don’t believe him.
And yet, I think he’s telling me the truth. Somehow, this killer—the most-wanted criminal in all of Ross City, someone whom Daniel fears and hates, a person who has ruled the Undercity with an iron fist—is the only person I’ve ever known who seems to see me straight to my core.
Now he’s offering me a chance to work with him.
“I can’t do this,” I tell him. “We aren’t the same person. We don’t have the same beliefs.”
Hann stays even-tempered. “You can tell yourself whatever you want,” he replies. “I understand that it would be difficult to do this, because you would be separating yourself completely from your brother. But I know this is what’s in your heart. You want to change things, just like I do. And you’re tired of other people gett
ing in your way. Tired of being unable to help the ones you care about the most. Tired of being unseen.”
I stay where I am, my mind whirling with confusion. On a surface level, he’s someone I’d need to avoid at all costs. But this …
“What if I choose not to work for you?” I say. “Will you still let me go?”
Hann nods. “If you choose not to, then what’s the point of keeping you here? Life is too exhausting to hold someone hostage every time I need something to get done.” He waves at the door. “Go. Confide in your friends. Find your brother. Never see me again. I won’t hunt you down at races; I won’t have my guards stalk what you do. All I can tell you is that you’re about to see what Ross City should actually be like, once it rises from its ashes. It’s time for someone else to run this place.” He leans forward on his knees. “Then you’ll soon ask yourself … who are you helping, exactly, by refusing my offer?”
I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know how to prove him wrong. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Ross City.
All I do is step toward the door. I go through the entrance and into the hall. Just like he’d said, his guards are waiting to take me wherever I want to go. And Hann is still behind me, sitting in my chamber.
I turn my back on the estate. Hann’s words ring in my mind, lingering, haunting.
Who are you helping, exactly, by refusing my offer?
And right as I consider those words, a high-pitched sound crackles around us.
I press my hands to my ears. The chip implanted near my temple seems to grow warm. My heart jumps into my throat.
Then everything goes silent.
It’s over as quickly as it happened, like an electric shock that blitzed right through the walls and floors and us. The guards, too, felt it—they hunch for a second, flinching, then look at one another in bewilderment before everything settles back down.
But something is missing. I open my eyes and see nothing virtual hovering in my view. No numbers, no account, not even the persistent warning that I’m unable to connect down here. There’s a weight to the silence, like the kind of quiet that you hear when you’re truly severed from civilization. The buzz and hum of technology. It’s all just gone.
He’s done it. It worked.
Dominic Hann has ordered the real signal to trigger. And he has just eliminated Ross City’s entire system.
DANIEL
It happens the next morning, right as June and I reach the AIS headquarters.
I’m awake by dawn, pulling my shirt and trousers on and tugging smooth my suit. Beside me, June’s already ready, as impeccably neat as any soldier trained in the Republic.
I don’t know what to say about what happened between us last night. Neither does she, I think. All we can do is glance occasionally at each other as we get ready. When I do speak, it’s about Eden.
“AIS messaged,” I tell her as we step out of the apartment and into the hall. “No luck hunting down Eden’s location. But my description of the underground has narrowed it down to a rough patch of the city.”
“What part?” June asks.
I bring up a map between us as we enter an elevator station, then point to a section of the grid. “This area was once in development to expand the Undercity to floors beneath the surface,” I explain. “They were going to house Undercity folks down there, in cramped spaces underground. It turned out to be a disaster, though—not enough escape routes up to the surface in case of fire or flood, not enough emergency ventilation. There was a huge fire that ripped through the space. After that, no one bothered with the maze of tunnels.”
“And it sounds like what you saw when you were down there?”
I nod. “The kind of building I saw, the construction site … it had the kind of infrastructure that reminded me of that story.”
June looks down at the city through the elevator’s glass windows. “We’re going down there, then, aren’t we?” She glances skeptically at me. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“I have to,” I reply. “I’m not going to keep lying around up here, waiting for AIS to find something.” In desperation, I bring up Eden’s account again and try one more time to track his location.
That’s when I feel it.
There’s a spark of something electric, as if every particle in the air were suddenly charged—followed by a sharp crack in my ears. It’s so loud that I flinch. June does the same in unison.
“What was that?” she exclaims.
But as soon as she says it, every single one of our Levels flickers out. June’s name and Level vanishes from over her head. The faint glow on the handles of her glasses disappears. The numbers and bars in my view fade into nothing. The elevator shudders to a stop on one of the middle floors of the building. When I glance up at the ceiling, I notice that the power’s out. None of the elevator’s panels are lit.
What happened? A short circuit in the system?
My first reaction is to turn on my grid lines—but there are none. Nothing about my system works at all. It’s as if it turned off.
June glances at me with a frown. “It looks like it’s not limited to our building,” she says, nodding out at the city.
Sure enough, she’s right—every building close to us also looks blacked out, with no hovering virtual info on any part of them.
June glances at me. “AIS? Can you contact them?”
I shake my head. “No. Everything about my system is disabled. Come on.” I step off the elevator, then motion for us to head down to the walkways. We start sprinting along the halls. Here and there, we run into a few other people also coming out of the elevators, looking bewildered.
One of them shouts at us as we pass. “Your systems working?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No,” I call back. So it’s not limited to our accounts, either. A heavy feeling starts creeping into my chest. Something has gone severely wrong—and a part of me knows it must be somehow tied to what Hann was doing.
What he had stolen my brother for.
As we sprint down the stairs, I almost run right into Jessan and the director, right as they exit into the stairwells from the headquarters.
“Wing!” Director Min exclaims. “You’re not supposed to be up—”
I ignore her comment and keep going. “Your systems?” I ask. “Anything working?”
She looks pale as she shakes her head back. “Our Levels—everything—our data—all the info that the government displays and tracks and keeps. All of it’s gone—not just reset, or flattened, but gone. Wiped.”
A cold fist tightens around my chest. It’s impossible, I want to say—because everything I know about the infrastructure of the system, how spread out across the city and how decentralized everything is. But I’ve seen too many goddy impossible things come true to believe those words.
“It’s citywide?” June asks.
Jessan nods grimly. “As far as we can tell. We can’t reach anyone. No calls going in or coming out.”
If the entire city’s system is down … the pandemonium on the streets in the Undercity must be unimaginable. My heart seizes at the idea of Eden still being trapped somewhere underground there.
“I’ve seen what happens when you have a complete blackout in a city as divided as this one,” June says as we run. Her face turns grimmer. “When people who have been held down for decades suddenly realize that their chains have been removed, things unravel quickly. It can take less than an hour for a society to destabilize.”
Jessan looks sharply at June. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean, you’d better make sure your military is down in the Undercity right now, before things get out of hand,” June replies.
I think of the constant outages we had in Lake, the unrest that would take over the streets. June’s right. There had been one particular outage that once affected the entirety of Los Angeles—and within the hour, fires had broken out all over the city as the poor sectors clashed with the Gem ones. I remember seei
ng the tanks rolling down the streets to bring order back. My mother had forced us to stay inside for two weeks as police swarmed through the neighborhoods.
“Ross City is not the Republic,” the director says stiffly to June.
“No,” June replies, just as severely. “It’s worse. This is a far more concentrated place, and the effect will be swifter. As far as I can tell, without your system in place, the Undercity will crumble, and it will happen soon if you can’t get your system back up.”
Damn, I’ve missed hearing her talk when she’s breaking down a situation. Min scowls at the bluntness in June’s voice, but she doesn’t argue back this time. Instead, she returns to trying to place a call out to the President.
“Emergency power’s still not up,” she swears under her breath after a moment.
“Head northeast as soon as we reach the ground,” I say to June. “We’ll go in the general direction where we’ve been hunting for Eden.”
She nods without hesitation. I have no idea what we’ll do after that, or how we’ll find our way down, but it’s the best bet for finding my brother.
We finally reach the bottom floor. The stairs lead out to a tall set of heavy, barred metal doors, and when we slide them open, they reveal the streets of the Undercity.
We step out into a scene of chaos.
All around us, the names and data hovering over each street stall, each shop, each person, are gone. When I look up, I notice that virtual overlays have vanished from over the elevator stations too. There’s nothing we look at that isn’t already real.
My eyes go to June, but she’s looking down the street. Some are taking advantage of the moment already, and the space in front of a station is starting to flood with people. My first, fleeting thought is that all the stations have also powered down instantaneously—if everyone’s Levels have been flattened, then everyone is trapped wherever they happen to be.
But that’s replaced almost instantly by my second thought: Our Levels haven’t just been flattened, they’ve been deleted. In one fell swoop, Ross City’s Level system—the class system I’ve always argued about with AIS, the same system that Eden rebelled against by constantly coming down here—has been cleared.
