by Lu, Marie
People are now able to enter the stations and stairwells, no matter their Level. Local police patrolling the streets struggle in vain to control the flood of people. Small, isolated scuffles have already started to break out between the authorities and the citizens.
Behind us come several other AIS agents. The director hurries over. “Coordinate the police in this district!” she shouts at me, pointing down the street. “Tell them we’re calling for reinforcements. Emergency martial law, immediately. Understand, Wing? We have no time to lose.”
I nod at her. “Yes, ma’am,” I reply. Then she’s off like a bullet, running with her other agents toward the nearest police headquarters to try to get the emergency lines up and running.
Shattered glass already litters the concrete, and not far from us, people are pushing into a store and eagerly starting to haul things out. Carts full of food they would never have been able to buy with their Levels, armfuls of clothing, appliances, and furniture. Around them, others are starting to get the hint too. I can hear the shouts rising up and down the street.
“Quick!” someone yells. “Before they get the system back up!”
I keep running in the direction that my brother might be in. How the hell am I ever going to find him in this mess? I reach a busy intersection and halt in the middle of it, looking in despair down both streets to see masses of people crowding out into the road. Beside me, June takes my hand and squeezes it once. I look at her, hating the feeling of helplessness that washes over me.
Suddenly, I feel like I’m back in the heat of the war with the Colonies, searching frantically for my brother in enemy territory.
And then, I see something familiar.
There. In the middle of the street. A flash of familiar, wavy blond hair and the glint of his metal glasses. A miracle in the midst of absolute chaos.
At first, I think I’m hallucinating. There’s no way Eden is here.
But I blink, and he doesn’t disappear. There’s his hair again. June also tightens her grip on my hand and points in his direction. “Is that him?” she calls out.
I don’t know how he got away from Hann. I don’t know how he found his way back here to the surface of the Undercity. I don’t know anything except that maybe he was heading back in the direction of our home too, so that our paths crossed.
But I raise my voice, and in it, I can hear my own terror. “Eden!” I shout. “Eden!”
His head snaps over to us. His gaze falls on me. From his distance, I see the recognition click on his face. “Daniel!” he calls back, and it’s as if I were seeing him as a child again.
Everything in me floods with adrenaline. I suddenly start pushing my way over to him. Beside me, June follows. I have to get to my brother before something happens to him. The fear in my heart reaches a bursting point.
Eden shoves his way toward us. It seems to take an eternity for him to fight his way through the throngs. For an instant, I think we’ll never reach each other. This is it, I think. I’m lost in one of my nightmares. I’m running and running toward my brother and I will never reach him.
But then he’s suddenly standing before me. And I’m not dreaming. And I’m sweeping him into a fierce hug. He embraces me tightly back.
It’s Eden, and he’s out of Hann’s clutches.
EDEN
I’ve never seen Ross City without its layers of augmented-reality before. I don’t think it was ever meant to be seen this way.
There are no signs or street names, no hovering messages, no grid lines. Most of all, there are no Levels over anyone’s head. It is as if everything that holds a city together—streetlights, traffic laws, police enforcement—has vanished in the blink of an eye.
Riots are triggered so quickly that—from the AIS headquarters in the Sky Floors—we can see the chaos happening in real time on their screens. At first, people stand around out on sidewalks, puzzled, muttering to one another as they ask others if their Levels had suddenly vanished. Auto-cars and trucks stop in the middle of the roads. The traffic starts to pile up.
Slowly, I see the realization start to hit the Undercity. It ripples through the streets in a wave. Murmurs turn into exclamations, and then into shouts.
The system is down.
The Levels are gone!
And just like that, the ripple becomes a tidal wave. The system is down, the Levels are gone, the system is down, the Levels are gone.
After the scene in the Undercity, the Sky Floors seem eerily quiet. It’s midnight now, and even though we’re at least a hundred floors high, I can see the orange glow of fire coming from the Undercity far below. Smoke rises in plumes as the city brings in the military to try to contain the chaos.
Even the AIS headquarters itself is struggling to stay operational, running on limited backup power. Here in the main lobby, a large screen plays live footage from the Undercity as a newscaster talks rapidly over the scene. It’s weird to see video like this without our Level systems in place.
“Why would Hann just let you go?” Daniel asks me as I pace restlessly by the windows. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I reply, distracted. I’m trying to place a call manually on a phone to Pressa, but nothing’s getting through. On my dozenth try, I swear under my breath and turn to my brother. “He didn’t do anything to me,” I reply. “He told me that he would release you if I helped him install my drone’s engine into his machine.”
“And then?”
“And then…” I hesitate, wondering whether I should tell Daniel about Hann’s history. My eyes go to my brother’s bandaged finger. Hann had promised he wouldn’t hurt Daniel at all—but his promise had only been partly true. Daniel was apparently hospitalized for dehydration. The guards broke one of his fingers.
Because of me, he’d hurt my brother. The thought makes me so sick to my stomach that I have to pause for a moment to fight down the nausea.
“After I finished installing the engine,” I say, “Hann told me that he would let me go, as a gesture of goodwill. But he said that I’d be back.” He knew, fundamentally, that Daniel and I would find ourselves at a crossroads again. That I’m not like my brother.
Daniel frowns at me. “It makes no sense,” he mutters.
“Hann said he has no interest in forcing me to work for him. Besides, he’s already got what he wanted.” I turn back to the windows, where we can see plumes of smoke rising from the streets below.
Daniel narrows his eyes at me. “He’s playing a game with you,” he finally says. “It’s what he’s known for. I’ve seen several cases of him winning over loan victims by giving them the illusion of safety with him.”
Something about the way Daniel just assumes that Hann’s playing a game with me makes me feel wary. It’s true that he’s a dangerous man—he kidnapped us both, after all, and held us hostage. Just the fact that he let us go on a whim … well, it’s something only a confident criminal would do.
But I can’t help thinking about what he’d said to me. What had happened to his son and wife. The genuine grief that had been etched onto his face. The way he seemed to know exactly what was going on in my mind, better even than what Daniel knew.
The call I’m trying to place fails again. I grit my teeth in frustration and toss the phone onto a nearby couch. Then I turn to look at the elevators leading out of the AIS headquarters.
“You’re not going down there,” Daniel says automatically as he watches me.
“I have to,” I reply. “I can’t call through to Pressa at all. If the AIS headquarters is this stripped down in terms of tech, the Undercity is probably completely cut off.”
Daniel’s lips tighten. “No.” He nods at the screen, where they’re showing the streets down below. Barricades have been put up in some parts of the Undercity, but they’re doing little to stop people from hopping over them and organizing into furious crowds. Some are marching down the streets, shouting. Others are breaking windows and flooding into shops.
“See that?” he says, glan
cing sternly at me. “The President himself is flying out tomorrow for his safety, and he’s taking his security detail with him.”
“Anden has offered to host him in the Republic,” June finishes. “He has invited us to evacuate with him too.”
Even the President’s leaving this behind. The thought of us all flying out sends fear rippling through me. What about Pressa and her father? I can’t just leave them here and run like a coward. And even then, tomorrow is far away. Daniel’s heading down to the Undercity in a few hours with the rest of AIS to get things under control.
I turn determined eyes on my brother. “Isn’t your shift next, down in the Undercity?”
“It’s my job to contain this mess,” he replies.
“Your job. Always your job.” I throw up my hands. “You think I don’t worry about what’ll happen to you every time you head out into that? You put yourself in danger’s way every day. But you won’t let me in. You won’t let me join you.”
“I do it so that you don’t have to,” he snaps.
“I have to!” I suddenly burst out. The anger burns in my throat. “When you head out there and don’t come home until late, when you’re captured by a dangerous criminal, I have to deal with it. I have to bear the idea of losing you. You can’t let me just leave Pressa to fend for herself down there. That’s not what you would do.” I take a deep breath and glare at him. “If June were down there, you would tear every street of the Undercity apart to find her. You would keep going until you were dead, and you wouldn’t care what the hell I said.”
June clears her throat uncomfortably at my words. Across from me, Daniel’s quiet. His face has turned pale, as if he’s remembering something from his past.
“It’s going to get worse down there,” June says after a while. I can’t tell if she’s siding with me or not. “People who have suffered for that long, who don’t have the ability to attack higher powers, turn on one another instead. They’ll destroy every shop and stall and home down there, and they’ll do it quickly. So if we’re going to get anyone out of the Undercity, we have to do it now. It’s about to become impassible.”
Daniel’s gaze goes from me back to the dark windows. When he finally speaks, his voice is pulled tight. “Fine. But you’re not going alone. I’m coming with you.”
“Same,” June says.
Even with this compromise, I can feel the chasm widening between us. No matter what Daniel says, he makes me feel small, like a little brother asking for permission to do anything and everything. I turn away, disgusted with myself, and start heading toward the elevators.
* * *
Even though it’s past midnight, the streets of the Undercity are fully lit tonight—with lights from the backup electric system; with handheld lamps, glowsticks, torches, and portable screens held up by protestors; and with floodlights set up along the streets’ barricades, monitored by police and soldiers alike.
Now I run through the streets with Daniel and June at my side. Shouts come at us in all directions. The streets, always narrow, are crammed full of people in every form of celebration and confusion. Some are uncertain, standing outside the front of their stalls or shops and wringing their hands, looking meekly at the police that rush by. Others hang out the open windows of the floors above, squinting at the buildings in disbelief at the lack of any augmented layering. Others take photos with old-school cameras, now that their systems are disabled.
Still others are furious, delighted to unleash their anger by attacking their neighbors with the kind of violence that’d normally get your Levels flattened. There are some taking advantage of the system’s disappearance to break into shops and stock up on all the things they’ve never been able to buy. We pass several young people who are simply wrecking the street for no reason, crushing scooters and boards and auto-buses and spraying them with buckets of paint. In the night, their figures cast long shadows against the wall.
“Things are deteriorating quickly,” June calls to us as we run. “Eden, we won’t have long before this situation makes it unreasonable for us to stay down here. Can we get to your friend before that?”
Pressa. Her name rings through me over and over. Her father’s apothecary is deep in the heart of the Undercity, right in the thick of everything. “We’ll reach her,” I call back as we hit an intersection and make a sharp turn. “We have to.”
A flipped auto-car in the street stops us dead in our tracks. People have already crowded around it so tightly that there’s no easy way around it. Nearby, flames burn gold against the night.
I spit out a curse. “We can’t get through,” I say.
Daniel looks overhead and nods for me to follow. “There’s a way,” he replies. He reaches the end of the street and then darts into a narrow alley between two blocks. His movements are steady and sure, like he’s been down these roads a dozen times before.
We hit a dead end stopped by a locked gate. But Daniel doesn’t stop moving. He kicks off against the wall and shimmies up to the second floor in a matter of seconds, then leaps off the ledge to climb onto the top of the gate. He drops out of sight. June runs up to the gate right as Daniel emerges from the other side of it, opening the gate from the inside.
“Hurry,” he gasps as he ushers us through. We dart down a private walkway before emerging back out into the streets.
Two blocks down, I see it. The apothecary.
There’s a mob of people that have surrounded the shop, and the front window is already smashed. Standing in the entrance is Pressa’s father, his frail body gamely pressed in the doorway as he pleads with the people to keep order. Beside him, Pressa and her father’s assistant, Marren, are shoving back anyone who gets too aggressive.
“Get away!” she shouts. “Get back in the street! You can’t come in here!”
There are others trying to help them, too. I recognize a few of the store’s frequent customers. Several of the larger men have formed a human barricade on one side of the shop, while two others are boarding up the broken window on the other side.
My heart lifts a little at the sight, even though the situation looks like it’s about to tip over into something dangerous.
“Pressa!” I shout at the top of my lungs as we approach. My hands wave high in the air.
Her head whips around in my direction, and her dark eyes search the crowd for me. They finally settle on where we are.
“Eden?” she says incredulously. Her entire demeanor brightens at the sight of me.
I don’t hesitate. I just start pushing through the crowd to reach where she’s standing with her dad. She grabs my arm in a viselike grip. Her eyes are wide and frantic.
“Everything’s falling apart,” she tells me in a rush. “People are trying to steal our medicine.”
Behind me, Daniel and June have pushed their way up to the top of the steps too. When one man trying to get into the shop suddenly shoves Pressa’s dad, June whips out an elbow so fast that she breaks the man’s nose before he can even react. He cries out in pain and shrinks back.
June narrows her eyes at him and raises her voice at the crowd. “Police!” she shouts. “Get back, now!”
The authority in her voice is so militaristic that, at least for the moment, everyone listens. Beside her, Daniel shoves two people away from the entrance.
I turn back to Pressa. “You and your dad have to get out of here,” I say. “Leave the shop. Dominic Hann destroyed the Level system—it’s not coming back up anytime soon. This situation’s going to boil over.”
Pressa looks desperately to where her father is standing guard at the entrance. “There’s no way in hell we’re leaving,” she replies. “I can’t just let him stay behind, and he’s not going to give up on his entire life’s work.”
I grit my teeth and start pulling her with me. “Do you get how dangerous this is?” I urge her. “I’m talking about your lives here!”
She yanks herself out of my grip. Her eyes flash with anger and fear. “You think I’m stupid?” she
snaps. “This is everything we have, Eden! Everything!”
“It’s a shop, Pressa—not your lives!”
“This shop is something that Dad has built all his life. It’s all that keeps us from being homeless. He’s not going to run, so I’m not going to leave his side.” She gives me a bitter glare. “Not that I expect a skyboy like you to understand.”
I release her arm, and she goes hurrying back to her father. Mr. Yu’s now pleading with the people who are trying to shove their way past him.
“Please!” he calls out. “I’ve known many of you for years!”
But the hunger and chaos is building to a breaking point. I see two men suddenly crash through one of the side windows. They stumble into the shop, then start dumping any and every herb and canister they can find into a bag. Others start stepping in.
I curse at the sight. Daniel’s struggling to keep the tide of people from entering through the broken side window, while June stands determined at the front entrance. I shove back a woman clawing her way through another open window.
Pressa shields her father, and together with Marren, they pull him back. Her father’s sobbing now—rivulets run down his face as he tries in vain to tell people to stop taking his medicines. “Please!” he calls over and over again, grabbing a passing sleeve and arm and pant leg whenever he can. “Stop! Please!”
This is going to go wrong. The thought amplifies until it becomes a scream in my head. My heartbeat speeds up until I think it’s going to explode. It’s the feeling of being tied down in a gurney in the seconds right before a soldier shoots my mother.
This is going to go very, very wrong.
I see it happen in slow motion.
A young, bone-thin man with hollow cheeks makes a beeline toward the shop’s entrance, trying to pass underneath Mr. Yu’s outstretched arms. He stumbles in his rush, falls, and hits his face hard against the edge of the doorframe. It cuts a deep gash across his cheeks.
