Wanna help?
I walk to Srin’s hotel, wrapped in my stolen coat. It’s late afternoon—I was asleep for sixteen hours while my bones were put back together—so it feels like the wrong time of day to me. Despite the autodoc’s work, my ribs still ache with every breath.
I’m wearing dazzle makeup from Rafi’s collection. The makeup reacts to movement, shifting the contours of my face with every step. In the crowded streets of Paz, no one gives me a second glance.
I wonder how many of my father’s agents are in this city, looking for me.
A Shreve assassin would probably stick out here. The cosmetic surge in Paz goes way past anything at home—manga eyes, dappled skin, extra digits. But why go to all the trouble of surgery, when they can feel gorgeous at the press of a finger?
How many of them are using their feels right now? The throng is bubbly, like a public holiday in Shreve, but maybe that’s just natural for a free city. Or maybe no one’s feelings are natural in Paz.
I glance at my wrist, the choir of expressions staring up at me. There’s something tempting about the little faces, but I’m addled enough without fake emotions buzzing in my head.
The spindly, floating buildings are so different from the squat skyline of Shreve. They remind me of Victoria’s skyline. Wild birds nest in hovering aeries, so the sky is full of wings. But no surveillance drones, no hovercams. The slants of afternoon sunlight are free of surveillance dust. That still feels strange to me.
I don’t know how to react to any of it. The smells, the colors, the possibilities. People in Shreve never hold hands as they walk. Here, everyone does. All this freedom doesn’t make me happy—it just confuses me. All these faces on my wrist, and I have no idea which emotion I’m supposed to feel right now.
All I know is that my sister is out there somewhere, without me to protect her.
Srin’s hotel looks fancy.
It’s an old-fashioned building, ten stories of steel and glass, solidly planted on the ground. Flowers everywhere in the lobby. No human staff, just helpful hoverdrones the size of teacups to guide me to her room. No one asks my name.
At her door, Srin looks me up and down.
“Frey, right?”
Hearing my real name said aloud makes me flinch. But I suppose that here in Paz even hotel walls don’t snoop. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Just checking,” Srin says. “Your sister likes to mess with me sometimes. Come in.”
Her room is a suite, a living area with three doors leading off to a bedroom, a kitchen, a workout space. Every wall, and some of the windows, are covered with stick-up flatscreens. They’re filled with video channels, trembling graphs, feed data from a dozen cities.
It reminds me of Dona Oliver’s offices, when we were planning publicity for my wedding.
I have to ask, “Your propaganda homework?”
Srin gives me a delighted grin.
“Every mention of your father, the Palafoxes, or the Vic resistance—tracked and visualized.” She waves her arm at the screens. “This is mostly real people, but I’ve got a couple thousand AI accounts working to keep the outrage going.”
I stare at the jittering graphs and burbling text clouds. “My father conquered a city. Shouldn’t outrage just happen?”
“Yeah, you’re really Frey,” Srin says with a laugh. “Raffles doesn’t do naive.”
I ignore her, going closer to the screens. More than half are in Spanish, some in English, a few in other languages. All this feed chatter, while everyone under my father’s thumb is silenced by the dust. One screen is labeled Depose the Dictator, another More Sanctions. And on another …
“Is that a turtle on a hoverboard?”
“His name’s El Moto,” Srin says. “Only half of my network is Free the Vics. The rest is eyeball-grabbing, with links back to the propaganda. My cooking channel’s pretty good.”
“I don’t cook much. Where’s my sister?”
“She didn’t leave you a ping?”
I shake my head.
Srin hesitates, like she isn’t sure if she’s supposed to tell me.
“Where’s my sister?” I draw my pulse knife, heading toward the satellite dish sitting on a stack of backup batteries. “Tell me or I’ll wreck everything in this room.”
“Relax, Frey! We’re on the same side. Raffles is gone. She left the city to join the rebels.”
I watch Srin’s face, but she doesn’t twitch.
“The rebels,” I say. “The ones who live in the woods and wear furs and skins? Rafi joined them?”
“I know, right?” Srin lets out a giggle. “You should’ve seen her packing. So much bug spray.”
“But I was just with them. Smith and X didn’t say a word.”
“Not those rebels. Raffles wanted a crew that wasn’t allied with the Vics. People who wouldn’t know who she really is.”
I shake my head. “You mean she joined them as … me?”
“Of course. Any crew would take you. Trained in combat your whole life, and you attacked your own dad’s city! Doesn’t get much more rebel than you, Frey.”
“So I’ve heard.” Suddenly my heart is pounding against my aching ribs.
Dizziness descends, and I sit down hard on the giant leather couch. My freshly knitted bones feel brittle inside me.
“I thought you’d have a message from her,” I say.
Srin shrugs. “Are you sure she didn’t leave one? You’re her proxy—you’ve got access to her stuff. The city showed you the apartment she got for you, right?”
“There wasn’t any message.” I stare at Srin. “Wait. That place was for me?”
“Of course. We spent days getting it exactly right. It was a present for you. A parting gift, I guess.”
“A parting gift … and you helped her buy all that stuff.” I look around the room. “How are you even here in Paz? After you ran away from school, your parents let you stay?”
“My home city doesn’t do adolescence. We’re adults at fourteen.” Srin straightens proudly. “Did my rite of passage a year early.”
“And the Victorians put you in charge of their propaganda?”
“The Vics aren’t talking to me.” She lets out a sigh. “Teo didn’t like my last story about his mom. Too many missiles.”
“Very tasteful.”
“Teo is guts-missing, but at least Col’s finally back.” Srin looks at me. “He escaped with you, right? The Shreve feeds aren’t saying, but their cover story’s falling apart.”
I hesitate, unsure how much to tell her. Maybe this is why she pinged me—to get the dirt on our escape for her feed network.
Maybe she’s just making all this up.
“How are you and Rafi friends?” I ask. “She only got to Paz a week ago!”
“We’ve been working together remotely since she escaped your dad.” A proud grin. “Her Frey impersonation is ninety percent me.”
“Um, I’m pretty sure it’s ninety percent me.”
Srin laughs. “Right. She knew how to talk like you. But we wanted the other cities to love her! That took some work.”
I let pass this suggestion that I’m not lovable.
“Srin, I need to find my sister. Did she tell you anything about the rebel crew she joined? The boss’s name?”
“Of course not. She doesn’t want to be found.”
Not this again. I stand up and start pacing the room.
“She does want to be found—she got herself spotted in Paz. She made me her proxy!”
“Yes.” Srin spreads her hands, as if to prove she’s not hiding anything. “Raffles wanted you to know she was okay. But she doesn’t want you following her. If you show up out in the wild, her crew might start wondering which of you is real!”
I stare at Srin. She’s talking like this is all obvious. As if Rafia of Shreve really wants to be a rebel now.
But she doesn’t know my sister at all. No one knows her like I do.
“She would’ve waited to tell me in person,” I say.
“You don’t know her!” I yell.
Another shrug. “Not sure anyone does. Love your sister to bits, but she’s got issues. I kept telling her to get some feels.”
I roll up my shirtsleeve. “You persuaded her. But they wound up on me.”
Srin’s eyes light up. “Ooh, have you tried any? This stupid city won’t let me surge yet.”
I stare at the little faces, wondering if there’s one to erase this feeling of confusion and betrayal.
“None of this sounds like Rafi,” I say.
“That’s the point, Frey. She doesn’t want to be Rafi.”
“What?”
“She hates herself,” Srin says.
That freezes me, and a thousand memories go through my head. All those rages. Despising her own friends. Wishing for our father’s death.
Falling apart, and that was before I went to Victoria, leaving her alone.
In the trophy room, Dona called Rafi a basket case. And what did my father say to me? After your meltdown during the war, it looked like you were gone for good.
A few hours after the attack on Victoria, Rafi thought I was dead in the rubble of Col’s home. She never appeared in public again. She was missing in action for the whole war.
It was her idea to test me, to have me wear the red or white jacket. And my father tried to kill me for it. I’d always protected her; it gave my life meaning. But she could never protect me.
Maybe she does hate herself.
Srin is still talking. “This way, everyone gets what they want. You get your revolution and your boy. And you’re her heir—one day you’ll get the city of Shreve!”
I shake my head. “But what does Rafi get?”
“You still don’t understand?” Srin lets out a giggle. “She gets to be you, Frey. That’s all she’s ever wanted—to be her own twin sister.”
I walk blindly at first.
Out into the city, through its jumble of noisy freedoms, letting the crowds swallow me. Here in the old part of town, the streets are lined with food stalls, musicians, wares spilling out of shops. But the clutter of Paz doesn’t erase Srin’s words.
I didn’t know my own sister.
All those times Rafi made me show her what I’d learned in combat lessons. When she tried to teach me French, and how to curtsy, and how to design clothes. When she fantasized about our father’s death, saying she’d tell the whole city our secret, so they’d love me too.
What if she wanted to switch places?
This last month in her skin, I started to see—being Rafia of Shreve wasn’t much better than being her body double. Maybe my sister envied my simple life of training and protecting someone. She had to deal with her dreadful friends. With Dona Oliver’s scheming. With him.
But I didn’t understand till now, when it’s too late to help her.
Where am I supposed to go next? Rafi doesn’t want me confusing the issue of who’s who. I miss Col more than anything, but the Vics don’t trust me—they only want to use me.
I’m starting to think that X’s crew really is where I belong. But there can’t be two rebel Freys, and masquerading as a rebel Rafi makes no sense.
Maybe I should just disappear into these happy Paz crowds.
From my wrist, two rows of faces stare up. Maybe one of these feels can stop the train wreck in my head.
My eyes fall on a face with closed eyes and a soft smile—the one the Paz AI told me about: Calm.
I cover the smiling face with my thumb, just for a second.
Nothing happens. Maybe I didn’t press it long enough …
Or maybe I don’t need a device in my wrist to control myself. For sixteen years, my trainers watched me, judging every word, every movement. I stayed calm when they broke my bones and made me bleed. When an assassin tried to kill my sister, I was calm and killed him instead. When House Palafox was destroyed, I was cool and collected enough to escape the city.
But here I am, frozen in this bustling crowd, staring at a little face.
And my brain is raging.
My finger slides over the Calm face again. This time I hold it there, trying to slow my breath.
Nothing seems to happen … but then a sigh eases from my lips. Something inside me lets go, gives up, like that moment in a rainstorm when I’m too soaked to care anymore.
Even after I take my finger away, the feeling lingers.
The chaos inside me settles. The jumble of thoughts starts to order itself. And after a moment, a strange notion creeps into my head.
Maybe Rafi needs her freedom more than my protection right now. Maybe she needs to find herself—even if that means being me for a while.
I shake my head, not recognizing my own thoughts.
Because they aren’t my thoughts. It’s the feels, sending hormones into my bloodstream. Emotions don’t change the fact that guarding Rafi is what I was born to do. I need to find her and protect her …
But maybe not this minute.
The joyous sounds of the city wash over me, and mixed into the chaos are Boss X’s words—Rafia of Shreve can take care of herself.
She handled my father for sixteen years. She’s charmed everyone she’s ever met. She’ll make friends in a rebel crew, maybe the first real friends she’s ever had who aren’t me.
But a part of my brain is still fighting the Calm. How dare I stop worrying about my sister? My father is still alive and searching for us both.
Relaxing for even a moment is dangerous.
Uncertain notes creep into the sound of the throng, as if the city itself is worried for me. Or maybe the crowd is reacting to something else.
I look up from the faces on my wrist.
Two machines the size of eagles are skimming down the street, a few meters overhead. Everyone’s looking up at the unexpected sight—this city doesn’t have surveillance drones.
They’re coming straight at me.
I turn away, pushing through the crowd.
Just ahead, between two old stone buildings, an alley looks barely wide enough for the drones to fit. Should I dive in? Or stay out here in the cover of the throng?
No decision comes. My blood should be screaming. But Calm still courses through my veins, like this is a pleasant afternoon walk.
The feel is blocking me from the rush of combat. Perfect.
I keep my head low, walking fast, uncertain if the drones have spotted me. Over my shoulder, I see them keeping their course down the center of the street.
The city interface has anonymized my movements. My face is disguised with dazzle makeup. There’s no way Shreve could’ve tracked me down.
Unless they were watching Srin’s hotel.
I draw my knife and head toward the alley, where the drones won’t hit people as they crash.
People are looking at me now, wondering why I’m shoving past them. But here in happy Paz, no one tries to stop me.
Something sharp brushes my left shoulder. The barest prickle, but a moment later a numbness is spreading across my back. It’s a sleeper dart—so why am I not knocked out already? For some reason, it’s working in slow motion.
Reaching the darkness of the alley, I spin around, squeezing the knife into full pulse.
With its roar in my ears, exhilaration cuts through my Calm. But the dart’s bite is still spreading down my left arm.
A drone buzzes into the alley, and my knife leaps up to meet it. The collision is earsplitting. The blast wave rushes over me, deafening and acrid. A second later, the hot knife leaps back into my open hand.
I smell smoke—a patch of my stolen coat is on fire.
As I pat out the wayward sparks, I see the tiny feathered shaft sticking up from the wool. I pluck it out, realizing two things at once.
One: The heavy coat saved me—the point of the dart only brushed my skin.
Two: The coat was reported stolen
last night. The owner must have put a picture of it on the feeds—the drones were searching for the pattern of its weave.
But for now it’s protection.
Wary of my pulse knife, the second drone hovers just outside the alley. But if they were using sleeper darts, an extraction team must be nearby.
My father wants to bring me home alive.
That thought sends a jolt of fear through me, wiping away the last of my Calm.
I run.
The alley turns twice, then hits a dead end. One of the old buildings is a wedding cake of stonework and decoration, easy to climb. But I’m woozy from the dart, and suddenly my stomach feels empty. Patches aren’t the same as solid food.
I stare down at my feels again. The Paz AI said something about …
Morning Buzz?
I find the razzle-eyed face and press down. Hard.
Fresh lines of energy surge through my body. The numbness from the dart retreats, but waves of dizziness come tumbling in. The world feels split in two, like there’s a slam band in one of my ears, a symphony orchestra in the other. Calm, Buzz, and the dart.
I ignore the cacophony and start to climb.
Up two floors is a window, darkness behind it. I kick in the glass.
Scrambling inside, I find myself in an escape stairwell—the building isn’t tall enough for bungee jackets.
The stairs are steep and dark, the walls echoing with my footsteps. My pulse knife trembles in my hand.
I hear glass shattering above me.
I freeze. The extraction team is inside.
The only sounds are from outside—the crowd still shouting about the crashed drone, the sirens of approaching emergency craft. In a few minutes, this building will be swarming with Paz wardens.
But wardens can’t stop my father’s soldiers. He’ll have sent Specials, surged beyond any normal human abilities.
They won’t stop until they have me.
Slow, deliberate footsteps are coming down the stairs.
“There’s no need for the knife,” a male voice says.
The tone is light and friendly. But I know the sound of a Special, throat-surged to send trickles of fear along my nerves. It jangles with my Morning Buzz.
Shatter City Page 10
