Shatter City

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Great philosophy.” Srin turns back to her screens. “Except there are literally people coming to save us. By morning they’ll be here in force. Excuse me while I get dressed.”

  She turns and heads into the bedroom. The door slides closed behind her.

  Essa joins me at the window.

  “You must think I’ve lost my mind,” I say.

  “No, I recognize you now. You’re the second daughter of Shreve—the one who was hidden. You’re always on the feeds, telling people to fight your father.”

  “That was my sister on the feeds, actually. But, yeah, Rafi and I are on the same side.”

  “That sounds difficult, a family at war with itself.” Essa gently takes my hand. “But, Frey, your tragedy has nothing to do with ours.”

  “This wasn’t a natural event—your city’s under attack!”

  An expression flickers across her face, a flash of lightning on still waters.

  “My city has lost so much today. Don’t try to use that to make us join your cause.” Essa regards Srin’s rows of screens. “I know what a propaganda operation looks like.”

  My heart twists. Essa just lost her brother, and she thinks I’m trying to exploit his death for my own purposes. She thinks I’m playing politics.

  Maybe I am—but only because politics are inescapable.

  Rafi would know what to say now. She’d be gentle, comforting, logical. All I have are Col’s blunt words.

  “For some of us, politics means fighting for our right to exist.”

  Essa’s lips tighten. She doesn’t answer.

  We might as well be from different planets. She grew up in a city where leaders are elected, where the walls ask for permission to listen. Where everyone is as happy as they want to be. For Essa, all my struggles are just a concept.

  Her fingers go to her wrist. Not one of the happy faces, but higher up her arm.

  Her smile returns, but it’s distant now.

  “I have no idea what it’s like, Frey, growing up somewhere like Shreve. I’m sure we seem strange to you as well.”

  I’m too exhausted to be polite. “Yeah. You guys might be a little too calm about all this.”

  “Panic doesn’t help. And grief will come.”

  I look down at my own arm. Only about half the little faces are smiling. The rest are thoughtful, leering, surprised. Some of the expressions I can’t even guess at.

  But Grief is obvious—the mouth wailing, a rain of tears.

  “Doesn’t it strike you as weird?” I say. “Pressing a button to be sad?”

  “I lost my brother today. If I wanted my heart to break, I wouldn’t need my feels.” Essa stares calmly out the window. “But there are times when what’s inside us is too much. Back in Rusty days, people used to die from sadness.”

  “Seriously? You can die from being sad?”

  She nods. “Here in Paz, we learn all about it in school. You know how Rusties used to murder each other all the time?”

  “Of course. That’s what they’re famous for.”

  “Well, for every Rusty who was murdered, three killed themselves.”

  “Huh. My tutors never mentioned that.” Suddenly I remember that Rafi made a will—leaving me everything, even her name. I shudder away the thought. “But how is Grief supposed to help with that? Why make yourself sad?”

  Essa shrugs. “Sometimes you need to cry. That’s why people listen to sad songs.”

  “Sad songs aren’t really my thing.”

  “I figured,” she says. “You don’t let anything out, do you? Your anger, sadness, frustration—it’s all built up inside you.”

  The words play under my skin, and I turn away from her. Talking about my emotions has never been my thing either. When I want to let a feeling out, I punch something, or train. I always loved stepping in for Rafi at nightclubs, dancing in the press of a hundred other bodies—not myself, but not quite my sister either. Nothing in me but the music.

  But there’ll be no dancing in this city for a while.

  I look at Essa. “Isn’t happiness fake, if you get it by pressing a button?”

  She shakes her head. “Every emotion has two sides—part of it’s in the machinery in your brain, and part of exists in the world outside you.”

  “Um, how are your emotions outside of you?”

  “They have a social reality. You don’t sit at home alone pressing Joy—you use it in the streets, with other joyful people around you. You only Languish if you’ve really lost someone. Anything else is meaningless and context-missing.”

  I turn away from her—the whole thing sounds context-missing to me.

  I cross the room to the stack of batteries, place my knife on top. The light blinks yellow, which settles my mind a little.

  Maybe I shouldn’t judge—charging up my pulse knife makes me Calm.

  But the Pazx have to be ready for what’s coming.

  I turn back to Essa. “I hope you haven’t gotten rid of all your anger. You’re going to need it soon.”

  “Like the Rusties, you mean?” Essa asks. “Acting out their anger at other countries, other religions, people with different complexions?”

  I shake my head. Military history is one thing I do know about.

  “Anger isn’t what made them dangerous. If you build a bunch of city-killers and diseases and nanobugs, eventually someone like my father comes along and uses them—angry or not.”

  Essa shrugs. “I don’t pay much attention to politics, but I’m pretty sure your father has emotional issues.”

  A laugh chokes out of me. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “There’s something missing in him.”

  Those words freeze me.

  Experts in other cities argue a lot about my father—whether he really plans every move, whether his successes are brute cunning or dumb luck. But hardly any of them get as close as Essa just did.

  “My brother is what’s missing,” I say.

  She finally turns from the window to face me. “Your brother?”

  “He was lost a long time ago. That’s what makes my father dangerous.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s complicated,” I say.

  “It always is.” Essa takes my left hand, turns my palm up. “Can I make a suggestion?”

  I thrust my arm at her. “Sure. Make me feel whatever you want.”

  “They only respond to your own touch.” She softly brushes one—not a normal face. It looks more like a cat, standing at a lectern. “It’s called Elucidation. It helps you talk.”

  That doesn’t sound like an emotion to me. It sounds more like something Col would love. The thought of him launching into some long-winded explanation almost makes me smile.

  Maybe if I can explain my father to Essa, she’ll understand what’s coming. I place a fingertip on the speech-giving cat face—and hold it there.

  A moment later, the words come a little easier.

  “My brother, Seanan, was older than me and Rafi. When my father became leader of Shreve, one of his enemies decided the only way to free the city was to kidnap his son.”

  Essa’s eyes widen a little. “Politics in your city really is different.”

  “No kidding. My mother got in the way, and the kidnappers killed her. And when my father didn’t surrender power, Seanan never came back.”

  She takes my hand again. “I’m sorry. You must miss them.”

  I shrug. “This is all before we were born. My father had my mother’s eggs harvested and made sure he got twins.”

  “Wait, he wanted twins because …” Essa’s voice trails away.

  “So if it happened again, he’d have an heir and a spare. One daughter the world knew about, the other a body double—sniper bait. Want to guess which one I am?”

  Essa doesn’t answer that, just stares at me.

  “Anyway,” I say, “that’s the man you’re dealing with. That’s his politics. That’s what he did to his own daughters. Imagi
ne what it’ll be like when his soldiers come for you.”

  Essa leans back against the wall, overwhelmed at first. Her right hand moves toward her left, but instead of using her feels, she makes a fist.

  More words bubble in my throat—long rants, righteous and eloquent. I want to tell her my family history, my doubts about the Victorians, and how much I miss Col. This feel has given me a sudden need to spill everything to a stranger.

  Elucidation. They should call it Truth Serum.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to blab.”

  Essa shakes her head. “That’s how it’s supposed to work. But that story is still hard to believe.”

  “Oh, it’s all real,” a voice comes from the bedroom. Srin’s been listening in, of course. “Her dad’s totally norm-shredding. But that doesn’t mean he can make an earthquake!”

  She steps out from the bedroom in her underwear, holding up two dresses.

  “The red or the stripes? I’m interviewing survivors on my newsfeed tonight.”

  We just stare at her.

  Srin frowns. “What? You think I should wear black?”

  I turn to Essa, more words spilling from me. “Maybe just ignore us. Most of my life, I only had one friend, and she was my sister. And Srin is … weird. Deal with your grief, bury your brother, and let the rest of the cities handle my—”

  “Just give me a second,” Essa says, letting out a slow breath. “I need to think about all this.”

  I shut my mouth firmly, dying to say more. To elucidate for her how the interlocking alliances of the first families will eventually take my father down. How we just have to reveal his true nature once and for all.

  “What if we find a way to—” I start.

  Essa’s hand goes gently over my mouth. “Relax, Frey. It’s a tricky feel to control. But you’ll be okay soon.”

  “Or maybe not,” Srin says. She drops the dresses to the floor, comes toward the broken window.

  I turn and see the streaks in the sky, and words spill out of me again.

  “That’s a suborbital insertion, from the edge of space. My father’s had drones and soldiers up there for months. He’s not waiting for the other cities to get here. He’s coming now.”

  My father’s suborbitals are landing all over Paz—out in the factory belt, in the suburbs near us, even in the wounded center of the city. Wreathed in halos of fire they fall, until their drogue chutes jerk them to a near halt.

  “Do you believe me now?” I ask Srin.

  “Not that your dad causes earthquakes.” She grumbles out a sigh. “But that Shreve is invading? Looks like it.”

  A flash fills the sky, then a boom that makes the remaining window glass shudder and creak.

  Essa leans out to look sideways. “That was close. Near the Marine Institute, I think.”

  “Can you take me there?” I ask.

  “It’s on my way home.” She turns from the darkness. “But are you going to fight the Shreve army on your own?”

  “Maybe.” I glance at my knife. Its charge light is still yellow, but at my signal it leaps into my hand. “The main thing is getting proof of what’s happening here. The sooner the other cities know, the better.”

  “Then you should take this,” Srin calls from the bedroom.

  She comes back out with an object the size of a soccer ball. She tosses it straight at me—but the device comes to a halt in midair.

  It’s a hovercam, bristling with lenses, lights, and a dish antenna.

  “This is Srin 3,” she says. “It’s got a direct link back here. Get some video of those Shreve orbitals, and I’ll broadcast it live.”

  I sigh. “You call your hovercam Srin 3?”

  “Srin 2 was taken,” she says.

  “I’m not going to ask. Come on, Essa.”

  We step onto the board and leap into the night sky.

  The slow rain of debris from the fallen towers hasn’t stopped.

  It floats in the darkness, forming vortexes in the alleys below us, like shambling ghosts of litter and ash. My eyes sting, and the smell of burned plastic sits sharp in the back of my throat.

  Srin 3 flies along beside us, coasting on the hoverboard’s magnetics. I carry my knife to save its charge.

  “Diego must have rescue workers in Paz by now,” I say, still needing to Elucidate my thoughts. “But most cities won’t have anyone here till morning. Hovercars are slow motion compared to suborbitals.”

  “Left here,” Essa says.

  We bank into the turn, around an array of repeater towers. Rattled by the quakes, they lean in all directions.

  “Looks like my thirteenth birthday,” I say. “Rafi brought me a cupcake from her party and stuck all these candles in it. But instead of thirteen, there were thirty, pointing everywhere.”

  “You know,” Essa says, “if you want to stop Elucidating, you can just hit the Neutral feel.”

  I glance back at her. “There’s a Neutral? Like, it erases whatever feels you’re using? That’s a really good idea. Because these things could get away from you if you’re not—”

  “The one with only eyes, no expression. In the first row, closest to your hand.”

  “Right.” I squint down at my wrist. “Ah … it’s under my crash bracelet.”

  “Dios mío.” She sighs. “If you keep talking, you’re going to get bugs in your mouth.”

  “Not a lot of bugs at this altitude. With all this smoke, there’s probably no bugs in the whole Baja—”

  “Oh,” she says, looking down.

  My gaze follows hers, and at last I’m silent.

  It looks like a soccer stadium—a brightly lit oval of green grass, now gray with dust, bleachers on all sides. But no one’s playing soccer.

  Hundreds of inflatable emergency cots are laid out below us, arranged in a neat grid. Med drones drift down the rows, maybe one for every fifty people. Even from this height, I can see blood shining red in the floodlights.

  We drift to a halt, staring down.

  “Whoa,” I say.

  The Elucidation has left my veins. Any need to speak is burned away.

  Those countless people in the central city, who evacuated the hovering towers after the first quake hit—how many are in improvised hospitals like this now?

  I look for familiar faces, fearful that my sister was somehow still here when the quake hit.

  “Stay right there,” comes Srin’s voice in my ear. She sounds tinny, bouncing her comms though the hovercam instead of the city interface. “Srin 3 is loving this.”

  The cam slips beneath us, its lenses scanning the carnage below.

  It’s uneasy-making, gawking at the aftermath of disaster. But if we’re going to stop my father, the horror of what’s happened has to be shown.

  “Maybe we should go down and help,” I say.

  “First things first.” Essa’s voice is like steel. “Let’s get that proof. We’re not far now.”

  The Marine Institute sits at the edge of the Sea of Cortez, the channel between Baja Island and the mainland. There’s less dust from the quake out here, thanks to a stiff breeze coming off the water.

  The Institute is a cluster of permacrete buildings, curved shapes like rolling ocean waves. Too solid for the earthquake to crack, they lean at random angles, as if the ground briefly turned liquid beneath them. Only the largest building is visibly damaged—a third of it has lifted from its foundations and broken off, crumbling into a pile.

  The suborbital is nowhere in sight, but a drogue parachute is flung across the Institute lawn like discarded laundry.

  Srin 3 flies ahead to get a better shot. Its lights wink on—the chute is clearly marked with the red trefoil of Shreve. My father’s not even trying to hide his invasion.

  For the first time, I wonder if his plans have changed. He knew I was here, of course, and that I could warn Paz what was coming. Maybe my and Col’s escape pushed things into a different gear.

  Maybe this calamity is my fault too.

 
I shake off the feeling as we take our board down to the ground. Leading away from the chute is a set of tracks in the grass. It must be a heavy armored drone, if it’s walking instead of flying.

  Essa and I follow the tracks into the largest building of the Institute. The drone must’ve been too big for the double doors of the main entrance, which have been torn from their hinges.

  “Srin,” I say. “We’re going inside to look for this thing.”

  “Srin 3’s right behind you.”

  We climb the cracked stone steps and enter through the gaping doorway. The halls inside are lit cold blue by emergency backup lights. A moment later, the brighter light of Srin 3 surrounds us as it flits in through the doors.

  “No shots of me,” I say. “Don’t want my father knowing I’m right next to one of his war machines.”

  “Duh. Just get out of my way.”

  We pause, letting the hovercam fly ahead.

  The floor is slanted beneath our feet, and the walls lean out of true, so it feels like we’re inside a photograph taken at a clumsy angle. Doors lead off the hallway into tilted rooms, full of desks and tables slid into odd arrangements, overturned lab equipment, but no people.

  A sound comes from ahead of us, a loud metallic rattling. I hear voices too, and the darkness ahead flickers with flashlight beams.

  The staff of the Institute has found the Shreve drone.

  But what’s it doing in here? How is a research station a military objective?

  We head toward the sounds, climbing up the tilt of the building until we come to another set of doors torn from their hinges. The noise is coming from inside.

  I draw my knife and enter.

  A cafeteria. A dozen round tables surrounded by chairs, a kitchen behind a broken wall, everything thrown into chaos by the building’s tilt. The far wall is missing, the gap full of night sky—this is the spot where the whole structure broke in half.

  The Shreve drone is lit by the full wattage of Srin 3’s lights. It’s a squat, ugly machine, a metal rhino with six legs. A handful of people in blue coveralls watches as it climbs through the missing wall and down into the rubble. It forelegs start to tear at the permacrete, the exposed wiring and water pipes, stuffing everything into its maw. A terrific grinding sound fills the room.