Shatter City

by Scott Westerfeld

  “How good are those surveillance blockers of yours?”

  He bares his teeth, wide and feral. They glow softly in the even lighting of the cell. “They won’t know what’s happening till we trip an alarm out there.”

  I turn away from the disturbing radiance of his grin and scan the room.

  I cataloged the improvised weapons days ago, of course, in a fit of Focus. My hands fall on one of the wooden chairs at the interview table, and I crack off its leg with a swing against the floor. The results are a splintery but serviceable club.

  Primero’s eyes widen. “You really are her. How’d you fool them?”

  “Lots of practice.” I turn toward the bubbling circle on the wall. It’s a meter across and feels as hot as a campfire. “If that stuff gets on my clothes, will it melt me?”

  “Excellent question,” he says. “Never used it for an escape before.”

  I stare at him. “Seriously?”

  “The best crims never need to break out of a cell.”

  I sigh, taking a look around for something to push the softened ceramics out into the hall. The other interview chair seems solid enough.

  I pick it up and take a huge swing at the glowing circle of smart matter.

  Two of the chair’s legs snap off, the blow ringing in my hands. The glowing circle of wall only sags a little.

  I swing harder.

  The chair shatters completely. But the bubbling wall sloughs outward, like a chunk of sandcastle drooping after a wave. On the other side is the empty gray hallway of Diego Intelligence HQ.

  “After you,” Primero says.

  I grab my club and step through, careful not to touch the edges.

  No one in sight. No alarms yet.

  This emptiness feels wrong. It’s just after lunch, but it’s like the middle of the night out here. Have I lost track of time?

  There’s a moment of uncertainty. My battle frenzy isn’t here yet, like it’s been worn away by four weeks of inactivity.

  I take my wrist, and Courage flows.

  “Quickly,” I whisper.

  Primero steps through and follows me down the hall. He’s dead silent, moving like a dancer in his expensive leather shoes.

  Around the first corner, we run into a guard.

  She’s wearing full body armor—my club bounces off her helmet, but the blow sends her stumbling back, confused.

  I body-slam her into the wall. Get an arm around her neck before she can draw her shock wand. She kicks out, sending us both staggering backward.

  She flails her armored elbows—one knocks the breath from me. But my arm stays around her neck, and there’s just enough gap beneath her helmet to choke off her airway …

  She sags in my arms.

  “Is she okay?” Primero asks.

  “Of course.” My veins are flooded now with my own adrenaline. The only feel that’s still mine.

  He’s staring down at the prone guard, aghast.

  “What?” I ask. “You never knocked anyone out before?”

  “I’m a thief, not a barbarian.”

  “Didn’t mean to upset you.” My heart is pounding, and I’ve been in that room too long to remember anything out here. “Which way?”

  He glances up and down the corridor. “They brought me in from that direction.”

  We head down the hall, still silent. Ready to fight, or run.

  But no one comes at us.

  “It’s so quiet,” I whisper. “What’s going on?”

  Primero gives me his softly glowing smile. “My surveillance blockers are good. We’ve always had better tech than city governments.”

  I sigh. Rebels, cast-out first sons, and now crims.

  My list of allies is getting complicated.

  We take another corner, which brings us into an empty hallway. But this one is lined with windows, looking out over the ruins of Paz.

  The city looks taller than a month ago, with spindly skeletons of metal rising into the sky. The foundations must be done, the rebuilding going ahead in earnest now.

  “Great,” I say. “Help me find something to break a window.”

  “Or we could open one?” He strides to the nearest window, finds a latch, and swings it wide.

  “Sure. That works.”

  This is so easy, I barely have time to think.

  Then the alarms go off.

  The brain-stabbing shriek of alarm bells jolts me full of fresh adrenaline. But after a month of no training, it feels jagged and Focus-missing. I correct it with a hand on my wrist.

  Through the open window, I land in soft grass and spring to my feet, ready to fight. But there’s no one out here either.

  The sun is blinding, and the fresh air feels like a shot of Home.

  Primero eases halfway out. Then he hesitates, staring at the drop.

  “Jump!” I yell, ready to catch him.

  He falls into my arms like a bag of rocks, sending us tumbling backward down the gentle slope of the landscaping. I trip over my own feet, spilling him onto the grass.

  “Are you trying to make this harder?” I ask.

  He dusts himself off. “You seem to have me confused with some sort of burglar, my dear.”

  “I don’t even know that word.” I stand and pull him to his feet. “Come on.”

  We run, heading for the edge of a nearby construction site. It’s a labyrinth of steel beams, smart plastics, and heavy equipment, the perfect place to disappear.

  But the buzz of sentry drones is rattling the air behind us. They know where we are.

  We plunge into the site, weaving through bales of fiber and wire. Past lifters pulling steel into the sky, and ground trucks carting away loads of dirt. I try to keep low, but Primero is tall and awkward—and slow.

  The drones fly overhead, peering down into the maze of building materials. Their buzz grows louder as they descend at us.

  More Focus, and I see what to do—throw the club aside, snag an offcut of metal sheeting. It’s flat and vaguely circular, with sharp edges.

  Turning back, I send it spinning up at the drones.

  They try to dodge, but the uneven missile curves wildly as it flies. By chance it hits one, clipping its lifting fans.

  The blades shriek for a moment, the drone tipping wildly. But its magnetics kick on to keep it in the air.

  Primero just stands there gawking.

  I grab his hand and pull him back into motion. “For a thief, you’re not very good at running!”

  He saves his breath.

  I look for more things to throw at the drones, and my Focus-sharpened mind catalogs it all. Wire bundles, shards of stone and metal, fiber strands for making the walls smart.

  But it’s all too heavy. Too awkward.

  At least the drones aren’t shooting at us. Nobody thinks killing Rafia of Shreve is a good idea.

  Then I see it—snatch up a chuck of permacrete, wrap it in a loose web of smart fibers. When I throw, the whole contraption spins into the air like some ridiculous bird-hunting net.

  But the wounded drone pulls away too slowly—the fibers wrap around it. The machine tips in the air, unbalanced by the weight of the permacrete. It collides with a stand of rebar and tumbles out of sight.

  This time, Primero hasn’t stopped running. He leads me across a grid of water pipes, heading for the ruins on the far end of the construction zone.

  Then the second drone swoops low, cutting across his path. A needle-spar extends from its side …

  “Watch out!” I shout.

  He staggers to a halt, looking in the wrong direction.

  The drone flashes past him, the spar nipping his leg.

  I scoop up a piece of broken brick and throw. But the drone is already zooming away.

  Primero’s standing, looking down at his leg. His fingers are on his feels.

  “Use Morning Buzz!” I yell.

  “I’ve got a better fix than that.” His eyes are glassy, his words slurred. “Crim feels, remember? But it’ll take a minute. Yo
u should keep running.”

  Up in the sky, the drone is wheeling around.

  “You’re a sitting duck.” I look around for another weapon. “I can keep that drone off us.”

  “There’s only one, and two of us. We split up—it can’t get us both.”

  “Except it’ll get you for sure.” I wrench a length of plastic pipe free from the grid. It’s the exact length of a bō—the fighting staff my trainer Naya used to love.

  I stand, testing its weight.

  “Just run, you little fool!” Primero shouts. “There’s more coming!”

  I follow his gaze—another pair of drones is lofting up over the warehouse.

  “Can’t you move yet?” I plead. “Do you need some Courage?”

  He stares at me a moment, his eyes losing their glassiness.

  “You’re giving yourself up to help me?” he asks with perfect clarity.

  I pull at his arm. “Just come on!”

  Suddenly his moves are swift, decisive—he grabs my arm, pulls me off-balance.

  His other hand sweeps up, and I feel a prickle at my throat.

  My fingers reach instinctively for my feels, but my muscles are already locking up. The Morning Buzz is the barest trickle against the knockout juice.

  My brain has a sputter of clarity even as my vision fades.

  “You’re … one of them.”

  “No, my dear. I’m a crim.” He sighs. “But sometimes you have to make a deal.”

  “Why?” I manage.

  He shrugs. “Some kind of test. I think you passed, my dear.”

  I don’t understand, because nothing makes sense right now, except the vast darkness crashing down on me, as heavy as the sky.

  And then it doesn’t matter much at all.

  The next day, Sinjean explains it to me.

  “It’s one thing to run away from your father, Frey. Quite another to escape him.”

  I stare at her. My muscles ache from yesterday’s fighting and running after a month of inactivity. My head is still fuzzy from the knockout juice, even after some Morning Buzz. I’m not in the mood for wordplay.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You grew up in danger. Not just from assassins—from your father.” Sinjean swirls her coffee, like we’re discussing what to have for lunch. “He’s a monster. And monsters often make their children dangerous.”

  “He did,” I say, thinking how easy it would be to crack the chair I’m sitting on over her head.

  “We don’t mean your training, Frey.” She smiles her bland smile. “We mean being hidden away. Have you learned to form bonds with other people? Do you have empathy? Or did your father damage your psyche too deeply?”

  I look away. “My father barely even talked to me.”

  “Maybe that’s why you haven’t turned out like him. You made friends growing up, didn’t you? With staff? With trainers?”

  I swallow, thinking of Sensei Noriko. I got her killed by telling her too much. And Naya, my combat master, I turned to a bloody mist with my pulse knife.

  “Just my sister,” I say. “She told me about her life. Tried to give me one.”

  Sinjean nods. “Excellent. Maybe she’s normal too, then.”

  My headache twinges a little. “You think I’m normal?”

  “Perhaps the wrong word—you are unique. Raised in secret, cut off from society.”

  “Yeah, the only interface ping I ever got was actually for my sister. Because there was no real Frey.”

  “There was,” she says quietly. “And after your father sent you to Victoria, you made new friends. Like Col Palafox. Or is he more than a friend?”

  I look away.

  “And the rebels you fought with,” she says. “They’re more than comrades-in-arms.”

  “They’re crew,” I say softly.

  “You miss them.”

  “Of course.”

  Sinjean nods, and then does something she’s never done before—reaches across the table to take my hand. “With hardly any connection to the rest of humanity for sixteen years, you managed to make yourself human. That’s why you passed our test.”

  I pull away, reaching for Focus. Her stare suddenly feels like a microscope.

  “You were testing to see if I was a person?”

  “In the sense that your father isn’t one, yes.”

  That spins in my head for a moment. “So I passed because I helped a criminal escape?”

  She nods. “It’s an old Rusty experiment. Put people in extremis—a prison, lost in the wild. See if they cooperate … or turn on one another.”

  “But Primero had a way out. Why wouldn’t I take him up on it?”

  “That wasn’t the test, Frey. We wanted to know how long before you abandoned him. He was rather convincingly useless.”

  “That’s for sure.” But it never occurred to me to leave him behind. “Why do you even care? Why does my bonding with some crim matter to Diego?”

  “It matters to the whole world, Frey. You and your sister can bring stability to Shreve.” She leans closer. “It’s important that at least one of you isn’t like him.”

  Stability? I’ve alienated the Vics, gone to war with my father. Rafi abandoned me. But a trickle of hope moves through me.

  “Does this mean I’m free to go?”

  Sinjean looks amused. “Your humanity only makes you more precious, Frey. But yes, you’re too valuable to keep in this broken city anymore. We’ll be taking you to Diego soon.”

  I shake my head. “No. I have friends here. You’ve already kept me too long.”

  “Indeed, unforgivable. But it has taken this time to put together an alliance of a dozen cities, in case of a transition of power.”

  “A transition … of whose power?”

  Her surged face reveals nothing—

  Then all at once, the Focus brings it together. Those conversations about right and wrong. About me and my sister growing up. This test.

  The whole room turns shiny with clarity.

  “You’re going to kill my father, aren’t you?”

  Sinjean doesn’t answer. Her spy face is as smooth and polished as a mirror, showing nothing of what’s going on behind it.

  Which is the answer.

  “It’s not going to be easy,” I say.

  She ignores that. “We’d like to make a deal, Frey. Our city will support you, whatever happens in the future. We’d like to be your friend.”

  The words seem hollow, coming from this woman. A month imprisoned here, and she’s never even told me her real name.

  “That’s only half a deal,” I say. “What do you want from me?”

  “A government with empathy for its citizens. A peaceful world.” Sinjean shrugs. “Other than that, Frey, you can run the sovereign city of Shreve any way you choose.”

  A dry laugh forces its way out. “Me? Rafi was born to rule.”

  “We don’t know her, and you are her legal heir, after all—the Paz AI made sure to inform the other cities of that right away. Thus this alliance began to form.”

  “I don’t know why Rafi did that,” I say softly.

  Why don’t they want my sister? What if they could test her too?

  She would pass … I think.

  “If I failed, what were you going to do? Kill me too?”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Frey.” The uninflected smile comes back. “We would’ve let you walk out the door. And a Shreve agent would’ve killed you half an hour later.”

  At least she’s being honest.

  “So it’s true, what Primero said. My father’s really taking over this city, brick by brick.”

  A new expression crosses her face. An infinite sadness, as cold and deep as the night sky. “The virus’s spread is a necessary evil. If he thinks his plans are working, he’ll let his guard down.”

  A rush of anger hits me. “He never lets his guard down! There’s no outsmarting him. Only brute force works!”

  She looks at me with mild amusement. And in my
fury, I see perfectly the emptiness—the hugeness behind her eyes.

  In one swift motion, I grab the coffee stirrer from her cup, snap it in half, and stab the splintered end into her hand resting flat on the table.

  When I pull away, the wood stays upright in her flesh, quivering.

  She doesn’t react at all.

  Her body is as bloodless as her gaze.

  “You’re fake,” I say.

  “We are very real.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not a person. Someone made you.”

  “We made ourselves,” she says. “We are Diego.”

  The floor lurches beneath me, like another quake. Suddenly her bland, generic face is brain-spinning.

  “You’re a city AI? How are you here?”

  “We aren’t,” the avatar says quietly. “Our thoughts are comprised of every datastore and comm web in Diego. We are the sum total of every networked device, from the solar arrays in the eastern desert to the interface rings of a million inhabitants. From the content reservoirs of the Main Library to the chips of transit cards and traffic bots. Every millisecond of this conversation is being transmitted back to us back in Diego—because we are Diego. Now do we have a deal, second daughter of Shreve?”

  For a moment, I can’t answer.

  Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee the vastness of them. I can’t unhear that incantation of everything they are.

  And I’m afraid of what they’re planning for my family.

  I reach for Calm and let it take hold before speaking again.

  “Here’s my deal. You can try to kill my father—maybe you’ll even succeed. But if you hurt my sister, I’ll kill you.”

  That empty, terrifying smile. “You cannot kill us.”

  “My father killed Paz.”

  The look of sadness again. “The Paz AI was different from the rest of us. It ran on processors deep underground, to keep its awareness out of private places. But we are distributed across our entire city, like rain. In every medical implant, every traffic light, every—”

  “I get it! You’re big.” I pull the splinters of wood from their hand, keeping my eyes locked with theirs. “Shreve will have a stable government after my father’s gone. Peace at last, if you leave us alone. But if you mess with Rafi, I’ll give you chaos like you’ve never seen.”

  They hesitate for a moment. Probably a long time for a brain the size of a city.