The Breaking Light (Split City Book 1)

by Heather Hansen

  She made sure to avoid Uri, Mariah, and also Colin, who winked at her when she slipped past. Arden hid herself in the shadows where the dance lights failed to penetrate. She waited on the outskirts of the dance floor, observing Dade’s movements as she had done earlier that day.

  He didn’t dance, a solid statue in the midst of the undulating hedonism that moved around him. That alone made him stand out, made him more alluring than if he’d taken part in the promise of their bodies. He drew looks of awe from the crowd. Many recognized him, either thinking he was the Ghost or perhaps sensing his real identity. Either way, they kept a healthy distance. Dade never looked in any one direction for more than a few seconds. He was clearly searching for someone. If Arden found out who, perhaps it would answer her questions as to why he’d stumbled in here.

  Dade began to walk through the crowd, never wavering from his intended direction and assuming that people would move. And they did, parting for him unconsciously.

  She followed. Curiosity, lust, and excitement all mixed together.

  He stopped in the middle of the dance floor. Dancers writhed around him. He remained still, poised like a hunter. As if he expected his prey to dart out in front of him.

  Arden reached out. She brushed his shoulder, following the line of his arm down to slip her hand into his. A zing sizzled against her skin, making her suck in her breath.

  Dade turned at the touch. Their fingers loosely joined. Then he squeezed her hand, pulling her closer. Sliding her other arm up around his shoulder, she fell into him as he tucked her against him, her body pressed warmly to his.

  He didn’t look surprised to see her. If anything, he appeared relieved. He smiled, big and radiant.

  Arden didn’t know what to say, deciding to enjoy the moment and letting the heat build between them.

  Electricity sparked inside her as their gazes held. Time suspended, the moment perfect in beautiful connection. Their bodies began to sway together, becoming one with the music and each other. The bubble of space that surrounded them shrank. Dancers moved closer, swallowing them up so that they became a part of the living mass, hidden from outside eyes, safe in their own world.

  All that existed was the music and him. For the first time that she could remember, Arden felt alive. That spark he’d lit inside her now rushed through her veins. Nothing else mattered beyond this. Reality would exist later once this magical moment broke.

  He leaned in, so close that she could smell the mint on his breath and the deep spicy richness of his cologne. She wanted to press her face close to his tunic, perhaps lay her head on his shoulder. But she maintained sense enough to hold herself back. Barely. This feeling, as nice as it was, couldn’t permeate her life. Because then she’d miss it when he left. Nothing good ever stuck around.

  Dade’s hand cupped the side of her face. His fingers trailed in flutter-soft strokes across her cheek, just below her mask. The touch left warm prickles of awareness. She shivered at the feel of skin against skin, wanting to press into it. Needing to prolong it somehow, to make it last, wanting to live in the moment before it slipped away.

  Then he touched her hair. Dade fingered the tendrils a moment before his hand slipped to cup the back of her head. He moved her forward, as his mouth inched toward hers.

  Arden turned her face up. Anticipation melted her, making the heat inside her spread like lava through her stomach and chest.

  Just for a moment, his lips hung above hers, almost, but not quite, touching.

  They connected. Dade’s lips brushed hers, soft at first with the barest hint of pressure. Then he leaned in farther, pulling her until she grabbed at his shoulders to seal their lips together.

  She felt as if all her dreams coalesced into heart-melting want. She could go on like this forever, sharing the same breath, touching, and being one together. Their masks brushed lightly, the nanotech sparks showering them in a cascade of fireworks light.

  Arden pulled back and drew in a long breath. They stared at each other, while their bodies still moved. The music continued to play, yet the moment they were caught in was long and quiet. She slid her tongue across her bottom lip, considering going back for another kiss.

  A piercing siren shattered the haze of her mind.

  Arden drew away, startled. Her brain tried to catch up with the situation exploding around her. It took her a second to put the context together, to realize the club was being raided.

  Govies stormed in from the doors, the windows, and through the roof. They wore their govie-greens: gender-neutral, sleek synth-suits in a material that helped to deflect phase-fire. Over this, they sported high-tech tactical gear and head cranials, with blue-phase shields that covered their eyes and provided them with night vision.

  A concussion grenade exploded. The reverberating sound shook the dance floor. Smoke billowed, making it impossible to see. The club lights were cut, leaving only the glow from the govie phase shields to slice through the fog like ghostly beacons.

  Arden tried not to breathe in the noxious fumes. Her body felt as if it had ground itself together, bone against bone, while her eyes watered and her head swam. The ringing in her ears from the grenade messed with her balance. She swayed, stumbling forward.

  Dade caught her.

  Club goers scattered, making the chaos worse.

  “We need to go,” Arden said.

  He nodded. “I’m sorry. I meant to get you out of here before they showed up.”

  That stopped her cold. She narrowed her eyes. The odds were always in favor that the govies might strike the club. But he’d known. Had Dade set her up? “How did you know there would be a raid tonight?”

  “I didn’t, not really. But I knew they were upping their sweeps. I thought I had enough time to warn you.”

  “That’s stupid,” she said, while feeling a warm flutter in her belly. “You’re not ever to risk your life. I already told you that once today.”

  Arden didn’t know if she was more frustrated at him for being here or for caring. She couldn’t trust him, but did it matter? He’d come to find her. That made him her responsibility. Even if he might be playing some other dangerous game, she couldn’t leave him for the govies.

  She grabbed Dade’s wrist and navigated them through the screaming chaos. They reached a back hallway where a govie stood at the mouth of the egress, keeping people from escaping in that direction. She shoved a group of club kids into him. While he was distracted, she moved around them and down the hall.

  She pushed her way into the men’s restroom. Thankfully, it was empty. “We don’t have much time. Lock the door.”

  Dade looked back the way they’d come before he stepped inside and did as she’d asked. His face was lined with worry, his shoulders tight. “What about those kids?”

  “It’s them or us,” she said. “And I didn’t want to kill a govie tonight. I try to save that for the last option.” Arden aimed for a joke, but it fell flat because it was the truth. Neither of them laughed. She left it at that, hoping she’d made her point.

  “We can’t leave them. They’re nobodies, just club kids.”

  “Which means they’ll be released from custody soon enough,” Arden said. “Let it go. We can’t help them.”

  Dade didn’t look happy, yet he nodded.

  She walked to the other end of the restroom. There was only one way out since they obviously couldn’t exit onto the streets. The Lasair members guarded their bolt-hole entrances zealously. Rescuing Dade was going against every rule the gang had. He could easily disclose the bolt-hole’s existence, making that escape route inoperable.

  She should not trust him. Didn’t trust him. And yet, she found herself leading Dade to the janitor’s closet.

  He looked at her, his eyebrow raised. “First date and you’re already shoving me into dark closets?”

  Arden rolled her eyes and pushed him inside. “As if.” But his words made her relive the brief kiss on the dance floor.

  She followed, shutting and lockin
g them into the darkness. From her pocket, she extracted a glo-wand, extending the tube and flicking it on to emit a low yellow light. Then she knelt down on the floor and unhooked a hidden latch that revealed a keypad. After she typed in the code to release the hatch, the floor slid open to reveal a set of stairs descending into the darkness.

  “Tell anyone about this bolt-hole and I’ll kill you,” she said, gesturing for him to go first.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Why do you keep threatening to kill me?” Dade asked, his amusement clear.

  “You seem to inspire that in me,” she said, forcing back an answering smile. Normally she wasn’t too entertained by people, but he was so honest and charming in his reactions, it was difficult not to get sucked in.

  Arden shone her glo-wand on another keypad inside the tunnel lip. When she keyed that one, the lights inside the tunnel flickered on. She pulled the hatch the rest of the way open and then gestured again. “You first.”

  He didn’t protest, moving past her while giving her a smirk. The kind promising a secret that said he would share it with her if she would only ask. It made her toes curl and her heartbeat stumble.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised at his cockiness. He’d come to the club knowing about the sweep, after all. That he was flirting even when they were in danger of being caught and she was literally leading him into a dark tunnel underground should be expected.

  She followed, making sure to shut and lock the hatch behind her. The light on the panel turned from green to red. The tube felt claustrophobic, with a stench of unfiltered air. The temperature lowered as they descended. Arden hated traveling to and from Undercity. The press of the walls always reminded her of how trapped they really were.

  They climbed down for a while, Arden’s muscles beginning to burn with exertion before they reached the bottom of the tunnel. Dade looked around the small antechamber. He studied the blue-tinged brick walls as if committing them to memory. The Levels and the Sky Towers were constructed from metal and moonglass. Only here in Undercity were the walls made from the planet’s soil.

  Reaching out, he ran his fingers along the rough texture. “I never thought I’d see brick in person. It’s fascinating.”

  Arden found his reaction humorous, but she managed to keep it in check. “Then you’re going to love the rest of it. Come on.”

  She slipped her mask off, tucking it into a pocket. Then pulled up the hood of her cloak. “Keep your head covered until we reach the fields. There aren’t many working cameras in this neighborhood, but there are enough.”

  “Right.” Dade mimicked her movements.

  There was another door on this side. The tunnel locked at both ends. She opened it, leading them into the basement of a food-package shop. The storage area was crammed with boxes and barrels. Arden didn’t bother with the overhead light, relying on her glo-wand as they entered the back of the shop and worked their way through the store. The dim electric lights from the street outside cast a gloomy shine through the clouded, aged windows. Arden shut off her glo-wand, collapsing and pocketing it.

  The store didn’t have much in the way of decoration, like most shops in Undercity. Cell-powered lamps hung from the rafters as a precaution against frequent power outages. The floor had been cobbled together from natural stone collected from the Wilds and smoothed to make a flat surface. Cracks in the grout had been dug out and refilled several times in a variety of colors. But the surfaces were clean, and the place was dry. There wasn’t the prevalent Undercity mold smell.

  Food commodities were carefully monitored for distribution. There wasn’t a lot for sale on the shelves. The items had been prepackaged individually in govie wrappers, and each sat with space surrounding it from the next item. They were high-calorie offerings made from meta-grains, their goal to sustain the body on less food. Prices glowed in suspended numbers in front of each shelf. Govie Buy Certificates were needed along with credits for purchase. This system limited the number and type of supplies, making sure there was a fair exchange of goods.

  “We need to move quickly,” she said when they reached the door to the street. “Stay in the shadows. If we’re seen, run. I’ll find you.”

  The streets were empty since they were currently in the middle of lockdown hours. Anyone on the streets now either had legitimate business with a govie pass or shouldn’t be there at all. The likelihood of being caught was slim because there weren’t frequent patrols in this neighborhood, but caution was still necessary.

  “I’m not worried,” he said.

  “You should be.” A little fear would be good for him, but as he’d proven over and over, getting him to understand that would be impossible. “If we’re separated, you won’t get out of Undercity without me showing you the way.”

  The food-package shop was located in a quiet section to the south of the town square. Arden led them past the row of storefronts and out toward the wheel of the city center where they could take the path that led to the farm district. From there, she would take him to a bolt-hole close to the Sky Towers. Then she would be done with him. Arden considered whether she’d use the next hour to figure out what made him so intriguing, then ruthlessly cut that thought from her mind.

  Dade looked up to the ceiling that domed the walkways, enclosing all of Undercity. “There’s brick everywhere.”

  “It’s how they keep us from crawling from the depths into Above.” She felt uncomfortable with his curiosity, like she feared being judged, and that in turn made her angry and embarrassed. No siskin was going to make her feel less than, even if he seemed enthralled by her world and hadn’t uttered a single disparaging remark.

  This was her normal, her home. For the most part, she barely noticed it. Of course, she saw the difference between the world she belonged to and Above, whenever she snuck up to run a job or manage a deal. It didn’t mean that she wanted him to understand the difference.

  “It’s a long walk, so keep up. The subtrains stopped running a few hours ago. I need to be back by the early bell.” She walked quicker, putting some strides between them and hoping that if they moved faster, he’d show less fascination with Undercity and then she could breathe a little easier.

  “I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it be easier to wait a few hours and then return through the club?”

  “It’s too risky. The govies will be watching the streets. Standard procedure is to establish a perimeter before the raid that then stays in place for at least twelve hours after. You probably just made it inside.” Then she added seriously, “I can’t get caught.”

  “Have you been caught in raids before?”

  “Not yet.” Though she was sure she was in the database.

  Not that she was only worried about being caught by the govies. She also couldn’t be caught leading Dade through Undercity. If anyone from Lasair noticed her, she’d be in trouble.

  Here, in the heart of Undercity, steel carcasses of what had once been enormous mining facilities rose out of the earth. They held the weight of the city above, providing the foundation on which the Levels had been built. Large sections had been reinforced with brick and more steel.

  Along the apex of the ceiling where the brick met to shape the peak of the dome, squares of opaque glass filtered in light. These were worked into the sidewalk in Above, unnoticed by the hundreds of pedestrians who stepped over them daily. Moss, dirt, and cobwebs crept over their surface, and plants grew from cracks.

  “Undercity is different than I thought it would be.” He’d caught up to her long strides, matching them with little to no effort.

  “What did you expect?”

  “The vids I’ve seen are from before the Levels were built. I expected it to be like that, but older maybe. It hasn’t been kept up as well as I’d been led to believe.”

  “The only thing anyone from Above cares about is that the infrastructure is sound. Wouldn’t want the city imploding,” she said. “Well, that and they want the food we grow.”

  Dade shrugged.
“I hadn’t given it much thought, I guess. I figured it would still look like it did when the planet was terraformed.”

  Arden snorted, half in amusement and half in disbelief. “You believed the history-vids that this is a ‘perfect planet’? That our ancestors were lucky to find it?”

  Dade didn’t respond, but the tiny frown indicated that he probably had.

  “This planet has oxygen, and the necessary minerals in the soil to grow plants. I guess if that’s all that matters, it’s perfect,” Arden conceded. “But a perfect planet would have sunlight available to everyone.”

  Dade gave a half nod, not so much to her, but more indicating that he was deep in thought. He didn’t voice whatever it was he was mulling over. Arden accepted that as response enough. He needed to come to terms with the true reality of the way things were.

  Trash became a problem as they left the urban center and wandered into the less-densely populated lands where the food was grown. Debris had been pushed to the corners, ready for pickup, though that didn’t run on any regular schedule. Along with the rubbish, there were also piles of broken brick and other scraps, ready to be repurposed for new projects. Water collected around these piles, as the streets were not properly irrigated to handle the rising water table.

  Dade stopped at the edge of the electric fields. The power-wired fences were necessary to keep gleaners out. Food was too precious a resource, kept under surveillance. Beyond the fence grew hybrid corn, the stalks a greenish blue from the soil’s minerals. The sun-strobes over the fields were turned off at this hour. He stepped to the barrier and reached forward as if about to reach through the fencing to touch the plant.

  “Don’t.” She stopped his hand. “The amount of voltage running through the fence will knock you out for days, if you’re lucky enough to survive.”