by Natasha Ngan
To my parents, who have always encouraged
me to chase my dreams.
And to Callum, who chases them with me.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Part I: Neo-Babel
1: The Banquet
2: Silver’s Mistake
3: The Head of the Elites
4: Confrontations and Confessions
5: The Wink
6: At the Beach
7: The Message Under the Moneyplant
8: A Secret Overheard
9: Aiming to Kill
10: The Limpets
11: Little Mae’s Last Hours
12: Inside the Skylung
13: The Tunnel
Part II: Outside
14: Trapped
15: The Temple of the Fat Wives
16: Butterfly’s Ghosts
17: Akhezo Dreaming at the Top of the World
18: Caterpillar Boy
19: Red
20: A Chance
21: The Kiss Before the Storm
22: The Exploded World
23: The Birthchip Charm
24: Fire and Ice
25: Down the River and Away
26: Cambridge’s Weakness
27: Shadows in the Forest
28: The Ghost City
29: An Unfortunate Encounter
30: Iarassi
31: The Truth
32: Cobe’s Secret
33: The Assassin’s Wife
34: The Story Behind the Scar
Part III: Neo-Babel
35: The Air-tram Ambush
36: Home Sweet Home
37: Into the Stacks
38: The Bee-Hives
39: The Limpets Rat and the Witch
40: A New Neo
41: Second Lives
42: The Break in the Wall
Copyright
Prologue
There is a rumour that the Elites don’t bleed.
As the boy stands in the corner of the small, shadowy room, his whole body trembling, he thinks, If only I could be an Elite. Clenching and unclenching his hands, he tries to stop the shaking. An Elite wouldn’t feel anything, he thinks. Then: But I will feel it all.
His mother is talking to the doctor by the operating table. They have their backs to him and are almost whispering, but he can still hear the insistence in their voices, the tension. Their murmurs rise over the room’s electronic ticks, the muffled throbbing of a generator nearby. The boy tries to focus on the shapes of their bodies, bent over like trees in the wind, but his eyes keep getting pulled away to the rest of the room.
The room and its contents scare him. Twists and coils of wires hang from the low ceiling, their ends feeding into strange machinery the boy does not recognise. Here and there he spies a familiar piece of technology; the round face of an air-tram light hanging above the operating table, casting a pool of liquid yellow in the darkness. And there, built into the wall, is a mosaic of screens that look as though they have been ripped from tablets. Though their screens are blank, every movement his mother or the doctor make sends a slice of light across their dark surfaces. It makes the boy feel as though the room is alive, watching him.
Then he spots a case of sharp metal instruments on a tray beside the operating table; the blade of a scalpel gleams in the low light. A shiver runs down the boy’s neck. Breathing slowly, he focuses on the conversation between his mother and the doctor, trying to block out the horrible room and its ominous metal instruments and its rotting smell of death.
‘What about two forty, sensei?’ his mother asks.
‘No,’ the doctor snaps. ‘Three hundred. Lowest.’
The doctor’s voice has a curl of an accent in it, but the boy isn’t able to trace it. Afronese? New Indian? Things are so muddled in the Limpets, he thinks. Even blood.
The boy’s mother shakes her head. ‘Two sixty –’
‘Two eighty.’
‘Two sixty-five.’
‘Two seventy. Last offer.’
The boy’s mother hesitates for a second, then nods.
‘Good.’ The doctor holds his hand out. ‘Pay now.’
‘N-now?’ she asks. ‘Can’t it wait until after Sauro’s operation?’
He shakes his head. ‘No guarantee. Must be now. What if it not work, then afterwards you don’t want to pay?’ He waves his open hand. ‘Must be before.’
Sauro’s mother glances back at him. He has a sudden urge to shout out to her, to ask her not to make him do this. To grab her hand and run out of the room. But then his mother pulls out her purse and turns back to the doctor, and all too soon, Sauro is strapped down on the operating table, his face pushed through a hole and his head clamped tight in the jaws of the metal.
That must be
he thinks, then pushes the thought away. I am an Elite, he tells himself firmly. I am an Elite, and I don’t bleed. I can’t bleed.
His mother has been sent to wait outside. Sauro wishes she could stay with him for the operation. He feels stupid for wanting it; a twelve-year-old boy shouldn’t need his mummy. But suddenly he can’t help it, and suddenly it’s all too much, and he’s struggling and trying to get his head out of the clamp and the doctor is holding him down, hissing at him with sour, stinking breath, ‘Stay still! Stay still! Do you want me to cut your head off?’, and he feels a hot, sharp bite in the side of his neck and he screams.
Part I
NEO-BABEL
1
The Banquet
Silver was standing outside her own bedroom, one ear pressed against the door. She couldn’t hear anything apart from the thudding of her heartbeat, which hadn’t calmed since finishing that afternoon’s training session. Her whole body ached – even her hair seemed to hurt – and she wanted more than anything to take a nap before the banquet that night, but she couldn’t bear facing Ember, her Elite senior. She pressed her ear harder against the cool metal of the door, listening for sounds that suggested Ember was inside.
As soon as they began the training programme, all juniors were paired with an older Elite to be their mentor. Silver had moved into the bedroom she shared with Ember when she was thirteen years old. She was fifteen now. Two years of living with her Elite senior had taught Silver enough to know that if she found Ember waiting in their bedroom now, she’d end up feeling even worse than she did already.
Silver pulled away from the door. She hadn’t heard a thing. Sending a quick prayer to the gods that Ember was elsewhere – and ignoring the thought of what her parents would say if they knew she’d asked the gods for help with such a trivial matter – she unlocked the door by touching her hand to the panel at its side. Then, carefully, she pushed it open.
The room was empty.
‘Thank you, gods!’ Silver smiled, stepping inside.
The room was just as she’d left it that morning. To the right, the shutters of her and Ember’s bedpods were open, and at the far end of the room the blinds for the plastiglass outer wall were pulled up, letting in a wave of pale light from the setting sun.
Silver shut the door behind her and dropped to the floor. She lay spread-eagled on her back, grinning widely. It felt so good not to be on her feet. Training had been intense that afternoon; five hours of stamina, stealth and fighting sessions. She could already feel the bruises forming on her body where the blows of her trainer had landed. Now, lying on the floor in the warmth of the sunshine, she felt her muscles relaxing, her limbs softening. Fighting had never been Silver’s strong point. She was quick and agile, which suited her to the covert assignments Elites were given by the Council, but even after years of training her combat skills were poor.
‘I’m not moving all night,’ she announced out loud to herself. ‘I’ll just
have to miss the banquet. No one will care.’ She snorted. ‘And Ember will be thankful that she won’t have to sit next to me, pretending to be nice –’
‘Oh, is that right?’
Silver scrambled up so quickly she banged her forehead into the door.
‘Careful now,’ said the voice behind her. ‘We don’t want you injured for your big day tomorrow.’
‘I’m fine,’ muttered Silver, getting to her feet.
Ember was leaning in the bathroom doorway. She had changed out of her uniform and was wearing a silk kimono tied loosely at her waist, slipping off one shoulder to reveal a curve of white skin. Her flame-red hair was wet and dark from the shower. Even without make-up she was beautiful, and Silver felt the familiar pang of jealousy as she took in Ember’s womanly figure, her large green eyes bright and sharp as jade stones.
‘It doesn’t look like you’re fine.’ Ember crossed her arms, the corners of her lips curled in a sneer. ‘After that pathetic performance at training today, I’m amazed Senior Surrey didn’t remove you from the Elite programme right away.’
Silver ignored this. She went to move towards her bedpod.
Ember stepped in her way. ‘But then,’ she said, leaning her face down to Silver’s, ‘maybe he’s finally realised how irrelevant you are to the Council.’ The orange blossom fragrance of her perfume was sickly sweet, clogging in Silver’s throat.
‘Look, Ember –’
‘Perhaps he’s working out who to replace you with tomorrow.’
Swallowing down an angry retort, Silver tried to push past her, but Ember grabbed her shoulders, leaning her face so close to Silver’s their noses almost touched.
‘You know,’ Ember whispered coldly, ‘I always ask him how it came to be that a Red would have the exceptional DNA needed to be streamed into the Elite programme –’
‘Don’t call me that!’
It came out louder than Silver had expected. For a few breathless seconds they stared at each other. Ember’s wide eyes were unreadable. Then, slowly, her mouth tightening, Ember straightened.
‘I will call you a Red, Silver,’ she said, ‘because that is what you are.’
Silver hung her head, her cheeks burning. She didn’t look back up until she had heard Ember move away, slamming the bedroom door as she left.
Every year, a banquet was held the night before the parade. It took place in the Ebora Building, the main offices of the Council and home to the Elites. It was nicknamed the Stacks due to its hollow centre criss-crossed with walkways and jutting prayer gantries. The preparations for the banquet had been underway all day. Enticing aromas wafted up from the east-wing kitchens as the city’s best chefs created an elaborate menu featuring dishes from every kind of cultural cuisine, while geisha maids in pretty kimonos ritualised the banquet space.
By the time Silver arrived, the hall was filled with the buzz of voices. Hundreds of Council members milled around, sipping sake and commenting on the performance of the musicians playing on a stage at the far end of the hall. Some Council members had their heads bowed deep in conversation, perhaps discussing the parade taking place the next day. Would the president stumble in his speech? Would there be a repeat of last year’s minor disturbance? Protestors were common at these events. There were low sniggers as many imagined the punishments awaiting troublemakers.
Silver hovered near the doorway. She tugged at the neck of her cheongsam, a traditional dress of the Chinese cultures of the Red Nations. She hadn’t meant to wear it, but after Ember’s comment earlier about her nationality – Reds was the derogatory term for the Chinese ethnicities of the Red Nations – she’d put it on in a little act of defiance. Silver was now starting to feel like it was a bad idea. The bright red colour of the dress and the slit hem which exposed the olive skin of her thigh was drawing looks from some of the male Council members, and she regretted wearing her long black hair loose. It made her look older than her age.
A Council member nearby caught her eye, smiling. As he started towards her, Silver rushed off into the crowd. Your fault for wearing a dress like this! she thought angrily to herself. She was just turning to check whether the man had followed her when she walked straight into someone, her head thumping against their chest.
‘I’m so sorry!’ Silver gushed, stepping back, but she broke into a smile when she saw who it was. ‘Butterfly!’
Though he looked smart in a fitted silk shirt and slim black trousers, Butterfly’s messy brown hair still fell into his blue eyes as it always did, and he was holding himself a little stiffly, as if he was uncomfortable in his clothes too. He was tall for his sixteen years. Unlike Silver, who was as slim as she’d always been, years of Elite training had defined the muscles in Butterfly’s body. She caught a couple of pretty female Council members nearby watching him hopefully, their eyes trailing over his broad shoulders, his defined cheekbones and freshly shaved jaw.
Silver’s grin widened.
Butterfly raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ she said quickly, stifling a giggle. She gestured at his clothes. ‘You just look nice, that’s all.’
Butterfly smiled; only a second and then it was gone. Having been best friends with Butterfly since she’d joined the Elites training programme a year after him, Silver was used to that. He didn’t smile very much, and when he did it was a fleeting thing, gone as soon as it had come. She remembered a time when Butterfly had smiled easily, but that was before the explosion.
‘Have you seen any of the others?’ Silver asked, changing the subject. She and Butterfly were close friends with some of the other Elites.
‘Not yet.’
She glanced round the crowd to see whether she could spot any of their friends. ‘I can’t wait for this to be over,’ she murmured. ‘Three hours stuck with Ember isn’t going to be fun.’
Butterfly nodded. ‘And this shirt is so uncomfortable. It’s really irritating my wings.’
Silver knew that if she reached a hand round his back, she’d feel two raised wing discs and the folds of his wings beneath his shirt. The Council had implanted the discs in Butterfly when he was a year into his Elites training to assess the practicalities of developing aerial surveillance. His wings were a secret kept within the Elites and their associated Council members, and Silver was one of the only people who had ever seen him in the air. Flying was still a contested subject after the Red Nations made the planes come down all those hundreds of years ago.
‘It’s a shame you still can’t fly on assignments,’ Silver said. ‘Where are they stationing you tomorrow?’
‘I’ll be on the stage with Ember,’ Butterfly replied. ‘And you?’
‘Hemmingway House rooftop. Right across from the stage.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m … I’m the only one that’s going to be there.’
Surprise registered on Butterfly’s face for a split second before he composed himself, flashing another quick smile. ‘That’s great! Senior Surrey must really be starting to trust you.’
Silver scrunched up her nose and looked away. ‘I doubt it. We all know I’m the worst Elite. Gods know why he’s given me such a big responsibility.’ Ever since she’d found out about the assignment, she’d wondered whether it was a challenge from Senior Surrey and the Council to see whether she really had the skills and confidence to be an Elite. She swallowed nervously. She didn’t like to think what would happen if she didn’t prove herself to them tomorrow.
‘Hey,’ said Butterfly, touching her shoulder. ‘Don’t doubt yourself. He’s given you the responsibility for a reason. And just think – after tomorrow, you won’t ever have to take Ember’s abuse again. She might even be proud of you.’
Silver let out a bark of laughter. She was about to say exactly what she thought about that when a gong sounded.
The clamour of the hall hushed immediately. On the stage, the musicians put down their instruments as a man in a brilliant blue tunic and slim metallic trousers stepped out in front of them. A man Silver had only ever
seen from afar at events such as this; the city’s president, Tanaka.
Tanaka gave a deep bow. He was a kindly faced Japanean man, with greying hair and small, almond-shaped eyes similar to Silver’s own. Though there was nothing particularly striking about his appearance, there was something about him that gave the impression of a calm assuredness, and despite his slender frame and average height, he commanded attention.
‘Council members!’ Tanaka beamed. ‘I am delighted to be President of Neo-Babel for yet another year, and to celebrate our Council’s leadership with you all one more time. But tonight is not the time for speeches. You will all have to sit through one tomorrow, and I don’t want you to fall asleep before having the chance to sample the fine food our chefs have prepared for us tonight!’ There were twitters among the crowd. ‘Now,’ he continued, gesturing at the tables spaced round the hall. ‘Let us take our places, and enjoy the finest food and company Neo-Babel has to offer!’
‘Good luck,’ said Butterfly, brushing Silver’s arm as the room burst once again into noise and activity.
‘For what?’ She gave him a grim smile. ‘The parade tomorrow or three hours with Ember tonight? I’m not really sure which I’m dreading more.’
He didn’t return her smile. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, turning to leave. ‘You’ll be great tomorrow. Tanaka’s in safe hands with you.’
It didn’t take Silver long to find her seat in the busy hall; Ember’s shock of fiery red hair was easy to spot. As she sat down, Ember’s eyes travelled slowly over her, taking in her loose hair and cheongsam.
‘Well, don’t you look nice,’ Ember said acidly before turning back to the Council member on her other side.
Ember stayed in that position for the entirety of the banquet, for which Silver was thankful. With no one else to talk to, she was left alone with her thoughts. Her mind wandered to the gift she’d bought for her father’s birthday in a few weeks’ time, an antique musical instrument from before the Great Fall. It had cost her the best part of her yearly salary, but with little else to spend the money on, she hadn’t minded. Silver was close to her parents, spending much of her free time outside of her Elites schedule with them. She smiled, imagining how delighted her father would be with her gift. Hopefully, he’d not try and play it though; she doubted the strange string instrument sounded much better than the ear-splitting Chinese opera her mother and father were so fond of.
