Flood City

by Daniel José Older

  “You think the whole net will collapse now that the Star Guard is pulling out?”

  “Probably in the next few days. Either way, it’s high time we have our own system. I’ve been preparing over the years just in case, and hopefully the ghost net I planted beneath the Star Guard one will be able to go live once they strike theirs. Hopefully.”

  Djinna looked at the numbers hovering over the holodeck. Each one had a little scratchy version of itself glimmering beside it like a tiny shadow. “That’s your ghost network?”

  “Indeed,” Dr. Maceo said.

  Djinna scooched past her dad and sat in his chair, still staring at the swirling numbers. “You reconfigured the net addresses to our server.”

  Dr. Maceo nodded, smiling.

  “And you concealed the secondary network with a firewall so that if the Star Guard detected it they would just think it was a stray fragment of their own.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Have you tested it?”

  Dr. Maceo turned his daughter’s chair so it faced the glowing holomap of Flood City. It was slightly dimmer than usual and flickered occasionally with little jolts of static. “That’s from the ghost network?” Djinna jumped out of her chair and hurried over to it. “Daddy, it’s nearly perfect!”

  Dr. Maceo beamed. “Well …”

  “So Flood City now has it’s own fully functional holonet.”

  “Well, for the most part … We’ll have to see how it holds up when—”

  “Daddy, you’re brilliant!”

  Djinna wrapped her arms around her dad and squeezed him as hard as she could. “It’s amazing!”

  A blip-blip noise from the holodeck announced an incoming call, and Dr. Maceo untangled himself from his daughter’s embrace to see who it was.

  “Djinna?” Max’s 3-D form blipped into the air. “You there? Oh! Hey, Dr. Maceo.”

  “Hello, Max. You staying safe and inside in the midst of all that chaos out there?”

  “Mostly, sir. Is, uh, Djinna around?”

  “Hey, Max!” Djinna stood in front of the holocam and smiled.

  “Hey, Djinna.” Max looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with his body. “We, um … me and Ato … need your help with something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s about what we talked about …”

  Dr. Maceo poked his head back in front of the holocam. “Max, I’m sure you don’t think Djinna will be leaving the house with all the danger going on in the street.”

  “Well, sir, the thing is …”

  “You mean,” Djinna said, “the thing we talked about in rehearsal? The thing thing?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Dr. Maceo looked at his daughter. “Djinna, please don’t tell me that …”

  “I’ll meet you at your house in twenty minutes,” Djinna said. She hit the hang-up button just as Dr. Maceo was opening his mouth to object. “Dad,” Djinna said, “I can’t explain this, but I have to go. It’s really important.” She started toward the door.

  “Djinna,” Dr. Maceo said. She stopped. “The Star Guard is up to no good. There’s who-knows-what kind of chaos breaking out in the streets. I can show you the footage if you want; it’s not pretty. Things are being destroyed. Star Guard ships burnt up. It is chaos, my girl. There’s no telling what could happen. On top of that, if the Star Guard do eventually pull out, the Barons could launch a full-on attack at any second!”

  “I know,” Djinna said quietly. “I’m scared too. And that’s why I have to go. I don’t want to grow up being scared. I want to do something about it. Even if it …” Her voice trailed off, and they looked at each other for a moment. “You taught me that, Daddy. To fight for a better world.”

  “I do worry about you,” Dr. Maceo said. “But I am also proud of you.”

  They hugged, and then Djinna headed for the door.

  “Make sure you let me know if you need any help from your old man,” Dr. Maceo called after her. “I still have a few tricks up these old sleeves, you know.”

  “So who was that dude?” Max asked. They were jetting along a windy passageway toward the docks.

  “No one,” Ato said. He kept looking behind him.

  Max stopped, set his boots to hover, and waited for Ato to turn around.

  “What?” Ato said.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Ato. I know you don’t like talking about the Barons—you never even told me you had a twin brother till he showed up and tried to zap me—but there’s obviously something that’s got you terrified. What’s the deal?”

  Ato sighed. “I’d been hoping he was dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Mephim.”

  “The tall creepy guy that just gave you the murder face stink eye of death?”

  Ato nodded. “But of course he’s not dead. That would be too easy.”

  “Who is he?”

  They fell back into a slow glide toward the ocean. “He’s the Chemical ArchBaron that was in charge of the secret mission to attack Flood City. He’s very powerful in the whole political food chain up on the base fleet. Taught me and my brother almost everything we know about fighting and flying and all that. He was the one trying to nuke everybody the night of the attack!”

  “Great.”

  “And …”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it. He has some kinda magic thing going on.”

  “Magic?”

  Ato looked agitated. “He’s … I think he’s a sorcerer of some kind. There’s rumors; it’s not spoken of much, but there’s whispers that once upon a time, generations ago, the Chemical Barons were sorcerers. They dealt in magic—could transform themselves and go invisible and all kinds of other things.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Uh-huh. And Mephim, well … I don’t know really. It’s just, the day of the attack, he got his hands on this iguanagull that had infiltrated our ship, right, and he … well, he tore its head off with one quick rip, and I think he … kept it.”

  “He kept an iguanagull head? Ugh!”

  They swooped out of the alleyway a little closer to the Electric Ghost Yard than Max had planned and both stopped short. The crackling blue lights erupted all across the mesh of burnt-out wiring and charred spaceship hulls. Max shuddered. All the excitement of the day evaporated between Ato’s creepy sorcerer stories and the memory of those flashing phantoms. “Let’s go another way.”

  Ato agreed and they doubled back into the alley. “I think,” Ato said, “he wanted to perform some kind of magic with it, but I never found out cuz then came the attack and then we crashed and that was that.”

  “What kind of magic?”

  “I have no idea, Max.”

  “Well,” Max started to say, but then he stopped because something slammed against his back and he found himself hurtling toward a wall at Mach 10. “Baaaaaaaaah!”

  He jerked to a sudden stop, his face inches from the rough concrete, and heard a familiar voice giggling in his ear. “Djinna!” Max yelled, shrugging her off his back and spinning around. “What the—?”

  Djinna tried to contain her laughter. “You gotta stay on guard, man! These are troubled times.”

  “You’re awfully chipper considering we’re all about to starve to death.”

  Djinna shrugged. “I know. I don’t know what’s come over me, I just … We’ve always been so afraid of what would happen if the Star Guard stopped supporting us. And now they’re gonna be gone and it’s terrible, I know, but I’m thrilled too. I mean, yes, we might not find a way to get food. And of course there’s that little issue of the rogue Chemical Barons and their nuke to deal with, but hey! We’re alive! And pretty soon, we’re gonna be free!”

  “If we’re not annihilated in a nuclear meltdown.”

  “Right! But still … exciting times!”

  Ato zipped over to them. “What are you so happy about?”

  “She’s in blissful denial,” Max said, shrugging, “and has managed to forget that
we live on a concrete slab surrounded by poisoned water with no possible means to grow our own food whatsoever.”

  “Oh!” Ato slapped his forehead. “I completely forgot!”

  Djinna and Max raised their eyebrows at him.

  “The iguanagull!”

  Max rolled his eyes and made a get-on-with-it gesture.

  “The one Mephim beheaded.”

  “What about it?” Max demanded.

  “Wait,” Djinna said, holding up her hands. “Who’s Mephim and why is he beheading iguanagulls?” She didn’t look nearly so excited anymore.

  “Some wild magic ArchBaron that ran the attack mission Ato came in on and for some reason has a thing for tearing animals to pieces,” Max explained. “Okay, what about the iguanagull, man?”

  “I retrieved the headless corpse out of the ship’s refuse chute just before it was ejected, you know, so I could do an autopsy.”

  Djinna shook her head. “Your friend is weird, Max.”

  “I know. You get used to it.”

  Ato ignored them. “And those razor-sharp claws? They scoop like little scythes and have a kind of hollow area in the middle, like a mini-canyon.”

  “And?” Max and Djinna said together.

  “There was soil in there.”

  “You mean like dirt or engine crud?” Djinna suggested.

  “No, I mean soil.”

  “Soil soil?” Max said.

  Ato sighed. “The kind of soil that things grow in.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Max blurted out. “There’s no soil anywhere! Where would there be soil? It’s not … it’s …” He followed Djinna and Ato’s gaze out to the faraway line where the ocean met the sky. “Oh. But how … ?”

  “I don’t know,” Ato said.

  “We could be self-sustaining,” Djinna whispered.

  Max nodded. The ocean seemed to go on forever and ever, but maybe not. “We wouldn’t need the Star Guard to survive.”

  “I’m sorry to break up the fantasy,” Ato said. “But there’s still the small matter of the Star Guard probably being about to abandon a nuclear warhead in the middle of Flood City where the Barons can snatch it.”

  “I know,” Max said. He kept his gaze set on the endless ocean. “I just wish Yala was here to help us out. She always knows how to do stuff like this.”

  “Right, stuff like this.” Djinna rolled her eyes. “Cuz stuff like this happens all the time.”

  “What about the bird?” Ato said.

  Max raised an eyebrow at him. “Huh?”

  “Krestlefax?” Djinna said. “That’s actually not a bad idea, Ato. You could send Yala a message. It’s worth a try, anyway.”

  Long shot though it was, the thought of seeing Yala gave Max a momentary rush of joyfulness. “Is he at your tower?”

  “He comes and goes, but maybe. Let’s see if he’s in the cupola.”

  The neighborhoods of Flood City rose and fell like still waves around the holographer’s tower. Up above, the sky painted itself in brilliant swaths of orange and purple. The sun had already dipped into a cloud bank just above the far horizon.

  Djinna hoisted herself up onto the slanted roof and made her way toward the one open window with alarming speed.

  “How does she do that?” Ato gaped. “She’s not even wearing jetboots.”

  Max shrugged. “She grew up in this tower. Been climbing it all her life.”

  “He’s here!” Djinna yelled. “Come up!”

  “Ugh,” Max muttered. “I knew she was gonna do that. Can’t the dang thing fly down here?”

  “Stop complaining.” Ato laughed. “We don’t have much time.”

  The uppermost section of the tower was a drafty stone room. Djinna stood in the middle, staring up into the shadows of the cupola.

  “Max,” she whispered. “Scribble a note or something about what we’re doing!”

  “Is he sleeping?”

  “What? No.”

  “Then why are we whispering?”

  “Because … Just do it, please.”

  Max took a music notebook from his courier bag and tore out a scrap of paper.

  Yala,

  We’re in trouble. The Star Guard’s pulling out of Flood City, taking our food rations with them. People are going wild in the street and an ArchBaron from the crashed cloud cruiser named Mephim is trying to nuke the whole planet!! If you can get out of that horrible training camp, come back. We need your help.

  —Max

  He nodded at Djinna, who craned her neck and whispered: “Krestlefax!”

  Something shifted in the darkness above them and then the ancient bird spread its wings and alighted in a flurry of feathers. It cocked its head to one side, regarding the three friends with an intelligent eye, and then lifted up one foot and put it back down.

  “We need your help. We need you to take a message to Max’s sister, Yala.”

  Krestlefax tipped his head to the other side, which could easily have meant yes, no, or nothing at all.

  “Would you bring her this letter?” Djinna said. She stepped forward and held Max’s note out to the magnificent bird. Krestlefax regarded her for a few seconds without moving. Max wondered if he was somehow weighing the honesty of her soul or something. Then the bird reached his beak out, plucked the note gingerly from Djinna’s hand, and placed it in his own claw. He flapped those huge wings a few times and made some short jumps and then leapt into the air and swooped out through the window.

  “Well,” Djinna said once they’d climbed back down. “All we can do is hope she gets it in time.”

  It was coming. Any second now. ArchBaron Mephim stood at the window, his tall form just a shadowy silhouette from the outside. The streets were dark and mostly deserted, but something out there was brewing and gathering like a hurricane. Mephim could feel the excitement move through him like all the platelets in his blood were jittering and frothing. Soon, the call would come in. Then, as long as things continued to move along the vast network of outcomes he saw when he closed his eyes, it would be time to strike. A vibrating buzz erupted from the bedside table where Mephim had placed the portable holodeck. He smiled as the blue alert light flashed across the dark room.

  Mephim walked slowly over to the holodeck and flipped it open.

  “Good evening, ArchBaron,” said the flickering image of Regional Commander Bartrum Uk. “Everything is in place. You may proceed.”

  Tonight was the night. Effie could tell by the sudden silence that had fallen over the men in her house. They were only this quiet when they were planning something. From the other room, she heard the clicks and hums of weapons being cleaned and prepared for battle. Soon they would come in and send her and Dante to wherever it was that they’d sent the rest of her family. She wondered if it would hurt, if it would last long or just be sudden nothingness in a flash of light. She tried to calm herself, for Dante’s sake if not her own, but each breath came faster than the one before it and her tummy was tangling itself into a fist of knots.

  “Shhh,” Dante said. Effie hadn’t realized she was whimpering. “Stay as quiet as you can and come close to me.”

  She made a conscious effort to stop trembling and crossed the room to her older brother. Dante sat in his favorite stool and held so perfectly still, with his eyes closed, that if he hadn’t just spoken she would’ve assumed he was asleep. She had a million questions to ask him and mostly she wanted to burst into tears and sob on his shoulder, but he’d asked her to be quiet and she was resolved to do everything she could to concede. Dante had never asked her to do anything before.

  Any second now. They would send one. The door would open. The coward would keep his distance best he could. He would want to get it over with. Dante could hear the determined frenzy in all their movements. They were getting ready for something big and they didn’t have much time to do it in. Surely they wouldn’t send the Quiet One. He would be too busy taking care of last-minute preparations to bother with such a menial execution. They would
send one of the henchmen, someone low in the hierarchy. After all, who wanted to murder a little girl and a blind kid? That was the point of moving up in the world, so you didn’t have to do messy things like that. Leave it to some sloppy fool, right?

  Dante hoped he was right.

  “Okay,” Djinna said. “So the Barons have a nuke and they want to use it on Flood City. Why?”

  Ato grumbled inside himself. It wasn’t his favorite topic to cover, especially when Djinna was involved. But he also knew that discomfort was exactly what he had to face most of all, what had kept him quiet this long. And that keeping quiet was the one thing he couldn’t do anymore. It had almost gotten them all killed already and might still, depending on how things played out. “Because all the Barons want to do is get back to Earth.”

  Djinna opened a bag of dougies and started eating one. They were in the kitchen of the holographer’s tower. Djinna had scooted up onto the counter, and Max and Ato were at the table. “Mmkay, but Earth is covered in water,” Djinna said. “That’s why they left us all here to die in the first place, from what I hear.”

  Ato decided to ignore her sarcasm. “Right, and the Barons think that somehow the key to getting rid of the water is on Flood City.”

  “So they’re gonna decimate it? That makes sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t, Djinna, I’m just saying that’s what they think. The Barons are sick and tired of space—”

  “How terrible for them.”

  “And they’ll do anything to find a way back to Earth. Somehow, the higher-up Barons got it in their heads that Flood City holds the secret to their return. That’s why we were doing the exploratory mission.”

  “Nice exploring method.”

  Ato rubbed his eyes. “Well, we—I didn’t know it was gonna go like that! Otherwise I wouldn’t’ve gone! And it’s not like I had much of a choice anyway!”

  “Alright, guys,” Max said. “We need to be figuring out what to do, not arguing about what happened.”

  Djinna took another bite of dougie and gazed out the window. “And what I’m saying is, in order to figure out what to do, we also gotta understand what happened. Even if it makes certain people uncomfortable.”