Usually, when I’m in the Undercity, I’m doing a sweep with my fellow AIS agents. I’ve definitely shut down illegal gambling and drug operations and all sorts of other cracked businesses before, as well as closing down unauthorized, makeshift elevator stations built out of old sewage tunnels.
But tonight I’m alone, masked, and hooded. I look like one of the hundreds of gamblers that roam this place.
It’s obvious that this side of the Undercity is the worst side—rows and rows of tents line the walls along the narrow, dark streets, and vendors stand outside forlorn, empty shops, watching me as I pass their storefronts.
Here, in this outfit, I go back to my Lake routine—hunched shoulders, listless gaze. I’m careful to keep a lookout for anything suspicious while at the same time not making eye contact with anyone. It seems to work okay. People think I belong down here, someone who’s clearly used to walking rough streets. But it still puts me on edge.
I didn’t come to Antarctica just to return to living like a street orphan.
What the hell is Eden doing down here again? The thought rings through my system like a warning bell. He’s the smartest damn kid in his entire university. He’s got an internship waiting for him back in the Republic. He’s got friends. He’s got everything he needs.
Why is he here? Why can’t I understand him? Why won’t he talk to me?
His location now takes me to a small, unremarkable bar. The bartender gives me a hostile look. This kind of place should be intimidating for most people unused to being down here, but I’ve seen plenty worse than this.
“What’s going on in there?” Jessan says over our line.
I observe the bartender’s posture, then everyone else in this space. “My guess is we need a password to get through,” I whisper. “Can you scan the outside perimeter for anything behind this building?”
“Looking now,” she says. I step out of the bar and into one of its narrow side alleys.
At first, it looks like any other dead-end street—a narrow space packed with garbage bins and wads of trash strewn all over the place. But when I walk closer to the back wall and run my hand along it, it feels thin and hollow. On the other side, I hear the sound of raucous cheers. There hadn’t been a doorway to this in the bar, at least that I could see. This is some kind of shoddy, makeshift wall separating the main streets from a hidden space.
I glance up to see where the back wall ends. It extends up maybe five or six floors, a crumbling brick surface bordered on either side by dilapidated apartments.
A familiar sight to a runner.
I sprint toward the wall, then skip up several steps to grab the second- floor ledge of the building next to the back wall. In a few seconds, I’m pulling myself up and jumping to grab the third floor’s balcony railings. The exertion sends a familiar thrill through me. This was how I survived in the Republic.
It takes just a moment for me to get to the top of the back wall. The cheers coming from the other side suddenly turn deafening. When I get my first glimpse over the wall, everything looks bathed in a hazy glow from strings of red lightbulbs.
I find myself staring down at a clearing packed full of people. There must be at least a thousand people crammed into a space that’s probably meant to fit less than half that number. They crowd around a small clearing in the center of the square, where a line of racers now stands with their drones.
Eden’s location in my view now flashes as it signals he’s very near.
And sure enough, when I take a closer look at the racers, I see him.
His familiar blond hair, his glasses, his wiry, lean frame. My brother’s a drone racer.
I lean against the wall, in danger for a moment of losing my balance. Maybe I’m just making up what I saw—maybe I’m so intent on finding Eden I’m hallucinating.
But when I take another look, he’s unmistakable. It’s him, along with
his friend Pressa, who’s in a long blond wig and wearing a smug look of satisfaction.
Not only was Eden in the race, but judging from the way everyone’s gathering around him, he won.
That’s when I notice the other man. He’s standing before both Eden and Pressa, his face hauntingly recognizable from all the internal AIS reports I’ve seen.
Dominic Hann.
I can’t believe my eyes.
Dominic Hann has killed hundreds. He’s committed some of the most gruesome murders I’ve ever seen—some that make even the worst of the Republic’s crimes pale in comparison. The image of the body in the streets is still fresh in my mind. I think of the sheer terror on the faces of the witnesses we were questioning. Even the act of hunting for him is considered dangerous. You don’t want a man like this setting his sights on you.
Dominic Hann doesn’t attend races like this. He rarely appears in public when he can just send his underlings in his place. He’s one of the most elusive figures terrorizing the city. AIS has glimpsed him only a few times, with nothing but a grainy photo of his face to prove it.
And yet, here he is, standing in front of my brother, a thoughtful smile on his face. As I look on, Hann says something to Eden that I can’t make out.
The blood in my veins chills to ice.
I force myself to stay calm, blending into the shadows, while the audience below gapes at the exchange. Before him, Eden stays frozen, unsure what to say in response.
Walk away, I urge him silently. Turn your back. Run.
Except my brother doesn’t. He smiles a little at Hann and then says something to answer him.
I feel like I’m back in the Republic again, looking on helplessly as the soldiers take my family away.
Why is Hann talking to him? What does he want with him?
But even as the questions flood my mind, I know the answer by instinct. It’s because Eden made the best drone here. His nimble hands have built a machine so remarkable that it caught Hann’s interest. That it beat out all the experienced racers. That it won.
I’ve never doubted Eden’s talents, but have I still been
underestimating him?
Everyone makes room for Dominic Hann as he steers Eden back toward the center of the clearing. Hostile looks linger on my brother. If it weren’t for Hann’s presence beside him right now, he might already have a knife in his back.
A surge of panic hits me. I have to do something.
My hand lingers by the gun at my belt. I’m not as good a shot as June, but I’ve gotten pretty good over the years with my AIS training. From here, I might be able to take out Hann with a single shot to the head.
But Eden would be the most immediate suspect. The new kid, suddenly here when Hann’s killed? I don’t know how many of the people in this audience are Hann’s spies and bodyguards, but I do note that there are some whose eyes sweep the audience instead of focusing on the racers. If I managed to kill Hann, his men would shoot Eden dead before the body even hit the floor. And there’s no guarantee I’d hit Hann. What if I missed?
I grit my teeth and force myself not to draw my gun. Instead, my gaze goes up to the red bulbs dangling over the space. I follow the trails of lights until they end next to the walls, the sides of which are supported by a lattice of thick, steel beams. An enormous circuit breaker sits against the wall that would have led back into that small bar.
I straighten a little from my perch on the back wall. In the shadows, I know I look like little more than a moving silhouette, and no one seems to notice me as I swing to the crisscrossing steel supporting one of the side buildings and pull myself soundlessly up onto the lowest horizontal beam, then the next one.
I keep climbing until I reach the circuit breaker. The wires connecting all the ceiling’s bulbs bunch together here in the upper corners. Aside from those bulbs, this clearing is lit only by the weak light coming from the surrounding buildings’ apartments.
I pull a knife out from my boot. Down below in the clearing, Hann pats my brother on his shoulder.
The sight’s enough to send a shudder deep through my bones. I slash once through the red bulbs’ wires.
The entire space plunges into darkness.
No time to waste. I turn on my system’s grids. In the chaos, a series of thin, neon-blue virtual lines light up over my view, showing me where to go and where people are. I swing down from the beams one at a time, as
fast as I can. My feet hit the ground in seconds. Then I’m bolting into the crowd, shoving past people as I seek out my brother.
I reach him. In my grids, he looks like a sickly green animation.
He lets out a startled shout before I clap a hand over his mouth. Then, without a word, I pull him with me and run. To my overwhelming relief, he doesn’t resist. He just follows me.
We dart through the crowds to one of the narrow alleys that other people are running toward, one that dead-ends at a nondescript shop, then leads out into a main street. Everyone around us jostles past, panicked that the clearing is being raided.
Somewhere behind us are Dominic Hann and his men. But I don’t dare look back.
“You followed me down here,” Eden snaps at me as we go. In the darkness, his eyes glitter once, livid. He doesn’t have a clue how close he came to death.
“You don’t understand,” I say. “That man was Dominic Hann.” At that, Eden blinks at me. “So?” he asks.
“So,” I answer grimly, “you have no idea what you’ve just gotten yourself into.”
