It’s a cold night, but I don’t mind the sting of the air against my skin. There’s something familiar about the wind against my face at a place high above the city, where I can see everything—the pulse of the hundreds of floors below me, the menagerie of bright lights lining the walkways that connect each high-rise, the flickering of virtual notations over people shuffling by below. Tonight, the skyscrapers nearest ours have a set of virtual murals of the ocean overlaid against their walls, of bright corals and rainbow-hued fish swimming between each building. As I look on through the augmented-reality system installed in my chip, a virtual whale colored neon turquoise and pink glides lazily in the air between two skyscrapers, its massive body materializing out through one wall and into another like a ghost.
I admire the moving art in silence.
Back in the Republic, I would climb to the top of a building and look down at a scene of haze and dirt, concrete and steel and red banners and metal waterwheels. At night, there would be patches of the city that were completely dark, areas where they cut the power to conserve it for military use. I have fragments of memories about those rolling blackouts, nights when Tess and I would light a roll of trash as a torch to navigate the pitch-dark alleys. It was a place that always seemed broken.
All I see here is a sea of eternal lights and colors. Yet, somehow, everything still has a feeling of precarious balance—like this whole goddy city’s sitting on a neglected, crumbling foundation, teetering on the brink of something sinister.
Dominic Hann.
The AIS has been tracking him for so long, and yet we still have no good leads. Not even a public sighting of him. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s got some powerful friends and a lot of spies. No doubt he knows that we’re after him, and he’s found a way to keep out of our
sights.
I check my messages again in my view. No new updates from Jessan or Lara. No luck hunting down where the next drone race might be happening in the Undercity.
I run a hand through my hair and try not to remember the feeling of that woman’s body going limp in my arms, her head lolling to one side as the life left her. Every time I close my eyes, I picture the foam flecks at her mouth and feel the weight of her. The memory makes me shudder. I’m too afraid to see her in my dreams.
It was easier when I had an enemy I could face: the old Republic, the military jeeps and the airfields and the plague patrols, those shining epaulettes and black boots. Not that I’m itching to go back to living on the streets anytime soon.
The thought reminds me of Eden, and I look instinctively over my shoulder toward the darkness of his room. At least he can get some sleep. Maybe in the morning I’ll be able to catch him before he heads off to the university and get a few words in with him. A part of me itches to check his location again, just to make sure he’s where he should be—but Eden’s outburst from this afternoon makes me pause. I force myself to leave him alone.
Instead, I look up to the few floors above our apartment. Tomorrow, the Republic’s Elector and his entourage are going to land on the Sky Floor of a nearby building. June will be with him. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen her since I bumped into her on the street in Batalla a month ago.
A knot of excitement and fear tightens in my chest. I look to my side and imagine our meeting, picture her standing here beside me and leaning against the railing. My memories have been so shattered since I left the Republic, and for years I couldn’t even remember who June was at all. I’d only see a nameless girl in my dreams, her long, dark ponytail swinging behind her, and wonder how I could never seem to catch up. I’d study the paper clip ring around my finger, something I’ve always worn since I left the Republic, and try to remember why it mattered so much to me.
It wasn’t until I saw her in the Republic a month ago, purely by accident, that fragments of her in my memories came rushing back to me. That I remembered June was the one who’d give me that paper clip ring.
That time, we’d shaken hands, and there had been tears in my eyes. We smiled over dinner with Tess and made awkward conversation. I walked her back home. I made jokes and she eased into them. Every gesture, every question, and every laugh from her triggered old memories that I thought I’d lost. She was the flint lighting sparks in my darkness, illuminating a history that I can just barely see.
That was the last time we spoke. She hasn’t contacted me in the month since then, and I haven’t reached out either. I don’t know why I’m terrified to call her again. Maybe it’s the fear of those sparks of memory returning to me.
But tomorrow, I’ll see her again. So every idle moment I have, I find my thoughts drifting to her.
I clear my throat, then pretend to look over at her and smile. Even this practice session makes me nervous. What the hell do I say to her?
“Fancy running into you again, yeah?” I murmur to myself, feigning the casual, flirtatious tone I try to have around her. I shake my head. I don’t want her to think I’m an idiot. “Seems like we’re always bumping into each other on the street,” I rephrase, but grimace. I try out a few other phrases.
“Welcome to my new neighborhood.”
“If you need a guide around the city, I’m pretty free today.”
“Any plans with your Elector tonight, or can I steal you for dinner?”
I scowl, embarrassed and grateful that no one else is around to see me talking to myself. I’ve never had trouble talking to a girl before. Why am I working myself up into such a panic?
I shift my footing against the ledge and start reciting things I’ve been working on telling her all week, memories of us that I’ve been working hard to recollect.
“Remember the time when you taught me how to fight?” I murmur to an imaginary June beside me, a sly grin on my face. “You had a fever from being Patient Zero for a plague, and you still beat me up.”
Honestly, the memory is vague for me. Most of them are. I remember the fight, recall June teaching me how to space my footing and how to protect my chin. But I don’t quite remember where we were, or why. I don’t remember what happened after she tripped me. There was a long, dark tunnel. Sweat beaded her brow.
If I mention it to her, she might help me fill in the gaps of that memory.
“Or the time when you wore that scarlet dress? You were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. Still are.”
That memory, too, is like a blurred photo. There were glasses of champagne and glittering chandeliers. There was the vision of June in that stunning red gown, her hair clipped high and thick on her head. We stood in a room lit only by moonlight, and for some reason, I’d walked away from her. Why would I ever do that?
I recite other fragments of memories. Her face, wet and glistening, as we crouched in a raging storm. Us, huddled together under a burlap sack in a rolling train car. Me, kissing her, pulling her to me, brushing strands of hair away from her face. Me, painstakingly twisting a pair of paper clips together and giving the ring to her. Her, doing the same for me in return.
There are a million pieces of us scattered through my memory, moments tiny and insignificant to everyone else in the world except for me.
I fall into silence and go back to staring out at the city. Suddenly I’m aware of how small I am against its backdrop, nothing more than a shadow in the night, lost in the sea of lights.
Maybe she doesn’t remember any of this, either. Maybe it wasn’t worth remembering. I look down, gathering my courage, taking in deep breaths to undo the knot coiled tight in my chest.
It doesn’t matter. If anything, it’ll have been worth it to tell her that I know we had something special.
