Still, they usually live apart from humans. On Spero, they stick to the Under, a series of stone tunnels burrowed into the surface of Mercury, but here on Cytherea, they live on the lowest levels, where the pressure is higher, or even on the surface of Venus, where they oversee mining efforts. It’s rare they’re this far up, mixed with normal humans, and the unease in the air is palpable. A mother keeps her energetic child from venturing to their side of the car. Others clutch their bags to their chests protectively. Many eye the Asters with suspicion, while a group of teens glare with open hatred. Only once the toddler starts to cry do the teens lose their tempers.
“Ey, bruv!” A boy with a geneassisted white eye and the bright, choppy clothing favored on the higher levels of Cytherea calls out. “Cockroaches, I’m talking at you! What’re a couple of bugs doing off the surface?” When the Asters don’t answer, he leans across the aisle toward them. “Can’t you see you’re making people uncomfortable? You’re scaring children.”
The Asters do their best to ignore him, leaning as far into their seats as they can. I doubt they speak any of our human languages, but they understand the boy’s expression and body language clearly enough.
His daring seems to catch and inflame the others in his group. A girl with pink hair sings an off-key song about catching rats. A skinny kid with some sort of metal implant above his right eyebrow turns to me. “Bruv in black come down from his Spire to shit among the rest of us and don’t do a thing to protect the people from the real problems. That right, bruv?”
A few others look up at me expectantly. Even the Asters’ green goggles turn in my direction as if expecting me to intervene. But I’m not in the peacekeeping division, I’m a duelist, and patrolling trains isn’t even close to my job description.
“Fucking useless.” The kid spits at my feet.
As much as I want to mess up his geneassisted face, I calm myself with my implant and let my eyes wander to the windows and catch on the overflowing plants on apartment balconies, greens interspersed with a thousand jewel tones. Kids like him and his friends want to feel big, and any reaction I give them will just fuel them.
The Asters leave at the very next station, their heads bowed to avoid hitting the ceiling with their great height, their spindly limbs tucked tightly to their sides. The remaining passengers pointedly avert their eyes but immediately relax when they’re gone, slouching into their chairs, chatting with the person next to them, smiling at things other than their screens. The kids who’d hassled them slap shoulders, celebrating a job well done, and return to their inside jokes. The entire incident is forgotten.
I don’t feel bad for the Asters. I grew up in the lower levels of Cytherea, side by side with several of them, but I pulled myself out. I got my family out. I used my talents playing gladius, earned the Val Roux Scholarship to the Academy, and secured a future for my little sister so that she can involve herself wherever she wants in the entertainment industry—cinema, theater, music. My name, sol Lucius, is proof of where I belong, yet here I am, having climbed the ladder of success one painful rung at a time.
The bullet train reaches Cytherea’s central terminal, Einstein Station, and I shoulder my way through my fellow passengers to disembark. In the very center of the station, a statue of two men stretches toward the ceiling, three meters tall and made of clear quartz. One man places wings of copper and gold on the other’s back. This statue and the numerous others like it throughout Cytherea depict Daedalus placing his grand invention on his son’s shoulders and serves as a reminder in two parts.
The first reminds us what our ancestors faced. During the Dead Century War, they left Mars for uninhabited, unexplored, and dangerous Mercury on the science vessel Icarus. But instead of perishing in fire, they flew to the planet closest to the sun, survived, and flourished.
The second reminder is this: while technological advancements can carry humankind to impossible heights, power must be exercised responsibly. After all, people tend to forget that Daedalus’s wings for his son did work; it was Icarus who used them incorrectly.
Despite the overwhelming crowd in the station, I stand apart. Black isn’t a popular color among fashionable Icarii, and my uniform carves a space for me in the press of people. A peacekeeper, an officer of the law also clad in black but in a different cut, respectfully nods to me at the exit of the station. As I descend the stairs toward Cytherea’s main thoroughfare, Newton Street, the city overwhelms me.
Cytherea is a wild and sprawling youth. Where other cities breathe sighs of relief, Cytherea sings of its glory. Mercury’s domed city, Spero, was created in a time of necessity, but Venus was seeded out of prosperity; every corner is full of substantial sights and sounds that assault me as I walk by—pulsing music from floating speakers that zip through the air like insects, Paragon influencers in the newest fashions lounging on the trendiest furniture as if they’re selling nothing at all, holograms of celebrities encouraging everyone to come to their newest interactive play. Everyone who’s anyone has a building on Newton Street, from vid studios to the president of the Icarii. Even the military.
The Spire is an obelisk of a building as black as our uniforms that stretches into the domed sky. It houses the Command division that provides orders to all branches of the military. Surrounded by other buildings in pearl white and shimmering opal, neon-bright advertisements pasted on street-level windows, the Spire stands out in its restraint. The building is bare of ornament other than one bold word that flashes red in the three most-used languages, English, Spanish, and Chinese. ENLIST. ALÍSTATE. 參加軍隊, the Spire reads.
But everyone knows the truth behind the Spire’s command: those who don’t attend the Academy won’t be duelists of the Special Forces, one of the elite Icarii soldiers. Instead they’ll be low-ranking infantry, their neural implants programmed to answer to their commanders en masse. In the Academy the duelists joked they were like worker bees, unable to make decisions without their queen. Dad just called them cannon fodder. I went to primary school on the lowest level of Cytherea with a few kids who were so desperate for credits, they joined up to pay their debts, and I’d quickly lost track of them. They’d ship out on a vessel bound for the Gean space around Earth or Mars, and they’d disappear into the stars, never to be heard from again.
When I reach my destination, a scanner confirms my neural implant at the Spire’s gate, and an infantryman in a formal black-and-silver uniform salutes me as I enter. The grounds in front of the building have well-maintained green bushes but no flowers, another thing that separates the Spire from the lively surrounding buildings that overflow with vines and blossoms. Still, we do our part toward air purification, even if our hedges are plain.
While the exterior is imposing, the interior is similar to what you’d find inside any other of the skyscrapers downtown: clean, white hallways blink with interactive maps on the floors, and people stroll through the lobby on their way to their assignments. But that’s where the similarities end. The workers here are soldiers, duelists, and commanders. There are no animated images acting as advertisements on the walls, as would be common in other buildings, and there are no desks or secretaries; to even get this far, you have to belong.
“I’ve been summoned by High Commander Beron val Bellator,” I say aloud.