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.
EDEN
I don’t know exactly when drone racing started. Decades ago, I think, in some other country, during a time when a game had supposedly taken the world by storm. All I know is that when Pressa first took me to one of the matches—when I saw the drones’ colorful streaks light up the air—I was hooked.
Now I pull my hood farther down over my head and hurry through the night markets of the Undercity. Where the Sky Floors of Ross City are awash in virtual murals, the scenes down here have the grit of reality. At this hour, everything is bathed in neon—flickering red and yellow signs hanging over crumbling stores and barred motels, trails of neon bulbs dangling over the menagerie of market stalls that are still as crowded as they are during the day. Everyone keeps their head down as they shove their way through the smoky streets. No one pays attention to me.
Tonight I’m passing through the area of the Undercity that’s usually teeming with criminals. Conmen. Gamblers and thieves, drug dealers and mafiosi. The Level system starts to break down here, where the majority of people have hacked accounts. Numbers and names don’t float over most heads. And when violence and murder break out, there are no points deducted, no alarms sent digitally to the police.
This is where you go if you need to take out a loan in a hurry, to temporarily bring your Level up high enough to be allowed to use a bus, or to buy medication that’s off the official market. People down here will do it for you, hacking your system so that you Level up—but for an exorbitant price. If you can’t pay that price back after your Level goes back down to normal … well, a lot of desperate people go missing all the time, their disappearances uninvestigated by an uninterested country.